Illustrated Urdu translation of the 1001 Nights in prose, done for the Naval Kishor Press

[Alf layla wa-layla - Urdu]. Muhammad Hamid ‘Ali Khan (transl.). Hazar dastan [The Thousand Tales].

€ 12.500,00

Lavishly illustrated lithographed edition: a prose Urdu translation of the Thousand and One Nights from Naval Kishor's press, perhaps the most famous Indian press of the 19th century. The translator, Hamid 'Ali Khan (1860-1918), was a barrister, colonial administrator, and poet whose edition of the Nights appears to have received little critical attention to date.

The earliest Urdu editions of the "Nights" were those of Shamsuddin Ahmed Shirvani (Madras, 1836) and Abdul Karim (Cawnpore, 1847), both intended for European students and written in a correspondingly simple prose. In 1867 Naval Kishor published the first Urdu edition intended for an Indian audience, an elaborate literary translation by Totaram Shayan (d. 1879); Kishor simultaneously published a versified Urdu edition (1861-68), begun by Asghar Ali Khan (Nasim) Dehlavi, who only accomplished the first volume, and completed by Totaram, who translated the second and third volumes, and Shadi Lal (Chaman), for the final two volumes. Totaram's Urdu prose translation would remain a mainstay of Naval Kishor’s operations; Richard Burton rather snidely noted in his own English edition of the Nights that by 1883 it had reached its fourth edition, with copies now available with “badly-executed full-page illustrations evidently taken from English prints".

Our translator Hamid 'Ali Khan was a prosperous and successful man by the late 1880s. He had completed his legal training in London and returned to practice law at Lucknow in 1886. As a boy he had already studied Persian and Arabic at home and English in school, while in London he learned French and Latin while in London, even publishing a volume of valedictory English verse in 1885. Whether he wished to translate the Nights to satisfy his own literary ambitions or was approached by Naval Kishor is unclear.

Khan completed his Urdu prose translation, retaining the numerous verse fragments of the Nights, rendered here as ghazals, in 1889. Naval Kishor published the folio first edition that same year at Cawnpore, of which only two copies can be located (both at the British Library, shelfmarks 14112.e.16. & VT577). The present folio edition followed at Lucknow in 1890; Naval Kishor also published an illustrated octavo edition of 4000 copies that same year (a single, fragmentary copy of that is located in the Maulana Azad Library of Aligar Muslim University). The 1890 folio and octavo editions have different but related suites of illustrations, both signed, in part, by the same artist, Yusuf Khan. An 1894 Lucknow quarto edition, with a single copy at Harvard, is the latest edition traced so far. The impression is that Hamid ‘Ali Khan’s translation found a ready, eager audience in multiple editions, sized and priced to suit a variety of customers.

Yusuf Khan’s illustrations are engaging, their relatively simple lines capturing action and expression in a compelling fashion. Lions, ladies, lords, djinn and even the hunched Ali Baba and his mule are caught by Khan’s pen and poised on the page. Compared to the formulaic Qajar-lite illustrations of the numerous Bombay editions of the Shahnameh, these have the ready charm of a well-drawn comic book.

Extremely rare; only one copy located at the British Library (shelfmark 306.25.D.2).