Seven volumes bound in three; folio (39 x 28 cm); pp. [i, manuscript English title], [v], [2, blank], 354, [2, blank], 3, errata], [1, blank]; [i, manuscript English title], [2]-242, [2, blank], [2, errata]; [i, manuscript English title], [2]-245, [1, blank]; [i, manuscript English title], [2]-179, [1, blank]; [i, manuscript English title], [2]- 180; [i, manuscript English title], [2]-161, [1, blank]; [i, manuscript English and Persian titles], [2]-229, [1, blank]; printed in Persian on Indian paper; 7 printed headpieces, text within printed frames, arms of the King of Oudh printed on upper margin of each page; final volume with a number of printed diagrams to text, largely illustrating grammatical points. Bound in contemporary half Indian polished calf over boards, spines gilt compartments with blind-stamped devices; spines neatly repaired; some intermittent spotting, a handful of pages heavily spotted.

The Haft qulzum is a superb, large, and comprehensive dictionary of Persian compiled by the king of Oudh and arranged and edited by Mawlawi Qabul Mohammad. It contains some 27,709 entries. Every single printed page proudly bears the coat-of-arms of the royal house of Oudh with its distinctive double fish motif. The work is beautifully type-set, being produced before the press switched to the new technology of lithography around 1830.

A magnificent work, the Haft qulzum represents the last flowering of Persianate culture under the patronage of the royal court of Oudh, printed at the royal press over two years, and containing nearly 28,000 entries, compiled by the courtier Qabul Muhammad at the behest of the first King of Oudh, and last Nawab, Ghaziuddin Haidar (1769-1827). The printed text ascribes the lexicon to the king, not the courtier, though Qabul Muhammad is identified as an assistant in the compilation.

The seventh volume contains a number of commentaries on Persian grammar and poetics. The tradition of Persian lexicography in India stretches back over centuries, to the Farhang-i Qawwas, compiled for the Sultan of Delhi in the late thirteenth century, and Persian remained at the heart of Indian government and literature through the nineteenth century, even as the Mughal empire ebbed. Persian literature remained a mark of status and cultivation at Delhi’s successor courts in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; as Annemarie Schimmel has observed more works of Persian literature were created in India than Iran itself.

This lexicon fulfilled a long-held ambition on the part of Ghaziuddin Haidar; the manuscript note tipped into the first volume describes his lifelong fascination with literature, and particularly lexicography. The king describes dictionaries as “a vast and deep ocean, from which the pearls of knowledge are to be extracted without much exertion...” He further explains the Quranic derivation of his own dictionary’s title: “Because philology is the ruling principle and basis of all science as water is of life according to the verse in the Coran “I have made of water all things that have life” so that water is the fundamental principle of animated nature, I have named this work, the Huft Koolzoom or Seven Seas.”

This magnificent dictionary is undoubtedly the finest product of the Lucknow Matba’e Sultani, one of the earliest private royal presses in India, established by Ghaziuddin Haider, Nawab of Oudh, in 1817.

Provenance: this copy was presented by George Swinton, Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, to the Signet Library, each volume with morocco label recording his gift and paper shelf-label to front pastedown, with the Library’s arms and name gilt-stamped on upper and lower boards. Contemporary 4-page manuscript note tipped in at front of the first volume with the “substance of a letter from the King of Oude relative to the Huft Koolzoom”.

Ikram Chaghatai in his Hammer-Purgstall and the Muslim India says:

“Some rulers of the Muslim dynasties in this Subcontinent were very learned persons and their poetical collections and autobiographical works have been considered literary masterpieces. Among the ruling literati, it is perhaps a unique example that a king of Oudh, Ghaziuddin Haydar (r. 1819-1827), founded a royal typography in Lucknow at great expense with the technical assistance of an Englishman, named Russell, and printed a number of books in Persian and Arabic. He was deeply interested in Persian lexicography and before ascending to the throne he compiled a voluminous dictionary of Persian language entitled Haft Qulzum (‘Seven Seas’) which was published beautifully from this press in 1822. Its authorship remains a controversial question and historians ascribe it to Mawlawi Qabul Muhammad who was deputed by the King himself for reshaping and recasting the whole script.

Haft Qulzum, a dictionary and grammar of the Persian language, discusses rhetoric, poetry, prosody, etc. and displays clearly the compiler’s incomparable knowledge of elegant nuances of the poetical artistry and the different rhetorical forms of the Persian language.

Immediately after its publication, several copies of this Dictionary were sent to the various European countries, as ordered by the King Ghaziuddin Haydar. One copy reached Vienna, and Hammer reviewed its first six parts in the Jahrbucher. In the beginning, he described in brief the contemporary history of Oudh, its political relations with the East India Company and the Indian contribution to the Persian lexicography, He took a few years for writing this detailed review, as he was engaged in cutting and casting a new Nastaliq character for Persian words. In an unpublished letter written to the Court of Directors, from Vienna on 31st July 1831, he writes:

"In the letter by which I gave to the Directors of the Hon’ble the East India Company my most respectful thanks for the valuable present of the ‘Haft Kolzoom’ of His Majesty, the King of Oude, I promised to give a detailed account of this most useful Dictionary in the ‘Vienna Review’. If seven years have elapsed since the cause of so long a delay is less to be looked for in the numerous interruptions of my reading and study of this Dictionary than in the toil of cutting and casting a new small Nestaalik character with which is printed the list of more than 3000 Persian words which are related to so many of Germanic root. As there existed at Vienna formerly no other Oriental Types but the old ‘Naskhi’ ones with which some words have been printed in the notes I was eager not to finish this notice till I could show off with my answer the first Nestaalik character cut and cast and used on the Continent. This type being finished for its greatest part I take the liberty to transmit to you, Sir, a separate copy of this notice printed in different years in different numbers of the ‘Vienna Review’. I leave it quite to the decision of the Honorable Directors of the East India Company whether the book itself deserves to be forwarded by them to His Majesty the King of Oudh as a token of gratitude for the generosity with which European libraries and Orientalists have been favored with this literary gift of Royal munificence."

At the end of his review, Hammer announced that the seventh part of Haft Qulzum would be translated and commented by Friedrich Riickert, his poetically competent former student. Riickert’s ingenious translation and long analysis of this Dictionary were published in different volumes of the Jahrbucher and almost half a century later Wilhelm Pertsch (1832-1899), a former student and great admirer of Ruckert, compiled these scattered parts in a book called Grammatik, Poetik and Rhetorik der Perser with some emendations and copious notes. According to A, Schimmel, “The book that thus came into existence ... belongs to the most fascinating studies of the highly sophisticated art of Persian poetry as it was practised in the Subcontinent throughout the centuries.”

With the efforts of Hammer, this Dictionary attained a greater celebrity in Europe than it enjoyed in India. While cataloguing the manuscripts of the royal libraries of the kings of Oudh, Dr. Aloys Sprenger found a large number of its copies which had been eaten by white ants. A relevant brief note in his Nachlass describes that “The book is not esteemed in Lucknow and certainly overrated in Europe. Hundreds of copies are rotting in the Topkhanah [one of the royal libraries]. In the Furah Bakhsh [another royal library] are seven very neatly written lists of errata to the seven volumes of Haft Qulzum which have not been printed.”