Dīwān-i Khāzin /
:
About fifty years ago, during renovation works in the complex of Imam Reza in Mashhad, a hoard of manuscripts was discovered in a secret niche. These manuscripts had probably been stashed away in a time of unrest to prevent them from getting looted or destroyed. Among them, there was one quite remarkable codex, copied in 481/1088 and published here, containing the divan of ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad al-Khāzin, a poet who belonged to entourage of the Buyid vizier Ṣāḥib b. al-ʿAbbād (d. 385/995). Al-Khāzin was his librarian for a time, until he was banished from the court. Since most of the poems are dedicated to Fakhr al-Dawla (d. 387/997) and Ibn al-ʿAbbād, they must have been written after Fakhr al-Dawla was brought to power by Ibn al-ʿAbbād in 373/983. Even with sections missing, this manuscript contains no less than 1.922 verses by al-Khāzin, much more than the 241 verses quoted in al-Thaʿālibī's (d. 429/1038) Yatīmat al-dahr.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406506
9786002030955
Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i Īrān u Islām. Volume 1 /
:
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 1.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404328
9786002030689
Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i aqwām-i pādishāhān-i Khutāy /
:
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 shahs of Khatāy (China)
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1 online resource. :
9789004404175
9789648700169
Laṭāʾif al-ḥisāb : Risāla-ī dar bāra-yi sargarmīhā-yi riyāḍī /
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Quṭb al-Dīn Lāhījī (d. ca. 1088-95/1677-1684) was a philosopher and traditional Islamic scholar who also took an interest in mathematics. He was a student of Mīr Dāmād (d. 1040/1630-31) of the 'School of Isfahan' in philosophy, as well as a contemporary of the philosopher, traditionist and mystic Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī (d. 1091/1680). After his studies in Isfahan, Lāhījī returned to Lāhījān. There he was entrusted with the office of Shaykh al-Islām which his elder brother had held for three years before him, in succession to their father, who had been Shaykh al-Islām of Lāhījān before then. He held this office for many years. Among his works are Maḥbūb al-qulūb (history of philosophy), Fānūs al-khayāl (the imaginal world in Illuminationist philosophy) and the Tafsīr-i sharīf-i Lāhījī (Qurʾān interpretation). The present collection of mathematical puzzles aims to show the fun and practical use of mathematics. As a Persian text, it is quite rare in its kind.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405639
9789648700947
Tarjuma-yi Kitāb al-milal wal-niḥal /
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Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm Shahrastānī was born in 479/1086-7 in Shahristān in today's Turkmenistan. After his basic education he went to Nishapur, then a major centre of learning. Afterwards, he taught for some years at the Niẓāmiyya academy in Baghdad. Returning to Khurāsān around 514/1120, he became a staff member at the chancellery of the Saljuq ruler, Sanjar (d. 552/1157), entertaining close relations with him. At some point Shahrastānī returned to his hometown, although it is not known why or when, dying there in 548/1153. His influential history of religions and sects, which also includes an account of Greek and Islamic philosophy, is one of his best known works. Until recently only two Persian translations of it were known: one by Afḍal al-Dīn Turka-yi Iṣfahānī dated 843/1449-50, and an improved edition of it by Muṣṭafā b. Khāliqdād, dated 1021/1612. The anonymous translation published here is much older and may even date from Shahrastānī's own lifetime.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406711
9786002031198
Tārīkh-i Būshihr /
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Born in Najaf, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Saʿādat (1865-1935) first studied in his hometown and later in Shiraz. In 1898 he went to Tehran, where he started teaching at Teachers College and also at a modern primary school. During that time there was a desire to put education on a new footing, taking inspiration from western ideas. This is how Saʿādat, whose talents in education had not gone unnoticed, was appointed to found a new school in Būshihr, Iran's main port and trading hub in the Gulf area. This school, which later came to be known as the Madrasa-yi Saʿādat, soon became a famous in the region and many of its alumni had brilliant careers. Saʿādat's history of Būshihr is the product of a methodical mind that can view things in local, regional, national and international perspective. The only history of the city that we have, it is a work of incontestable importance.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405967
9786002031358
Kitāb talkhīṣ al-Muḥaṣṣal : fī sharḥ al-Muḥaṣṣal fī ʿilm al-kalām /
