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The Ottoman biographer, historian and former career military officer Kātib Çelebi (d. 1067/1657), better known as Ḥājjī Khalīfa, completed his Taqwīm al-tawārīkh in Istanbul in 1058/1648. Begun as an excerpt of his earlier history Fadhlakat aqwāl al-akhyār , he expanded it to cover personalities and events up to the days in which it was written. Composed in a mixture of Ottoman Turkish and Persian, it became a popular 'desk reference' that received various upgrades by different eighteenth-century authors. The work was printed for the first time in Istanbul by İbrahim Müteferriqa in 1146/1733. The Taqwīm al-tawārīkh was translated into Latin, Italian and French, besides the anonymous Persian translation contained in this volume, completed in 1075/1664, well before any of the other translations. It is one of the rare historical works in Persian to have the form of a chronology, most of them being histories of dynasties or general histories

Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī's (d. 718/1319) Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh has been described by many as the first world history ever. Composed in Persian for the Mongol Il-khans Ghāzān (r. 1295-1304) and Öljeitü (Uljāytu, r. 1304-16), its aim was to set out the history and condition of the Mongol people, conquerors of the world (part one), followed by a description of the other peoples and nations of the world and their histories (part two). Given its unprecedented scope, Rashīd, vizier to both rulers, mobilized a whole team of specialists, informants, and collaborators to assist him in his task. Making use of written and oral sources, the part on the Mongols is a key source on the emergence and organisation of the Mongol empire, while the second part constitutes the first attempt ever at writing a history of the world. The four volumes published here contain the history of the Mongols up until Ghāzān. Section: Mongols; 4 vols; volume. 4

To know a culture, is to know its written tradition. Before the coming of the printing press, books were transmitted in manuscript form. When texts started to get printed rather than copied, earlier works that until then had only existed in manuscript, came to be printed too. Until the early nineteenth century, a fair copy of a handwritten text would be all that was needed to turn an older work into a printed book. Today, all this has changed and most ancient texts are now published on the basis of a commonly accepted methodology. In the Islamic world, where we have thousands of works in manuscript that still await a proper edition, these modern methods are not always accessible to local scholars and uncritical editions still abound. This Persian guide to the publication of manuscripts is meant to change that situation. As such, it is an important statement on the advances in scholarship in Iran

Not much is known about ʿIzz al-Dīn Zanjānī's (d. 660/1262) personal life other than that at different times in his career he was in Mosul, Baghdad, Bukhara and Tabriz, where Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsi (d. 672/1274) wrote his Tadhkira fi 'l-hayʾa at his request. To posterity Zanjānī is maybe best known for his work on Arabic morphology, the Mabāḍiʾ al-taṣrīf , also known as Taṣrīf al-Zanjānī and al-ʿIzzī , on which many commentaries and supercommentaries were written. Zanjānī has four more works on linguistics, besides one work on astronomy and six treatises on mathematics, two of which are published in facsimile here. The first of these is his ʿUmdat al-ḥisāb on arithmetic and the second the Qisṭās al-muʿādala on equations. Following Zanjānī's own statements at the beginning of these treatises they were written for practical reasons, people in general standing in need of a good text on arithmetic, while the text on equations was especially relevant for jurists

Since times immemorial man has been fascinated by his dreams. This is true of western civilization as it is true of any other civilization, including Islam. In the Qurʾān and the traditions, dreams and visions are frequently mentioned as instruments of divine guidance and instruction. This sanctification of the pre-existing oral tradition around dreams and their interpretation created room for this tradition to further develop, both in a religious and in a secular context. Dream interpretation remained unsystematized and mostly oral until Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq's (d. 260/873) Arabic translation of Artemidorus' (2nd cent. CE) Oneirocritica and Dīnawarī's al-Qādirī fi 'l-taʿbīr (commissioned in 397/1006) that it inspired. From then onwards, a vast literature developed. The work published here is an important early text from the Persianate world, based on more than fifteen declared and other sources, most of which are lost. It is a compilatory work, with an introduction followed by an alphabetical inventory of themes. 2 vols; volume 1

Idrīs Bidlīsī (d. 926/1520) was the son of a munshī (secretary) in the chancery of the court of the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Ḥasan (d. 882/1478) first in Diyarbakır and then Tabriz. Idrīs must have enjoyed the usual education for an adolescent of his social background. He was fluent in Persian and Arabic, knowing Kurdish as well. He started his career in Tabriz under Yaʿqūb Beg (d. 896/1490), and served him and his descendants for seventeen years in various high administrative offices. When Tabriz was conquered by the Safavids in 907/1501, he fled to the court of the Ottoman emperor Bāyazīd II (d. 918/1512) in Istanbul, serving him and Selīm I (d. 926/1520) in different positions and capacities. Bidlīsī authored more than twenty works but is best known for his Hasht Bihisht , a history of the Ottoman empire written for Bāyazīd II. The present work is a mirror for princes type of composition with a strong religious colouring

