Same But Different? On copies of the general history Ḥabīb al-siyar in Saint Petersburg manuscript collections

Abstract

Manuscript copies of the 16th century general history Ḥabīb al-siyar fī akhbār afrād al-bashar (Beloved of Careers: On the Accounts of People) written in Persian by Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad Khvāndamīr (d. 942/1535-6) are preserved in many collections worldwide. As the author rewrote his text several times during the time he worked for the Safavids under Shah Ismāʿīl in Iran and the Mughal emperor Bābur in India respectively, extant copies of the work are not identical but differ remarkably. The article tackles the issue of textual diffe- rences in extant manuscripts and is threefold: first, it discusses observations advanced in the writings of the Russian scholar N. D. Miklukho-Maklai based on his work at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Second, it examines variations in the corpus of twenty-five copies of Ḥabīb al-siyar kept today in the manuscript collections of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, the National Library of Russia, and Saint Petersburg State University. The textual differences contained in the manuscripts of the corpus clearly indicate that Ḥabīb al-siyar had two versions of equal status (“Shiʿi” and “Sunni”). In a last step, by exploring paratextual elements such as ownership and endowment remarks, or birth notes, the article addresses the question of readership, i.e. how people actually read, copied, sold or commented upon copies of the work.