£504
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 739
Auction: 21 June 2023 at 11:00 BST
Ali Hasan Khan ibn Muhammad Siddiq Hasan. Subh-i Gulshan ['The Morning Rose-Garden']. Bhopal: Matba' Fayd, 1295 AH [1878 CE];
Muhammad Muzaffar Husayn Saba. Ruz-i Rawshan ['Bright Daylight']. Bhopal: Matba' Shahjahani, 1296 AH [1878/9 CE].
Both 8vo, side-stitched in uniform contemporary red half leather bindings, manuscript paper spine-labels, marbled sides, decorative title-pages, text in Persian, lithographed throughout, Subh-i Gulshan 646 14 pp., pp. 351/2 and 349/50 transposed, light marginal worming to front and rear, lower fore corner of rear board detached (still present), Ruz-i Rawshan 868 17 pp., page numbers 173-4 used twice (text not duplicated), pp. 207/8 and 204/5 transposed, marginal worming to outer leaves, rear inner hinge split, front inner hinge starting
Note: First editions of these two biographical dictionaries of contemporary and historical Persian-language poets, commissioned by the Bhopal court, 'the last princely court in South Asia to fully invest itself in the production of tadhkiras of Persian poets' (Schwartz p. 122). The growth of the tadhkira genre in India in the 18th and 19th centuries has been linked to the decline of the Mughal empire, the rise in Persian prestige, and the dispersal of Delhi elites to regional centres after the sack of the city in 1739. By the late 19th century, however, Persian was itself becoming marginalised by the rise of Urdu as a literary language. Persian tadhkiras produced by other courts, such as Arcot, focused on local poets, whereas the Bhopal offerings sought to be comprehensive. The author of Subh-i Gulshan has been identified as a son of Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832-1890), leading Islamic scholar and, via his second marriage, consort of Shahjahan, Begum of Bhopal. See further: Kevin J. Schwartz, 'A Transregional Persianate Library: the Production and Circulation of Tadhkiras of Persian Poets in the 18th and 19th Centuries', International Journal of Middle East Studies 52 (2020), 109-135.