Risālat ithbāt al-ʿaql al-mujarrad-i khwāja-yi Nasīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī va shurūḥ-i ān /
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Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) was an influential philosopher, theologian, mathematician and astronomer, besides being the first director of the famous observatory at Marāghah near Tabriz as well as a man of politics. The author of a large number of scholarly works, he is especially famous for such treatises as his Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād on theology; the Zīj-i Īlkhānī on astronomy; the Ḥall mushkilāt al-Ishārāt ; his influential commentary on Avicenna's (428/1037) Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt on philosophy and logic; and his Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī on ethics. In the brief Arabic treatise that is the subject of this publication, Ṭūsī proves that there is a separate intellect in which all contingent being is semperternally represented, unchanging, as a kind of 'interface' between God and the human mind ( dhihn ). Even though this treatise is extremely short, it certainly had an impact, as is clear from the variety of critical reactions in the commentaries and glosses published alongside it in this volume.
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1 online resource. :
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9786002030757
Tarjuma-yi Kitāb al-Nijāra : Dar handasa-yi ʿamalī /
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Abu ʼl-Wafāʾ Būzjānī (d. 388/998) was a mathematician and astronomer and a native of Būzjān near Nishapur. He studied arithmetic with two of his uncles, probably in Būzjān. When he was nineteen years old he went to Baghdad. There he further developed himself to become one of the leading scientists of his age, working at the Buyid court. He was a contemporary and protector of the chronicler of intellectual and artistic life in Baghdad at the time, Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. ca. 414/1023). In the bibliographical literature more than twenty works are ascribed to him, many of which were lost. The present work was originally written in Arabic under the title Kitāb fī mā yaḥtāj ilayhi ʼl-ṣāniʿ fī aʿmāl al-handasa . It is a groundbreaking work in that Būzjānī was the first to write a monograph on practical geometry as justified by the rules of theoretical geometry. Medieval Persian and French translation, with introductions and notes.
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1 online resource. :
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Kitāb-i Īrānī : Chahār maqāla dar mabāḥith-i matn pizhūhī, nuskha shināsi wa kitāb ārāʾī /
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For many years, Francis Richard (1948) was responsible for the Persian manuscripts in the Oriental collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The author of numerous publications on Persian manuscripts and their tradition and much esteemed among his peers in Iran, this is the Persian translation of Richard's Le livre persan (BnF, 2003), containing the following essays: "Le Supplément persan : l'acquisition de manuscrits par le département des Manuscrits de 1739 à nos jours", "La transmission des textes dans le monde iranien : quelques pratiques liées à la culture manuscrite", "Un cas de « succès littéraire » : la diffusion des œuvres poétiques de Djâmî de Hérât à travers tout le Proche-Orient", and "Le sarlowh ou frontispice enluminé : un décor fréquent dans les manuscrits persans." In recognition of his great services to Persian studies, part one of a two-volume Persian liber amicorum was published in Tehran in 2005.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404724
9789648700152
Qānūn-i Shāhanshāhī /
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Idrīs Bidlīsī (d. 926/1520) was the son of a munshī (secretary) in the chancery of the court of the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Ḥasan (d. 882/1478) first in Diyarbakır and then Tabriz. Idrīs must have enjoyed the usual education for an adolescent of his social background. He was fluent in Persian and Arabic, knowing Kurdish as well. He started his career in Tabriz under Yaʿqūb Beg (d. 896/1490), and served him and his descendants for seventeen years in various high administrative offices. When Tabriz was conquered by the Safavids in 907/1501, he fled to the court of the Ottoman emperor Bāyazīd II (d. 918/1512) in Istanbul, serving him and Selīm I (d. 926/1520) in different positions and capacities. Bidlīsī authored more than twenty works but is best known for his Hasht Bihisht , a history of the Ottoman empire written for Bāyazīd II. The present work is a mirror for princes type of composition with a strong religious colouring.
