The Zoroastrian myth of migration from Iran and settlement in the Indian diaspora : text, translation and analysis of the 16th century Qeṣṣe-ye Sanjān 'The story of Sanjan' /
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The Qesse-ye Sanjān is the sole surviving account of the emigration of Zoroastrians from Iran to India to form the Parsi ('Persian') community. Written in Persian couplets in India in 1599 by a Zoroastrian priest, it is a work many know of, but few have actually read, let alone studied in depth. This book provides a romanised transcription from the oldest manuscripts, an elegant metrical translation, detailed commentary and, most importantly, a radical new theory of how such a text should be "read", id est not as a historical chronical but as a charter of Zoroastrian identity, foundation myth and justification of the Parsi presence in India. The book fills a lacuna that has been acutely felt for a long time.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [239]-242) and indexes. :
9789047430421 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
A catalogue of the Turkish manuscripts in the John Rylands University Library at Manchester
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During the six hundred years of its existence, innumerable of manuscripts with, mostly, Turkish texts were produced in the Ottoman Empire. These are mainly preserved in libraries in the countries that once were part of that extended empire; a lesser number of such manuscripts had their origin in central Asia, Persia and India. From the sixteenth century in particular, interest for these handwritten books increased in Europe and found their way to the libraries of scholars, book collectors and universities. The John Rylands University Library is one such repository of Turkish manuscripts of both Ottoman and wider Asian provenance. Most of these manuscripts, among which a number of unique, rare and luxuriously produced items, were originally gathered by a rich mine owner, the 25th Earl of Crawford. In this book, the collection is for the first time described in a detailed and systematic way.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004201316 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The genesis of the Bábí-Baháʼí faiths in Shíráz and Fárs /
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The Bábí and Baháʾí Faiths represent two of the most important religious movements of modern times. This book relates the story of the evolution of the Bábí-Baháʾí community, beginning with the birth of its founder, Siyyid ʾAlí-Muhammad, known as the Báb, in 1819 and then traced over the next century and a half in the city of his birth, Shíráz. Its author, Mírzá Habíbuʾlláh Afnán, was himself born in the house of the Báb, reared by the widow of the Báb, who shared with him many stories of the Báb's life, then spent nearly a year with Baháʾuʾlláh in the ʾAkka-Haifa area, and some ten years in close proximity to Baháʾuʾlláh's son ʾAbduʾl-Bahá. He served for the next half century as the hereditary custodian of the house of the Báb, and as such was uniquely qualified to tell the story of the Bábí-Baháʾí Faiths in the city of Shíráz in remarkable and moving detail.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [381]-384) and indexes. :
9789047442349 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
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.
The expansion of prophetic experience : essays on historicity, contingency and plurality in religion /
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Abdulkarim Soroush is known primarily for his epistemological/hermeneutical theory, the "Contraction and Expansion of Religious Knowledge," and its application to Islamic political theory and religious pluralism. While his Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam applies that theory to plurality and the historicity of understanding and interpretation of religion, this book captures some of his original theories about religion itself. The Expansion of Prophetic Experience treats the historicity of the Prophet Muhammad's revelatory experience, including human and contextual influences on the genesis of the sacred Text. It presents substantial aspects of Soroush's Neo-Rationalist hermeneutical project for an Islamic reformed theology and ethics, systematically leading Islamic reformation beyond conventional projects of piecemeal adjustments to the Shariʿah or selective re-interpretations of the Qurʾān.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [345]-348) and index. :
9789047424369 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Arabic version of Tusi's Nasirean ethics : with an introduction and explanatory notes /
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Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī's (d. 672/1274) Nasirean Ethics is the single most important work on philosophical ethics in the history of Islam. Translated from the original Persian into Arabic in 713/1313, the present text was primarily intended for the Arabic-speaking majority of the people in Iraq. A fine example of medieval Persian-to-Arabic translation technique, this first edition carefully reproduces Middle Arabic elements that can be found throughout the text.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004307506 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Universal Science : An Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics.
