Nakhshabi

Ziya' al-Din Nakhshabi was a 14th-century Persian[1] physician and Sufi living in India. He died in 1350.

According to a statement in a manuscript now at The National Library of Medicine, Nakhshabi himself transcribed and illustrated a Persian translation made of a Hindi version of a Sanskrit treatise on sexual hygiene.

There are 5 full-page miniatures painted in a variety of opaque watercolors with gilt and two half or three-quarter miniatures, all of a provincial Mughal style typical of north-west India, especially Kashmir, in the 18th century.

No other particulars are known of Nakhshabi.

There are, however, a number of other Persian manuscripts which associate the name Ziya' Nakhshabi or Dhiya' al-Din Nakhshabi with versions of this ultimately Sanskrit treatise on sexual hygiene. And he is also known to have edited and added his own verses to a Persian translation called Tutinama of a Sanskrit collection of 52 tales narrated by a parrot (tuti in Persian) and a nightingale (sharak) to a woman in order to keep her away from a lover while her husband, a traveling merchant, was absent.

See also

• List of Iranian scientists

References

1. Donzel, E. J. van (1 January 1994). Islamic Desk Reference. BRILL. p. 310. ISBN 90-04-09738-4. Nakhshabi, Shaykh Diya* al-Din: famous Persian author; xivth c. He used his knowledge of Indian languages to translate Indian books into Persian. The best known is The Book of the Parrot.

Sources

For treatises attributed to him, see Fateme Keshavarz, A Descriptive and Analytical Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1986), pp 377–378 no 211 and pp 633–634 no 450.