IOL – Islamic Manuscripts Second Conference: The Persian Collection

The Persian Collection of the Islamic manuscripts consists mainly of copies of the works of the great Persian poets: Firdawsi, Nizami, Sa’di, Hafiz and Jami, to name but a few. Highlights of the approximately 330 manuscripts that make up the collection include illustrated folios from the so-called Great Mongol (Demotte) Shahnama, or Book of Kings, of about 1335, and a fragmentary copy of this same text made in the late sixteenth century for the Safavid ruler, Shah ‘Abbas the Great.

One of the most beautiful and most extensively illuminated manuscripts in the Library is a copy of the Gulistan of Sa’idi, made in the 1420s for Baysunghur, one of history’s greatest patrons of the book and a prince of the Timurid dynasty that ruled much of Iran throughout the fifteenth century.