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The Universal Science ( ʿIlm-i kullī ) by Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī , is a concise, but authoritative, outline of the fundamental discussions in Islamic metaphysics. For many years used as a textbook in Iran, this short text offers English readers a readily accessible, lucid, and yet deeply learned, guide through the Sadrian, Avicennan, and Illuminationist schools of thought, whilst also demonstrating how the 'living tradition' of Shīʿī philosophy engages with central ontological, epistemological, aetiological, and psychological questions. Discussions include the primacy of existence; the proper classifications of quiddity; and the manifold properties of causality and causal explanation. This is the first of the various influential works authored by this leading Shīʿah intellectual to have been translated into English from the original Persian.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004343115 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The sea of chronicles (muḥīṭ al-tavārīkh) /
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"The Sea of Chronicles is an English translation of the ninth and tenth chapters of the historiographical work entitled Muḥīṭ al-tavārīkh by Muḥammad Amīn b. Mīrzā Muḥammad Zamān Bukhārī. The work is a valuable source in particular for the study of the late seventeenth-century Central Asian political, cultural and religious history. The ninth chapter offers accounts of the Timurid, Abulkhayrid/Shaybanid and the first four Ashatrkhanid khans. The tenth chapter which is the most original and important chapter of the work presents a detailed account of the life and time of the last great Ashatkhanid ruler, Subḥān QulīKhān (r. 1682-1702), revealing historical information essential for the study of the period and region".
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004415287
Bilawhar wa Buyūdhasf /
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Bilawhar and Būdhāsaf are the main characters of an ancient Arabic work called Bilawhar wa-Būdhāsaf , a text whose core narrative derived from the biography of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. The original Sanskrit text on which it was based was translated into Middle Persian and from there into Arabic, besides Old Turkish and New Persian. It is from this lost ancient Arabic translation that later versions, adaptations or summaries derive, whether in Arabic, Persian, Georgian, Hebrew, or Greek. The Persian work published in this volume is Niẓām Tabrīzī's (fl. late 8th/14th cent.) summary of an anonymous Persian translation of an equally anonymous Arabic commentary on Bilawhar wa-Būdhasaf , both lost. As such, it provides new material for further study into the history of transmission of this text, both from a philological point of view and as a complex narrative issuing from a progressive intermixture of elements from different times and cultures.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402966
9789646781702
Dīwān-i Hātif-i Iṣfahānī /
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Persian poetry of the pre-modern era is divided into three successive styles, each belonging to a different period: Khurāsānī, ʿIrāqī and Hindī. The Hindī style is called such because in Safavid times, during which it developed, poets no longer enjoyed the shah's patronage so that many of them went to India, where Persian poetry had flourished since Ghaznavid times (11th-12th century CE). The Hindī style is often regarded as a lesser style, but has the merit of having put a halt to the decline that Persian poetry was suffering from at the time and also, by its accessible language and subject matter, of having brought poetry within reach of the ordinary man. The poetry of Hātif Iṣfahānī (d. 1198/1783) published here was written in the latter half of the 12th/18th century, at the beginning of the neo-classical period of return ( bāzgasht ) to the poetical styles of the pre-Safavid era.
