Maqāṣid Al-Awsīyā' fī Maḥāsin Al-Anbīyā': Persian 1403

The Purposes of the Saints in the Virtues of the Prophets is written by Mahmoud ibn Ahmad ibn Hassan Faryabi, an author from the late 6th century AH. The author dedicated his book to the introduction to the Al-Baqlat-ul-Tangan of Malik Arsalan Khaqan Abu al-Muzaffar Ibrahim ibn Jalal al-Din (r. 574–600 AH/1178–1204 CE). Two works of Faryabi are mentioned in the sources: The Purposes of the Saints in the Virtues of the Prophets and Khulasat al-Haqqa’iq. The subject of the Purposes of the Saints in the Virtues of the Prophets is the stories of the prophets, which include the story of the beginning of creation and the creation of Prophet Adam (AS) to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and also the Rightly Guided Caliphs. This work is one of the oldest examples of the writing of the stories of the prophets in Persian, and therefore it is of great importance among the surviving works in Persian on this subject. The text of the book has prose mixed with Arabic idioms, which has given it literary value and made it a significant source for Persian lexicography. Six manuscripts have been used in the correction of this work, the oldest of which is dated 1009 AH, and the other manuscripts belong to the 10th and 11th centuries. The book includes an introduction by the corrector, the text, the compilations, and an index. The annotations section includes explanations of difficult words in the text and their textual evidence, grammatical points, and points related to the correction of the text. Translations of Arabic poems and phrases are also given in this section. At the end, a list of idioms with their meanings has been prepared.