Manuscript. Persian. Title from fol. 1a. Scribe not identified. Possibly written in India. Date on fol. 1a; manuscript may be older. Paper; medium cream color paper with no visible watermarks; fol. 1b has floral unwan in gold, blue, red and white contains the Basmalah; text block enclosed in ruled border of one thin blue and one wide gold line; text itself is set off by single gold line on either side; hemistichs and sections are also separated by a thin gold line; black ink, section titles in red; catchwords. Nastaʻliq; 19 lines in written area 16.5 x 6.3 cm. Fol. 1b-114a. Library of Congress. Persian manuscript, M76. Binding is tan paper over boards with black cloth spine and corners. Also available in digital form on the Library of Congress website.
Memoirs of Babur, 1483-1530, the Mogul emperor of Hindustan. This book is a lithograph edition of the Persian translation of Bāburnāmah (Memoirs of Babur), the autobiography of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad Bāburshāh (1483-1530), the first Mughal emperor of India. Bāburnāmah originally was written in Chagatai Turkish and was translated into Persian during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar. The translation was undertaken by Bairam Khan (died 1561), an Afghan bureaucrat and military commander who served under Emperor Humayun and who was briefly appointed regent over his successor, Emperor Akbar, when Akbar was a child. This book was printed in 1308 AH (1890-91) in Bombay (present-day Mumbai), India, from a 19th-century manuscript. The print bears the stamp of the Cheetra Prabha Press and has on its last page the seal of Mirzā Mohamed Shīrāzī Malik al-Kuttāb, the scribe of the manuscript. A few explanatory lines in Persian are in the colophon, presumably written by Mirzā Mohamed Shīrāzī. He notes that he used a unicum (a unique example) and tried to "correct" the renderings of the Turkish nouns before producing the book. The manuscript reproduced here is written by one hand in the Nasta`liq script popular in Central and South Asia from the Mughal period onward, with 27 lines per page. Lithographic printing was invented in Europe in the late 18th century and spread widely on the Indian subcontinent from the early 19th century onward, its popularity stemming from the relative ease with which it could be used to reproduce different scripts not based on the Latin alphabet. The new technology was so successful during the Raj that many more Persian lithographic books were printed in India than in Iran. World Digital Library.
Based on the Arabic treatise Sharḥ al-asbāb by Nafīs ibn ʻIwaḍ (-approximately 1449); covers the symptoms and treatment of diseases specific to particular parts and general diseases.
This work is a compendium of the compositions (primarily in verse) of Ghulām Muḥammad Khān (1830-1900), a prominent Pashto Afghan intellectual of the 19th century. Known by his pen name Ṭarzī (the Stylist), Ghulām Muḥammad Khān was a member of the important Bārakzay tribe of Kandahār. The dībācha (introduction) of this work includes an account of Ghulām Muḥammad Khān and his family's exile from Afghanistan in 1882, which was ordered by Amir ʻAbd-al-Raḥmān (reigned 1880-1901). The important and detailed account of the family's life outside Afghanistan, dated June 15, 1892, was written by Ghulām Muḥammad Khān's son, Maḥmud Ṭarzī (1868-1935), a famous intellectual and author in his own right who is generally referred to as the father of journalism in Afghanistan. It describes his family's stay in Karachi and subsequent immigration to Syria, where Ghulām Muḥammad Khān received the protection and sponsorship of the Ottoman ruler Abdülhamid II (reigned 1876-1909). The bulk of Ṭarzī's dīwān (divan or collection) consists of his ghazals (lyric poems), which are grouped alphabetically according to the last letter of the radīf (rhyme). In Persian literature the ghazal generally denotes a metered and rhymed poem expressing the beauty and pain of love. The ghazal was derived from the qaṣīda (ode); and it matches the rhyme scheme of the qasida, although it is shorter, generally consisting of 12 verses or less. Many of Ṭarzī's ghazals are response poems, referring to earlier poets in the Persian and Indo-Persian tradition. In this regard, the poems of ʻAbd al-Qādir Bīdil (1644 or 1645-1720 or 1721) and of Ṣā'ib Tabrīzī (1601 or 1602-77) figure prominently. In addition to poems in the ghazal form, Ṭarzī's divan includes his rubāʻīyāt (quatrains) and other poetic forms, such as the tarjīʻ band and the tarkīb band (strophic forms, with a series of isolated verses marking the end of each strophe). This edition is dated August 10, 1893. The work was published by Sardār Muḥammad Anwar Khān and printed at the press of Fayḍ Muḥammadī in Karachi. The calligrapher is Muḥammad Zamān. The cover of this copy contains a handwritten note indicating Asmā' Ṭarzī, wife of Maḥmūd Ṭarzī, as the owner, and containing the date 11 Sha'ban, 1336 AH (May 22, 1918). Upon his accession to the throne, the Afghan ruler Amir Ḥabībullāh (reigned 1901-18) gave amnesty to Ghulām Muḥammad Khān's family, allowing its members to return to Afghanistan. A measure of the family's improving fortune is that Asmā' and Maḥmūd Ṭarzī's daughter, Soraya, married Amir Ḥabīballāh's son and was queen of Afghanistan from 1913 to 1929. World Digital Library.
This copy of the Shahnameh (Book of kings) was published by subscription in Bombay in 1906 by the Indian Parsi community. The Shahnameh is a Persian epic poem of more than 50,000 couplets that recounts the pre-Islamic and Sassanid history of Persia and the story of the Islamic conquest. Abu al-Qasim Firdawsi, the author, worked for some 30 years on the Shahnameh, which he presented to his patron, the Turkic-Persianate ruler of Ghaznavid dynasty, Sultan Mahmud, in 1010. This lithographic edition has a table of contents, a prose foreward, the Hajw-nama (a verse lampoon of Sultan Mahmud), the Shahnameh narrative, and a section with additional information (paginated differently). The foreward discusses the modern Persian language, the role of Firdawsi in its development, the greatness of the Shahnameh, the politics of writing the Shahnameh under the patronage of Sultan Mahmud, and the use and consultation of previous manuscripts for the compilation and publication of this edition. The Hajw-nama is a satirical poem that describes the dispute between Firdawsi and Sultan Mahmud; historians and literary scholars disagree about whether or not Firdawsi himself wrote it. The main narrative begins with verse notes praising God, the conception of wisdom, the creation of the world and human beings, the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, and the composition of the Shahnameh. The narrative that follows tells the stories of the mythical pre-Islamic Persian heroes and kings, starting with the mythical accounts of the creation of the world and the first man, Keyumars, the heroic wars between Iranian and Turanian heroes (particularly of the greatest Iranian hero, Rustam). This is followed by the history of the late Sassanian kings and the story of the conquest of Persia by Muslim armies. The book includes a glossary of rare and non-Persian words that appear in the Shahnameh. The final section contains notes on the publication of this edition, the names and professional titles of many notable individuals of the Parsi community in India, and the list of subscribers. Pagination is done differently throughout the text, both in Arabic and modern Persian numerals. Lithographic images depict individuals who play roles in or are described in the poem, beginning with the pre-Islamic Persian prophet Zoroaster. The image on page 15 shows Firdawsi standing in line with other great Persian poets, offering his completed Shahnameh to Sultan Mahmud. World Digital Library.