Thanks: To His Most Exalted Highness the Sultan of the Deccan, May God Most High Preserve Him

Thanks: To His Most Exalted Highness the Sultan of the Deccan, May God Most High Preserve Him

Since His Highness, whose presence shines with light, of his own accord and without any intercession, adding favour upon favour, has granted me a new stipend, together with a rank for my fortunate son Darbar Ahmad, may his life be long, and has bestowed on me this rank, this honour and this pride because of my lasting works on the language, morals and literature of Urdu, the national language, the language of learning, the language of the court and the memorial of the Mughal house, that is, because of my continuing service to the nation, so that:

What I received without asking, I received;
what He gave without cause, He gave to me,

how could it be that any work of mine, any essay, should shirk the duty of this thanks and turn this loyalty into ingratitude? I had read of Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma'mun al-Rashid in the histories; I had seen the learned splendour of Baghdad and Cordoba in the travellers' accounts; I had found the tales of Hatim's generosity living in every vein of the Arabs. But may God keep safe the blessed person, the sum of all virtues, of His Exalted Highness Nawab Mir Usman Ali Khan Bahadur, whose generosity, patronage of learning, support of every art and care for the poor we have heard with our own ears, seen with our own eyes and experienced ourselves, and whose kindness we have found all creation praising and extolling. So our first small offering, brief in writing but very wide in its research and its conclusions on the Urdu language and the like, is presented with folded hands, in great humility and with perfect respect, acting on the saying "A green leaf is the dervish's gift": [TN: Persian proverb.]

To bring a locust's leg before Solomon
is a fault, but from an ant it is a skill. [TN: Persian verse.]

If life is faithful, and if God wills it surely will be, and if at the same time the means do not fail me, then in the same way, after winning the public's approval, I will offer to His Most Exalted Highness the *Lughat-un-Nisa* (Dictionary of Women's Speech), *Bachchon ka Rakh-Rakhao* (The Care of Children), *Akhlaq-un-Nisa* (Women's Morals), *Risala-e-Roz-marra* (A Treatise on Everyday Idiom), *Risala-e-Tafhim-ul-Masadir* (A Treatise Explaining Verbal Nouns) and *Urdu ka Anokha Qa'ida* (A New Urdu Primer) with its method of teaching, most of whose drafts your servant has made ready for the press; nay, I will go on offering them always. And, God Most High willing, the day is soon coming when God Most High will have a small room built for me and the workers of my office in which to sit with our legs stretched out:

There is no stopping the work, O foolish heart;
of itself, from the unseen, some means will appear.

So hope, holding its breath, is crying out and reciting this verse:

Do not be downcast; the door of mercy is not shut;
on what day is the door of the king of the age not open?

The Date of Compilation

When I looked for the Hijri year of the compiling of the *Muraqqa*,
it came out as *Nazr-e-Asaf Bahadur*. [TN: "An offering to Asaf Bahadur", that is, to the Nizam; in the *abjad* reckoning, where each letter stands for a number, the phrase gives 1333 AH (1914–15).]

Delhi. Syed Ahmad Dehlavi

December 1915. Compiler of the *Farhang-e-Asafiya* and other works

Well-wisher of the eternal state of His Highness the Nizam, may God preserve his kingdom

How wondrous is Your power!

A hundred thousand thanks to God Most High that the house of authorship, that is, the office room of the *Farhang-e-Asafiya* and its private study, has been completed and looks very handsome. The stone bearing its name has been set on this room too. Only the plastering, the furniture and the door frames remain. The following line has been chosen for the main door, because all this is the doing of the Asafiya state and the sign of its general generosity. The line: "Here is the mark of the general bounty of the house of Asaf."

Although the *Farhang-e-Asafiya* has fallen into debt, God Most High will soon pay off this debt, because an honoured director of the archaeology department of the Asafiya state saw the building with his own eyes and has written his very true opinion of it as an eyewitness. That is all.

Syed Ahmad Dehlavi, 28 May 1916