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1 online resource. :
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Shajarat al-mulūk : Tārīkh-i manẓūm-i Sīstān az kuhantarīn rūzgārān tā farmānrawāyi-yi Malik Bahrām-i Kiyānī dar dahihā-yi nukhust-i ḥukūmat-i Qājārān /
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Sistan is a region straddling the eastern border between Iran and Afghanistan and on the Iranian side part of the province of Sistan-Baluchistan. Irrigated by numerous rivers coming from the mountains of central Afghanistan, the fields of Sistan produce mostly barley and wheat. Located on the trade routes between north and south and east and west, Sistan's strategic importance has always been recognized. The last conflict involving control over Sistan dates back to the nineteenth century when Persia and Afghanistan disputed the region, the border finally being fixed by the second Sistan Border Commission in 1903-05. There are not many local histories on Sistan, until recently only the anonymous Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Sīstān (5th-7th/11-13th cent.) and Malik Shāh Ḥusayn's Iḥyāʾ al-mulūk (11th/17th century). The history of Sistan published here is especially interesting because it runs until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Until now, we possessed little information beyond the early eighteenth century. Mathnawī, imitating the Shāh-nāma.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404908
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Mathnawi-yi maʿnawī. Volume 3 : mujallad-i sivum daftar-i panjum u shishum /
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The founder of the Mawlawiyya order of dervishes, Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273) is the most celebrated and widely quoted mystical poet of the Persianate world. Born in Balkh in 604/1207, he was still a child when his father, a preacher, emigrated westwards with his family, moving to Malaṭya, Sivas, Akshehir, Larende and, finally, Konya. It was in Konya that Rūmī, who had also received a regular education, met the people who would give his life a decisive turn towards mysticism: first, his father's former pupil Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Muḥaqqiq (d. 637/1239-40) and then, most of all, the celebrated mystic Shams al-Dīn Tabrīzī (d. 645/1247). Rūmī's Mathnawi-yi maʿnawī is a didactic poem inspired by his favourite student Ḥusām al-Dīn Čelebi (d. 683/1284). Composed in six fascicles ( daftar ), it took several years to complete. The edition printed here is an enhanced version of the one by Nicholson, with Nicholson's introductory essays and notes translated into Persian. 4 vols; volume 3.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406339
9786002030818
Rāhnamā-yi dastnivishthā-yi Mānavi-yi Tūrfān (ravish shināsi-yi vīrāyish va bāz sāzī) /
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After its foundation by Mani in the third century CE, Manicheism spread quickly from Iran through the ancient world, from North Africa to Europe and from Central Asia to China. Mani wrote seven works, six in Syriac and one in Middle Persian. The spread of Manicheism led to the emergence of Manichean writings in a number of other languages, and also of texts in criticism or description of this religion by non-Manichean authors in some of these same languages, among them Greek, Latin, Coptic, Arabic, Soghdian, and Chinese. From among the archeological findings involving Manichean texts, one of the most exciting ones was the discovery, in the early nineteen hundreds, of many Manichean fragments in Turfan, in Xinjiang province, China. These are in Middle Persian, Parthian, Soghdian and Manichean New Persian, besides material in Uygur, Bactrian and Kuchean. The present work is a Persian manual for the interpretation, reconstruction and edition of these Turfan texts.
