[IO Islamic 735] مصطفى نامه

Muṣṭafâ-nâma

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 1737 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 735 here with notations and hyperlinks].

1737

Muṣṭafâ-nâma (مصطفى نامه).

A very long and curious mathnawî, a rhymed Muḥammadan history from Muḥammad down to the first Sulṭâns of the Ghaznawide and Saljûḳ dynasties, together with biographies of famous Saints and Shaikhs, by an anonymous author.

Beginning:

بنام خداوند فتح وفلاح

كنم مصطفى نامه را افتتاح

This copy is apparently the first rough sketch of the poet, as not only many blanks are found, but also a great number of unfinished single verses, of which often only the first word is written. Moreover the arrangement of the whole poem is rather confused; in the last part, for instance, after the history of the Khalîfs, the Sâmanide, Ghaznawide, and Saljûḳ rulers the author gives us a detailed story of Moses. It breaks off in the beginning of an incomplete bait, the initial word of which is كنون.

No. 735, ff. 485, 4 coll., each ll. 31; clear Nasta’lîḳ; the first two pages richly illuminated; size, 14¼ in. by 9 in.