Newly Discovered Manuscript of the Quatrains of Owḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī

Document Type : pajoohesh

Author

10.22081/jap.2023.75321

Abstract

Sheikh Owḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī (561-635 AH) is a prominent figure in the history of Iranian Sufism and Persian Sufi poetry, with around two thousand quatrains attributed to him. He spent most of his life in Anatolia, nurturing numerous disciples. Some of his followers in the latter half of the 7th century AH undertook the task of collecting and compiling his quatrains. The author of "Nuzhat al-Majālis," a contemporary of Owḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī, included 53 quatrains in his book. Among the ancient manuscripts of Owḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī's quatrains is manuscript No. 2910 at the Hagia Sophia Library, containing 1641 quatrains compiled into 12 chapters, transcribed around 706 AH. Another manuscript, containing 1136 quatrains, titled "Anīs al-Ṭālibīn va Jalīs al-Ṣāliḥīn," was compiled by the son of one of Owḥad al-Dīn's disciples in the second half of the 7th century AH and is preserved in Istanbul University Library. This manuscript is also thematically organized into 76 chapters. In this article, we introduce another ancient manuscript of Owḥad al-Dīn’s quatrains, compiled thematically in the late 7th or early 8th century AH, containing 1349 quatrains. This manuscript is part of the Amir Khwaja Collection in the library of Haji Salim Agha in Istanbul.

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