[THE POETRY COLLECTION OF ALI IBN ABI TALIB / THE FIRST BULAQ EDITION] ديوان سيدنا علي بن أبي طالب / Dîwân 'Alî ibn Abî Tâlib [with] Al-urghûzat

ALI IBN ABI TALIB (c. 600-661).

Matba’at Bulaq, Bulaq - Cairo, AH 1251 [1835 CE].

Original full brown calf with flap. Inlay mystical sun (shemse) decorations on the front and rear boards, surrounding inlay borders of the covers. Text in borders with marginalia. Small roy. 8vo. (23 x 15 cm). In Arabic. 76, 12 p. A period ownership note on the recto of the first blank page records the purchase price: “This book was bought for 60 kurush”. Slight foxing on several pages. Overall, a very good copy in original Bulaq binding, a fine letterpress book. This early edition, like others traditionally stored horizontally rather than upright on shelves, bears its title handwritten along the bottom edge.

Scarce (in the market, not in institutional holdings) first Arabic edition of the poetry collection including verses and poems, supplications and advice attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Rashidun caliph (r. 656-661), the first Shia imam, and the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, compiled by Sharif al-Murtaza (965-1044 CE). In the marginalia, there are poems entitled al-Urghûzat, composed in the rajaz metre.

Poems attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib do not appear as an independent divan in early Islamic sources but have come down to us through compilations assembled in later centuries. A significant portion of these poems was collected from the 3rd-4th centuries AH onward and attributed to him due to their moral and gnomic character. Among those associated with the transmission and compilation of such materials is Sharif al-Murtaza (d. 1044), the eminent Imami scholar and brother of al-Sharif al-Radi, who is also connected with the broader tradition of preserving and organizing texts attributed to Ali.

Sharif al-Murtaza was a Shia Muslim scholar, jurist and theologian from Iraq, who was widely considered one of the foremost Shia scholars of his time. He was one of the students of Shaykh al-Mufīd, who taught in Baghdad and later in Najaf. His younger brother is al-Sharif al-Radi, the compiler of Nahj al-Balagha.

Al-Sharif al-Murtada lived during the era of the Shia Buyid dynasty of Daylamite origin, which came to rule over Iraq and parts of Iran in 934-1062, which also coincided with the golden age of Arabic literature, and great poets al-Ma'arri, were among his contemporaries. His prominence as a Shiite authority is also evident in the outreach of his letters, which addressed inquiries of Shiite communities (masâ'il) in Tiberias, Tripoli, Sidon, Mosul, and Aleppo.

This Arabic imprint, first printed at the earliest press established in the Arab world, served as the source for the Ottoman Turkish edition published at the same press four years later (1255 AH / 1839 CE), translated by Müstakimzade Süleyman.