The authorial problem in the Ḵẖāliq Bārī of ‘Ḵẖusrau’

Abstract

The Ḵẖāliq Bārī is the most famous South Asian example of the niṣāb genre of multilingual versified vocabularies, comprising synonymous or near-synonymous terms and phrases drawn from Arabic, Persian and early Hindawī. Its persistent popularity in the South Asian Islamicate educational system is the result primarily of its association with the celebrated fourteenth-century Persian poet Amīr ‘Ḵẖusrau’ Dihlawī. This article examines the debates surrounding the authorship of this text, examining both early attributions and more recent nationalist interpretations of the work in light of internal and manuscript evidence. The chaotic structural organisation and mnemonic technologies deployed throughout the Ḵẖāliq Bārī, as well as the multilingual character of the text itself, would suggest that the effort to identify of a single author or original text is misplaced.