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Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 606/1210) was a prominent theologian, interpreter of the Qurʾān and philosopher. He was born in Rayy where he studied theology, philosophy and law under different masters, including his father, a preacher. After his studies, he started a wandering life which took him to different cities and courts in Transoxania and Khwārazm. He finally settled in Herat where he spent the rest of his life, a wealthy and respected scholar and author of a number of seminal works. 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, his influential commentary on Rāzī's Muḥaṣṣal on philosophical theology is a critical appraisal of a work which Ṭūsī considered much overrated. Facsimile of the oldest known copy, dated 669/1270.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406650
9786002031006
Akhbār wulāt Khurāsān /
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The present work is not an historical text in the regular sense of the word. It is rather an inventory of as many citations and borrowings in later sources as possible from a text now lost. Written in Arabic, the Akhbār wulāt Khurāsān was started by ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Sallāmi (d. 300/912) of Khwār near Bayhaq, whose account ran to the year 289/902, and then continued by his brother Abū ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Sallāmī, finishing in the year 344/955. As stated by the author of the present compilation, the work is important in that it is an early history of the governors of Khurāsān which was not written from religious or political motives. A trusted source, it saw at least three abridgements and is cited or used by many later authors, among them Abū Rayḥān Bīrūnī (d. 440/1048), ʿIzz al-Dīn b. al-Athīr (d. 630/1233), and ʿAbd al-Ḥayy b. Ḍaḥḥāk Gardīzī (fl. middle 5th/11th century)
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1 online resource. :
9789004405806
9786002030177
Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Pākistān (Fihrist-i 8000 nuskha-yi khaṭṭi-yi kitābkhānahā-yi shakhṣī va dawlatī). Volume 2 : ʿIrfān etc. /
:
This catalogue of Persian manuscripts in Pakistan was compiled by the well-known specialist of Islamic manuscripts ʿĀrif Nawshāhī (1955). It can be seen as a sequel to Aḥmad Munzawī's (d. 2015) 14-volume Fihrist-i mushtarak-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Pākistān (1983-1997), besides Nawshāhī's own catalogues of the Persian manuscripts in the National Archives of Pakistan and the Punjab University Library in Lahore. The catalogue published here contains information on around 8000 manuscripts in 335 collections in Pakistan, mostly in non-government and private libraries, madrasas, and monasteries. In view of the threat of decay of manuscripts in private collections due to poor storage conditions and a declining interest in the Persian language, this catalogue is both a witness and a wake-up call. In this work, Nawshāhī relies on his own research, on notes by others, until then forgotten in the archives of the Iran-Pakistan Institute of Persian Studies in Islamabad, and also on different kinds of published sources. 4 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
9789004408173
9786002031433
Minhāj al-ʿulā : Risalaʾī dar bāb-i ḥukūmat-i qānūn /
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In the beginning, Qajar rulership (1210-1344/1796-1925) pretty much reflected the traditional, top-down leadership common among the Turkic tribes from which this dynasty had come forth. It was only under Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh Qājār (r. 1264-1313/1848-96) that serious attempts at reforms were made, initially under Chancellor Mīrzā Taqī Khān, in office between 1264/1848 and 1268/1851. However, Amīr Kabīr's energetic initiatives met with internal resistence, leading to his downfall and subsequent murder in a bathhouse in Fin Garden, Kashan, in 1268/1852. In the years following, Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh introduced various administrative initiatives, but ineffectiveness and internal resistence remained important impediments to genuine reforms. Well-structured and lucid, the present work by Abū Ṭālib Bihbihānī is one of several memoranda on reform that were sent to the shah in the course of his reign. Focussing on the separation of powers as codified in European constitutional law, many of its suggestions were implemented in Iran's first constitution of 1906-07.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405592
9789648700909
Ḥall mushkilāt Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt : Mashhūr bih Sharḥ-i Ishārāt /
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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, and his Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī on ethics. The present volume contains a facsimile edition of an ancient copy of another famous work by him, the Ḥall mushkilāt al-Ishārāt , which is his influential commentary on Avicenna's (d. 428/1037) groundbreaking Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt . The Ishārāt is commonly regarded as Avicenna's final statement on all there is to know in logic and philosophy. Directed at a restricted readership of trusted specialists, it was deliberately written in a terse, impenetrable style. From the many commentaries that were written on it, the one by Ṭūsī would be decisive for the later Avicennan tradition.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405721
