Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i Imāmiyah : Muntakhabātī az ʿUyūn-i akhbār-i Riḍā, Amāli-yi Shaykh-i Ṣaddūq, Ṣaḥīfat al-Riḍā /
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At first glance, the collection of traditions, notes and drafts published here is just like so many other personal documents from the library of the average medieval Muslim scholar. But on closer inspection, this codex dated 580/1185 is quite interesting. The manuscript is in two different hands, one part being by a certain Abū Naʿīm al-Naʿīmi al-Bayhaqī, and the other part by the equally unknown Abu ʼl-Ḥasan al-Bayāḍī. As is evident from two study certificates ( ijāza ) contained in this manuscript, Abu ʼl-Ḥasan was a student of Abū Naʿīm. Abū Naʿīm was a native of Bayhaq and Abu ʼl-Ḥasan of Rayy. The manuscript contains mainly excerpts from Ibn Bābawayh's (d. 381/991) Amālī and ʿUyūn akhbār al-Riḍā and traditions which Abū Naʿīm himself had collected in Khurāsān. As such it contains the oldest known fragments from the Amālī , besides being a rare witness of the early Imami teaching tradition in Khurāsān, more specifically in Bayhaq and Nishapur.
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1 online resource. :
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9786002030948
Arabic Astronomy in Sanskrit : Al-Birjandī on Tadhkira II, Chapter 11 and its Sanskrit Translation /
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This book provides the first presentation of the bilingual textual material that illustrates the transmission of Islamic astronomy to scientists of the Indian Sanskritic tradition. It includes editions of the chapter of the Tadhkira in which the mid-thirteenth century Persian astronomer, Nasīr al-dīn al-ṭūsī discussed the new solutions that he devised to overcome certain technical problems in the lunar and planetary models of Ptolemaic astronomy and of the learned commentary composed by al-Birjandī in the early sixteenth century together with the Sanskrit translation of both made by Nayanasukha at Jaipur in 1729. An English translation of the Arabic texts and a commentary discussing their technical meanings and the deviations from them in the Sanskrit version together with a glossary of the Arabic and Sanskrit technical vocabulary conclude the volume.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004453418
9789004124752
Chīn-nāma /
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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. :
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Tuḥfat al-mulūk /
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In the Persianate world, wisdom literature has a long history, dating back to pre-Islamic times. After the advent of Islam, this type of literature, often enriched with Islamic, Greek, or Indian elements, was continued in various forms, be it in poetry, prose, or in a mixture of both. Some of these works would address themselves to a wider urban audience while others were primarily directed at kings and their immediate political entourage. Saʿdī's (d.691/1291-92) Rose Garden ( Gulistān ) is an example of the former, Niẓām al-Mulk's (d. 485/1092) Epistle on Rulership ( Siyāsat-nāma ) of the latter. A hybrid form is constituted by Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī's (d. 672/1274) highly influential Nasirean Ethics ( Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī ). Judging by its title, the work published here in a new edition would seem to be for kings only. But, compiled in the 6th/12th century, it is actually an account of the wisdom of kings that, written for a general audience.
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1 online resource. :
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9789646781641
Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i Āl-i Saljūq /
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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 Saljuqs.
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1 online resource. :
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9789648700381
Zīj-i Yamīnī /
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In Islamic science, a zīj is an astronomical handbook made up of tables and text. Between the 2nd/8th and 13th/19th centuries, over 200 such works were written, many of them lost. Famous zīj are al-Zīj al-Ṣābiʾ by al-Battānī (ca 300/900), al-Qānūn al-Masʿūdī by al-Bīrūnī (421/1030), and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's (d. 672/1274) Zīj-i Īlkhānī . The Zīj-i Yamīnī published in facsimile here was compiled in Ghazna in 511/1156 by a certain Muḥammad al-Ḥaqāʾiqī and dedicated to the Ghaznavid ruler Bahrāmshāh b. Masʿūd b. Maḥmūd (reg. 511-552/1117-1157). It is the third oldest zīj in Persian, after the Zīj-i mufrad of Muḥammad b. Ayyūb Ṭabarī (485/1092) and the Persian translation of Kūshyār b. Labbān Gīlānī's (fl. ca. 390/1000) Arabic al-Zīj al-jāmiʿ by Muḥammad b. ʿUmar Munajjim-i Tabrīzī in 483/1090. Al-Ḥaqāʾiqī based himself on the works of others, notably al-Battānī's al-Zīj al-Ṣābiʿ , whose data he then recalculated for the city of Ghazna where necessary. Good example of early scientific Persian.
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1 online resource. :
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9786002031303
Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i Ughūz /
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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 is about the Oghuz Turks of Central Asia.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404168
9789648700114
Majālis /
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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 in 718/1319. Rashīd al-Dīn is the author of the first world history ever, the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh . Besides he also wrote a considerable number of texts on many different subjects. As a promotor of learning, Rashīd al-Dīn founded a cultural complex called the Rabʿ-i Rashīdī. Among the people invited there was the author of the present series of lectures on Sufism. Held seasonally between 712/1312 and 718/1318, these lectures survive thanks to an attentive student.
