Delhi Persian 1027 (Oriental Manuscripts, British Library)
India Office Library
Miscellaneous works on Sufism, 7 items (a-g)
Contents
Language(s): Persian and Arabic
Item a.
Treatise assembling miscellaneous prayers, aphorisms, anecdotes, and verses on Ṣūfī subjects, some quoted and others apparently original, intended for recitation or chanting, by an unnamed compiler.
Dated colophon (f. 29v): completed by Muḥammad Faṣīḥ, 11 Rajab (year not stated). Datable to the early eighteenth century.
Subscription below the colophon relating to the origin or ownership of this copy has been erased.
This copy is marked by an extraordinarily bold hand hybridising the taʿlīq and nastaʿlīq scripts in a dynamic and quasi-calligraphic synthesis.
Excessively rubbing darkening paper (ff. 25v-29r).
Item b.
Fragment from the beginning of an unidentified collection of formal diplomatic correspondence, probably from the Nādir Shāh Afshār dynasty, by an unnamed compiler. See item d for a lengthier fragment.
The text ends abruptly at the end of the second page without formal conclusion.
Not dated at end.
Item c.
Substantial fragment from an unidentified collection of models for formal correspondence or inshāʾ by an unnamed writer who compiled the collection at the age of 41 years.
The text ends abruptly without formal conclusion.
The work is specifically intended as an educational aid for rhetoric and literary techniques.
Not dated at end.
Item d.
Substantive fragment from an unidentified collection of formal diplomatic correspondence by an unnamed compiler, consisting of part of the introduction and continuing beyond the point of abrupt conclusion found in item b.
The text ends abruptly without formal conclusion.
Not dated at end.
Scribal nastaʿlīq hand similar to that in item c.
Item e.
Untitled treatise on Persian grammar and diction by ʿAbd al-Vāsiʿ Hānsavī.
Not dated at end.
Item f.
Substantive fragment from an unidentified collection of formal diplomatic correspondence and bravura prose accounts commemorating events and people connected with the Timurid or Mughal court, by an unnamed compiler.
Defective at beginning and end.
Not dated at end.
Rough shikastah āmīz.
Item g.
Fragment from an untitled treatise on Persian grammar by Ẓahīr ibn [Maḥmūd ibn Masʿūd] al-ʿAlavī.
Not dated at end.
Physical Description
Hand(s)
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Purchased by the Government of India at sale organised by Delhi Prize Agents, 1859; administrative deposit India Office Library, 1876
1876
Government of India
Availability
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Funding of Cataloguing
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