[IO Islamic 825] Mathnawîs

Mathnawîs.

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 917 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 825 here with notations and hyperlinks].

917

A defective copy of two mathnawîs by Sanâ’î.

Contents:

1.Sair-al’ubbâd ilâ-alma’âd (here styled رسالۀ سیر العباد), beginning, on fol. 2b: مرحبا اى بريد الخ.

2.Ḥadiḳah, incomplete and much curtailed; Book I, on fol. 30a, beginning: اى درون پرور الخ ; Book II, on fol. 93b; III, on fol. 107a, last line (the chapter not being numbered); IV, on fol. 157b; V, on fol. 166b; VI, on fol. 198b. The sixth bâb agrees with No. 2481 (918 in this Cat.) as far as fol. 202b, l. 6 (=fol. 175a, last line but two in that copy); but from thence there is no further agreement, Bâb VII, on fol. 241a, is entirely different from the corresponding 7th in No. 2481; after fol. 249 a very large lacuna; fol. 250a opens in Bâb X with the bait:

با دو عاقل هوا نياميزد – يك هوا از دو عقل بگريزد

But the exact words are not found in No. 2481; the agreement begins again on fol. 255b, first line (=fol. 383a, first line, in No. 2481). The usual date of A.H. 525 appears here in the last bait:

پانصد و بیست و چار رفته زعام

پانصد و بیست و پنج گشت تمام

Copied by Ḳiwâm bin Muḥammad of Shîrâz; no date appears. On fol. 1a appears the same wrong spelling of Sanâ’i’s name (ثنائى) as in No. 915 above.

No. 825, ff. 262, 2 coll., each ll. 14; Nasta’lîḳ; two luxuriously illuminated title-pages on ff. 1b and 2a; illuminated frontispieces on ff. 2b and 30a; ff. 2b, 3a, 29b, and 30a splendidly adorned; size, 8 in. by 5 in.