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1 online resource. :
9789004407244
9786002031167
Majlis dar qiṣṣa-yi rasūl (ṣalawāt Allāh ʿalayhi) /
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In Persian literature, so-called ' majālis ' works typically evoke the atmosphere of a religious gathering. In such a gathering, a chronicler relates parts of the history of Islam and the lives and times of its prominent representatives, often referring to trustworthy sources. Besides, questions may be asked, while teachings or sermons may also be given. Examples are Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī's (d. 672/1273) Majālis-i sabʿa and Saʿdī's (d. 691/1292) Majālis-i panj-gānah . Judging by its title, the present work by an unknown author from the 5th/12th century-it is not known if it was originally written in Persian or translated from Arabic-would seem to belong to this same type of writings. Only, on closer inspection this is not the case. Being mostly inspired by Ibn Isḥāq's (d. 150/767) al-Sīra al-nabawiyya and Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī's (d. 322/933-4) Aʿlām al-nubuwwa , only its last five chapters are called majlis , but then lack the characteristics of a typical majālis work.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405769
9786002030122
Risāla-yi Ḥātimiyya /
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Ḥātim al-Ṭāʾī, a pre-Islamic poet from the late sixth century CE, is especially known for his chivalry and magnanimity. A member of the tribe of Ṭayy in Yemen, he is mainly associated with the court of the Lakhmids in Ḥīra in Mesopotamia under king Nuʿmān b. Mundhir (reg. ca. 580-602). His poetry centers around the qualities that earned him his fame, even if part of the poems ascribed to him may be later inventions. Legend has it that his grandfather, who was his guardian, abandoned him when he saw that his grandson's generosity was incurable. Four mourning girls, hewn in stone, lined his grave, together with the cooking pots from which he had served his guests. A popular character in medieval Arabic literature, no separate work was ever dedicated to him, unlike the Persian tradition. The present text on his life and deeds by Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī (d. 910/1504-5) is the oldest to exist in Persian.
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1 online resource. :
9789004407299
9786002031297
Risāla-yi asṭurlāb-i Kūshyār Gīlānī /
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Kushyār (Pers. Kushyār) b. Labbān Gīlānī was a Persian astronomer and mathematician who flourished around 390/1000. All we know about his personal life is that he originated from the region of Gilan in northern Iran, bordering on the Caspian Sea. Given that he is cited in Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī's (d. after 442/1050) Kitāb fī ifrād al-maqāl fī amr al-aẓlāl , Kushyār must have become an authority by the time al-Bīrūnī came to write this work. From his works in mathematics, Kushyār's Kitāb fī uṣūl ḥisāb al-Hind on Indian arithmatic is the most important, and in astronomy his Zīj-i jāmiʿ . His Arabic work on the astrolabe is published here for the very first time, accompanied by a Japanese translation, both by Taro Mimura of Japan. In addition, this volume also contains a facsimile edition of the anonymous medieval Persian translation of this work, followed by a critical edition, both by Mohammad Bagheri of Iran.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406278
9786002030764
Rāhnamā-yi dastnivishthā-yi Mānavi-yi Tūrfān (ravish shināsi-yi vīrāyish va bāz sāzī) /
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After its foundation by Mani in the third century CE, Manicheism spread quickly from Iran through the ancient world, from North Africa to Europe and from Central Asia to China. Mani wrote seven works, six in Syriac and one in Middle Persian. The spread of Manicheism led to the emergence of Manichean writings in a number of other languages, and also of texts in criticism or description of this religion by non-Manichean authors in some of these same languages, among them Greek, Latin, Coptic, Arabic, Soghdian, and Chinese. From among the archeological findings involving Manichean texts, one of the most exciting ones was the discovery, in the early nineteen hundreds, of many Manichean fragments in Turfan, in Xinjiang province, China. These are in Middle Persian, Parthian, Soghdian and Manichean New Persian, besides material in Uygur, Bactrian and Kuchean. The present work is a Persian manual for the interpretation, reconstruction and edition of these Turfan texts.
