[IO Islamic 54] ديوان منّت

Dîwân-i-Minnat

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 1723 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 54 here with notations and hyperlinks].

1723

Dîwân-i-Minnat (ديوان منّت).

The minor poems of Mîr Ḳamar-aldîn, with the takhalluṣ Minnat, who was born at Dihlî about A.H. 1159 (A.D. 1746), went to Lucknow A.H. 1191 (A.D. 1777), was taken by Mr. Richard Johnson to Calcutta and introduced to the Governor-General Warren Hastings, who bestowed upon him the title of a ‘king of poets,’ and died A.H. 1207 (or according to others 1208=A.D. 1792-1794), comp. A. Sprenger, Catal., pp. 171, 258, 259, and 498.

Contents:

Ḳaṣîdas, on fol. 1b, beginning:

زهى بسويتو هركس بغير تو محتاج

گداى كويتو فارغ زننگ افسر و تاج

A mathnawî, on fol. 65a, beginning:

حَبّذّا صانع صورت گر معنى پرداز

كه چنین ریخت سراپاى تو در قالب ناز

Ghazals (with some mukhammasât and ḳiṭ’as at the end), on fol. 78b, arranged in alphabetical order, beginning: بآب زر سزد تحرير بسم الله عنوانها الخ.

The initial poem of Sprenger’s copy is missing here.

No date. The copyist was Mîr Wilâyat.

No. 54, ff. 190, 2 coll., each ll. 15; Shikasta âmîz, written on brown paper, except the last twenty-one leaves; excellent frontispieces on ff. 1b and 78b; ff. 1b, 2a, 78b and 79a luxuriously illuminated with beautiful pictures on the margin in gold and other colours; all the pages column framed with gilt stripes; ff. 63b, 64, 77, and 78a left blank; size, 93/8 in. 55/8 in.