Principles of Jurisprudence [IO Islamic 456] نُور الأنوار

• Principles of Jurisprudence.
• This manuscript is now IO Islamic 456 in the India Office collections.
• [metadata: Otto Loth, A Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, (volume 1), no. 316 here with further notations and hyperlinks].

316.

456. Size 9^1/4 in. by 5^1/4 in.; foll. 264. Fifteen lines in a page.

Another Commentary (ممزوج) on the same work [i.e. Nasafī's منار الأنوار في أصول الفقه] entitled نور الانوار, by Shaikh Jîwan (جیون) Aḥmad b. Abu Sa’îd b. ‘Abdallah b. ‘Abd al-razzâḳ b. Khâṣṣah (خاصة) Ḥanafî Makkî Ṣâliḥî Hindî Lakhnawî (d. A.H. 1130 [=1717 CE], at Dehli),¹ who wrote it at Madînah in A.H. 1105 [=1693-94 CE], when he was in his fifty-eighth year. Printed at Calcutta, 1818, and at Lakhnau, A.H. 1266. Cf. Bibl. Sprenger. 608-9, and [Charles] Stewart’s Catal. 150

Beginning:

الحمدلله الذی جعل اصول الفقه مبنًی للشرائع و الاحکام

At the end is an epilogue by the author, from which the above statements are derived.

Clearly written in Nasta’liḳ. Colophon:

قد تمت شرح المنار بعون الملک الجبار فی یوم الجمعة فی تاریخ الخامس من شهر الشوال بید احقر العباد سید عبد الواجد (sic) ابن النظام الدین و کان من هجرة النبی صلعم الف و مائة و سادسة عشرون سنة

A number of leaves near the beginning are in a different hand. Fol. 8 should stand after fol. 1.

A charm, in Persian, has been added at the end.

Seal of Ṣibghat Allah.

¹ So according to a note at the end of the Lakhnau edition

• [ed note: see further Library of Congress authority file; and Reynolds, ed. Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (2001), 277: Mulla Aḥmad ibn Abī Sa‘īd al-Ḥanafī al-Ṣāliḥī al-Amīṭhawī Jīwan (b. 1047/ 1637, d. 1130/1717) Religious scholar and tutor to the Mughal emperor Awrangzīb (Aurangzeb). There is, according to A. S. Bazmee Ansari in EI² 2:558, a detailed autobiographical note in his unpublished Manāqib al-awliyā’. A short extract is quoted in ‘Abd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī (d. 1304/1886—see below), Nuzhat al-khawāṭir wa-bahjat al-masāmī wa-l-nawāẓir (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1999), 691–92].
• [ed note: Quick link to a further copy of this text].
• [ed note: the colophon reports the copy was made on 5 Shawwal 1126 (=10 October 1714 CE) thus in the lifetime of Shaykh Jīwan].