Introducing and Analyzing the Text of Ma’dan ol-Javaher and a Review of its Manuscripts

The book Ma’dan ol-Javaher (Mine of Gemes) is the only available work written by Doulat Khan-e Tarzi Dehlavi, a poet and writer in the Indian subcontinent, authored in the years 1024-1025 AH and dedicated to Jahangir Shah Gourkani. This book is being kept in the form of manuscripts with libraries around the world and among them, three manuscripts are available in Iran. The present descriptive study aims to introduce and analyze the text of Ma’dan ol-Javaher. Research findings indicate that the book is composed of seventeen chapters in the same format as Golestan of Saadi, that is a mixture of prose and poetry. The book consists of thirty-six stories, and Tarzi Dehlavi considers himself the compiler of these tales, not the creator of them. Most of the poetic evidence of the book belongs to the author himself, but the verses of other Persian poets such as Saadi, Hafez, Nezami, Jami, and others have also been cited. Most of the poems cited from others belong to Saadi. This shows that Tarzi, in addition to imitating Golestan in his prose, had also an eye on Saadi's Bustan. Employing rare Indian words such as ‘sokhpal’, ‘mooti’, ‘joogi’, etc., agreements of adjectives and adverbs, word formation and the use of verbs in special meanings, the use of redundancy, and the like are among the stylistic features of Ma’dan ol-Javaher.