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1 online resource. :
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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. :
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9786002030320
Aristotelian Meteorology in Syriac : Barhebraeus, Butyrum Sapientiae, Books of Mineralogy and Meteorology /
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This volume contains an edition, together with a translation and a commentary, of those parts relating to Aristotle's Meteorologica in Barhebraeus' Butyrum sapientiae (Cream of Wisdom) , the major philosophical work of the thirteenth-century Syriac prelate and polymath. Butyrum sapientiae , though based mainly on Ibn Sīnā's Kitāb al-šifāʾ (Book of Healing) , draws on a number of other sources. The detailed analysis of the text provided in this volume casts some important light on the manner in which Greek science and philosophy were transmitted in the Orient and as such will be of interest to scholars both of the Classical and Islamic world. The philological analysis of the text will be of interest to scholars of Syriac language and culture.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047412656
9789004130319
Tarjama-yi Taqwīm al-tawārīkh : Sālshumār-i waqāyiʿ-i muhimm-i jahān az āghāz-i āfarīnish tā sāl-i 1085 H.Q. /
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The Ottoman biographer, historian and former career military officer Kātib Çelebi (d. 1067/1657), better known as Ḥājjī Khalīfa, completed his Taqwīm al-tawārīkh in Istanbul in 1058/1648. Begun as an excerpt of his earlier history Fadhlakat aqwāl al-akhyār , he expanded it to cover personalities and events up to the days in which it was written. Composed in a mixture of Ottoman Turkish and Persian, it became a popular 'desk reference' that received various upgrades by different eighteenth-century authors. The work was printed for the first time in Istanbul by İbrahim Müteferriqa in 1146/1733. The Taqwīm al-tawārīkh was translated into Latin, Italian and French, besides the anonymous Persian translation contained in this volume, completed in 1075/1664, well before any of the other translations. It is one of the rare historical works in Persian to have the form of a chronology, most of them being histories of dynasties or general histories.
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9789646781986
Ḥikmat-i Khāqāniyya : Shāmil-i yak dawra-yi mukhtaṣar-i mantiq, ṭabīʿiyyāt u ilāhiyyāt /
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Bahāʾ al-Dīn Iṣfahānī (d. 1137/1725), better known as Fāḍil Hindī, was born into a comfortable home in Isfahan. Being a particularly precocious child, he completed his studies in the traditional and the foreign sciences by the age of thirteen, even carrying the title of mujtahid (someone authorized to issue legal opinions in Shīʿī Islam). He then accompanied his father to the court of the Mughal emperor Awrangzīb (r. 1658-1707), where he remained for several years before returning to Isfahan. At a time at which Isfahan was under the spell of the anti-speculative, literalist Akhbārī school in Shīʿism, Fāḍil Hindī was one of the few to engage in philosophy, so much so that one could call him equally a juristic philosopher or a philosophical jurist. The present work is a very readable, complete course in logic and philosophy that bears witness to his originality as a thinker in each of these domains.
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Majmū'a-yi āthār-i Ḥusām al-Dīn-i Khūʾī /
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In every age and culture, royal courts have always attracted a multitude of scholars, artists and other folk seeking patronage and protection. In the Islamic world, one of these courts was that of the emirs of the Saljuqs of Rūm in Kastamonu in northern Anatolia. In the year 680/1282, Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 709-1309), a student of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) who lived in Anatolia for years, dedicated his Ikhtiyārāt to the emir of Kastamonu, Muẓaffar al-Dīn Yavlaq Arslan (d. 691/1292). This same Muẓaffar also had a secretary in his service by the name of Ḥusām al-Dīn Khūʾī (alive in 709/1309-10), a refugee from Khūy near Tabriz in Iran. Ḥusām al-Dīn is the author of a number of works, six of which are published here for the very first time: four manuals on the art of the secretary, one Arabic-Persian glossary for use at the chancellery, and finally a collection of his poetry.
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9789646781481
Taḥqīq dar majālis-i tafsīri-yi Faḍl b. Muḥibb-i Nīshābūrī wa abyāt-i Fārsi-yi ān : Ganjīnaʾī az surūdhā-yi Zāhidāna-yi Fārsī az sada-yi panjum-i hijrī /
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In Persian literature, so-called ' majālis ' (sg. majlis , 'session') works typically evoke the atmosphere of a religious gathering. In some of these gatherings, a lecturer recounted parts of the history of Islam and the lives and times of its prominent representatives. In others, his focus was on the interpretation of the Qurʾān or some other subject. Sometimes, a speaker answered questions and at others, he sermonized. An early work in this genre is a majālis text on Qurʾān interpretation by Faḍl b. Muḥibb Nīshāpūrī (d. 472/1079). Issuing from a well-educated family of Nishapur, Faḍl was known for his learning and his virtue, earning him the nicknames of ustādh ('master') and wāʿiẓ ('preacher'). The lines of poetry published here were culled from a majālis text by him, the title of which remains unknown. Testimony to his use of rhetorical means to enhance the impact of his talk, these lines of poetry are also among the earliest in their genre in Khurāsān.
