Suchergebnisse

For over a hundred years, between 1507 and 1622, the island of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf was in the hands of the Portuguese. It was only under Shāh ʿAbbās I that the Safavids were able to recapture Hormuz and the neighbouring island of Qishm, under the leadership of general Imām Qulī Khān and with the unexpected help of some forces of the British East India Company that happened to be in the area at the time. The two epic poems from the 11th/17th century published in this volume, one by an otherwise unknown 'Qadrī' and the other by an anonymous author, deal with the recapture of Qishm and Hormuz under Imām Qulī Khān. While not of high literary quality, the poems show some interesting local and historical features, especially the longer one on Hormuz whose author had a great admiration of Imām Qulī Khān, whom he appears to have known personally

Mīrzā Asadallāh Khān, better known by his pen-name of Ghālib Dihlawī, is the last one of the great poets of the Mughal era. Born in Agra in 1212/1797, he traced his origins back to Tūrān, his paternal grandfather having emigrated from Transoxania to India during the reign of Shāh ʿĀlam (r. 1759-1806). While mostly known as one of the foremost Urdu poets, Ghālib's Persian work, poetry and prose, is of comparable quality. In his childhood days, his Persian had been greatly improved thanks to the teachings of a Persian immigrant by the name of ʿAbd al-Ṣamad. But even if Ghālib acknowledged ʿAbd al-Ṣamad's qualities as a teacher and a human being, as a writer of Persian poetry, he regarded his talents as God-given. Ghālib's life was full of drama: an unhappy marriage, the loss of all his children, alcoholism, depression, and years of financial hardship. Plagued by ill health, he died in Delhi, aged 71

Ghiyāth al-Dīn Khwāndamīr (d. after 942/1535-6) is a Persian historian who worked for several Timurid rulers in Herat. After the capture of Herat by the Uzbeks in 912/1507 and their ousting by the Safavids in 916/1510, Khwāndamīr held no further public office there. In 927/1520 he went to Agra where he entered the service of the founder of the Mughal dynasty Bābūr (d. 937/1530) and, following the latterʾs death, his son Humāyūn (d. 963/1556). He died in India, where he was also laid to rest. Khwāndamīr is especially known for his Ḥabīb al-siyar , a universal history from the beginning of time until the reign of Shāh Ismāʿīl I (d. 930/1524). The present work, written at the beginning of his career, is a monument to the greatness of his first patron, the vizier Mīr ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī (d. 906/1501). Khwāndamīrʾs personal involvement in many of the events that it describes lends this work its special interest

Born into a wealthy intellectual family in Isfahan, Muḥammad ʿAlī born Abī Ṭālib, better known as Ḥazīn Lāhijī (d. 1180/1766), was a particularly gifted child. Greatly stimulated by his father, he received a varied education: from literature and the traditional Islamic sciences to mysticism, logic, philosophy and more. Until the siege of Isfahan by the Afghans in 1135/1722, Ḥazīn lived mostly in that city. He then fled the capital, leading a wandering existence in Persia, Arabia and Iraq. Ten years later and seeing no future for Persia, he left the country for good to settle in India, dying in Benares, aged 74. Ḥazīn is mostly famous as a poet and intellectual who left his imprint on India's Persian-speaking, ruling élites. His attractive prose-pieces on a wide variety of subjects, from Qurʾān interpretation and knowledge of the soul to pearl-diving and the lifting of weights, are much less known. The present volume aims to fill this gap