Me’raj al-Sa’adat, a worthy work with unreliable prints

Abstract

Molla Ahmad Naraghi (died 1244 or 1245 AH) is one of the greatest jurists of Iran in the early Qajar era. In addition to authoring numerous works in jurisprudence and principles of jurisprudence, mainly in Arabic, he also left valuable works in Persian literature and ethics. Molla Ahmad's Me’raj al-Sa’adat, which is a free translation (from Arabic to Persian) of his father Molla Mohammad Mahdi's book entitled Jame’ al-Sa’adat with additions and changes, has a special place among Persian moral books. In addition to the fact that many manuscripts of this book have reached us, it has been printed many times in Lithography and etc. However, there is no edited text of this book based on scientific criteria. The most reliable and famous edition of it was published by Hejrat Publications (without the editor's name) in 1378 "with correction, research, comment and editing". Various faults can be seen in this edition, which shows carelessness in editing and research. In this article, we will criticize this edition from different perspectives of edition, stylistics and the principles of text correction, and we will present our suggestions for its editing.

Keywords

• me’raj al-sa’adat
• molla ahmad naraghi
• editing
• codicology
• criticism