Jawami ul-Hikayat

Jawāmi ul-Hikāyāt wa Lawāmi' ul-Riwāyāt ("Collections of Stories and Illustrations of Histories", commonly known by the shorter title, Jawāmi ul-Hikāyāt, also transcribed Djami al-Hikayat and Jami al-Hikayat) (جوامع الحکایات و لوامع الروایات) is a famous collection of Persian anecdotes written in the early 13th century. It was written by Zahiriddin Nasr Muhammad Aufi, who lived during the reign of Shamsuddin Iltutmish (Altamash) (r. 1211–1236) the third Muslim Turkic sultan of the Sultanate of Delhi, and the book is dedicated to his minister, Nizam-ul-Mulk Muhammad, son of Abu Sa'id Junaidi.

The book was an encyclopaedia of anecdotage containing mines of interesting information, namely on historical information often not found elsewhere, from mythical times until the end of the rule of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mustansir.

The entire text of this 2,500 page book is yet to be edited and printed. Currently, only abridged volumes have been published.

The oldest extant manuscript of this work exists in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, dated 1232.

The Jawami ul-Hikayat contains 4 volumes consisting of chapters of unequal length. Zahiriddin Nasr Muhammad Aufi used his personal observations, information from many Arab and Persian works (listed as sources in Jawami), as well as information gathered from individual traders concerning the conditions and life in different countries throughout every chapter. This makes the Jawami ul-Hikayat unique among Persian works.

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