Mirʾāt al-adwār wa-mirqāt al-akhbār. Volume 1 /
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Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Lārī (d. 979/1572) was a Persian scholar in the traditional and foreign sciences. Born in Luristan in south-western Iran, he received his academic education in Shiraz, attending the lectures of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī ((d. 949/1542) and Kamāl al-Dīn Lārī (d. 979/1572), prominent representatives of the Shiraz School in philosophy. Under the Safavids, many intellectuals left Persia for India or Asia Minor. Lārī went to India, living at the court of the Mughal emperor Humāyūn (d. 963/1556). After the latter's death he went to Mecca and then on to Istanbul, where he lived for a number of years, a respected scholar among his peers. His final years Lārī spent as the head of a school in Amīd, today's Diyarbakır. Lārī compiled the universal history published here in Istanbul, dedicating it to Sultan Selim II (d. 982/1574). Worthy of note are his lack of partisanship, his transparence on sources, and his interest in scholars and artists. 2 vols; volume 1.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406414
9786002030733
Risāla-yi jild sāzī : Ṭayyāri-yi jild /
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Before the printing press made its appearance in the Islamic world, books were reproduced in manuscript, as was the case in Europe before Gutenberg (d. 1468) introduced printing in movable type. In that connection, the art of bookbinding was very important. This may be inferred from a special chapter devoted to this subject in Ibn Bādīs' (d. 453/1061) ʿ Umdat al-kuttāb wa-ʿuddat dhawi ʼl-albāb , or from Ibn Abī Ḥamīda's (9th/15th century) didactic poem for bookbinders, called Tadbīr al-safīr fī ṣināʿat al-tasfīr . The present work is a new and improved edition of a didactic poem on bookbinding in Persian, composed in India by a certain Sayyid Yūsuf Ḥusayn, somewhere before 1228/1813. About the author not much is known other than that his knowledge of Persian shows some shortcomings and that he must have had mystical leanings. This new edition follows the discovery of another copy of this text in Iran, besides the one kept in Madras (Chennai)
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1 online resource. :
9789004405837
9786002030221
Al-Arbaʿīniyyāt li-Kashf anwār al-qudsiyyāt /
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In the history of Islamic literature, there is a genre called arbaʿūna ḥadīthan , in which 40 Prophetic traditions are jointly published, mostly with some kind of commentary. The genre finds its origin in the tradition saying that whoever commits forty traditions to memory will be reckoned among the jurists on Resurrection Day. Qāḍī Saʿīd Qumī (d. after 1107/1696) is a Shīʿite philosopher, jurist, physician and mystic of the Safavid period. Having been trained by some of the foremost scholars of his time, he spent most of his active life in Qum, where he divided his time between his judgeship and teaching. In imitation of the forty-traditions genre, Qāḍī Saʿīd wanted to publish a collection of fourty essays, mostly on philosophy and mysticism, as the fruit of his many years of study. In fact, he got no further than ten. Still, this does not detract from their quality, as may be judged from the present edition.
