<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>The binding is in plain dark blue leather, with a central medallion and two pendants, and a tooled margin round the edge, 372 x 225 x 70. The spine is plain. Doublures are of plain yellowish paper.</p><p>The paper is quite thick, grainy, with impurities, of a biege colour, and some water discolorations at the top.</p><p>Fol. 1r has an inscription with the date 1231 (AH). The poem starts on fol. 1v under a decorative unvan, 128 x 150 mm.</p><p>The margins are ruled in red, space, blue, space, blue; columns are 2 single blue lines; rubric boxes also a single blue line. The rubrics are written in tomato red nasta'liq.</p><p>The text is accompanied by several very neat marginal annotations and comments, sometimes explaining the vocabulary. The catchwords are in place. The calligraphy altogether is neat and clear.</p><p>The text is divided into two books, at the reign of Luhrasp (f. 231v). The space left for an unvan at the start of 'book two' is unused. 'Book one' ends on f. 230r and ff. 230v-231r are left blank. The text breaks off at the end (though apparently after the end of the Shahnama itself: Explicit: chu az mustafa man hikayat kunam // chu Mahmud .. (Muhammad?) .. ra himayat kunam, with the catchwords "chu sultan...". the next fol. (508r) is however left blank.</p><p>At least two other folios are missing from the ms. Approximately 168 verses from Mohl's text are missing between ff. 187 and 188, in the story of Bizhan and Manizha; at a maximum of 50 verses per page, this suggests one of the two folios contained a painting. It is thus possible that other pictures and folios are missing too; this still needs to be checked.</p><p>The illustrations themselves are well-executed and rather attractive in their way, with some fine passages of painting. There is a very heavy emphasis on the earlier part of the Shahnama, and particularly the exploits of Rustam: after his death (f. 305r) there are only three more paintings: two of Ardashir and one of Bahram Gur. Some of the pictures are preceded by passages of chalipa (diagonal) script. In some cases also, especially after f. 137v, the outer margins of the paintings are not properly finished off. The iconography of the paintings and the subject matter is sometimes quite at variance with the text and with traditional depictions of the scenes.</p><p>For a description of this manuscript, see Benedek Peri, Catalogue, pp. 181-183.</p><p>(Ch.M.)</p></p>
