<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>The MS contains a fragment of the poem from the beginning until the story of Gushtasp, quite incomplete. Actually it is a collection of paintings, restored and remargined in Europe with some text left in between them:</p><p>ff. 1v-8r: prose introduction; f. 8r was added later by another hand; ff. 5v onwards, contains the satire on Mahmud.</p><p>Inc: Aya shah-i Mahmud-i kishvar-gushay...</p><p>Exc: V-az ruju'- khuld-ash...</p><p>Several images are reproduced in Stchoukine, who notes (p. 43) that 26 (sic.) illustrations from this incomplete ms. are in Cambridge and five others are in the British Museum (no. 1948-10-9-48 to 52), q.v. He considers only the earliest to be original, Shiraz c. 1430. After f. 29v, he thinks they are of 16th-17th century, and poorly executed. Later writers (Wormald, Titley, Sims) prefer c. 1435, the date retained here. Stchoukine also refers to the crude palette and the effect based on contrast.</p><p>NB the pictures are clearly out of sequence, and need to be re-ordered; the numbers found on many of them, and on the British Museum pictures from the same ms., allow this with some confidence, as well as the textual evidence.</p><p>Almost all the pages are badly wormed, and the ms. is in such fragile condition that it was withdrawn from use in July 2008. Inappropriate earlier repairs with paper patches and self-adhesive tape contributed to the damage. All the folios have been trimmed and were inlaid into a modern laid paper that caused additional stress.</p><p>The folios were restored in preparation for the Shahnama millennial exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in September 2010, and several published in Barbara Brend and Charles Melville, Epic of the Persian Kings, pp. 66-69, 74-75, 122-27 (ff. 11v, 12v, 18v, 22v and 25v).</p><p>The manuscript was previously exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1951-2, no. 13 and in 1967, no. 120 (a).</p></p>
