[IO Islamic 2482] كشف الاستار عن وجوه مشكلات الاشعار

Kashf-alastâr ‘an wujûhi mushkilâti alash’âr.

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 1270 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 2482 here with notations and hyperlinks].

1270

Kashf-alastâr ‘an wujûhi mushkilâti alash’âr (كشف الاستار عن وجوه مشكلات الاشعار).

Another commentary on Ḥâfiż dîwân, by Muḥammad Afḍal of Ilâhâbâd, who flourished under Shâhjahân, forming the seventh risâlah out of eighteen (not sixteen as Sprenger asserts), dealing with the interpretation of Persian poetry, except the mathnawî and the ḥadîḳah. The immediately preceding sixth risâlah was a commentary on Niżâmî’s Sharafnâma or Iskandarnâma, as we learn from the very heading of this copy, on fol. 1b: خاتمۀ شرح شرفنامه مشهور بسكندر نامه و فاتحۀ شرح ديوان خواجه حافظ قدس سرّه‘.

Beginning:

زبان ميگشایم بشکر خدا

که از کشف استار آن بیتها

The title appears on fol. 2b, and in the same page begins the introduction (مقدّمه) to the commentary.

The commentary itself opens, on fol. 21b (شروع در شرح ابيات), with the verse: در همه دير مغان نيست چو من شیدائي الخ.

The work is especially interesting, on account of its long extracts from older and contemporary writers, particularly on mystical matters; comp. A. Sprenger, Catal., p. 415. Bibliotheca Leydeniana.

No. 2482, ff. 153, ll. 15; Nasta’lîḳ; size, 87 in. by 6 in.