[IO Islamic 1320] Maâthir alkirâm-i-ta'rikh-i-Balgrâm

• Maâthir alkirâm-i-ta’rikh-i-Balgrâm.
• This manuscript is now IO Islamic 682 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 1320 here with notations and hyperlinks].

682

Maâthir alkirâm-i-ta’rikh-i-Balgrâm (مآثر الكرام تأريخ بلگرام ) .

The first volume of the great biographical work on the famous men of Balgrâm in Audh and neighbourhood, and those other eminent Indians who were in some way or other connected with that district, by Mîr Ghulâm ‘Alikhân Ḥusainî Wâsiṭi Balgrâmî, with the takhalluṣ Âzâd, who was born in Balgrâm, A.H. 1116 (A.D. 1704, 1705 ), and died towards the end of A.H. 1200 (A.D. 1786, September); comp. on the author, who has been mentioned above as the first editor of the Maâthir-alumarâ, in No. 622 sq., and again in No. 655, Rieu i. p. 373; A.,Sprenger, Catal., p. 142, and Bland, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ix. P. 150; and on the مآثر الكرام , Rieu iii . p. 971, and W. Pertsch, Berlin Cat., pp. 566-569, where a full list of the biographies in the second faṣl of the work (sixty-seven in the Berlin copy) is given.

The date of composition is A.H. 1166 (A.D. 1753), according to the chronogram ختامه مسك . The Maâthir-alkirâm is divided into two faṣls, the first dealing with the Fuḳarâ or Shaikhs and pious men, the second (beginning on fol. 71^b) with the Fuḍalâ or learned men; there are seventy-seven biographies in the former, and seventy-two (five more than in the Berlin copy) in the latter. The author mentions himself in both, see ff. 65^b and 121^a.

Beginning: نسائم المحامد سارية الى الحمى السرمدى و ازهار التصلية و التسليم الخ .

This copy was sent (according to a note in this MS.) by the author from Aurangâbâd, to Mr. Richard Johnson, at Ḥaidarâbâd, through ‘Lutchmen-narain’ (that is no doubt Laćhmî Narâyan, the author of the گل رعنا , a tadhkirah of Persian poets in India, composed A.H. 1181=A.D. 1767, 1768, and a faithful Ghulâm or servant of Âzâd, see Rieu iii. p. 977), the 1st of March, 1785; 100 rupees were sent in return.

No. 1320, ff. 123, ll. 21; Nasta’lîḳ; size, 9^3/8 in. by 5^3/8 in.