Persian MS 355 (The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester)
Persian Manuscripts
Contents
چون تیغ اجل زند سیرها هیچ است
When Destiny Unsheaths the Sword of Death...
در سنبل آوتخیم از روی نیاز
In the sweet Hyacinthien Hair...
To die in raptures of delight
preludes the gloom of Fortune's night.
Physical Description
Collation
Condition
Layout
Written in 1 column with variant lines throughout.
Hand(s)
Written in a range of clear and hasty hands by Charles Fox .
- The Left pastedown bears an unidentified (possibly Cochran?) pasted catalogue entry that advertises the set for £4 4shillings.
- The Left pastedown bears the Sotheby's sale entry for the set, as well as the ‘Bibliotheca Lindesiana’ bookplate with shelfmark ‘1/K’, ‘Bland MSS No. 575’ with the name and number crossed out and ‘Persian’ and ‘355’ written aside.
Binding
Contents probably arranged by Rev. Adam Clarke and uniformly bound as a set for him shortly before his death, together with Persian MS 358 and 359.
Oversewn on three recessed cords with wove paper watermarked ‘J. Whatman 1831’, manufactured by the Whatman Paper Mill in Maidstone, Kent, then owned and operated by William Balston (1759–1849) added as endpapers at beginning and end. Untrimmed, endbands omitted. Covered in half british-tan coloured calfskin leather with medium-brown shell-patterned marbled paper sides.
Spine panels paletted with single fillets, with the title of the set, volume number, and poet tooled with handle letters in the second to fourth panels down, respectively.
195 × 130 × 28 mm.
Binding in fair but stable condition, with spine surface cracked, board edges and joints abraded, headcaps broken, and corners bumped. Opening to the gutter margins restricted due to oversewing.
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Subsequently acquired at the sale of Fox's library by Methodist minister Rev. Adam Clarke (1762–1832), who likely arranged them and bound them into their present form. After Clarke's death, his son Jospeh Butterworth Bulmer Clarke (d. 1855) inherited the volumes and describes them in a catalogue published in 1835.
The next year on 20 June 1836, Clarke's son auctioned his father's collection through the London firm of Sotheby & Son where someone named ‘Cochran’ purchased it for £2 11 shillings, probably either John George Cochrane (1780–1852) or John Cochran (fl. ca. 1826–1844).
Probably thereafter sold by Cochran to scholar Nathaniel Bland (1803–1865), after whose death, London bookseller Bernard Quaritch (1819–1899) sold his oriental manuscripts in 1866 to Alexander Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford (1812–1880).
Purchased by Enriqueta Rylands (1843–1908) in 1901 from James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford (1847–1913).
Bequeathed by Enriqueta Rylands (1843–1908) in 1908 to the John Rylands Library.
Record Sources
Bibliographical description based on an index created by Reza Navabpour circa 1993, derived from a manuscript handlist by Michael Kerney, circa 1890s and his Bibliotheca Lindesiana, Hand-list of Oriental Manuscripts: Arabic, Persian, Turkish, 1898.
Manuscript description by Jake Benson in 2023 with reference to the volume in hand.
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
Iran Heritage Foundation
The John Rylands Research Institute
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