[Cookery] Mahbub Hyderabadi, Ghulam, Tuhfat al-Lazzat Mahbubiyah, al-ma'ruf bihi Khwan Ne'mat-e Asafiya [The Gift of Self-Love, or Khwan Naamat Asifiya], Hyderabad, Fakhr Nizami (lithographer) for Ghulam Mahbub, [1894 CE =] 1310 Rumi.

[Cookery] Mahbub Hyderabadi, Ghulam

Tuhfat al-Lazzat Mahbubiyah, al-ma'ruf bihi Khwan Ne'mat-e Asafiya [The Gift of Self-Love, or Khwan Naamat Asifiya], Hyderabad, Fakhr Nizami (lithographer) for Ghulam Mahbub, [1894 CE =] 1310 Rumi.

Rare Hyderabadi palace cookbook with Ottoman dedication

Monumental Urdu recipe-book of the Nizami court, compiled by Ghulam Mahbub Hyderabadi, "Dar-e Bawarchikhana" (head of the kitchens) of Nawab Sir Asman Jah Bahadur, Hyderabad’s prime minister from 1887 to 1894. The work offers 680 recipes representing the late 19th-century repertoire of elite Hyderabadi dining, from biryani and pula'o to kabab, khorma, chutneys, and pickles.

$ 13,500.00

Enquire

4to, (245 x 165 mm). 15 ff., 348 pp., lithographed throughout, original orange printed wrapper bound within contemporary Ottoman three-quarter calf over red boards with green spine labels and gilt lettering. Stored in a custom-made velvet-lined half morocco solander by J. & S. Brockman of Oxford. Binding slightly scuffed and rubbed; hinges sympathetically restored. Last page of the index replaced with a contemporary manuscript facsimile, showing minor ink smudging. Original dedication leaf removed; manuscript dedication in Arabic supplied on the verso of the title-page.

A four-page illustrated opening section presents 46 traditional bread forms: an unusually concrete visual aid within South Asian lithographed cookery literature. Issued in Urdu nasta'liq by lithography, the book belongs to the decisive phase in which courtly culinary knowledge began to circulate beyond manuscript households into a wider reading public. The present copy documents an early twentieth-century transfer into the Ottoman sphere, where its paratext was adapted to local expectations, turning a Hyderabad palace book into a witness of transregional taste and print mobility.

Provenance: imported into the Ottoman Empire with bookseller’s note recording alterations, dated 5 Rajab 1319 Rumi (19 October 1901 CE).

Travel & Exploration

Cookie preferences

Join our mailing list

Travel & Exploration

[Cookery] Mahbub Hyderabadi, Ghulam

Further images