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A collection of treatises on various subjects compiled by the author. :
1 online resource. :
9789004402812
9789646781658
Rawḍa-yi taslīm (taṣavvurāt) /
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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. 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. Ṭūsī spent at least half of his academic and political life among the Nizārī branch of the Ismailis, first in Quhistan in eastern Iran, and then in Alamut in the north and other Ismaili strongholds. The Persian work published here originated as a lecture series on Nizārī Ismaili doctrine, given by Ṭūsī in Alamut. The edition is a much improved version of the one by Ivanov, based on better manuscripts, unavailable to him.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406353
9786002030832
Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i Sāmāniyān u Buwayhiyān u Ghaznawiyān /
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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 Samanids, the Buyids and the Ghaznavids.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404199
9789648700398
Bih guzīn-i ʿAlī-nāma : Kuhantarīn manẓūma-yi Shīʿi-yi Fārsī /
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Until the discovery of the Persian ʿAlī-nāma , Ibn Ḥusām's Khawarān-nāma (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 , but then adapted to fit the Shīʿī theme, with ʿAlī and his companions often taking the place of Rustam and other heroes. The ʿAlī-nāma , extant in one manuscript in Konya, is a much older poem on the same subject. Composed by someone using the alias of Rabīʿ, it was completed in 482/1089 in Khurāsān, 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. Different from the edition by Omidsalar (2010), this edition only reproduces verses deemed worthy of Rabīʿ, rejecting two-thirds as the work of some unknown 'poetaster'.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405943
9786002030337
Mirʾāt al-adwār wa-mirqāt al-akhbār. Volume 2 /
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Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Lārī (d. 979/1572) was a Persian scholar in the traditional and foreign sciences. Born in Luristan in south-western Iran, he received his academic education in Shiraz, attending the lectures of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī ((d. 949/1542) and Kamāl al-Dīn Lārī (d. 979/1572), prominent representatives of the Shiraz School in philosophy. Under the Safavids, many intellectuals left Persia for India or Asia Minor. Lārī went to India, living at the court of the Mughal emperor Humāyūn (d. 963/1556). After the latter's death he went to Mecca and then on to Istanbul, where he lived for a number of years, a respected scholar among his peers. His final years Lārī spent as the head of a school in Amīd, today's Diyarbakır. Lārī compiled the universal history published here in Istanbul, dedicating it to Sultan Selim II (d. 982/1574). Worthy of note are his lack of partisanship, his transparence on sources, and his interest in scholars and artists. 2 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406438
9786002030740
Mirʾāt al-waqāyiʿ-i Muẓaffarī. Volume 2 /
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ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Khān Lisān al-Salṭanah Sipihr (1869-1933), also known by his honorific title of Malik al-Muwarrikhīn, was an historian, a court official, a chronicler, a politician, a writer of many books in various disciplines, and an Iranian newspaperman of the first hour. Entering the secretarial ranks of the court at the age of eighteen, he held various positions of trust under Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh (d. 1313/1896) and Muẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh (d. 1907). After Muẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh's death he worked in several official capacities, lastly as head of the religious endowments of Kashan. Unable to make a living as a publisher, he spent the last part of his life in education. He died after a short illness in Tehran, aged 64. This volume contains his thusfar unpublished chronicle of the reign of Muẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh. His reports on Iran's internal affairs are especially interesting since he was a close witness of most of these events. 2 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404854
9789648700275
Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i mubārak-i Ghāzānī. Volume 1 /
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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 four volumes published here contain the history of the Mongols up until Ghāzān. Section: Mongols; 4 vols; volume. 1.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404373
9786002031082
Kitāb shināsi-yi āthār-i Fārsi-yi chāp shuda dar shibh-i qāra (Hind, Pākistān, Banglādish), 1160-1387/1195-1428/1781-2007. Volume 2 /
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Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century marked the beginning of a new era in the transmission of knowledge, the spread of ideologies, and the administration of peoples. Even if the Mughal emperor Jahāngīr (d. 1627), when presented with a printed copy of the Gospels, expressed his interest in exploring the possibilities for the printing of texts in nastaʿlīq in movable type, it would take another two hunderd years before the people of the Indian subcontinent started printing themselves. In the 1820's, when Indians began using western printing techniques to reproduce texts in local languages, they preferred lithographs over movable type. The former required less technology, were typographically superior, and also closer to the traditional reading experience. Movable type came only later. The printing of Persian texts had its heyday between the 1820's and 1850's. The present inventory shows the immense richness of two centuries of Persian printing on the Indian subcontinent. 4 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406063
9786002030429
Kitāb al-mulakhkhaṣ fi ʼl-lugha maʿa ʼl-wafāʾ bi-tarjamat mā fi ʼl-Qurʾān /
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A trusted and much-used means to navigate between words and languages, the dictionary has a long history. The oldest bilingual dictionary is a Sumerian-Eblaite lexicon of more than 4000 years ago. The earliest monolingual dictionary is preserved in fragments from a Chinese lexicon from around 800 BCE. As for Arabic-Persian dictionaries, of which the facsimile published here is a valuable specimen, these made their first appearance in the 4th/10th century, at the time of the first translations of the Qurʾān and its commentaries and the increase of scientific texts in Arabic eligible for translation into New Persian. The present dictionary was copied in 684/1286, but is certainly older than that. It is a general lexicon which has been alphabetically arranged. At the end there is an appendix with an overview of the terminology of various practical fields that leaves a very modern impression (days of the week, basic arithmetic etc.). Historical and philological introducton, indices.