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1 online resource. :
9789004408074
9786002031372
ʿArafāt al-ʿāshiqīn wa-ʿaraṣāt al-ʿārifīn. Volume 8, Indices /
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In Persian literature, tadhkira ('note', 'memorandum') works are for the most part collections of biographies of poets, combined with selections from their writings. The earliest such work is Dawlatshāh Samarqandī's Tadhkirat al-shuʿarāʾ (completed in 892/1487), which set a standard for posterity. The tadhkira genre was especially popular in the 10th/16th century and following. The present work by Taqī al-Dīn Awḥadī (alive in 1042/1632-33) is a good example of this. Born in Isfahan in 973/1565, as a young man his poetical talent was commended by, among others, the poet ʿUrfī Shīrāzī (d. 999/1591). After some time in the entourage of Shāh ʿAbbās I and a six-year stay in Iraq, he left Persia to try his luck at one of the courts in India. The present work, completed in 1024/1615, was written for a high official at the court of Jahāngīr. It contains about 3500 entries on Persian poets from the earliest times until his own day.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405578
9789648700879
Dīwān-i Jāmī. Volume 2 : Wāsiṭat al-ʿaqd, khātimat al-ḥayāh /
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Regarded by many as the last great mystical poet of medieval Persia, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) spent the greater part of his life in Herat. As a student, he excelled in every subject he engaged in and appeared destined for an academic career. But then, in his early thirties, he went through a spiritual crisis that ended in him joining the Herat branch of the mystical Naqshbandiyya order, led by the charismatic Saʿd al-Dīn Kāshgharī (d. 860/1456). A protégé of three successive Timurid rulers in Herat, Jāmī's wide network of friendships and relations extended from spiritual and literary circles through the political to the academic. With 39.000 lines of verse and over 30 prose works to his name, Jāmī's literary production is quite overwhelming. His Dīwān , published here in two volumes, underwent various changes before he finalized it in 896/1491. This best edition so far is based on some of the oldest surviving manuscripts. 2 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
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Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i Ismāʿīliyān /
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Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī's (d. 718/1319) Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh has been described by many as the first world history ever. Composed in Persian for the Mongol Il-khans Ghāzān (r. 1295-1304) and Öljeitü (Uljāytu, r. 1304-16), its aim was to set out the history and condition of the Mongol people, conquerors of the world (part one), followed by a description of the other peoples and nations of the world and their histories (part two). Given its unprecedented scope, Rashīd, vizier to both rulers, mobilized a whole team of specialists, informants, and collaborators to assist him in his task. Making use of written and oral sources, the part on the Mongols is a key source on the emergence and organisation of the Mongol empire, while the second part constitutes the first attempt ever at writing a history of the world. The section published here describes the history of the Ismailis.
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1 online resource. :
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Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥājjī ʿAbdallāh Khān Qarāgūzlū Amīr Niẓām-i Hamadānī /
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In Persia under the Qajars (1210-1344/1796-1925) tribal leaders played an important role; at the regional level and also in matters of state. An illustrative example is ʿAbdallāh Khān Qarāgūzlū (d. 1334/1916), a prominent member of the Turkish Qarāgūzlū tribe of Hamadan. Qarāgūzlū, who died of a stroke age sixty, had a colourful life. Governor of the district of Astarābād at only 26 years of age, he had a career in which he served in a wide range of military and administrative positions, both regionally and nationally. But like so many others, he was certainly not without blemish: emprisoned on accusations of rebellion, rejected by parliament as governor of Kurdistan on charges of embezzlement and despotism in an earlier office in Shiraz, and an incapable Minister of Finance whose policies were often determined by taking an omen from his prayer beads. In the present collection of notes and reports, the tone is of course more positive.
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1 online resource. :
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9789646781832
Naqd wa bar rasī-yi Āthār u sharḥ-i aḥwāl-i Jāmī /
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Regarded by many as the last great mystical poet of medieval Persia, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) spent the greater part of his life in Herat. As a student, he excelled in every subject he engaged in and appeared destined for an academic career. But then, in his early thirties, he went through a spiritual crisis that ended in him joining the Herat branch of the mystical Naqshbandiyya order, led by the charismatic Saʿd al-Dīn Kāshgharī (d. 860/1456). A protégé of three successive Timurid rulers in Herat, Jāmī's wide network of friendships and relations extended from spiritual and literary circles through the political to the academic. With 39.000 lines of verse and over 30 prose works to his name, Jāmī's literary production is quite overwhelming. The present volume by Aʿlākhān Afṣaḥzād contains an in-depth study of his life, work and significance, concluded by a two hundred-page analysis of his famous Laylī u Majnūn.
