XXII. Further Notes on the Literature of the Hurufis and their Connection with the Bektashi order of Dervishes

Extract

Nine years ago, in the J.R.A.S. for January, 1898, pp. 61–94, I published an article entitled Some Notes on the Literature and Doctrines of the Ḥurúfi Sect. The materials for that article were chiefly derived from a manuscript of the Jávidán-i-Kabír (Ee. 1. 27) in the Cambridge University Library, and two manuscripts (Anciens Fonds Persan, 24, and Supplément Persan, 107) in the Bibliothèque Rationale at Paris, of which the former contained (1) the Istiwá-náma of the Amír Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Muḥammad b. Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad al-Ḥusayní, of Astarábád, composed shortly after A.H. 828 ( = A.D. 1425), (2) an allegorical mathnawi poem, and (3) a glossary of the dialect words used in the Jávidán-i-Kabir; while the latter contained another Huriifi treatise which appeared to be that entitled the MaḤabbat-náma. Thanks to information contributed by the late Mr. E. J. W. Gribb, I was also able to prove that the sect, which appears not to have taken root in Persia, the land of its birth, spread into Turkey, where it caused some commotion at several different periods, and suffered several fierce persecutions, amongst the victims of which (in A.H. 820 = A.D. 1417–18) was the bilingual poet Nesími, whose Díwán is not uncommon in manuscript, and was printed at the Akhtar Press in Constantinople in A.H. 1298 ( = A.D. 1881).