<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>A part of the original covers is preserved, and probably the doublures of filigree work maybe hidden behind modern plain thick blank paper. The spine is modern, with the title stamped in gold. The manuscript, which belonged to Sir Gore Ouseley, has been disbound and the text folios are now loose within the covers. The illustrated folios were removed and stored in glass plates in 1952. There is some disorder of the opening folios containing the frontispieces and drawings (in the glass plates), which are numbered out of their correct sequence.</p><p>The ms. has 468 folios, measuring 288 x 198 mm, written area 222 x 147 mm, with the text arranged in 4 columns, and 31 lines per page.</p><p>Illuminations: ff. 16v-17r, double illumination, with sarlauh; ff. 17v-18r, illuminated double page, with the opening verses of the poem (incip. normative); ff. 238v-239r, double page illumination. The name of the illuminator, Nasr al-Sultani, is given on f. 17v. The decorations on the introductory pages of a version of the prose preface, added later, were never carried out.</p><p>The text rubrics are of two main designs, with a dense and detailed ornamentation, one written in black letters against a black or dark brown and gold design, the other in gold letters against a lighter design of blue and red flowers. There are often several per page, generally alternating; see e.g. f. 21r, with two black and gold and one blue and red panel.</p><p>Blocks of chalipa (diagonal) text generally precede the paintings in the text (e.g. at f. 80r-v).</p><p>For a description of this important early Timurid ms., see Stchoukine, Les peintures des manuscrits Timurides, 43, and Robinson, Persian paintings in the Bodleian Library, 16-22. See also F. Abdullaeva and Ch. Melville, The Persian Book of Kings: Ibrahim Sultan's Shahnama, Oxford, 2007. Important discussion of the manuscript is also found in Elaine Wright, The Look of the Book, Washington D.C., 2012.</p><p>Pages from the manuscript were exhibited in the Shahnama Millennial exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, 2010-2011, see Brend and Melville, Epic of the Persian kings, and at the joint Bodleian Library and State Library of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) in 2012, see Susan Scollay (ed.), Love and devotion from Persia and beyond.</p></p>
