Persian Manuscripts
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
: SUPPLEMENT TO THE CATALOGUE OF THE PERSIAN MANUSCRIPTS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM BY CHARLES RIEU, Ph.D. PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE TRUSTEES Sontion SOLD AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM; AND BY Messrs. LONGMANS & CO., 39, Paternoster Row; R QUARITCH, 15, Piccadilly, W.j A. ASHEE & CO., 13, Bedford .Street, Covent Garden ; KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Paternoster House, Charing Cross Eoad ; and HENEY FROWDE, Oxford University Press, Amen Corner. 1895. : LONDON printed by gilbert and rivington, limited , st. John's house, clerkenwell, e.g. TUP r-FTTY CFNTEf ; PEE FACE. The present Supplement deals with four hundred and twenty-five Manuscripts acquired by the Museum during the last twelve years, namely from 1883, the year in which the third and last volume of the Persian Catalogue was published, to the last quarter of the present year. For more than a half of these accessions, namely, two hundred and forty volumes, the Museum is indebted to the agency of Mr. Sidney J. A. Churchill, late Persian Secretary to Her Majesty's Legation at Teheran, who during eleven years, from 1884 to 1894, applied himself with unflagging zeal to the self-imposed duty of enriching the National Library with rare Oriental MSS. and with the almost equally rare productions of the printing press of Persia. By his intimate acquaintance with the language and literature of that country, with the character of its inhabitants, and with some of its statesmen and scholars, Mr. Churchill was eminently qualified for that task, and he availed himself with brilliant success of his exceptional opportunities. His first contribution was a fine illuminated copy of the Zafar Namah, or rhymed chronicle, of Hamdullah Mustaufi (no. 263), no other MS. of which is known to exist. His last was a rich collection, including original Firmans of the Sovereigns of Persia from the Ak-kuyunlu dynasty to the present Shah (nos. 401-2); numerous autographs of celebrated statesmen, scholars and poets (nos. 400, 403) ; and, finally, portraits of Nasir ud-Din Shah and some of his ministers (no. 412). Mr. Churchill's MSS. abound in rare, or altogether new, materials for the study of Eastern, and more especially Persian, history. The following are a few of the most valuable The general : histories of Elchi e Nizamshah and of Haidar Razi (nos. 32, 33) Rauzat us-Safaviyyah, a history of the Safavi dynasty, written by a follower of Shah b vi PREFACE. 'Abbas I., and brought down to the accession of Shah Safi (no. 58) ; three works, treating chiefly of the reign of Shah Tahmasp, and respectively written by Amir Mahmud, son of Khwandamlr (no. 53), by Hasan Beg Rumlu (no. 55), and by an anonymous writer, whose work is entitled Afzal ut-tavarikh (no. 56) ; Khuld i Barm, an official record of the reigns of Shah Safi and 'Abbas II. (no. 34) ; Gulshan i Murad, a history of Karlm Khan Zand and his immediate successors (no. 66) ; two contemporary accounts of the reign of Path 'Ali Shah, one by his son, Mahmud Mirza, the other by his secretary, Pazlullah Khavari (nos. 70, 71) ; a history of 'Abdullah Khan Uzbek, by Hafiz Tanish (no. 73) ; local histories of Kum, of Baihak, and of the conquest of Kirman by Malik (nos. 88 geographical with historical notices, by Zain ul-'Abidin Dinar —90) ; works, i Shirvani (nos. 139—141) ; lastly, the best copy known of Ta'rikh Jadld, the history of the Btibis, lately translated by Mr. E. G. Browne (no. 15). Poetry will be found to be still more largely represented than history. Mr. Churchill's collection is especially rich in Tazkirahs, a favourite branch of Persian literature, combining biographies of poets with more or less extensive specimens of their compositions. It contains one of the earliest works quoted under that head, the Chahar Makalah of Nizami 'Ariizi (no. 390) ; a large volume of the rare Khulasat ul-Ash'ar, by Taki Kashi (no. 105) ; three' otherwise unknown works of the same class, entitled Bazm-arai, Maikhanah, and Khair ul-Bayan (nos. 106—8) ; and a whole host of later Tazkirahs, illustrating the revival of Persian poetry under the Kajar dynasty (nos. 115, 118—129). Early copies of the Divans, or collected works, of ancient poets will be found under nos. 211, 220, 222, 240, 243, 246 ; and those of modern poets described under nos. 340—373 were almost exclusively supplied by Mr. Churchill. Nor should we leave unnoticed the unique "Mu'ajjam" of Shams i Kais (no. 190), the earliest treatise extant on Persian metres. Not the least curious of Mr. Churchill's acquisitions consisted of eight MSS. written in Persian, but in the Hebrew character. Two of them, being transcripts