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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

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 latter's 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). Khwāndamīr's personal involvement in many of the events that it describes lends this work its special interest

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

Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235) is arguably the greatest mystical poet in the history of Arabic literature. Born in Cairo and a student of Shāfiʿī law and ḥadīth in his younger years, he turned to mysticism, living a solitary existence on Cairoʾs Muqaṭṭam hills, in the desert, and in the Hijaz. After his return to Cairo, people worshipped him as a saint and even today, admirers still visit his tomb in that city. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) is one of Persiaʾs great medieval poets. As a young man, he joined the followers of Saʿd al-Dīn Kāshgharī (d. 860/1456), leader of the mystical Naqshbandiyya order in Herat. His combined output in poetry (39.000 lines of verse) and prose (over 30 works) is quite overwhelming. Besides a commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍʾs Khamriyya mīmiyya , he also made the first and only Persian translation of his seminal al-Tāʾiyya al-kubrā , published here for the very first time