9789648700893
Al-Mukhtaṣar min Kitāb al-siyāq li-tārīkh-i Nīsābūr /
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In the Islamic middle ages, urban histories were for the most part not the kind of chronicle that one might think, covering the political, economic, or cultural history of a particular city over a certain time. Instead, they were a kind of 'who's who' directory of names of a city's prominent inhabitants, mostly from as far back as information would be available until the lifetime of the author. In the case of the city of Nishapur, which saw its greatest blossoming between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, there is al-Ḥākim al-Nīshāpūrī's (d. 405/1014) foundational Taʾrīkh Nīsābūr , an Arabic work-now lost-on which many later biographers relied. Al-Ḥākim's work was continued by ʿAbd al-Ghāfir al-Fārisī (d. 529/1134) in his al-Siyāq li-Taʾrīkh Nīsābūr . The text published here is described as a partial summary of al-Fārisī's work, although Frye in his The Histories of Nishapur (p. 10) still regarded it as a fragment of the Siyāq itself.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404656
9789648700022
Miʿyār al-ashʿār wa-Mizān al-afkār fī sharḥ Miʿyār al-ashʿār /
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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. The present work contains an edition of a compendium on Persian and Arabic metrics which Ṭūsī says he wrote at the request of some friends, probably at the time of his association with the Ismailis, before the Mongol invasion and the collapse of the Niẓārī state in 654/1256. It is followed by the edition of a detailed commentary on it by the Indian scholar Muḥammad Saʿdallāh Murādābādī (d. 1294/1877). Persian, interspersed with Arabic.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405714
9786002030115
Al-Risāla al-muḥīṭa : Nuskha-yi khaṭṭi-yi shumāra-yi 5389 Kitābkhāna-yi Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī /
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Ghiyāth al-Dīn Jamshīd Kāshānī is one of the most outstanding mathematicians and astronomers in the history of the Persianate world. The son of a physician, he was born around 790/1388 in Kashan, where he lived most of his life. Many of his writings were composed in that city, including his famous Zīj-i Khāqānī . In 824/1421 he left for Samarqand, where he played an important role in the construction of the observatory commissioned by the Timurid ruler and astronomer, Ulugh Beg (853/1449), becoming its first director. In 832/1429 he was found dead near this observatory, outside the walls of Samarqand. A violent death is suspected, probably on the order of Ulugh Beg. The present work, completed in 827/1424 in Samarqand, is about the determination of the number Pi. An innovative work of great merit, its exactness was only superseded with the publication of Ludolph van Ceulen's Van den circel in Delft, Holland, in 1596.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406179
9786002030559
Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i mubārak-i Ghāzānī, Nuskha badalhā, taʿlīqāt u ḥawāshī. Volume 3 /
:
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. 3.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404403
9786002031105
Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt al-lawḥiyya wal-ʿarshiyya. Volume 1 : al-Mantiq /
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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 1, Logic.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405066
9789648700688
Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Pākistān (Fihrist-i 8000 nuskha-yi khaṭṭi-yi kitābkhānahā-yi shakhṣī va dawlatī). Volume 3 : Adabiyyāt etc. /
:
This catalogue of Persian manuscripts in Pakistan was compiled by the well-known specialist of Islamic manuscripts ʿĀrif Nawshāhī (1955). It can be seen as a sequel to Aḥmad Munzawī's (d. 2015) 14-volume Fihrist-i mushtarak-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭi-yi Fārsi-yi Pākistān (1983-1997), besides Nawshāhī's own catalogues of the Persian manuscripts in the National Archives of Pakistan and the Punjab University Library in Lahore. The catalogue published here contains information on around 8000 manuscripts in 335 collections in Pakistan, mostly in non-government and private libraries, madrasas, and monasteries. In view of the threat of decay of manuscripts in private collections due to poor storage conditions and a declining interest in the Persian language, this catalogue is both a witness and a wake-up call. In this work, Nawshāhī relies on his own research, on notes by others, until then forgotten in the archives of the Iran-Pakistan Institute of Persian Studies in Islamabad, and also on different kinds of published sources. 4 vols; volume 3.