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9789004402478
9789646781160
ʿAlī-nāma : Manẓūma-ī kuhan (facsimile) /
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Until the discovery of the Persian ʿAlī-nāma , Ibn Ḥusām's Khawarān-nāma (completed in 830/1427) was believed to be the oldest Persian epic poem involving the often wondrous exploits of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and the beginnings of Shīʿism. The Khawarān-nāma takes its inspiration from Firdawsī's Shāh-nāma (completed in 400/1010), but then adapted to fit the Shīʿī theme, with ʿAlī and his companions often taking the place of Rustam and other heroes. With this facsimile edition of the ʿAlī-nāma we now have access to a much older poem on this subject. Composed by someone using the alias of Rabīʿ, it was completed in 482/1089 in Khurāsān, most probably in or near the town of Sabzawār, just seventy years after the completion of Firdawsī's Shāh-nāma . The text is important because long before others, it acknowledges the heroes of the Shāh-nāma , some of whom were actually written into the script.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405127
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Iskandar-nāma, bakhsh-i Khatā /
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The Persian Iskandar-nāma or Alexander romance is a collection of mostly legendary stories about Alexander the Great, whose core narrative goes back to a Greek account of his life and accomplishments, written between the third century BCE and the first century CE. In the Persian tradition, the work distinguishes itself from its Greek model in that Alexander is described as half-Persian and half-Greek, and also in that he is often identified with the prophet Dhu ʼl-Qarnayn mentioned in the Qurʾān, besides the introduction of all manner of local motifs and elements. There exist various versions of this romance in Persian, both in poetry and in prose, the oldest ones dating from the 4th/11th (Firdawsī, Shāh-nāma ) and 6th/12th (Ṭarsūsī, Dārāb-nāma ) centuries, respectively. The present work is one of seven chapters of a popular prose version in story-teller fashion dating from the Safavid era in which earlier, traditional themes are often overshadowed by elements introduced for entertainment.
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1 online resource. :
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Tuḥfat al-azhār wa-zulāl al-anhār. Volume 3 : Fī nasab abnāʾ al-aʾimma al-aṭhār ʿalayhim ṣalawāt al-malik al-ghaffār /
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In traditional societies, ancestry is an important organising principle, often determining the lives of individuals or groups from the moment that they are born. In the Arab world, nasab (pl. ansāb ) or lineage was and to some extent still is, a major factor in the distribution of wordly and religious power, while administrative positions, trades, crafts and certain offices in the world of scholarship, too, often devolved along hereditary lines. Among the Shīʿa, where blood ties with the family of the Prophet through ʿAlī and his descendants are highly regarded and a source of authority and social standing, we find a number of ansāb works that focus exclusively on the genealogy of the twelve imams. Born into a Shīʿite family of ansāb scholars in 11th/17th-century Medina, the author of the present work travelled extensively in the Shīʿa world in his search for information. The result is a voluminous work, rich in material, genealogical and historic. 3 vols. & supplement al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī tashjīr Tuḥfat al-azhār ; volume 3.
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Vol. numbering from spine. :
1 online resource. :
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Takmila-yi Nafaḥāt al-uns /
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Regarded by many as the last great mystical poet of medieval Persia, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) spent the greater part of his life in Herat. As a student he excelled in every subject he engaged in and appeared destined for an academic career. But then, in his early thirties, he went through a spiritual crisis that ended in his joining the Herat branch of the mystical Naqshbandiyya order, led by the charismatic Saʿd al-Dīn Kāshgharī (d. 860/1456). A protégé of three successive Timurid rulers in Herat, Jāmī's wide network of friendships and relations extended from spiritual and literary circles through the political to the academic. With 39.000 lines of verse and over 30 prose works to his name, Jāmī's literary production is impressive. In his biographical handbook on Sufi masters, the Nafaḥāt al-uns , Jāmī did not mention himself. This is why his student ʿAbd al-Ghafūr Lārī (d. 912/1506) wrote this biographical supplement to it.
