[IO Islamic 1571] روضة المحبّين

Rauḍat-almuḥibbîn

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 1852 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 1571 here with notations and hyperlinks].

1852

Rauḍat-almuḥibbîn (روضة المحبّين).

A mystical mathnawî, containing ten Ṣûfic love-letters, and therefore styled in the copies of the British Museum and the Berlin Library (see Rieu, Supplement, p. 217, and W.Pertsch, Berlin Cat., pp. 715 and 716, No. 687, 3) ده نامه, by Ibn’Imâd. a contemporary of Ḥâfiż, who was born in Khurâsân and lived in Shirâz, where he died A.H. 800 (A.D. 1397, 1398). It was composed A.H. 794 (A.D. 1392), see fol.38b, ll. 6 and 8. The above title, روضة المحبّين, the garden of lovers, which is also found in the Bodleian copy (Bodleian Cat., No. 1265), is no doubt the correct one, as it is distinctly given at the end of the poem itself; the other ده نامه or the ten letters, although correctly describing the contents of the poem, seems to rest on a confusion of this mathnawî with the ده نامه of Khwâjah ‘Imâd-aldîn Faḳîh, with the takhalluṣ ‘Imâd, who died A.H. 773 or 793 (A.D. 1371, 1372 or 1391, see Bodleian Cat., No. 803. And A. Sprenger, Catal., p. 438) and who was very likely the father of our Ibn ‘Imâd (see similar suggestion in W.Pertsch, Berlin Cat., loc. cit.).

Beginning:

الحمد لخالق البرايا - و الشّكر لواهب العطايا

Copied by Mîr ‘Imâd alḥusainî at Harât; the date is effaced. Another work of Ibn ‘Imâd is entitled طرز قدما, see W. Pertsch, loc. cit.

No.1571, ff. 39, 2 coll., each ll. 11; clear Nasta’lîḳ; illuminated frontispiece and all headings written on gilt ground; beautiful ornaments throughout; all the margins sprinkled with gold; two pictures on ff. 9a and 36b; size, 9½ in. by 6 in.