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1 online resource. :
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Kitāb al-adwār fi ʼl-mūsīqī : Tarjuma-yi Fārsī bih inḍimām-i matn-i ʿArabi-yi ān /
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In his younger years, the famous musician and theorist of music Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Urmawī (d. 683/1294) seemed destined for an administrative career. Having moved to Baghdad as an adolescent, he had received a first-class education, excelling in Arabic, calligraphy, and Shāfīʿī and comparative law especially. For a time he was a copyist in the library of the caliph al-Mustaʿṣim (reg. 640-56/1242-58) and a teacher of calligraphy. His talents as a lute-player and musician then led to a brilliant career at al-Mustaʿṣim's court. Under al-Mustaʿṣim he also held juridical office, while under the Mongols he was head of the chancery of Baghdad and supervisor of the religious endowments of Iraq. Administrative talents notwithstanding, it was in musical theory that Urmawī secured himself eternal fame. Innovative and concise, yet complete, his Kitāb al-adwār fi ʼl-mūsīqī became the most popular textbook in music for centuries. An undated, anonymous Persian translation is published here, together with the Arabic original.
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1 online resource. :
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Kitāb al-mabāḥith wal-shukūk : Nukhushtīn taʿlīqa bar al-Ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt, hamrāh bih Kitāb ʿUyūn al-masāʾil-i Fārābī wa Risāla-yi l-Asmāʾ al-mufrada-yi Kindī /...
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The Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt of Avicenna (d. 428/1037) is the most influential philosophical compendium in the history of the Islamic world. Being his last major work, written towards the end of his life, the Ishārāt contains what Avicenna considered to be the gist of all there was to know in logic and philosophy. It is different from his other works in that it represents the ultimate stage of development of his philosophical method, transcending the familiar Aristotelian aporetic method of his earlier days, to culminate in an elliptical kind of discourse in which, by the use of pointers or hints, the maximum is asserted with a minimum of means. The commentary by Sharaf al-Dīn Masʿūdī (d. before 605/1208) published here in facsimile is the earliest to survive. Focussing on a limited number of questions, it is not a running commentary. Two other philosophical texts by al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) and al-Kindī (d. after 247/861) accompany it.
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1 online resource. :
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Musakhkhir al-bilād : Tārīkh-i Shībāniyān /
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ʿAbdallāh Khān b. Iskandar (d. 1006/1598) of the Uzbek Abu ʼl-Khayrid (Shībānid) dynasty was the ruler of the Khanate of Bukhara between 991/1583 and 1006/1598. Before then, he had already defended the territorial interests of his family against other branches of the Abu ʼl-Khayrids, putting his half-witted father on the throne in Bukhara in 961/1554 while he himself became the de facto ruler of the khanate, aged 23. During the time of ʿAbdallāh, Transoxania lived through a whole series of internal and external conflicts against a backdrop of ever changing alliances. In this period, ʿAbdallāh's centralizing policy led to considerable improvements in infrastructure, favouring the development of trade. The present work by Muḥammad Yār b. ʿArab Qaṭaghān is a history of the Abu ʼl-Khayrid dynasty with an emphasis on the reign of ʿAbdallāh Khān. Apart from its obvious historical interest, it contains a lot of linguistic and geographical information, besides highlighting the significance of Persianate culture in that region.
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1 online resource. :
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9789648700183
Bahāristān wa rasāʾil-i Jāmī : Mushtamil bar risālahā-yi mūsīqī, ʿarūḍ, qiyāfa, chihil ḥadīth, nāʾiyya, lawāmiʿ, sharḥ-i tāʾiyya, lawāyiḥ wa sar rishta /...
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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 quite overwhelming. The present volume contains his Bahāristān , in imitation of Saʿdī's (d.691/1291-92) work on morals Gulistān , as well as a number of other texts, treating of music, poetry and mysticism.
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Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh : Tārīkh-i mubārak-i Ghāzānī, Wāzhahā-yi Mughūl-Turkī, namāyahā. Volume 4 /
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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. 4.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404410
9786002031112
Al-Yamīnī : Fī akhbār dawlat al-malik Yamīn al-Dawla Abi ʼl-Qāsim Maḥmūd b. Nāṣir al-Dawla Abī Manṣūr Sabuktakīn /
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uḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-ʿUtbī (d. 428/1037 or 431/1040) was a native of Rayy who, through family connections, had entered the administration of the Sāmānids in Nishapur, attaining the rank of postmaster there. After several intermediary engagements he entered the service of the founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty Abū Manṣūr Sebüktigin (d. 387/997) and then, of his son Maḥmūd of Ghazna (d. 421/1030). From the time that al-ʿUtbī was sent as an envoy to Gharchistān in around 390/1000, there is a gap in his career until he offered his famous history of the Ghaznavids presented here to Maḥmūd-also called Yamīn al-Dawla-in around 410-11/1020. Since he was rewarded with a postmastership in the relatively insignificant town of Ganj Rustāq-which he soon lost to intrigue-he must have written this Arabic work mainly as a means to securing a job. Early dynastic history, ornate style, invaluable source of information on the early Ghaznavids.
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1 online resource. :
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9789648700329