Dabestan-e Mazaheb
The Dabestān-e Mazāheb, also transliterated as Dabistān-i Mazāhib (Persian: دبستان مذاهب) "School of Religions", is an examination and comparison of South Asian religions and sects of the mid-17th century. The work is written in Persian, probably having been composed in about 1655 CE.
The Dabistan-e Madahib is best known for its chapter on the Dīn-i Ilāhī, the syncretic religion propounded by the Mughal emperor Jalālu d-Dīn Muḥammad Akbar ("Akbar the Great") after 1581 and is possibly the most reliable account of the Ibādat Khāna discussions that led up to this.
This work was first printed by Nazar Ashraf in a very accurate edition in movable type at Calcutta in 1809 (an offset reprint of this edition was published by Ali Asghar Mustafawi from Teheran in 1982). A lithographed edition was published by Ibrahim bin Nur Muhammad from Bombay in AH 1292 (1875). In 1877, Munshi Nawal Kishore published another Lithographed edition from Lucknow. The distinguished Persian scholar Francis Gladwin translated the chapter on the Persians into English and published it from Calcutta in 1789. A German version by E. Dalburg from Wurzburg was published in 1809. The chapter on the Raushanyas was translated into English by J. Leyden for the Asiatic Researches, xi, Calcutta. The entire work was translated into English by David Shea and Anthony Troyer under the title, The Dabistan or School of Manners (1843) in three volumes from London.
