<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>The binding is made of thick green leather with the three almond shaped medallions (larger central one and two small ones above and below), of dark yellow paper with stamped floral design on each cover. In the small medallions one can read the name of the binder: Khaja 'Abd ar-Rahim... Ibn Khaja... The interior sides of the covers are made of red leather with yellow painted frame. The paper is thin, glossy, yellowed.</p><p>The text is in quite small, but neat and legible nasta‘liq in Indian ink, headings in the same script and even of the same size, but in gold, which is sometimes almost completely faded, or red. Text is executed by two very similar hands usually in 4 columns. But some of the pages contain the 5th marginal column with diagonal lines (ff.23v, 137v, 436r, 527v).</p><p>The text of the manuscript is in satisfactory condition: water stained in places. In the beginning the paper is spoiled with big dark brown stains; the manuscript was professionaly restored in the margins. Maybe during the restoration the manuscript was rebound: ff. 331-332 are put upside down; according to the catchwords they are on the right place, but must be read in the reverse order. The last folio was restored by putting the page on some white transparent essence, which makes the colophon not completely legible.</p><p>Full copy with several interpolations. Ff. 3v-16r contains the Baysunghur Preface.</p><p>Incipit: Qadim-i ki ghubar-i havadis-i douran bar daman ‘izzat…</p><p>Satire on Mahmud consists of 124 baits (ff.11v-12v).</p><p>The poem incipit is normative (ba nam-i khudavand-i…)</p><p>Ff. 23v-87v: Jamshid-nama (about Jamshid and the daughter of Kurang-shah) and Garshasp-nama.</p><p>Ff. 92v-114v: continuation of Garshasp-nama</p><p>Ff. 279v-280r: story about Rustam and the son of Div Akvan.</p><p>Lacunae: between ff. 312-313, 374-375. Between ff. 251-156 the order of folia must be as follows: 351, 355, 353, 354, 352, 356.</p><p>Explicit: chu khahim ba nam-I tu bashad magar (?)/ ba nam-i tu bar daram az khal-i sipar</p><p>Two very faded frontispieces open the volume (f. 1r, 2r with the intervening page, 1v, blank), the text of which starts with the prose preface in the Baysunghur version, on a magnificent illuminated double-title page (ff. 3v-4r). The preface ends on f. 16r and is followed by the start of the poem, under a delicate 'unvan with blue finials, on f. 16v.</p><p>Illuminations were executed by a more professional hand than the miniatures.</p><p>Two 'unvans (ff. 16v and 334v) in faded blue and gold with neat polychrome details of floral and geometric ornament are in a good state of preservation. However the once luxurious double page (ff. 3v-4r) marginal sarlauh, the neat details of which floral ornament were executed in gold, blue and polychrome with very good taste and thorough, has suffered significantly from wet.</p><p>The 23 miniatures very typical for the end of the 16th c. The condition of the all miniatures ia very poor, evidently suffered from water. Above all in some of the miniatures faces were deliberately spoiled.</p><p>Formerly double page composition of the frontispiece of the royal reception in the garden, was rebound as two separate folios one after another (1r-2r). Both paintings are in a very bad state.</p><p>See article by Karin Ruehrdanz, "The Samarqand Shahnamas in the context of dynastic change", in Shahnama Studies II, ed. Melville and van den Berg, Leiden 2011, pp. 213-33, esp. 217-18.</p></p>