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1 online resource. :
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Al-Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa /
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Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) was an influential philosopher, theologian, mathematician and astronomer, besides being the first director of the famous observatory at Marāghah near Tabriz as well as a man of politics. The author of a large number of works, he is especially famous for such treatises as his Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād on theology; the Zīj-i Īlkhānī on astronomy; the Ḥall mushkilāt al-Ishārāt ; his influential commentary on Avicenna's (428/1037) Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt on philosophy and logic; and his Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī on ethics. Another famous work is his Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa published here. As stated by the editor, this is one of the most important and influential astronomical works written in the pre-modern Islamic world. It belongs to the second phase of Ṭūsī's academic career and constitutes a synthesis between two earlier works by him, written when he was still working for the Nizārī Ismailis. Arabic text and apparatus, Persian introduction translated from the English edition.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406476
9786002030917
Mirʾāt-i wāridāt : Tārīkh-i suqūṭ-i Ṣafawiyān, payāmadhā-yi ān wa farmānrawāyi-yi Malik Maḥmūd-i Sīstānī /
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The final years of the reign of the Safavids (1501-1722) have been described by many (near-) contemporary authors. A key-event in this period was the rebellion of Malik Maḥmūd Sistānī who, in 1722, in exchange for recognizing Maḥmūd the Afghan as the new shah of Persia rather than doing battle with him in a last-ditch effort to liberate Isfahan, was allowed to claim sovereignty in Mashhad in Khurāsān-an independence which lasted until his defeat in November of 1726. In the standard Persian sources covering this episode, Malik Maḥmūd is described in negative terms, as an adventurer who had to be dealt with. The present work, written by a first-generation Indian of Persian descent, gives a much more positive description of Malik Maḥmūd and his claims to power, often providing hitherto unknown details. Most likely based on oral testimonies by followers who had fled to India, this a is welcome addition to the standard account.
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Majmuʿah bih khaṭṭ-i Mullā Ṣadrā : Yād dāshthā-yi Qurʾānī va tafsīr-i āya-yi nūr az Mullā Ṣadrā, Muntakhab-i Baḥr al-Ḥaqāʾiq Najm al-Dīn-i Dāyah va al-Taʾwīlāt-i ʿAbd al-Razzāq-i K...
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The Islamic manuscript has many forms and shapes, from notes on a scrap of paper to the most preciously illuminated manuscript that can compete with the best one can find in the western world. Usually, a text would be written out at least twice: first as a draft and then as a clean copy from which later copies would be made. Usually, draft versions would either be destroyed, or washed and dried as a means to save paper, or used as reinforcement material by the bookbinder. Thus very few drafts have come down to us. And this is precisely what lends the present manuscript, containing a draft commentary on Qurʾān 24:35 (the celebrated Light Verse) by the famous 11th/17th-century philosopher Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 1050/1640) its special interest. Also in this manuscript: sundry notes on the Qurʾān and excerpts from two works by Najm al-Dīn Dāya (d. 654/1256) and ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshī (d. 736/1336)
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1 online resource. :
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Risāla-yi asṭurlāb-i Kūshyār Gīlānī /
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Kushyār (Pers. Kushyār) b. Labbān Gīlānī was a Persian astronomer and mathematician who flourished around 390/1000. All we know about his personal life is that he originated from the region of Gilan in northern Iran, bordering on the Caspian Sea. Given that he is cited in Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī's (d. after 442/1050) Kitāb fī ifrād al-maqāl fī amr al-aẓlāl , Kushyār must have become an authority by the time al-Bīrūnī came to write this work. From his works in mathematics, Kushyār's Kitāb fī uṣūl ḥisāb al-Hind on Indian arithmatic is the most important, and in astronomy his Zīj-i jāmiʿ . His Arabic work on the astrolabe is published here for the very first time, accompanied by a Japanese translation, both by Taro Mimura of Japan. In addition, this volume also contains a facsimile edition of the anonymous medieval Persian translation of this work, followed by a critical edition, both by Mohammad Bagheri of Iran.
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1 online resource. :
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