<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Modern European red leather binding, with doublure of bright colourful marble paper. At first glance this is a luxurious production, with high quality illustrations and very neat details, a lot of gold, extremely expensive thick glossy Oriental paper, with a thick gold edge. Text blocks are covered with gold dust, very tasteful illumination of the headings. However, at a closer look the paintings produce a rather dry and dull impression.</p><p>MS in adequate good condition, but some folios need restoration/conservation (double page illuminated frontispiece), ff. 21, 27-30, 236-8, 418-9; some of the cuts were restored in the East, to horrible effect, the glue dried and tarnished. The silver has oxydized, gold in places darkened. Water damaged in places. Many ff. have split along the margin rulings, dividing the text into columns. The gilded edge of some of the ff. (e.g. ff. 205-7) is almost detached from the margins.</p><p>Three sample pages give the impression of different styles of chalipa decoration: f. 16r, f. 18r – with multicoloured chalipa, ff. 118v, 212v – colourful chalipa (f. 306r – restored chalipa in an ugly pink), 19r – opposite the picture of Kayumars with gold drawings on margins.</p><p>There is an illuminated double title page (ff. 2v-3r) and illuminated heading at beginning of poem (f. 15v). Besides the luxurious double frontispiece, every double page containing a miniature has margins richly decorated with golden floral and animal ornamentation.</p><p>The text rubrics characteristically take up two lines of text, within a box ruled with thick blue and red margins. The rubric is written in white against a plain gold ground, with a light floral motif of twin arc stems and tulip-like blooms. Many of the rubrics are simply given as 'hikayat' (story) instead of an actual heading for the story.</p><p>The text itself is very disturbed, presumably from the time of being given its modern binding. Thus ff. 192r-199v are from the story of Nauzar, bound within the story of Bizhan and Manizha, which also ends abruptly. The story of Forud is also truncated; no doubt the missing folios are to be found elsewhere in the volume, which needs therefore to be examined thoroughly (Ch.M.).</p><p>The illustrated folios used to have bookmarks – some traces of the formerly attached threads glued in between the layers of the paper sheet (in gold ?, e.g. f. 306) – were all trimmed off.</p><p>Robinson has identified two artists at work, A (the better) and B.</p></p>
