<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>This MS was a gift of General A.Ermolov to the Imperial Public Library in 1821.</p><p>There is also a letter by General A.Ermolov to A.Olenin, director of the Imperial Public Library and Academy of Fine Arts dated 16 March 1821, about sending this MS to him.</p><p>Binding made of black lacquered leather with a flap. The outside covers are decorated with the pattern of red grapes and green leaves, over a black foreground with a gold frame of floral design and gold drawing. The inside part is of plain terracotta red thin leather. There is a stamped name of the binder: Sa‘id Razi (details see in Gyuzalyan-Dyakonov, 1935, pp. 62-63). The upper cover is detached and kept in the folder with the manuscript, needing restoration.</p><p>Paper is yellowed, thick, slightly glossy. The added sheets (4 in the beginning and 4 in the end) very glossy, with pictorial water marks (vase, sun, tower, heart), date 1814 and inscriptions: NO4 TMEH, POLLERI, NICOLO, BAR.</p><p>The text is in nasta‘liq of medium size in Indian ink, headings in thulth in white over shiny gold foreground, decorated with small blue, yellow, orange and lilac flowers.</p><p>It is a full copy, with many interpolations. Folios 2v-16v contain Baysunghur Preface.</p><p>Incipit (f.1v inside the shamsa): Iftitah-I sukhan…</p><p>The satire on Mahmud consists of 83 baits.</p><p>The poem itself starts on f.16v with the normative incipit and another fantastic sarlauh with gold clouds and arabesque margins.</p><p>Explicit: hazaran durud-u hazaran salam</p><p>Zi ma bar Muhammad alayhu-s-salam</p><p>The main interpolations are ff. 23r-48r - Garshasp-nama (ff.30r-30v - original text by Firdausi); ff.124r-126v - birth of Faramurz from Tahmina; ff.304r-305v - Kay Khusrau's bequest of Turan to Jihnu.</p><p>The manuscript is extremely luxuriously decorated. The margins of ff.1v-2r containing two frontispiece miniatures are heavily covered with arabesque ornament in blue, gold and polychrome. Ff. 2v-3r – sarlauh with shamsa in the centre and double frame, where the folios are covered with the fantastic arabesques in gold, blue and polychrome. Every miniature is accompanied by three decorated folios (one before and two after), where the framed text is surrounded by shiny gold interlinear clouds, over which small multicoloured flowers are executed, and the margins are covered with the herbal and floral ornament in gold. The same can be referred to some “special” places like the last two folios. There are 62 ff. decorated in such a style. (FA)</p></p>
