[IO Islamic 3131] 'Iyâr-alshu'arâ

Iyâr-alshu’arâ'.

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 702 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 3131 here with notations and hyperlinks].

702

‘Iyâr-alshu’arâ (عيار الشعرا ).

The touchstone of poets, a very extensive, but utterly uncritical tadhkirah of Rekhta poets, by Khûb Ćand bin Bhawânî Ćand bin Râi Salâmatrâi bin ‘Ajâ’ib Râi Kâyath, with the takhalluṣ Dhakâ (acumen), or, as Sprenger reads, Dhukâ (sun), see fol. 2a , ll. 3 and 4, and fol. 137a, l. 9, a native of Dihlî, who lived in Sikandarâbâd, and compiled, or at least began to compile, this tadhkirah in A.H. 1208 =A.D. 1793, 1794, or 1213=A.D. 1798, 1799 (according to a rather ambiguous chronogram on fol. 2b, l. 8), at the request of his teacher Mîr Naṣîr-aldîn Naṣîr, see fol. 138a , l.7. The title appears on fol. 2b, l. 3. According to A. Sprenger, Catal., pp. 184 and 185, he must have been engaged in this work more than thirty years, since a date as late as A.H. 1247 is found in it. He died A.H. 1262 (A.D. 1846). In the preface, on fol. 2a, l. 3 ab infra, he mentions his previous work, the ديوان ذكا .

Beginning: حمد بيحدّ داورى را سزد كه به كلك قدرت نقش وجود انسان را بر كرسى الخ .

The tadhkirah is arranged alphabetically, beginning with Âftâb, that is, the emperor Shâh ‘Âlam, on fol. 2b

The author’s own biography, with copious extracts from his Rekhta poem, begins on fol. 137a.

No date.

No. 3131, ff. 474, ll. 15; careless Nasta’lîḳ, mixed with Shikasta; size, 93/4 in. by 6 in.