Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsī u ʿArabi-yi Kitābkhāna-yi Firdawsī, Kālij Wādhām (Wadham), Dānishgāh-i Āksfūrd (majmūʿa-yi Mīnāsiyān) /
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In the western world, oriental manuscript collections are now mostly kept at universities, institutes and in national or regional libraries. Yet many of these collections were jumpstarted with the acquisition or donation of some private collection. An example is the oriental collection at Leiden University Library, which started with a legacy of around 60 oriental manuscripts by J.J. Scaliger in 1609. In fact, private collectors have always enriched library collections until this very day. The shelf marks of the oriental manuscripts in almost every major collection in the western world bear testimony to this. Dr Caro Minasian (d. 1973) was an Iranian physician and a passionate collector of oriental manuscripts. In 1968 he sold the greater part of his collection to UCLA (1507 items). In 1972 he bequeathed the remainder (959 titles) to the Ferdowsi library of Wadham College, University of Oxford. This Persian catalogue contains the first detailed description of the entire Minasian collection.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406704
9786002031136
Muqarnas : an annual on the visual cultures of the Islamic world.
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Muqarnas is sponsored by The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Muqarnas 26 contains articles on a variety of topics that span and transcend the geographic and temporal boundaries that have traditionally defined the history of Islamic art and architecture. Contributors include Robert McChesney, Mattia Guidetti, Marcus Schadl, Christian Gruber, Katia Cytryn-Silverman, Doris Abouseif, Olga Bush, Emine Fetvaci, Moya Carey, Bernard O'Kane, Hadi Maktabi, Nadia Erzini and Stephen Vernoit.
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"Sponsored by the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts." :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789047429333 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
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
Al-Ifāda fī tarīkh al-aʾimma al-sāda /
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As is well known, the main difference between the Imāmiyya and Zaydiyya branches in Shīʿī Islam is to do with the fact that the Zaydiyya-named so after their first leader Zayd b.ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (d. 122/740)-did not unconditionally condemn the first three caliphs before ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, while to the Imāmiyya branch, all Sunnīs were infidels. But even though the Zaydīs did not consider Sunnīs generally as infidels, they regarded rebellion against Sunnī rule -unlawful to them-as a religious duty for all. The Imāmīs on the other hand, while radical in doctrine, did not have a militant attitude comparable to that of the Zaydīs. Geographically, the Zaydīs divided into a Yemeni and an Iranian branch, concentrated along the shores of the Caspian sea. The present work contains the biographies of 15 Zaydī imams, some from the Caspian, the author-Abū Ṭālib Hārūnī (d. 424/1033)-being a Zaydī scholar from that region.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404960
9789648700572
Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi madrasa-yi Imām Ṣādiq-i ('alayhi al-salām) Chālūs /
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Many studies on the Islamic world refer to writings that were originally published in manuscript. Even if a lot of these texts are now available in print, countless others are not, while printed works are often superseded by later, more critical editions. This means that the importance of Islamic manuscripts remains undiminished. In the West, major collections were established before 1900 and it is exceptional for new collections to be founded. In Iran, a country whose libraries host over 345.000 manuscripts, the establishment of new collections, often by testamentary disposition, is not uncommon. The Imām Ṣādiq Madrasa of Chalus near the Caspian Sea was founded in 1948. Its library contained just printed books. From 1979 onward, its third director, Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Mūsawī, introduced a programme for the active collection of manuscripts from among the inhabitants of Chalus and the surrounding region. By 2002, some 700 manuscripts had been obtained, all described in this catalogue.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402775
9789646781610
Kitāb shināsi-yi āthār-i Fārsi-yi chāp shuda dar shibh-i qāra (Hind, Pākistān, Banglādish), 1160-1387/1195-1428/1781-2007. Volume 4 /
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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 4.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406087
9786002030443
Taḥsīn wa taqbīḥ-i Thaʿālibī /
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Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038) was a very productive writer in Arabic philology and belles lettres and a promotor of the Arabic language in the eastern lands of the Islamic word. Born in Nishapur, it was there that he began his career, forging bonds of friendship with influential literati and various men of state. From there he travelled to the courts of different rulers in some of the major cities in Transoxania and Khurāsān, finally to return to Nishapur where he spent the last years of his life. A compiler and literary critic more than an author in his own right, al-Thaʿālibī's literary anthologies have done much for the preservation of early Arabic literature-mostly poetry-otherwise lost. As explained by the editor, the present work is not a Persian rendering of his Taḥsīn al-qabīḥ wa-taqbīḥ al-ḥasan , but probably done from an Arabic original that was similar to two of Thaʿālibī's other compilatory works.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404786
