Persian MS 958 (The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester)
Persian Manuscripts
Contents
For four other copies of this work under variant titles held in the Rylands, see Persian MS 110, 490, 499, and 765.
Physical Description
Layout
Written primarily in 1 column with 15 lines per page. Ruled with a misṭarah hand guide.
Hand(s)
Written in clear black nasta‘līq with red subheaders.
Replaced folio 1a written in hasty black shikastah.
Accompanying Material
A detached bifolium from an unidentified Persian work on Arabic morphology (ṣarf).
History
Provenance and Acquisition
While the circumstances under which this manuscript arrived in Britain remain unclear, British East India Company writer Robert Thomas Ives (1763–1786), the son of naval surgeon Edward Ives (1719–1786) whom in 1773 published an account of his voyage to India and overland return. Whether Robert also travelled to India and returned with the volume awaits confirmation.
Manchester bookseller J. E. Cornish subsequently acquired the manuscript from an unidentified source.
Purchased by the John Rylands Library in June 1926 from J. E. Cornish.
Record Sources
Manuscript description by Jake Benson in 2023, with reference to the volume, an unpublished handlist, accession registers, and a Persian description of the volume published by Tawfiq Subhani in 1993.
Availability
To book an in-person or online appointment to consult the manuscript, visit Using the Special Collections Reading Rooms. For any other enquiries please email uml.special-collections@manchester.ac.uk.
Bibliography
Funding of Cataloguing
The John Rylands Research Institute and Library
The Soudavar Memorial Foundation
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