Art. XXVIII.—The Author of the Life of Shāh Isma'īl Ṣafavī

Extract

Since writing the letter on this subject which appears in the January number of the J.R.A.S. I have examined the British Museum MS. Or. 3,248 more carefully, and have obtained a clue to its authorship. Dr. Rieu and Professor Denison Ross considered the work to be anonymous, and regarded the name at the end—Muḥammad ‘Alī, son of Nūra—as being probably that of the owner or copyist. I am inclined to think that it is the name of the author, and that the work is more recent and less valuable than has hitherto been supposed. No doubt the writer has used some old records, and it would appear from a marginal note that a manuscript called the Qissa Ṣafavi, and which seems to have been lost, was the basis of the work. It is also likely that he used the TārīkhShāhī of Abdullah Marwārid, but I think that Or. 3,248 cannot have been put together earlier than the first half of the seventeenth century. We know from Mr. Denison Ross's paper in the J.R.A.S. for April, 1896, that the work must have been composed, in whole or in part, after 946 A.H. (or 1539), as it records the death of Muḥammad Zamān Mīrzā, which occurred in that year during the flight after Humāyūn's defeat at Causā by Sher Shāh. But there are two marginal notes in the manuscript which have hitherto escaped notice, and which show, I think, that the work must have been written at a still later period, and also that the author did not expect or intend that he should remain anonymous. These notes are not perfectly intelligible, for the margins have been clipped in binding (before the MS. came into the Museum), and consequently some important words are missing, but their general purport can be understood.