Ahmad-i Jam, the Muslim saint known as zhendeh-pil (d. 1141), Divan, poetry North India, 17th Century


Persian manuscript on paper, 123 leaves, 13 lines to the page written in nasta'liq script in one and two columns in black ink, headings and occasional phrases in red, intercolumnar rules in black, inner margins ruled in gold, blue and red, one illuminated frontispiece, and one further headpiece near beginning in colours and gold, worming, brown morocco, worn and stained 300 x 180 mm.
|The text begins with a prose preface (headed with the word Jam in red), giving the biographical details of Ahmad-i Jam and praising him. This section is likely to have been taken from Amin Ahmad Razi's haft eqlim, a geographical and biographical encyclopaedia composed in AH 1002/AD 1593-94. Razi's name appears in the single line immediately after the illuminated headpiece: 'After praises to the One, and to Ahmad [i.e. the Prophet], the one who blackened [taswid, an expression used as a sign of humility] this blackening and writing, Amin Ahmad Razi, says thus [...]'. His dates are not known, but he is described in other sources as having lived during the reign of Shah Tahmasp (1524-76), and that he may have moved to India.The text after the preface consists of poems by Ahmad-i Jam, starting with his ghazals and ending with his quatrains, after which comes a prose text with a heading in red, consisting of explanations of difficult words and phrases, by 'Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492).