A brief account of the collection of Oriental manuscripts in Oxford, with an emphasis on the Persian collection, going back to the activities of Archbishop Laud, and celebrated figures such as Thomas Greaves, Thomas Hyde, James Fraser, Sir William and Sir Gore Ouseley and others, is given by N.C. Salisbury, then Keeper of Oriental Books, in his Preface to the catalogue of an exhibition of Persian manuscripts held in 1972. This was compiled by B.W. Robinson and Basil Gray, under the title, The Persian Art of the Book, Oxford 1972. The main source for an account of the illustrated Shahnamas in the Bodleian Collection is Robinson's pioneering work, A descriptive catalogue of the Persian paintings in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University Press, 1958. The author notes in his preface, p. viii, that he has excluded Indian examples and paintings produced under the Mamluks and the Ottoman Empire. The Indian Shahnamas are noted in the catalogue produced by F. Beeston, in continuation of the catalogue of H. Ethe.