9789648700220
Kitāb shināsi-yi āthār-i Fārsi-yi chāp shuda dar shibh-i qāra (Hind, Pākistān, Banglādish), 1160-1387/1195-1428/1781-2007. Volume 1 /
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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 1.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406032
9786002030412
Dīwān-i Qāʾimiyyāt /
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Ḥasan Maḥmūd Kātib (d. after 640/1243) was an Ismaili poet. Born near Qazvīn, he was alive when Imam Ḥasan of Alamūt (d. 561/1166) proclaimed his doctrine of qiyāmat or spiritual 'resurrection' in 559/1164. He was a secretary of the governor of the fortress of Gird Kūh, Shihāb al-Dīn, whom he later followed to Quhistān. Around 630/1232 he was in Alamūt, preparing a copy of the diwan whose surviving fragments are published here, to be offered to the Imam of the Ismailis at the time, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad (d. 653/1255). Ḥasan Maḥmūd was well-versed in the intellectual and spiritual universe of Nizārī Ismailism as recorded, inter alia, in Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī's (d. 672/1274) Rawḍa-yi taslīm , Sayr wa sulūk , and Āghāz wa anjām . The present diwan contains the most complete contemporary catalogue of the terminology used in expressing Nizārī Ismaili doctrine, surpassing even the works of Ṭūsī, Nāṣir Khusraw (d. after 462/1070) and Nizārī Quhistānī (d. 720/1320)
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1 online resource. :
9789004405929
9786002030283
Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i Īrān u Islām. Volume 3 /
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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 3.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404366
9786002030702
Sharḥ-i Naẓm al-durr : Sharḥ-i qaṣīda-yi tāʾiyya-yi kubrā-yi Ibn-i Fāriḍ /
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Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235) is arguably the greatest mystical poet in the history of Arabic literature. Born in Cairo and a student of Shāfiʿī law and ḥadīth in his younger years, he turned to mysticism, living a solitary existence on Cairo's Muqaṭṭam hills, in the desert, and in the Hijaz. After his return to Cairo, people worshipped him as a saint, and even today admirers still visit his tomb. Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī (d. 835/1432) stemmed from a well-educated family in Isfahan. A survivor of Tīmūr Lang's (d. 807/1405) massacre of the population of Isfahan in 789/1387, he first studied the Islamic sciences with his elder brother in Samarqand, after which he went on a study tour which took him to such great scholars as Shams al-Dīn Fanārī (d. 834/1451) and Sirāj al-Dīn al-Bulqīnī (d. 805/1403). A specialist of mysticism in its relation to philosophy and Islam, this is his commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍ's al-Tāʾiyya al-kubrā.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404632
9789646781962
Bayān al-ḥaqāʾiq : Majmūʿa-yi hifdah riṣala /
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Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī (d. 718/1319) came from a Jewish family in Hamadan. His grandfather had been a courtier of Hūlāgū Khān (r. 1256-65) while his father was a court pharmacist. Rashīd al-Dīn converted to Islam when he was about 30 years old. Trained as a physician, he started his career under the Il-khanid Abāqā Khān (r. 1265-82), rising to the rank of vizier under Ghāzān (r. 1295-1304), Öljeitü (r. 1304-16) and Abū Saʿīd Bahādur Khān (r. 1316-35), who had him executed for murdering his father in 718/1319. Rashīd al-Dīn was also an historian and as such he is best known for his monumental Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh , the earliest attempt at writing a world history and a major source of information on the emergence and organisation of the Mongol empire. The present work is a collection of his essays on various subjects, from theology to Qurʾān interpretation and from the perception of colours to medicine and ethics.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404946
9789648700404
Khuld-i barīn : Rawḍahā-yi shīshum u haftum-Tārīkh-i Tīmūriyān u Turkmānān /
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In the Islamic world, universal histories have been written almost from the very beginning. Among the Arabic works one could, for example, mention the Kitāb akhbār al-rusul wal-mulūk by Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī (3rd/9th cent.), Ibn Miskawayh's (d. 421/1030) Kitāb tajārib al-umam , or the Mukhtaṣar taʾrīkh al-bashar by Abu ʼl-Fidāʾ (d. 732/1331). The first such history in New Persian was the abstract of Ṭabarī's Akhbār that was made by Abū ʿAlī Balʿamī (d. between 382-87/992-97) for the Samanid emir Manṣūr b. Nūḥ (d. 365/976). Many other works followed, such as Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī's Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh (composed in 699-710/1300-10) or the Tārīkh-i Ḥāfiẓ Abrū by Ḥāfiẓ Abrū (d. 833/1430). The present work by Muḥammad Yūsuf Wālih Qazwīnī (d. after 1078/1667) is a universal history with a focus on the Safavids. The sections published here describe the history of the Timurids and the Aq and Qara Qoyunlu dynasties, vital to our understanding of the rise of the Safavids.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402744
9789646781511
Khazāʾin al-anwār wa-maʿādin al-akhbār /
