A COLLECTOR'S LIBRARY OF PERSIAN PRINTED BOOKS AND A MATHNAVI MA'NAVI BY RUMI
Mostly Iran and India, 17th, 19th and 20th century

The group comprising:

Illustrated Travels of Nasser al-Din Shah, Persian lithograph print, the text in nasta’liq script, 485pp., 14ll. to the page, dated 1283 AH (1866), printed 1286 (1869), written by Ali Asghar, printed at Agha Mir Bagher Tehrani’s printing house in Mashhad, in dark calf binding, 26cm x 16.5cm;

Volume I of The Arabian Nights, Arabic lithograph print, 710pp., plus four flyleaves, 33ll. to the page, gilt edges, in tooled dark brown calf binding, 25.5cm x 17.2cm;

The Kulliyat of Sa’di, Persian lithograph print, the text in nasta’liq script, each page with 22ll., dated 1301 AH (1883), with corrections based on the ‘Bombay issues’, with black and white illustrations, printed in Tehran, Seyyed Hossein Tehrani publishers, in plain brown calf, 26cm x 16.5cm;

A paperback edition of Fawayed al Insan, Alaj ul Abdan, a book in acrostic verse on the qualities of plants and herbs, and curative formulae, Persian lithograph print, the text in nasta’liq script, 166pp., 23ll. to the printed page, with a dedication to Muzaffar al-Din Shah (r.1896-1907), dated 1333 AH (1914), published by Kashmir Book Bazaar;

The Adventures of Haji Baba of Isphahan, 1824, by James Morier (1782-1849), translated by Mirza Habib Isphahani into Persian, 356pp. of Urdu script lithographed on paper, 24ll. to the printed page, edited by Shadan Bilgrami, third edition, November 1931, Alamgir Electric Press, Lahore, in cloth dark binding with reinforced corners, 23.7cm x 15.3cm;

The Kulliyat of Sa’di, Persian verse and prose lithograph print, each page with 19ll. of Urdu script, Lucknow and Kanpur, 1925, in printed paper on card binding, with reinforced cloth corners and spine, 26.4cm x 17.5cm;

The Kulliyat of Sa’di, Persian verse and prose lithograph print, 432pp., 23ll. to the page of nasta’liq script on paper, the text arranged into four columns, Mozaffari publishing house, Mumbai, 1335 AH (1917), in dark brown calf binding, 27.3cm x 21cm;

Rumi’s Mathnavi Ma’navi, 665pp. of Persian prose lithographed on paper, plus additional texts and two flyleaves, 25ll. to the page, arranged in four columns, dated 1 Rabi al Awal 1309 AH (6 October 1891) printed at Safdari publishing house at ‘the port of Bombay’, library stamp of Nasser Engheta’, in red card binding with red leather spine, 25.5cm x 17cm;

And a Persian manuscript on paper, Book 5 of 6 of Rumi's Mathnavi Ma’navi, signed Zelli Al Hosseini, dated Friday 19 Rajab 1067 AH (3-4 May 1657), 103ff., plus two flyleaves, each folio with 25ll. to the page, the poetry arranged in four columns of nasta’liq calligraphy in black ink, the chapter headings and synopses in red ink, the opening folio with gold and polychrome illumination, catchwords, marginal notes, in gold and blue rules, the colophon with the pen and ink drawing of a standing man with a turban, library stamps, in dark brown tooled calf binding, the text panel 26cm x 15cm, the folio 35cm x 23cm.