The finest product of one of the earliest private royal presses in India

(Qabul Muhammad). Farhang-i rif'at-i musamma bi-haft qulzum. Ghaziuddin Haidar, Nawab of Oudh. Haft qulzum. [The seven seas. A dictionary and grammar of the Persian language by His Majesty ... the King of Oudh].

€ 45,000.00

First edition: an exceptional copy of this remarkable printing from Lucknow, housed in its contemporary binding and presented by George Swinton, Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, to the Signet Library.

The "Haft qulzum" is a superb, large, and comprehensive dictionary of Persian. Every single printed page proudly bears the coat-of-arms of the royal house of Oudh with its distinctive double fish motif. The work is beautifully type-set, being produced before the press switched to the new technology of lithography around 1830. A magnificent work, The "Haft qulzum" represents the last flowering of Persianate culture under the patronage of the royal court of Oudh. Printed at the royal press over two years, and containing some 27,709 entries, this superb, large, and comprehensive dictionary was compiled by the courtier Qabul Muhammad at the behest of the first King of Oudh, and last Nawab, Ghaziuddin Haidar (1769-1827 CE). The text ascribes the lexicon to the king, not the courtier, though Qabul Muhammad is identified as an assistant in the compilation.

The tradition of Persian lexicography in India stretches back over centuries, to the Farhang-i Qawwas, compiled for the Sultan of Delhi in the late 13th century. Persian remained at the heart of Indian government and literature through the 19th century, even as the Mughal empire ebbed. Persian literature persisted as a mark of status and cultivation at Delhi's successor courts in the 18th and early 19th centuries: as Annemarie Schimmel has observed more works of Persian literature were created in India than in Iran itself.

This lexicon fulfilled a long-held ambition on the part of Ghaziuddin Haidar; the manuscript note tipped into the first volume (written in a secretarial hand, containing "the substance" of an original letter by the king) describes his lifelong fascination with literature, and particularly lexicography. The king describes dictionaries as "a vast and deep ocean, from which the pearls of knowledge are to be extracted without much exertion". He further explains the Quranic derivation of his own dictionary's title: "Because philology is the ruling principle and basis of all science, as water is of life, according to the verse in the Coran, 'I have made of water all things that have life', so that water is the fundamental principle of animated nature, I have named this work, the Huft Koolzoom or Seven Seas".

This magnificent dictionary is undoubtedly the finest product of the Lucknow Matba'e Sultani, one of the earliest private royal presses in India, established by Ghaziuddin Haider, Nawab of Oudh, in 1817.