[IO Islamic 1098] صفوة الصّفى

Ṣafwat-alṣafî

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 1842 in the India Office collections.

[metadata: Hermann Ethé, Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, 2 vols. (Oxford: India Office, 1903): volume 1, number 1098 here with notations and hyperlinks].

1842

Ṣafwat-alṣafî (صفوة الصّفى).

The life, wonderful deeds, and miracles of the great Ṣûfic Shaikh Ṣafî-aldîn Isḥâḳ al-Mûsawî, the ancestor of the Ṣafawîs, who died A.H. 735 (A.D. 1334, 1335), see fol. 278b. This work, which is usually-and probably more correctly-styled صفوة الصّفا, was composed by Darwîsh Tawakkulî (or Tawakkul) bin Isma’il bin Ḥâjî of Ardabîl, commonly known as Ibn Bazzâz (not Bazzâr, as Ḥ.Khalfa iv. p. 105, calls him), whose father and uncle were disciples of the great Shaikh, see the description of a revised edition of the same biography by a certain Abû-alfatḥ al-Ḥusainî in Rieu i. pp. 345 and 346. Rieu assigns, from internal evidence, the composition of this work to about A.H. 750 (A.D. 1349, 1350); the present copy is stated at the end to be the autograph of the author Ibn Bazzâz, and dated in the month of Sha’bân, A.H. 759 (A.D. 1358, July-August); that could easily be reconciled with the fact of Ṣadr-aldîn Mûsâ, Ṣafî-aldîn’s son and successor, who died A.H. 758(A.D. 1357), being spoken of in this work as still living, on the assumption, that the bulk of it was written a few years before the final date of completion.

The biography is divided into twelve bâbs, and begins:

الحمد لله الذى تجلّى لاوليائه بانوار العرفان و المعارف و تحلّى اصفيائه بانواع اللّطائف و العوارف الخ.

In Rieu’s revised edition it contains an additional preface and khâtimah, and the beginning consequently differs from that just given; another copy is described in the Cat. des MSS. et Xyl., p. 289.

No. 1098, ff. 342, ll. 21; clear and distinct Nasta’lîḳ; illuminated frontispiece; size, 133/8 in. by 83/4 in.