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1 online resource. :
9789004408074
9786002031372
Tārīkh-i Rashīdī /
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In the history of Islam, royal courts and other centers of wordly power played a major role in the survival and development of the sciences and the arts. And many rulers and high ranking officials themselves, too, often engaged in one or several of these. By way of example one may, for the Persianate world, mention Sultan Bayqārā (d. 911/1506), the Timurid ruler of Herat, and Ẓahīr al-Dīn Bābur (d. 937/1530), founder of the Mughal empire in India. Another example is the author of the present work, Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥaydar Dūghlāt (d. 957/1551). Coming from a family of Chagatai generals and high administrators, he served a whole series of rulers in various parts of east Asia, mostly as a general and lastly as the ruler of Kashmir. Though wider in scope, the Tārīkh-i Rashīdī is above all a unique source of information on Chagatai history, full of personal reflexions on religion, culture, and the arts.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404083
9789646781870
Iskandar-nāma, bakhsh-i Khatā /
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The Persian Iskandar-nāma or Alexander romance is a collection of mostly legendary stories about Alexander the Great, whose core narrative goes back to a Greek account of his life and accomplishments, written between the third century BCE and the first century CE. In the Persian tradition, the work distinguishes itself from its Greek model in that Alexander is described as half-Persian and half-Greek, and also in that he is often identified with the prophet Dhu ʼl-Qarnayn mentioned in the Qurʾān, besides the introduction of all manner of local motifs and elements. There exist various versions of this romance in Persian, both in poetry and in prose, the oldest ones dating from the 4th/11th (Firdawsī, Shāh-nāma ) and 6th/12th (Ṭarsūsī, Dārāb-nāma ) centuries, respectively. The present work is one of seven chapters of a popular prose version in story-teller fashion dating from the Safavid era in which earlier, traditional themes are often overshadowed by elements introduced for entertainment.
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1 online resource. :
9789004404717
9789648700121
Sindbādnāma /
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To most people Sindbad is the iconic hero of a collection of medieval tales about the adventurous travels of a sailor named Sindbad, known from the Arabian Nights . Composed of seven stories, the collection is all about the importance of personal initiative, courage, and perseverance to overcome potentially disastrous situations and always come out on top. But apart from Sindbad the sailor, there is another collection of stories around another Sindbad, less known to the modern western reader. This collection turns around a young prince who is exonerated from the false accusation of plotting against his father, the king, thanks to the wisdom and foresight of his tutor, a sage named Sindbad. The stories go back to a Middle Persian archetype, which was-besides Abān Lāḥiqī's (d. ca. 200/815) Arabic version-rendered into New Persian several times. From among these, Ẓahīrī Samarqandī's (6th/12th cent.) adaptation, here edited anew, is the only one to have survived.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402973
9789646781726
Ṣaḥīfa-yi Sajjādiyya bā tarjumaʾī kuhan bih Fārsī /
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The Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya is a compilation of supplicatory prayers ascribed to the fourth Imam of the Shīʿa, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn al-Sajjād (d. 94/712-13 0r 95/713-14). Alternatively referred to as the 'psalms' ( zabūr ) or the 'gospels' ( injīl ) of the family of the Prophet, the Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya ranks among the holiest books of the Shīʿa, together with the Qurʾān and ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib's Nahj al-balāgha . Al-Sajjād was known for his piety and for his being given to prayer. Yet it is more likely that the Ṣaḥīfa is a later compilation of prayers attributed to him. The Ṣaḥīfa published here in facsimile is the 'complete' ( kāmila ) recension ascribed to Ibn Makkī (d. 786/1384) in a copy made just five years after Makkī's death, together with an early interlinear Persian translation. Apart from the orthographical and linguistic points of interest of this manuscript, its early dating may throw light on the history of transmission of Ibn Makkī's recension.
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1 online resource. :
9789004406674
9786002031068
Badāyiʿ-i mulaḥ : Nawhā-yi namakīn /
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In the history of Arabic literature, the term adab ('custom', 'norm of conduct') applies typically to works providing a particular kind of moral and intellectual education. Aimed at a specific urban class whose values they reflected, these works offered a useful stock of relevant quotations to be used in social discourse. Among the adab works, the poetic anthology was extremely popular. These anthologies could take on different forms, depending on whether they were organised around a set of themes, a collection of motifs, a series of comparisons, a selection of geographical places, and so on. The poetic anthology published in the present volume was written in Khwārazm in 595/1199. As the title ' Marvels of Witticism ' suggests, its author, the linguist Qāsim b. al-Ḥusayn al-Khwārazmī (d. 617/1220), wanted to highlight the beauty of the repartee in different thematic contexts. The Persian translation accompanying the text was probably made by someone other than al-Khwārazmī himself.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402768
9789646781603