of Muslim works, have found place in this Supplement (nos. 230, 272). The others, belonging more properly to Jewish literature, have been reserved for the Hebrew Catalogue now in course of preparation. Having concluded this brief sketch of the Churchill MSS., we now proceed to enumerate, in chronological order, the main sources from which the remainder of the present collection has been derived. PREFACE. Vll " A number of Oriental MSS. brought together by the genial author of Histoire des religions et des philosophies dans l'Asie centrale," Comte de Gobineau, during his resi- dence as French Envoy at the Persian Court, were sold by auction, after his death, in Paris in the year 1885. Nine of the most valuable were secured for the British Museum. These included the gem of the collection, a finely written and tastefully illuminated volume comprising the best text known of Asadi's Garshasp Namah, and three other of great epic poems hitherto scarcely known by name (no. 201) ; further, a volume the translation of Narshakhi's history historical work of Hafiz i Abrii (no. 27) ; the Persian Isfandiyar (no. ; and Ihya of Bukhara (no. 87) ; the history of Tabaristan, by Ibn 92) ul-Muluk, a curious and otherwise unknown history of SIstan (no. 97). In the same year eleven Persian MSS. were purchased of the sons of the Eev. Henry Aaron Stern, who had acquired them during his missionary journeys in Persia in the years 18-47— 52. The only one that calls for a special notice here is a copy of the Shahnamah in two large folios (nos. 196-7), containing a number of additional episodes and later poems grafted on the original text of Firdausi. Eleven MSS. acquired at the same date originally belonged to a distinguished Persian scholar, the late Nathaniel Bland. Besides a copy of the Atashkadah, a Biography of Poets, which he had been the first to make known in Europe, they include the Yusuf u Zulaikha of Firdausi (no. 200), the only copy of that rare poem which contains the full text of the prologue ; the history of the Moghols, by Rashld ud-Dln (no. ; and a profusely illuminated (no. 25) ; an early MS. of the Khamsah of Nizami 226) copy of the Hamlah i Haidari (no. 336). The collection of Alfred von Kremer, purchased in 1886, is essentially Arabic, and has been described in the Preface to the Arabic Supplement. The most interesting of the nine Persian MSS. which it includes is a volume containing a large collection of letters written by Baha-ullah, the late head of the Babis, to his followers in Persia (no. 13). At the sale of the MSS. of the late Thomas Fiott Hughes, Secretary to the British Embassy at Constantinople, which took place in London in the year 1890, the Museum became possessed of seven choice MSS. remarkable either for their early dates or their exquisite calligraphy. The Risalah of Kushairi (no. 16) and the Akhlak i Nasiri (no. 147) are dated respectively A.H. 601 and 680. A Gulistan (no. 249) and a b 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Theology 1 Sciences. Encyclopaedias 102 Shi'ah works 4 Ethics and Politics 105 Babi boohs 6 Astronomy 110 Sufism 9 Mineralogy 112 Appendix to Theology 13 Medicine 113 Farriery 114 Law 13 Music 114 Hinduism 14 Philology. Persian Lexicography . 116 History. General history 15 Arabic Lexicography and Grammar . 120 Muhammad and the Imams ... 29 Various Lexicographical works . 120 Moghols 33 Rhetoric and Insha 121 Muzaffaris 33 Prosody 123 Timur 33 Middles 126 Safavis 34 Poetry 127 Nadir Shah 43 Anthologies 232 Zands 43 Tales and Fables Kajars 45 238 Collections Anecdotes Uzbeks 49 of .... 243 Letters, Afghans 51 State Papers and Autographs . 253 India 51 Paintings 260 Local histories 58 Inscriptions 263 MSS. of Mixed Contents 264 Biography 68 Latest Accessions 270 Lives of Sufis 70 Alphabetical Index op Titles .... 275 Tazkirahs or Lives of Poets ... 71 Index of Persons' Names 285 Memoirs and Travels 96 Classed Index of Works 299 Cosmography and Geography .... 98 Numerical Index 305 —; ; SUPPLEMENT TO THE CATALOGUE OF THE PERSIAN MANUSCRIPTS. THEOLOGY. 1. It is imperfect at the beginning, com- mencing abruptly in the middle of comments Or. 4379.— Foil. 384; 12J in. by 8£ on the first words of the Fatihah as follows : 27 lines, 6 in. long ; written in Neskhi by c***j o-:^ ji j\Ksil two hands, apparently in the 17th and 18th J j\ j> centuries. [Wallis Budge.] J?.—** j vju^-j \jZj>- iz*>*> The The Persian commentary of Husain Va'iz commentary upon Surat ul-Bakarah Kashifi upon the Coran. See the Persian begins, fol. 4a, as follows: WM syLJl ijy» Catalogue, p. 9 6, and Ethe, Bodleian Cata- logue, nos. 1805— 8. sjAc C^—aIUs ^ ^ J^c- WT, The MS. contains the first part of the ^ CLo.^J (Jl^wJ^ work. It breaks off in the middle of Surat j (3^* dX^>- Zjy^j J\ ul-A'raf, vii., v.