Delhi Persian 228 (Oriental Manuscripts, British Library)

Copy prepared for publication (presumably lithography) of a polemic treatise in simple Persian prose intent on persuading common followers of the Ḥanafī Sunnī maz̲hab of the virtues of the Is̲nā ʿAsharī Shīʿah faith, written by Salāmat ʿAlī the ṭabīb ibn Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAjīb Dihlavī known as Ḥadāqat Khān, named in a slightly different form in the colophon.

Beginning with an erroneous and truncated account of the Shīʿah faith in Timurid (Mughal) India down to “two to three generations away from the third hijrī millennium,” the author persistently attributes the political and military weakness of the Timurid Empire to Sunnī deviation from the principles of the true Shīʿah faith, contrasted with the strength and power of Shīʿah Iran.

The chronogrammatic title encodes the date of composition.

The work comprises a muqaddimah, seven bāb, and khātimah.

Dated colophon (f. 150v): the work by Ḥakīm Salāmat ʿAlī Khān Banārasīwas corrected by Muḥammad Ḥanīf Dhamtūri, and [intended to be] published by Shaykh Hidāyat Allāh at the dār al-imārat Kalkattah (Kolkata), 1236/1820-21.

Persian and intermittent pencil foliation.

Damaged plain brown leather binding.