Author: Mohammed Zakir
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 1994
Language: English
Pages: 158
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0140245731
Description
A Tale of Four Dervishes (Bagh-o-Bahar) is a classic of early Urdu literature.
Bagh-o-Bahar, also known as Qissa-e-Chaar Darvesh, is believed to have been composed in Persian sometime in the fourteenth century. Though the first Urdu translation appeared in 1775, it was Mir Amman's translation in colloquial Urdu, completed in 1803, that made the work popular.
Structurally similar to the Arabian Nights, this book is a collection of five main stories and several sub-stories loosely strung together, with all the ingredients of a traditional oriental epic - beauty, valor, love and adventure with elements of the supernatural. The principal characters are four wandering dervishes - three princes and a rich merchant - who have renounced the world on account of their failure in love. In their journeys they meet characters more unfortunate than themselves who tell stories more fantastical than their own...
Wonderfully entertaining as fiction, the stories should be of added interest because of the rich descriptive detail they provide of the customs, beliefs and people of the time.
Contents
Introduction
The Author's Petition
Prologue
The Beginning
Adventures of the First Dervish
Adventures of the Second Dervish
— The Prince of Neemroz
Tale of Azad Bakht
— Khwaja the Dog-Worshipper
— The Princess of Zerbad
— The Princess of Sarandeep
— The Merchant's Son of Azerbaijan
Adventures of the Third Dervish
— Nu'man the Merchant
Adventures of the fourth Dervish
Denouement
Epilogue
Select Glossary