
Matthew Thomas
Senior Specialist
Sold for £1,147.50 inc. premium
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Provenance
Private UK collection.
Ma'sum 'Ali al-Musawi was a poet (d. 1833), who seems to have produced other similar texts, including a collection of poems (jung-e ash'ar) in the University Library of Tehran (no. 3587), presented to Na'ib al-Saltanhah and dated Rabi' II 1233/February-March 1818. Neither Sayf al-Sultan nor the scribe Mirza Husayn al-Husayni have been identified.
The text is an anthology of 1001 bayt of Sana'i's Hadiqa al-haqiqa. For copies of the Hadiqa in the British Library, London, Bodleian, Oxford, and in Berlin, see C. Rieu, Supplement to the Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum, London 1977, pp. 146–147, no. 215. Another abridged copy entitled Intikhab-i Hadiqa or Muntakhab-i Hadiqa, and with the same opening and concluding verses as this copy, is in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. See F. Richard, Catalogue des Manuscrits Persans, Tome II: Le Supplement Persan, Rome 2013, p. 908, SP 704.
There are two seal impressions of the owner of the manuscript, Muhammad Taqi, dated AH 1255/AD 1839-40.
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