[IO Islamic 261] ثمرة الفؤاد و نتيجة الوداد

Thamarat-alfu’âd wa natîjat-alwadâd

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 1698 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 261 here with notations and hyperlinks].

1698

Thamarat-alfu’âd wa natîjat-alwadâd (ثمرة الفؤاد و نتيجة الوداد).

Collected works in prose and verse treating of love and lovers, and consisting of little mathnawîs, poetical prose stories, ghazals, rubâ’îs, etc., all of the elegiac kind, as the author composed them three years after a great misfortune, a فراق or هجران (a parting), that seems to have been the loss of his beloved one, which befell him in A.H. 1143 (A.D. 1730, 1731), in A.H. 1146 (A.D. 1733, 1734), and finished this, his own autograph, the 22nd of Rajab, A.H. 1147 (A.D. 1734, Dec. 18). The author’s name is, according to the preface (see fol. 1b, lin. penult. and fol. 2a, l. 1), Muḥammad Ḳâsim, with the takhalluṣ Żarâfat (ظرافت),but this seems to have been an afterthought of the poet, since in all the lyrical poems of this work the takhalluṣ is either Ḳâsim or Ṣadâḳât (صداقت), see, for instance, fol. 92b, l. 2, fol. 173a, ll. 3 and 8, fol. 173b, ll. 3 and 9, etc., and in all places where ظرافت appears, it is evidently corrected out of an original صداقت, signs of scratching being clearly visible.

Beginning of the preface, on fol. 1b: الحمد لله الذى برحمته الّف بين القلوب و جعل العشّاق منشقّة الجيوب و صيّر الصبر سبب وصال المطلوب الخ.

The first poetical piece is a حمد و نعت , on fol. 3a, beginning:

بنام آنكه نامش الفت آموخت

رخ عصيان زجام رحمت افروخت

The second, a مناجات, on fol. 3b, beginning:

الهى عاصئ رحمت پناهم

گنهكار ضراعت دستگاهم

The principal part of this collection ends with the colophon, on fol. 187a, giving the above-mentioned date, A.H. 1147, 22nd of Rajab; but on ff. 188b-212a a longer mathnawî follows by the same author, and composed, as he says on fol. 189a, l. 8, six years after his heavy loss, i. e. A.H. 1149 (A.D. 1736, 1737), or two years after the completion of the main part of this work.

Beginning:

بنام آنكه نامش ذكر جانست

بعاصى بندگانش مهربانست

It is copied, like the preceding portion, by the author’s own hand.

Another copy of this work is described in Rieu ii. p. 710b, where it is represented as a coherent mathnawî with inserted extracts from Arabic and Persian works and consisting of two daftars, completed respectively A.H. 1146 and 1149 (see above); the appendix mentioned there, as describing a happy meeting of the poet with his beloved in A.H. 1156 (A.D. 1743), is not found in this copy, which seems somewhat different from Rieu’s and does decidedly not represent a coherent mathnawî, as, apart from the inserted pieces in prose and verse, even the original parts differ both in metre and in poetical character, lyrical poetry being mixed up with the epical to a great extent.

No. 261, ff. 212, ll. 12; two illuminated frontispieces on ff. 1b and 188b; small illuminations throughout; Nasta’lîḳ; size, 83/8 in. by 53/8 in.