In the history of Islam, Muslim-Jewish polemics have been documented from the earliest times and studies on this subject abound. The present work is a case in point. In the spring of the year 1211/1796, the famous Shīʿī scholar Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī al-Ḥusaynī al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1212/1797) was on his way from Mashhad to visit the holy shrine of Imam Ḥusayn in Karbala, accompanied by a flock of his senior students. When they reached the town of al-Kifl, less than 20 km north of Najaf and home to a community of over 3.000 Jews, a delegation of the latter came to see Ṭabāṭabāʾī in the caravanserai where was staying, wishing to engage in a debate with him. The text presented here is an account of Ṭabāṭabāʾīʾs detailed listing of the contradictions and errors in Judaism as seen by him, a listing that remained largely unanswered. Arabic text, with a Persian translation from before 1238/1822-3

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

"Until recent times, Iran regularly had to cope with local or national famines. The various governments, until the second decade of the twentieth century, had neither a policy nor institutional arrangements to deal with grain shortages, artificial or not, and the resulting famines. In severe cases of famine governments might have temporarily intervened in the market, but usually they left care for the hungry to private philanthropy. Invariably, this private effort was inadequate when compared to needs. Although there were earlier incidental efforts, it was only as of 1918 that a beginning was made for more permanent and structural pro-active measures to prevent rather than to combat famine. The creation of the Edareh-ye arzaq or Alimentation Service in Tehran and Tabriz to ensure food security saved thousands of lives in the years that followed. Despite this result, its work is almost totally ignored; there is not even an encyclopedia article about its activities. In this study, Willem Floor discusses the early efforts to combat famine as well as the beginning of a more targeted and structural approach developed by Lambert Molitor in Tabriz during 1917-18 as well as its application in Tehran as of 1918. Whereas in Tabriz, after 1918, the approach was reactive, in Tehran a pro-active program was developed, which as of 1922 became part of the tasks of the Millspaugh mission. During 1926-27 there was even a quasi-national food security program. After Millspaugh's departure in 1927 the food security of Tehran became an entirely Iranian affair, which as of 1935 was transferred from the Alimentation Service to a State company that had a national food security responsibility." --

The first Iranian woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi has inspired millions around the globe through her work as a human rights lawyer defending women and children against a brutal regime in Iran. Now Ebadi tells her story of courage and defiance in the face of a government out to destroy her, her family, and her mission: to bring justice to the people and the country she loves. For years the Islamic Republic tried to intimidate Ebadi, but after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rose to power in 2005, the censorship and persecution intensified. The government wiretapped Ebadi's phones, bugged her law firm, sent spies to follow her, harassed her colleagues, detained her daughter, and arrested her sister on trumped-up charges. It shut down her lectures, fired up mobs to attack her home, seized her offices, and nailed a death threat to her front door. Despite finding herself living under circumstances reminiscent of a spy novel, nothing could keep Ebadi from speaking out and standing up for human dignity. But it was not until she received a phone call from her distraught husband--and he made a shocking confession that would all but destroy her family--that she realized what the intelligence apparatus was capable of to silence its critics. The Iranian government would end up taking everything from Shirin Ebadi--her marriage, friends, and colleagues, her home, her legal career, even her Nobel Prize--but the one thing it could never steal was her spirit to fight for justice and a better future. This is the amazing, at times harrowing, simply astonishing story of a woman who would never give up, no matter the risks. Just as her words and deeds have inspired a nation, Until We Are Free will inspire you to find the courage to stand up for your beliefs; advance praise for Until We Are Free: "Shirin Ebadi is quite simply the most vital voice for freedom and human rights in Iran"--Reza Aslan, author of No god but God and Zealot : The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth; "A riveting account of a brave, lonely struggle. Reads like a police thriller, its drama heightened by Ebadi's determination to keep up the quotidian aspects of her family life"--The Washington Post Book World; "A must-read. may be the most important book you could read this year"--Seattle Post-Intelligencer; "As a testament to how a single, inspired voice can rise above the cacophony. The book should be required reading"--The Nation; "Some of her admirers in Iran call her a woman of steel. Sure, ...