Shahnama Project : Shahnama

Firdausi

Shahnama Project

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Formerly Ethé 876. Eighteenth-century leather binding with medallions, rebacked. The ms. has a good quality illuminated double title-page (ff. 1v-2r) and 63 miniature paintings. The first 59 of these are of the Isfahan school of the period, possibly by the same artist as the "young Isfahani" of the Garshaspnama in the British Museum. The last 4 are rather different; Robinson proposes a provincial, possibly Turkish hand (which would seem to be borne out by the name of the signatory of the ms. itself), though nearly contemporary with the manuscript.The text is not subdivided into books.One characteristic of the paintings is that the picture is carried into the spaces between the columns of text.BibliographyH. Ethé, Persian manuscripts in the India Office, London, 1903, p. 552 (no. 876)I. Stchoukine, Les peintures des manuscrits de Shah Abbas, Paris, 1964, B.W. Robinson, Persian paintings in the India Office library, London, 1976, pp. 196-207</p></p>