Abstract
The project about the Persian manuscripts of Sir William Ouseley (1767–1842) and his brother Sir Gore Ouseley, bt (1770–1844) explores how after 1757 the increased British demand for literature about Mughal India changed the international manuscript trade. On the Subcontinent and in Iran secondary markets specialised in selling manuscripts to foreigners. As the exported manuscripts often became source texts of modern scholarly editions, Indian and Iranian dealers actively participated in the transmission of Persian literature and its British reception. By advancing the debate about the circulation of Persian manuscripts, the project will also shed new light on transcultural relationships between scholars in the Georgian era. Its main source are the brothers' manuscripts in the Bodleian and the Rylands.
In the British history of Persian studies, the Ouseley brothers are transitional figures who originally were pursuing careers in the military and in business. In 1794 William sold his military commission in the Royal Irish 8th Regiment of Dragoons, and published Persian Miscellanies, the first English textbook of Persian palaeography in 1795. Gore meanwhile lived for almost twenty years as an independent entrepreneur first in East Bengal, later in Lucknow. From 1810 until 1815, he was charged with a British mission to Tehran and St. Petersburg to assist with the negotiations of the 1814 Golestan Treaty; William accompanied Gore as his private secretary. Both brothers joined the new Royal Asiatic Society in London in 1823. In 1828 Gore became the first chairman of its Oriental Translation Fund, which published in print primary sources, heretofore only available as manuscripts. His lifelong passion for Persian literature is reflected in the posthumously published Biographical Notices of Persian Poets (1846).
The Ouseleys bought Persian manuscripts to read Persian literature. While Gore could buy new and used manuscripts in India, the brothers also purchased them in Europe and Iran. William collected “not only the oldest and finest Persian works, but several copies of each, that by collation a perfect and accurate text might be obtained” (Catalogue of… Manuscript Works, London, 1831, p.iv). In 1843 his heirs sold 600 manuscripts as a single lot to the Bodleian (Falconer Madan, Summary Catalogue, 4, 1897, pp.664–673). In contrast, Gore acquired and disposed of manuscripts throughout his life, not always inscribing or adding his armorial bookplate, even to important codices such as a complete copy of Rūmī’s Mathnavī, dated 805/1403 (Bodl. Ouseley Add. 146 = Ethé 646). Accordingly, the Bodleian received Gore’s manuscripts from different owners, and many of his manuscripts are unprovenanced (ibid., 5, 1905, pp.40 and 72). It is against this backdrop that the codicological examination of the brothers' manuscripts promises to yield new information about their collecting strategy.