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1 online resource. :
9789004407237
9786002031150
Sharḥ-i Thamra-yi Baṭlamyūs : Dar aḥkām-i nujūm /
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Claudius Ptolemy (d. ca 170 CE) was a Graeco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer who lived and worked in Alexandria. His Tetrabiblos ('Four Books', Lat. Quadripartitum ), in which he sets out the principles and practice of astrology, became a highly influential work that was also taught at the cream of European universities, well into Renaissance times. In the Islamic world, there existed an Arabic summary of this work, entitled Kitāb al-thamara ('Harvest', Lat. Liber Fructus ), erroneously ascribed to Ptolemy himself. 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. Author of more than 50 scholarly works, the present volume contains his Persian commentary on the Kitāb al-thamara in which he also made use of two earlier commentaries in Arabic, one by Aḥmad b. Yūsuf al-Miṣrī (4th/10th cent.) and the other by Abu ʼl-ʿAbbās al-Iṣfahānī (4th/10th cent.)
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1 online resource. :
9789004402638
9789646781221
Mirʾāt al-waqāyiʿ-i Muẓaffarī. Volume 1 /
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ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Khān Lisān al-Salṭanah Sipihr (1869-1933), also known by his honorific title of Malik al-Muwarrikhīn, was an historian, a court official, a chronicler, a politician, a writer of many books in various disciplines, and an Iranian newspaperman of the first hour. Entering the secretarial ranks of the court at the age of eighteen, he held various positions of trust under Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh (d. 1313/1896) and Muẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh (d. 1907). After Muẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh's death he worked in several official capacities, lastly as head of the religious endowments of Kashan. Unable to make a living as a publisher, he spent the last part of his life in education. He died after a short illness in Tehran, aged 64. This volume contains his thusfar unpublished chronicle of the reign of Muẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh. His reports on Iran's internal affairs are especially interesting since he was a close witness of most of these events. 2 vols; volume 1.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404847
9789648700268
Humāyūn-nāma : Tārīkh-i manẓūm, Nīma-yi nukhust - mujallad-i yakum u duwum /
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The author of this epic poem, Ḥakīm Zajjājī (alive in 676/1277), was a glassmaker who also had a talent for poetry. At some point, for reasons that remain unexplained, his life took a turn for the worse. He lost all his friends, and his wife became estranged from him. It is in this period of emotional distress that he decided to break with his previous life and move to the Charandāb district of Tabriz. This district was home to the famous house of Juwaynī, whose members held high administrative offices under the Saljūqs, the Khwārazmshāhs and Īl Khānids. Zajjājī hoped to attract the attention of this family with his masnavi, in order for them to get him out of his miserable situation. For twenty years he worked on this versified history of Islam from its earliest times until his own day. Edition of part one, part two having been published seven years earlier by the same scholar.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406001
9786002030320
Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i Īrān u Islām. Volume 2 /
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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 in these three volumes describes the history of Iran and Islam. Section: Iran, 3 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404342
9786002030696
Dīwān-i Fānī : Mawsūm bih Ganj Allāh /
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Born in Khūy (Azerbaidjan), Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Zunūzī Khūʾī (1172-1225/1758-1810) was a traditional Islamic scholar and man of letters who signed his poems as 'Fānī'. He received his basic education in Zunūz, Tabriz and Khūy, leaving for the holy cites of the Shīʿa in Iraq at the age of 23. There he attended the classes of, among others, Āqā Muḥammad Bāqir Bihbihānī (d. 1205/1790) and Mīrzā Muḥammad Mahdī Shahristānī (d. 1215-16/1800-01). He then returned to Khūy where he spent the rest of his life, save for a two-year 'sabbatical' in Mashhad. In Khūy Fānī was a protégé of the local ruler, Aḥmad Khān Dunbul (d. 1200/1785) and his son Ḥusayn Qulīkhān Dunbul (d. 1213/1799). He is the author of a number of works, among them the encyclopaedic Baḥr al-ʿulūm (Persian) and the spiritual Wasīlat al-najāh (Persian). The Persian poems published here are mostly mystical in tone, often inserting terms or concepts taken from astronomy.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405851
