Shahnama Project : Shahnama

Firdausi

Shahnama Project

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>This copy is bound in entirely plain black leather with a plain spine, except for the word Shahnama written in Persian on a yellow-gold paper cartouche. The paper is a brownish biege, slightly worn and discoloured, and much repaired round the edges. The catchwords are in place.</p><p>The text opens with the Baysunghuri Preface, under a decorative unvan (f. 1v). The manuscript is defective at the end, stopping in the reign of Gushtasp (f. 399v): explicit is Mohl, 15: 929, with a catchword v. 930. There is thus no final colophon. However, the end of the prose Preface has a colophon dated 1028 AH (f. 15r).</p><p>The poem starts on f. 15v, incipit normative, under quite a crude unvan. The manuscript contains the interpolated text of a Sam-nama, with two illustrations (ff. 72r, 79v). One further peculiarity is that the interpolated story of the Barzu-nama is included in the text after the story of Rustam and the Div Akvan, and takes up a substantial portion of the text (ff. 258r-294v), and this also contains two illustrations (ff. 278v, 289v). The Barzu-nama is followed by the story of Bizhan and Manizha, which normally precedes it. The story of Bizhan and Manizha includes the Barkhiyas interpolation.</p><p>The paintings are rather worn and badly retouched. They are frequently preceded, or introduced, by passages in diagonal script, which is often, unusually, written vertically not at an angle. The pictures do not seem to be consistent with the manuscript, and note that a couple of them bear a later date.</p><p>Recorded by ChM. 3 November 2008.</p><p>For digital images of the complete manuscript and additional information, see now:</p><p>http://www.thedigitalwalters.org/Data/WaltersManuscripts/html/W601/</p></p>