Manuscript. Persian. Title from colophon. Name of scribe not indicated. Probably written in India. Paper; cream-color laid paper of varying thickness, with no visible chain-lines or watermarks; black ink with rubrication; catchwords on versos. Nastaʻliq; 14-16 lines in written area approximately 18 x 9.5 cm. Folios 1a-200b Library of Congress. Persian manuscript, M 62. Limp red leather binding; originally with embossed gold medallions in center and at four corners from which the gold has now been rubbed off. Also available in digital form on the Library of Congress website.
Ẓafarnāmah (Book of victory) by ʻAli Yazdi (circa 1390-1454) is a biographical work dealing with the life of the central Asian conqueror Timur (reigned 1370-1405). Completed in around 1424, Yazdi's work is based in part on an earlier work, also entitled Ẓafarnāmah, by Nizam al-Din ʻAli Shami (who completed his work in 1404). A poet and scholar, Yazdi wrote works on numerology, astrolabes, and a variety of other topics, and he was renowned for his knowledge of ʻūlūm-i gharība (the esoteric sciences). He was summoned to the provincial capital of Shiraz around 1419 by Timur's grandson, Ibrahim Sultan (1394-1435), and asked to compile and codify the records related to the life of Timur. The present copy of the Ẓafarnāmah is the first volume of a two-volume edition, published under the aegis of the Asiatic Society at the Baptist Mission Press in Calcutta in 1887. The editor, Maulawi Muhammad Ilahdad, was a professor in the Arabic department at the Calcutta Madrasah. Ilahdad notes that the decision to publish this work in two volumes was made in order to avoid a bulky single volume. The first volume of this edition covers the events of Timur's life to 1397 and the conclusion of Timur's five-year campaign in the west that resulted in the conquest of Kurdistan, Southern Persia, and Georgia, and in the fall of Baghdad. World Digital Library.