<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>This manuscript apparently dating from the early Qajar period contains an unsual selection of paintings, which might help identify its date and provenance. It is bound in a laquered floral cover (rather damaged), with an attractive floral painted doublure. The spine seems to be more modern, of plain soft tan leather. The ms. is kept in a plain grey cardboard box.It contains a number of peculiarities, the chief of which is that a text of the Barzunama has been inserted on ff. 189-230, in a different hand and on different, inferior paper (rather Indian in appearance), and in a smaller text block (c. 228 x 145 mm). This insertion interrupts the last part of the story of Bizhan and Manizha, which resumes on f. 231r, and is followed by the story of the Davazdah Rukh.In the first, original part of the ms., the rubrics normally take up one line only, and are crudely written in faded tomato red. Often, these are offset, crossing the two left, or two right-hand columns, rather than the centre two (e.g. f. 183v). In the Barzunama section, headings are larger and written in a crimson ink. In the latter part of the ms., many rubrics are left blank (e.g. ff. 490 ff). Illuminations: there are three decorated sar-lauhs, ff. 1v (start of the prose preface), 8v (start of the poem) and 288v (at the start of the reign of Luhrasp).The text is in two parts, the first ending on f. 287r, which is followed by two blank pages (287v-288r). The ms. contains 537 folios, and probably had at least 2 more: according to the catchwords, folios are missing between ff. 140v-141r and 303v-304r, probably both containing paintings (also on the evidence of the chalipa script, which often precedes a painting).Another peculiarity of the manuscript is that the Shahnama ends, and several sections of "wisdom" follow, without any break in the text, c. ff. 531v-532r. There is no colophon: the sections of advice seem also end abruptly. (Ch.M.)</p></p>
