Shahnama Project : Shahnama

Firdausi

Shahnama Project

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Described briefly in Sayyid Mohammad Bagher Najafi, Iranische Kunstschaetze in Aegypten (Koln, 1989), p. 134-35 and pl. 1-8.</p><p>Inspected briefly by Ch.M. February 2007, and preliminary notes taken. Images are still missing for many pictures.</p><p>The binding is 19th-century, British, of brown stained leather with a stamped gilt chain ornament round the edges. There are five cord ridges down the spine, the spaces filled with for gold stars. Page dimensions vary quite a bit.</p><p>Fol. 1r has a shamsa with a date of ownership or library mark, dated 1162 AH. The Preface on ff. 1v-2r begins: Sepas va afarin khoday-ra jalla jalalahu..</p><p>Fols. 6v-7r contain a double illuminated inscription with the title of the patron and his genealogy. There are seals on ff. 2r and 6r: on f. 6 an inscription reads mahall-e surat-e Amirzada a'zam Shams a-Daula wa'l-Din Muhammad - the place allocated for an image.</p><p>The margins are two thin-black and gold rulings, as are the columns and the rubric boxes, the rubrics in thulth/sols, on varying backgrounds: pink cross-hatching with blue flecks, or blue tendrils, or thick blue tendrils with red dots. The paper is creamy but quite fibrous, slightly burnished, with visible chain lines. There are few catchwords in place.</p><p>The paintings bear signs of a typical corrosion of the green pigment but are not much overpainted.</p><p>The poem starts on f. 7v, normative under a small 'unvan.</p></p>