Hayat-i Naseruddin Shah. Ghani, M. Abdul. Middle East, incl. Arabian Gulf: History, Travels, Falconry and Horses

8vo (150 x 228 mm). 62 ff. Urdu lithographed text on paper. Nasta'liq script throughout with headings within bold, floral borders and typographic ornaments, with several lithographed illustrations. Modern binding of maroon cloth-backed spine with gilt-lettered title "Hayat-i Naseruddin Shah" and blue marbled paper-covered boards. A South Asian lithographic printing of the historical and biographical account of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (1831-96), ruler of Iran from 1848 until his assassination in 1896. - The text follows the Shah s long reign, which witnessed both modernization efforts and increasing foreign influence in Iran, and culminates in his violent death. Significantly, this book was printed in 1898, a mere two years after the Shah s assassination, making it one of the earliest published accounts of the event. Abdul Ghani frames the Shah s death not as an isolated act, but as the climax of mounting political, social, and religious tensions under Qajar rule, and his narrative captures both the sense of shock and the reformist debates that followed in its wake. - Naser al-Din Shah was assassinated on 1 May 1896 at the shrine of Shah Abd al-Azim near Tehran by Mirza Reza Kermani, a follower of the reformist thinker Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-97). The assassination shocked Iran and reverberated across the region, seen by many contemporaries as both a political act against autocracy and a reaction to foreign encroachment on Iran s sovereignty. - In this work, Abdul Ghani places the Shah s death within a broader narrative of dynastic history, noting the unsettled political and social atmosphere it produced. The book interweaves biography with description of Iran s geography, population, and institutions, as well as discussions of the military, economy, and foreign relations, presenting the assassination not as an isolated event but as the climax of mounting tensions during Qajar rule. - M. Abdul Ghani, a former schoolmaster at Edwardes High School in Peshawar, explicitly introduces the book as both biography and political history. An announcement leaf, forming the final folio, records his intention to publish a second volume, prepared with the permission of Hakim Ahmad Raza Khan of Turkmen, further extending the narrative of Iran s rulers after Naser al-Din Shah s death. - This volume offers not only a South Asian perspective on the last great Qajar monarch, but also a contemporary reflection on monarchy, reform, and foreign domination in the Muslim world at the end of the 19th century. Its lithographed illustrations and striking account of the Shah s assassination make it both a vivid historical document and a rare survival of Urdu historiography on Iran in the Qajar period. - Well preserved with occasional tears at top corners on some folios without loss to text. In very good condition. - Cf. Abbas Amanat. Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831-1896 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997). Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly, Charles Melville (eds.), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 7: From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991).