Persian 4

Abstract

An eighteenth century manuscript from Northern India. Contains a Persian translation of the Indian Mahabharata, with 27 brightly-coloured full-page illustrations through the text.

This manuscript is contained within the The Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern Manuscripts, held at the Department of Special Collections, University of Birmingham. This collection was founded in Birmingham between 1925 and 1929 by Edward Cadbury, the Chairman of Council of Woodbrooke College and a founding member of the Selly Oak Colleges, who sponsored and financed the Collection, and housed it in the Selly Oak Colleges Library. He named the Collection after its collector, Alphonse Mingana. The Arabic manuscripts are the third largest collection in the UK. The content is mostly religious, mainly Islamic and early Near Eastern Christian.