TEHRAN – The English translation of the book “The Picture Gallery (Nigaristan): A Persian Moral Miscellany” has been released by the Edinburgh University Press.

Written by Muini Juvaini, modelled on the Gulistan of Sadi, the book was translated by Edward Rehatsek (1819-1891); however, it had not been published before, Mehr reported.

“The Picture Gallery” contains one of the richest collections of teaching stories from medieval Persia, offering readers insights into its ethical values, social dynamics, and political and spiritual ideals.

Nigaristan is a term referring to a collection of teaching stories imbued with ethical and moral lessons, and this particular work is considered a distinguished one in the tradition of Persian wisdom literature.

Originally completed for the Kama Shastra Society, Rehatsek's translation has remained unpublished until now. This edition, edited by Gregory Maxwell Bruce, has been compiled from Rehatsek's original manuscript and contains extensive information about the translator, translation, text, and original author. It also contains a scholarly glossary of names and information aimed at facilitating comparison between Rehatsek's translation and Muini's Persian original.

Not much is known of the life of Muini, and the few items that have come down to us are almost all traceable to anecdotes in “Nigaristan” itself. Although his date of birth is unknown, it is clear from “Nigaristan” that he lived in the first half of the 14th century and spent most of his life in or near Juvain in Khurasan, which was then in the eastern part of the Mongol Empire. 

Concerning his family, Muini describes his father, Ibn Muin, as a man of literary achievement, wisdom, and a Sufi teacher surrounded by a circle of disciples. From “Nigaristan,” we learn that Muini's grandfather, Muini, was likewise a Sufi teacher and preacher. 

Edward Rehatsek was born in Hungary and educated there as an engineer, but spent most of his adult life in India, where he travelled as an engineer but eventually reinvented himself as an Orientalist. Over the past century and a half, he has been one of the most widely read Victorian-era translators of Persian literature into English. 

In the same year that Rehatsek completed “The Picture Gallery” (1888), he shipped his manuscript from his home in Bombay to Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot in England to include in his and Richard Francis Burton's Kama Shastra Society series. By that time, Rehatsek had already produced two translations of Persian works in the same genre for the series, both of which were published: Jami's “Baharistan” as “Abode of Spring” (1886) and Sadi's “Gulistan” as “Rose-Garden” (1887). 

“The Picture Gallery” thus represents the mature work of an important translator who had spent several years immersed in this important genre of Persian wisdom literature.

SS/SAB