DIWAN./DIVAN.

Safavid Persia (Iran), Rabī‘ I 964 AH / January–February 1557 AD.. Generally a very good, fresh and clean example of this 16th century Safavid Persia/Iran Diwan/Divan of Hafiz.. Binding: eighteenth-century or early nineteenth-century Persian maroon goatskin with inlaid stamped centre- and corner pieces, 19th century rebacking with new endpapers., Notes: An elegant mid sixteenth-century manuscript of the collected poems of Hafiz, carefully remargined in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. ‘Though credited with learned works in prose, [Hafiz’s] fame rests entirely on his Diwan. There are few aspects of the life and writing of Hafiz that have not given rise . . . to vigorous scholarly dispute over matters of interpretation and fact. The reverence in which he is held, not only in Persia but widely throughout East and West, as the undoubted composer of some of the world’s most sublime and technically exquisite poetry, will doubtless ensure continued world-wide interest.
Legend credits Hafiz with editing his Diwan in 770/1368, i.e., over twenty years before his death, but no manuscript of this version is known. Less speculative, perhaps, but still unattested by real evidence, is the edition (with a preface of doubtful biographical value) compiled after the poet’s death by a disciple, a certain Muḥammad Gulandām. From this traditional version are assumed to spring the thousands of manuscripts now extant and over 100 printed editions: many of these versions differ widely in the order and number of verses within a given poem, and in their detailed readings’.
, Size: 8vo. [(text 95 x 48 mm); , Illustration: Manuscript in Persian, written in a good, small nasta’liq script on gold-sprinkled paper, double columns of 12 lines, first leaf of text bearing a headpiece decorated in colours and gold and preserving part of the original margin decorated with scrolling gold leaves and flowers, text of first leaf set within cloud bands against a gold background, each ghazal marked by a heading written in blue ink against a panel decorated with delicate scrolling tendrils and gold leaves; a few marginal annotations in eighteenth- or nineteenth century hands; illuminated frontispiece partly retouched (probably at time of binding), some very light marginal staining and spotting
, Pages: ff. [203] with a single fly-leaf at each end of the volume, Category: Book Literature; Book Manuscript; Book Asia Middle East Iran;