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Commentaries on the Qurʾān exist almost from the time of the Prophet. Sometimes they consists of a commentary on just one verse, like Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī's (d. 1050/1640) Tafsīr āyat al-Kursī , or on one single sura, like the latter's Tafsīr sūrat Yūsuf . Sometimes a commentary focusses on verses sharing some common theme, like Fakhr al-Dīn Astarābādī's (d. 1028/1619) Tafsīr āyāt al-aḥkām , comprising all those verses from which legal rules are derived. Commentaries on the entire Qurʾān are always voluminous, like Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī's (d. 311/923) Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān . Many commentaries were begun but never finished. The present work by Mīr Muḥammad Riḍā Muʾmin-i Khātūnābādī (early 12th/18th cent.) is an example of this. Planned as a complete commentary in four parts, only the first part (until the end of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ , no. 4) was finished and just the introduction and the commentary on the Fātiḥa are published here. Persian, elegant but accessible prose, ethico-mystical and literary elements.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404878
9789648700367
Kitāb al-muʿtamad fī uṣūl al-dīn /
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Abu ʼl-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī (d. 436/1044) was the founder of the last theological school of the Muʿtazila and author of, among others, the Kitāb taṣaffuḥ al-adilla and Sharḥ al-uṣūl al-khamsa . None of his theological works survive in full, while his influential Kitāb taṣaffuḥ al-adilla , of which only fragments remain, was actually never finished. Al-Baṣrī's teachings were given a new impulse and audience through the writings of Rukn al-Dīn b. al-Maḥmūd al-Malāḥimī (d. 536/1141) of Khurāsān, where his ideas also gained support among the Shīʿa, including Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274). Al-Malāḥimī's Kitāb al-muʿtamad fī uṣūl al-dīn , in which he relies mostly on al-Baṣrī's Kitāb taṣaffuḥ al-adilla , survives only in part. The present volume contains a new edition of this text. Thanks to the discovery of two manuscripts in Yemen it was possible to amend the first edition in places and to add a lot of new material, the text now being double in size.
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Added t.p. has: Revised and enlarged edition by Wilferd Madelung.
"Mīras̲-i Maktūb ; 236" :
1 online resource. :
9789004405974
9786002030375
Sullam al-samawāt /
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In the Persianate world, encyclopaedias have a long history. Arabic works by Persian authors aside (like Ibn Farīghūn's Jāmiʿ al-ʿulūm , 4th/10th century), the earliest encyclopaedia in Persian is Avicenna's (d. 428/1037) philosophical Dānishnāma-yi ʿAlāʾī . Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī's (d. 606/1210) Jāmiʿ al-'ulūm on the other hand, is an encyclopaedia on everything there was to know at the time. Philosophical encyclopaedias would usually divide into logic, physics and metaphysics, more general encyclopaedias into the pre-Islamic and Islamic sciences, also called the rational ( ʿaqlī ) and traditional ( naqlī ) sciences, even if a strict separation was not always maintained. In addition, there were also specialized encyclopaedias like Ibn Ḥusayn Jurjānī's medical Dhākhira-yi Khwārazmshāhī (early 6th/12th century). The content of encyclopaedias often being dependent on the author's interests and intellectual horizon, no universal format exists. The present work by Abū Qāsim Kāzarūnī (fl. early 11th/17th century) is an example of a very personal encyclopaedia, treating of religion, philosophy, and literature.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404939
9789648700305
Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt al-lawḥiyya wal-ʿarshiyya. Volume 2 : al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt /
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Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191) is arguably the most influential thinker in post-Avicennan (d. 428/1037) philosophy. He is best known as the originator of the Philosophy of Illumination, a mixture of Hellenistic, old-Iranian, and mystico-Islamic elements, further developed and transformed in the Transcendental Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1640). Suhrawardī wrote four major works on the Philosophy of Illunination: al-Talwīḥāt al-lawḥiyya wal-ʿarshiyya , al-Muqāwamāt, al-Mashāriʿ wal-muṭāraḥāt , and the Ḥikmat al-ishrāq . This was also the order in which these works had to be studied. The Talwīḥāt being an introductory course on the Philosophy of Illumination, it is not surprising that three commentaries on it were written, by ʿAllāma Ḥillī (d. 726/1326), Shams al-Dīn al-Shahrazūri (d. 687/1288), and Ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284), whose commentary is published here. Ibn Kammūna was a thinker of Jewish origin who by his own declaration was self-taught in philosophy. He wrote several other important philosophical works, among them his commentary of Avicenna's Ishārāt . Volume 2, Natural philosophy.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405073
9789648700701
Tuḥfat al-azhār wa-zulāl al-anhār. Volume 1 : 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 1.
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Vol. numbering from spine. :
1 online resource. :
9789004402539
9789646781085
Tuḥfat al-azhār wa-zulāl al-anhār. Supplement : Al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī tashjīr Tuḥfat al-azhār /
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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 ; supplement.
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Vol. numbering from spine. :
1 online resource. :
9789004402591
9789646781092