MIRZA QAJAR (Prince Abdulhassan).
Kitab al-Abrar. [The Book of the Righteous.]
An exiled Qajar Prince in India
A rare treatise by the Qajar prince Abdulhassan Mirza, composed during his time in exile from Iran.
Abdulhassan (also known as Sheikh al-Ra’is) was born in Tabriz and educated in Tehran and Mashhad. He continued his religious education in Iraq, eventually returning to Mashhad in the late 1870s. Despite his princely status he was an outspoken opponent of the Qajar monarchy and subsequently found himself exiled to Central Asia.
Kitab al-Abrar was published in the midst of that period, giving an autobiographical account of of his intellectual and political development from his early years right up to 1894. The sections on his travels are particularly vibrant, such as those describing his passage to India via the Suez Canal. Once there he wondered at the densely populated cities and expressed shock at several aspects of Indian culture, such as the spiciness of the cuisine. It is probable he also gained some knowledge of the vibrant publishing industry in Mumbai, resulting in the publication of the present work.
Rare. We locate just three copies, at Cambridge, Princeton and New York University.
Provenance: 1). The seal impression of ‘Abd al-Husayn Mirza Farman Farma to final page. 2). Spine label and bookplate of the Firuz library, named after ‘Abd al-Husayn Farman Farma’s eldest son, Nusrat al-Dawlah, who chose Firuz as his surname.