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1 online resource. :
9789004408210
9786002031440
Dīwān-i Munjīk Tirmidhī : Ashʿār-i parākanda /
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Abu ʼl-Ḥasan Munjīk Tirmidhī was a Persian poet of the second half of 4th/10th century. Not much is known about his personal life, just that he sang the praise of some of the members of the ruling Muḥtājid dynasty of Chaghāniyān in Transoxania, a region just north of his hometown of Tirmidh. He was a contemporary of other poets at the Muḥtājid court, such as Daqīqī (d. ca. 365/976) and Farrukhī (d. before 432/1041). Tirmidhī is especially known for his panegyrics and his satire. In Nāṣir Khusraw's (d. 481/1088) Safar-nāma it is stated that Tirmidhī's divan was extant. Today his divan is lost. What verses we have were gleaned from biographical dictionaries, poetical anthologies and works on eloquence. The present edition contains a listing of everything found in such sources, supplemented by additional information taken from modern authors. The collection contains 410 verses, 50 of which were hirtherto unknown.
:
[Collection of poems by Monjeek Termazi, who was a court poet for the Choghani kings.]
In Persian.
Romanized title from cover, page 4. :
1 online resource. :
9789004406100
9786002030405
Chīn-nāma /
:
Born in Macerata, Italy, in 1552, Matteo Ricci was a Catholic priest who was sent to the Jesuit representation to Macau in 1582. His assignment was to travel on to mainland China and seek to establish the first permanent Jesuit mission there. Ricci arrived in China in 1583, never to leave it again. He died there in 1610. Fluent in Chinese, he was very succesful, on good terms with people that mattered, much appreciated as a carthographer and astronomer, and given free access to the Forbidden City, which was quite exceptional. Ricci's account of his mission to China, called De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas , was published posthumously in 1615. The present work is a Persian translation of the book's first fascicle made in India by a Persian convert to Christianity from the seventeenth century. The translation is significant in that it was made at the suggestion of a Jesuit priest, most likely from missionary ambitions.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405004
9789648700350
Al-Riḥla al-Makkiyya : Tārīkh-i siyāsī u ijtimāʿi-yi Mushaʿshaʿiyān /
:
In Islam, messianic beliefs are typically associated with the doctrines of the Shīʿa. The idea of the Manifestation of the Hidden Imam at the appointed time has always been part of their beliefs, then and now. Besides mainstream Shīʿa movements such as Twelver Shīʿism, Zaydism, or Ismailism, there have also been marginal and extremist groups around charismatic leaders claiming a messianic role. One of these is Sayyid Muḥammad b. Falāḥ (d. 861/1456-7), founder of the Mushaʿshaʿ movement among the Shīʿī Arab tribes of Khūzistān, western Iran. Fighting or arranging themselves temporarily with their neighbors, notably the Safavids and the Ottomans, the Mushaʿshaʿ dynasty continued to exist in different forms and shapes well into the nineteenth century. The present work is a nineteenth-century Persian translation of a history of the Mushaʿshaʿ dynasty in Arabic by the governor of Ḥuwayza and descendant of Ibn Falāḥ, ʿAlī Khān Mushaʿshaʿī (alive in 1128/1716). Based on written and oral sources.
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1 online resource. :
9789004408111
9786002031310