MELA Notes

This article traces the four-century journey of the earliest surviving copy of ʿArafāt al-ʿĀshiqīn va ʿArasāt al-ʿĀrifīn (MS 5324, Malek National Library, Tehran), a seminal Persian poetic anthology compiled by Taqī al-Dīn Awhadī Balyānī in Mughal India. Through a microhistorical analysis of codicological features, ownership seals, inspection notes, and valuation marks, it reconstructs the manuscript’s passage from the library of the nobleman Sayf Khān into the Mughal Imperial Library, and later into Qajar Iran and the collection of Ḥusayn Āqā Malek.