Manuscript is incomplete; text breaks off abruptly at second word of line 5, leaf 257a. Tārīkh-i Nādirī (The history of Nadir) is a historical work that chronicles the political and military career of Nadir Shah, who was born in 1688 and rose to power in Iran during the 1720s; he became shah in 1736. (This work is also known as Jahāngushāy-i Nādirī in reference to the celebrated history of Genghis Khan, whom Nadir Shah admired.) Nadir Shah is known as a military warrior famous for his campaigns in Iran, Afghanistan, northern India, and Central Asia. He was assassinated by his officers in June 1747. The name of the author of this work, Muhammad Mahdi Munshi' ibn Muhammad Nasir (also seen as Mahdi Khan Astarabadi), appears on page four. Mahdi Khan was a court secretary, historian, and close confidante of Nadir Shah, whom he accompanied on many of his campaigns, so the work is an important historical source. The manuscript is organized chronologically and recounts about 100 military and political events. The preliminary pages contain a preface outlining the political developments in Iran and Qandahar (or Kandahar) that led to the Afghan invasion of Persia in 1722 and the emergence of Nadir Shah as a ruler who would confront and eventually defeat the Afghans and other enemies. The manuscript is incomplete, with the scribe having stopped mid-sentence after completing several lines from the penultimate section of the work, "On the end of the [Nadir Shah] and the manner of his murder...". Virtually all of this penultimate section (chronicling the cruel and bloody final years of Nadir's reign) and the final section (on the rule of ʻAli Quli Khan and Ibrahim Khan, nephews of Nadir, who each claimed the throne for a brief period after the assassination of their uncle) are therefore missing from the manuscript. The missing parts correspond roughly to six pages of text. In the manner typical of Persian court historiography, the author emphasizes throughout the restoration of order, the introduction of justice, and the defeat of the enemies of the state. Various poems and verses from the Qur'an appear throughout the text. The manuscript is written by a single hand in a uniform nastaliq, the calligraphic Persian script. All of the events recounted have a rubricated title. The first word of every other page is repeated as a "catchword" in the bottom margin of the previous page to ensure the proper order of the pages prior to binding, as was common practice in Persia and elsewhere. World Digital Library.
History of Sultan Muhammad Qutb Shah, Sultan of Golconda and the Qutb Shahi dynasty and includes the historical, political and social events prevalent in Hyderabadi during the Qutb Shahi period.
Manuscript. Persian. Title from colophon. Name of scribe not indicated. Written in India. Paper; dark cream-color unpolished, coarse laid paper with no visible chain-lines or watermarks; severely worm damaged; no borders; black ink with some rubrication. Nastaʻliq; 15 lines in written area 18 x 11 cm. Folio 1b-136b. Library of Congress. Persian manuscript, M40. Dark brown leather binding; text partially disbound; poor condition. Also available in digital form on the Library of Congress website.
Manuscript. Persian. Title supplied by cataloger. Scribes not identified. Written in India. Paper; coarse, cream color laid paper with no visible chain lines or watermarks; black ink with rubrication on some texts; catchwords. Work contiains: [1]. A collection of letters and notes by Muhammad Bahadur Shah II, King of Delhi, 1775-1862 (dated 1855) -- [2]. Unidentified historical treatise (undated) -- [3]. One leaf numbered leaf 20 from an unidentified work -- [4]. Daftar-i avval from the Mukātabāt-i ʻAllāmī by Akbar, Emperor of Hindustan, 1542-1605 (dated 1257 [1841 or 1842]). Nastaʻliq; various lines in written areas of varying size. Fol. 1a-39a, 1a-117b, 1 leaf, fol. 1b-125a. Library of Congress. Persian manuscript, M96. [Other physical details, binding] Also available in digital form on the Library of Congress website.
Collection of texts in Persian and Arabic, mostly unidentified, two works with titles are Bayaẓ-i Adʻiyah in praise of the Mogul hero Muḥammad Bahādūr Sirāj al-Dīn; and the other, al-Majlisī's Ḥulyat al-muttaqīn
Manuscript. Persian. Title supplied from container. Scribe not identified. Written in India? Paper; thin, lightly polished laid paper with vertical laid lines and no visible chain lines or watermarks; elaborate floral carpet page in blue, gold, pink, and black surrounded by three borders: the outer of a gold floral design, the next of a repeating design in blue and gold and the inner of a floral design of repeating flowers in alternating rose and pink on a gold background; remainder of text has outer ruled bord of thin blue, white, gold, red and dark blue; text block within ruled border in blue, white, red, blue, a wider floral border and an inner border of blue and red; sections separated by a horizontal block in gold; hemistichs divided by a wide dark blue vertical divider with gold highlighting; black ink; catchwords. Nastaʻlīq; 15 lines in written area 13 x 6.2 cm. Numerous miniatures throughout the text. Fol. 1b-466b (incomplete) Library of Congress. Persian manuscript, M19. Binding; disbound; text block and many pages loose in remainder of binding which is brown leather; spine lacking. Also available in digital form on the Library of Congress website.
Son of a Scottish military adventurer and a woman of the Indian martial nobility, James Skinner (1778-1841) became a famous soldier with his private regiment Skinner Horse, which still continues in the Indian Army. He was a fluent writer in Persian, the prestige language of India in his day, and composed his "Kitab-i tasrih al-aqvam" (History of the Origin and Distinguishing Marks of the Different Castes of India), given by James S. Collins of Pennsylvania to the Rosenwald Collection. The castes presented here are Khattris, nobles who converted from Hinduism to Islam and who function as lawyers and judges. This particular Khattri seems comfortable and benevolent, and is blessed with a son or student fiercely attentive to his dictation. The style is of the Company School, paintings made by local artists combining Mogul traditions with a minute realism to record people and natural history for staff members of the British East India Company which was taking over India.