Shahnama Project : Shahnama

Firdausi

Shahnama Project

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>The manuscript has the ex libris of the Fitzwilliam Museum on the back flyleaf. There are Chinese seal marks and inscriptions on several guard leaves (ff. 272v-273v, etc.).</p><p>The ms. has a prose Preface on ff. 1v-6r and the text of the poem from ff. 6v to 440r. Preface has half a page of formal ornament, on the title page; there is a double page spread on ff. 6v-7r at the start of the poem.</p><p>A scribe's note on the last page states that there are 82 pictures in the book, though now there are only 68 miniatures left. This implies some text/folios must be missing too, presumably from the beginning of the ms. - it is unusual that the first painting is not till f. 56, but thereafter it is quite heavily illustrated.</p><p>This is an interesting and idiosyncratic manuscript that deserves fuller study, one of the few thought to have been produced in Astarabad.</p><p>Included in the exhibition, Epic of rhe Persian Kings: the art of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, Sept. 2010 - Jan. 2011. See Brend and Melville, pp. 190-91.</p></p>