Yaʿqūb Dilmāniān (Yaghoub Dilmanian), a Jewish merchant from Mashhad, Iran, compiled a history of the forced conversion to Shīʿī Islam of the city's Jewish community who were known as the Jad īd-i Islām (lit. "the new ones of Islam"). He was born in Mashhad in 1902 and died in 1988. As a businessman he traveled frequently and spent many years outside Mashhad in places such as Bombay.

When Dilmāniān turned thirty-two, he decided to gather the recollections of the Mashhadi community elders and write a history of the Allāhdād (Pers. God gave), the forced conversion of the Jews of Mash…