[IO Islamic 2480] قصّۀ چهار درويش

• Ḳiṣṣa-i-ćahâr darwîsh.
• This manuscript is now IO Islamic 739 in the India Office collections.
• [metadata: Hermann Ethé, Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, 2 vols. (Oxford: India Office, 1903): volume 1, number 2480 here with notations and hyperlinks].

739

Ḳiṣṣa-i-ćahâr darwîsh (قصّۀ چهار درويش).

The Persian version of the story of the Sulṭân of Rûm, Âzâdbakhsh, his son Bakhtyâr, and the four dervishes, popularly ascribed to the greatest Persian Poet of India, Amîr Khusrau of Dihlî , who died A.H. 725 (A.D. 1325), comp. Bodleian Cat., No. 443; Rieu ii. p. 762; A. F. Mehren, p. 32; [Edward B.] Eastwick, translation of the Bâgh-o-Bahâr, Hertford, 1852, p. vii.

Beginning:

امّا بعد راويان اخبار و ناقلان آثار و طوطيان شكر شكن الخ.

Dâstân I, story of the first Dervish, on fol. 6^a.

Dâstân II, story of the second Dervish, on fol. 32^b.

Dâstân III, story of the Sulṭân, on fol. 56^b.

Dâstân IV, story of the third Dervish (here called درويش چهارم by mistake), on fol. 100^b.

Dâstân V, story of the fourth Dervish, on fol. 120^b.

Epilogue or final story (داستان اخير), on fol. 135^b.

The book ends on fol. 141^a; the remaining two pages and a half are filled with a detailed colophon, in which the transcriber, who does not mention his name, gives a short historical account of the circumstances under which he made this copy, in A.H. 1188, the sixteenth year of Shâh ‘Âlam’s reign (A.D. 1774, 1775).

Bibliotheca Leydeniana

No. 2480, ff. 142, ll. 18-19, but the greater number of pages are written in diagonal lines; Shikasta; size, 8^3/8 in. by 3^1/2 in.

• [ed note: Quick link to other manuscript copies of this work.]