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Some remarks on the miniatures in the Society's Jāmi‘ al-tawārīkh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

G. M. Meredith-Owens
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Extract

This copy (dated 714/1314), which is now on indefinite loan to the British Museum, is perhaps the best known of our illustrated manuscripts. It is one of the few surviving remnants of the vast historical project set in motion by the Ilkhānid wazīr Rashīd al-Dīn Faẓl Allāh (d. 718/1318), and in its present form consists of fragments of the second volume of the Jāmi‘ al-tawārīkh in the Arabic version, amounting to 60 folios, viz.:—

(1) Fragments of the History of the Prophet and his Companions (fol. 2a–9a).

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 102 , Issue 2: Studies in Honour of Sir Mortimer Wheeler , April 1970 , pp. 195 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1970

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References

1 Morley, , A descriptive catalogue of the historical manuscripts in the Arabic and Persian languages preserved in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, London, 1854, No. 1, pp. 1–11Google Scholar. The manuscript (numbered A.27) bears the Library seal of Shāh Rukh, son of Tīmūr, on f. 11 a. Another larger portion of the same manuscript is in the University Library of Edinburgh (No. 20, dated 707/1307–8). See Storey, Persian Literature, 75.

2 The information for this section was derived from two Chinese named Li-ta-chi and Maksūn (?).

3 This part of the history was written with the help of Kāmala-śrī, a learned monk from Kashmir. It has now been published by Professor Jahn, who is at present working on an edition of the History of China (Section 2). See Rashīd al-Dīn's History of India. Collected essays with facsimiles and indexes by Karl Jahn, The Hague, 1965.Google Scholar

4 “Letters to the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society by W. Morley, Esq. and Professor Duncan Forbes on the discovery of part of the second volume of the Jāmi‘ al-tawārīkh, supposed to be lost”, in JRAS, VI, 1841, 11–41.Google Scholar

5 The person who wrote the captions must have possessed the manuscript in its present state as the catchwords are written in the same hand and these ignore the places where folios are missing.

6 The text says Kao-tsu—probably “First Ancestor”. I am greatly indebted to my colleague Mr. H. G. H. Nelson for his advice on the transliteration of Chinese names and for his help with this section.

7 I acknowledge with thanks the help given by my colleague Dr. G. E. Marrison in this section.

8 Kings of Káshmira being a translation of the Sanskrita work Rájataranggini of Kahlana [sic] Pandita by Jogesh Chunder Dutt, Calcutta, 1879, V, 139–140Google Scholar, and also Râdjataranginî, histoire des Rois du Kachmîr traduite et commentée par M. A. Troyer, Paris, 1840, II, 248.Google Scholar

9 Śākyamuni.

10 See Rashīd al-Dīn's History of India. Collected essays … by Karl Jahn, xliii.

11 ibid., xlviii.