[Sa’adi Shirazi], (1210 – 1291 or 1292), [Kāsefi, Kamāl-Al-Din Ḥosayn Wāʿeẓ] (1436/37-1504/5). The Iqd-I Gul, Being a Selection from the Gulistan and Anwar-i Sohaili. For the use of the Students of the Anglo-Persian Department of the Calcutta Madrasah/ Ed. By W. Nassau Lees, and Mawlawi Kabir Al Din Ahmad. Lees’ Persian Series. No. Vii. Prose No. IV. Calcutta: College Press, 1863.

First edition. Octavo (ca. 23,5x16,5 cm). With two title pages (in English and Farsi). 348 pp. (numbered in Eastern Arabic system). Text in Farsi. With numerous ink and pencil written commentaries in English, Arabic, and Farsi on verso of the title page and in text. Period brown full sheep with gilt lettered title “Lees. Persian Series” on the front board and a gilt lettered title label on the spine; marbled endpapers, bookseller’s paper label (Arthur Probsthain, Oriental Bookseller, London), in the left lower corner of the front pastedown endpaper. Binding slightly rubbed, paper slightly age toned, otherwise a very good copy.

Very rare Indian imprint with only four paper copies found in Worldcat. Second unaltered edition was published under the same title in 1871.

“The Iqd-I Gul” or “The Rose Necklace” is a collection of short stories, aphorisms and parables from the famous “Gulistan” by Sa’adi Shirazi and “Anwar-I Sohail” (or “The light of Canopus”) by Ḥosayn Wāʿeẓ Kāšefī (b. 1502). “Gulistan” is Sa’adi’s second major work after the “Bustan” (“Garden”). It consists of small stories of aphoristic character, with elegant intricate plots expressed in precise and exact lines. This “multi-layered” poem led to the creation of an Iranian saying: “Every line of Sa’adi has 72 meanings”. Gulistan contains hidden context of Sufi character and is deeply connected with the teachings of as-Suhrawerdi. (b. 1155). “Anwar-I Sohail” is a book of fables, inspired by the classical Indian moral stories of “Kalila wa Dimna” and early Arabic works of Ibn al-Muqaffa’ (724-760); it consists of fourteen chapters “commissioned by and dedicated to the Timurid amir Neẓām-al-Din Sheikh Aḥmad Sohayli, whose name is alluded to in the title” (Encyclopaedia Iranica online). The collection was assembled by the principal of the Calcutta Madrasa and a noted orientalist William Nassau Lees (1825-89). “He was for some years principal of the Madrásá or Mohammedan College, Calcutta (averaging four hundred students), in which institution he was also professor of law, logic, literature, and mathematics. He was likewise secretary to the college of Fort William, Persian translator to the government, and government examiner in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu for all branches of the service, besides being for some years part proprietor of the ‘Times of India’ newspaper, and was an incessant contributor to the daily press on all Indian topics, political, military, and economical. In 1857 the university of Dublin conferred on him the honorary degree of LL.D., and he was also a doctor in philosophy of Berlin. He became a member of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, in 1872”.

The “Iqd-I Gul” consists of several parts, titled “Dervish’s Morals”, “Padishah’s Lessons” etc. Our copy is interspersed with period ink marginalia, apparently made by a student of the Calcutta Madrasa, among which are translations of specific words and expressions, remarks on the stories, dates when a particular story was read (mainly in 1875), et al.: “grazing fields of Paradise” (p. 114), “Bravo!” (p. 118), “Story of the Raven & the Serpent” (p. 205), “Story of the Hare and the Wolf” (p. 210), et al.