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Or 16285

Record Id:
032-004343801
Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
032-004343801
MDARK:
ark:/81055/vdc_100163240411.0x0000d2
LARK:
SLARK:
Format:
TEI
Reference (shelfmark):
Or 16285
Title:
Bhopal royal letter
Collection Area:
Oriental Manuscripts
Project / Collection:
Oriental Manuscripts
Hierarchy Tree:
[{ "id" : "032-004343801", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Or 16285: Bhopal royal letter" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
Hierarchy Record Ids:
032-004343801
Is part of:
not applicable
Hierarchy:
032-004343801
Container:
not applicable
Record Type (Level):
Fonds
Extent:
1 f.
Digitised Content:
Languages:
Persian
Scripts:
Arabic
Start Date:
1868
End Date:
1868
Date Range:
1868
Calendar:
Hijri-shamsi
Era:
CE
Access:

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Material Type:
Archives and Manuscripts
Legal Status:
Not Public Record(s)
Names:
Navvāb Shāh Jahān Baygum
TEI:

Oriental Manuscripts

Or 16285

Bhopal royal letter

Contents

1 copy of Bhopal royal letter

A calligraphed letter from Navvāb Shāh Jahān Baygum, announcing her recent enthronement as Queen of Bhopal, following the death of her mother Sikandar Baygum, and inviting the recipient of the letter and his wife to her coronation ceremony one month later, on 4 Shavval 1285/18 January 1869; this would have been immediately after the end of the three days of ‘Īd al-Fiṭr. Apart from his gender, there is no internal evidence as to the identity of the person addressed, although he may well have been the ruler of one of the neighbouring kingdoms.

Shāh Jahān Baygam was the third of four women to rule Bhopal, the second largest princely state in India. Her mother, Navvab Sikandar Begum (1816-1868), wrote an account of her Hajj journey a few years earlier, which was translated into English for the benefit of the British agent at Bhopal and published in 1870. See Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, ed., A Princess’s Pilgrimage: a pilgrimage to Mecca (1863-1864), Markfield, UK: Kube; New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2007. For a perceptive review of this work, see Bruce King, ‘From Mecca to Dhaka’, in Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 44:2, pp. 205-211.

Begins: Ṣāḥib-i mushfiq-i mihrabān-i mukhliṣān sallamah Allāh ta‘ālà Ba‘d-i ta’sīs-i asās-i khulūṣ-i qadīm ... al-Ḥamd li-Llāh va l-minna ki az maḥkama-’i rafī‘-i ṣadr-i manī‘ al-qadr manẓūrī-i jānishīnī-i mukhliṣa bar manṣab-i ṣadr-ārā-yi riyāsat-i Bhūpāl

Ends: Ānshafīq ham ma‘ah mīmṣāḥiba masḥaqqa bi-maqdam-i sharīf zīb va zīnat-i maḥfil afzūda mukhliṣa-rā mamnūn-i minnat va marhūn-i ishfāq farmāyand... shādkām farmūda bāshand Ziyāda chi bar ṭirāz Muvarrakha yakum-i Ramażān-i sana 1285 hijrī...

Bhopal, India. 1 Ramażān 1285/16 December 1868.

Calligraphic nasta‘līq. 11 lines. Surface stamped lozenges of gold leaf and sprinkled with silver. Thin, brittle light beige paper, with slight damage in the form of small losses of paper along the one vertical and three horizontal folds. 1 folio. 488 x 222 mm. Old seal impression of Shāh Jahān Baygum, dated 1265/1848-9.

Purchased at Bonhams sale, 12 October 2006, Lot 55.

Language(s): Persian
Title: Bhopal royal letter

Physical Description

Form: leaf
Material: paper
Extent: 1 f.
Dimensions (leaf): 488 × 222 mm.
Dimensions (written):

Hand(s)

History

Origin: 1868-12-16 1 Ramaz̤ān 1285 AH; 16 December 1868 CE Kingdom of Bhopal ; Bhopal, India

Record Sources

Based on unpublished description in M.I. Waley, Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts acquired 2000-2014.

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Funding of Cataloguing

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