9786002030238
Muntakhab-i risālāt-i Ṣafāʾ al-Ḥaqq /
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Ṣafāʾ al-Ḥaqq (1879-1962) is the artist's name of an Iranian Kurd whose family had moved from Kurdistan to Hamadan when he was still a child. His father was a respected businessman and a follower of the ideas of Shaykh Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī (d. 1241/1826). Though well-educated, having studied traditional and herbal medicine and animal husbandry, as an adolescent Ṣafāʾ al-Haqq spent a lot of time in his father's business in the bazaar. Due to his convictions, his father lost his livelyhood and Ṣafāʾ al-Ḥaqq started travelling. He spent several years in India, where he worked in a British hospital in Bombay. He then returned to Hamadan, where he settled as a physician. As a poet Ṣafāʾ al-Ḥaqq wrote in the Hindī style. He was an amateur musicologist as well as an accomplished calligrapher. This volume contains his autobiography, a treatise on animal husbandry, and two further treatises on various aspects of Shaykhism and music.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404892
9789648700466
Kitāb shināsi-yi āthār-i Fārsi-yi chāp shuda dar shibh-i qāra (Hind, Pākistān, Banglādish), 1160-1387/1195-1428/1781-2007. Volume 3 /
:
Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century marked the beginning of a new era in the transmission of knowledge, the spread of ideologies, and the administration of peoples. Even if the Mughal emperor Jahāngīr (d. 1627), when presented with a printed copy of the Gospels, expressed his interest in exploring the possibilities for the printing of texts in nastaʿlīq in movable type, it would take another two hunderd years before the people of the Indian subcontinent started printing themselves. In the 1820's, when Indians began using western printing techniques to reproduce texts in local languages, they preferred lithographs over movable type. The former required less technology, were typographically superior, and also closer to the traditional reading experience. Movable type came only later. The printing of Persian texts had its heyday between the 1820's and 1850's. The present inventory shows the immense richness of two centuries of Persian printing on the Indian subcontinent. 4 vols; volume 3.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406070
9786002030436
Maḥakk-i Khusrawī /
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When the founder of the Qajar dynasty of Iran, Āqā Muḥammad Khān Qājār (r. 1789-97), conquered the capital of Georgia Tiflis in 1795, two infant sons of the defeated king Heraclius II were captured. Of these, the eldest died on the way. The other, Khusraw Khān, the later Mīrzā Khusraw Bayg Gurjī (d. 1277/1860), was taken back to Tehran by the commander of the Persian forces, Ḥājjī Ibrāhīm, who treated him as if he were his own child, calling him Mīrzā. When Ḥājjī Ibrāhīm was executed in 1803 on the orders of Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh (d. 1249/1834), Mīrzā Khusraw first lived with a family in Shiraz and then, in 1805, he was adopted by the childless Talpur ruler of Sind, Mīr Karam ʿAlī Khān (r. 1227-44/1812-28). It is there at the court in Hyderabad that he developed into a refined man of letters and where he compiled this poetical anthology, then only 27 years old.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405776
9786002030146
Siyah bar safīd : Majmūʿa-yi guftārhā u yād dāshthā dar zamīna-yi kitābshināsī u nuskhashināsī /
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This is a collection of research notes, personal recollections, interviews with colleagues, and professional letters, sent and received, compiled by the Pakistani specialist of Islamic manuscripts ʿĀrif Nawshāhī (b. 1955). They cover a period of over 35 years of professional activity (1974-2011), mostly in Pakistan, India, and Iran. The work consists of five chapters, of which the research notes contained in chapters one and two are perhaps the most informative ones. Especially interesting is the information on the holdings of some of the libraries in India and Pakistan in chapter one and the codicological notes in chapter two. The notes, memoirs, anecdotes, interviews, and letters of chapters three to five give a fine impression of how this prominent scholar experienced the world of manuscripts and codicologists in which he was active for so many years. And here too, useful information may be found, especially in his long series of very short notes in chapter three.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405844
9786002030207