Government of India Alqabnamah

Government of India Alqabnamah [Title at head:] List showing the Names, Titles and Modes of Address of the More Important Sovereigns, Ruling Princes, Chiefs, Nobles, etc., having Relations with the Indian Government. Corrected up to the 5th October 1935. New Delhi: printed by the manager, Government of India Press, 1935. Folio, original printed blue paper boards, rebacked and recornered, [4] iii [2] 2-118 pp., updated throughout in manuscript (red and black inks) and with tipped-in printed slips, printed insert tipped to p. 108, covers marked, title-page, pp. 21/2 and 117/18 heavily washed and reinserted, uniform browning to other text-leaves, small abrasion to first page of index from adhesion to facing page, pencilled shelfmark to verso of title-page, Government of India ink-stamp to verso of final blank Qty: (1) Note: Marked 'confidential', this is the only edition of the work we have traced, and in institutional terms is present in one other copy, at the British Library (shelfmark IOR/R/15/1/734), with no copies traced in auction records. The work covers the protocols of addressing the ruling princes and chiefs of India, in addition to the rulers of independent states, including Tibet, Nepal and Siam, 'miscellaneous states', including Zanzibar, Muhammerah (modern Iran), Indore, Arcot and Bombay, and protectorate rulers. This last group includes the sultan of Muscat and Oman, the rulers of various sultanates in modern-day Yemen, and the shaykhs of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and of each the Trucial States, that is, Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Ra's al-Khaymah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain. Each ruler is listed under seven headings: Name of state or place of residences; Name and address in English; Commencement and conclusion of letter in English and colour of crest; Highest British authority by whom hitherto addressed; Name and address in Persian or Arabic; No. of Guns [for salutes]; Remarks. The profuse additions to this copy (in the form of printed slips and manuscript annotations) both record rulers' deaths and the identities of the successors, and illustrate changes in the status of rulers while still living: the shaykhs of Bahrain and Kuwait are both noted as being promoted from the title of Excellency to Highness, while the raja of even a minor Indian state, Talcher, is recorded as receiving the new title of Raja Bahadur 'as a personal distinction'.