[RAS Persian 239] Shahnamah of Firdausi, of Muhammad Juki

The Shahnamah of Firdausi, copied in Herat for the Timurid prince Muhammad Juki (1402-1445) whose name appears on a banner in a miniature on f. 296r. It is written in nasta’liq with 536 folios and contains 29 miniatures with two further miniatures on f. 430v and f. 531r, added during the Mughal period. It contains the impressions of seals of the Mughal emperors from Babur, Emperor of Hindustan, 1483-1530, to Aurangzeb, Emperor of Hindustan, 1618-1707; together with a note written by Shahjahan, Emperor of India, 1592-1666 on f. 536v. At the beginning of the manuscript we find an inscription by the same on gold ground.

It was presented by Lieutenant Colonel Doyle, 1787-1848 to the Society in 1834 (2r) and it is thought to have been given to him as a parting gift by the Marquess of Hastings, Governor General of Bengal, 1813-1823.

For further information, see ‘Muhammad Juki’s Shahnamah of Firdausi’, by Barbara Brend (2010).

This manuscript was digitized thanks to the support of Professor Charles Melville, Dr. Firuza Melville, and the Pembroke Shahnama Centre for Persian Studies. It is also available on the Cambridge University Digital Library here: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-RAS-00239-00001/1

The miniature paintings from this manuscript are also available here: //royalasiaticcollections.org/collection/manuscript-illustrations/

Please note that the digital library paginates manuscripts left to right, even when the manuscripts display from right to left. This means that the manuscripts start on the last numbered page, and progress with the left arrow takes the viewer with lowering page numbers to the end of the manuscript. Folio numbers are to be found in a concordance here: Juki Concordance. Folio numbers are to used in all academic work and for ordering images.

There is a problem with the text order of the foliation (see Robinson, ‘The Shahnama of Muhammad Juki’, 1979, pp. 92-93; Brend, 2010, p. 46)