The manuscript is bound in tooled grey-brown leather (245 x 160 mm), with a light strapwork design in the margins, with a central medallion and four corner pieces. The tan spine is plain. The doublures are of tan/fawn leather, with a central oval medallion and delicate filigree work over a blue and gold base. A neat hatching design runs round the border, and there are strapwork triangular corner pieces.
The ms. begins with four plain flyleaves, and the left hand side of a double frontispiece (f. 1r), followed by a double illuminated page for the start of the Preface (ff. 1v-2r) - the older (pre-Baysunghur) preface, which continues to f. 7r, and a list of reigns, with headings in gold. The text of the Shahnama starts on f. 7v under a very neat unvan and the bismillah.
The text was written by Isma'il Khwaja son of Mubarak Qadam, probably in Shiraz, shortly after the death of Ibrahim Sultan and his brother Baysunghur.
The volume is in good condition; the paper is original, oriental, polished and quite thick, with very little repair, but some quite severe water staining at the start. Pagination is in neat Persian figures on the bottom left of the recto page (and in English numerals up to p. 10 - ff. 16v-17r); the catchwords are present but partly trimmed, when the ms. was cropped and rebound (possibly soon after its completion).
The margins are ruled in thin purple, space, two thin black with gold. The colums are ruled in 2x two thin back with gold. The rubric ornament is an elaborate gold arabesque, making the riqa' script of the headings sometimes quite hard to read. The same script is used in the colophon.
There are pages of chalipa (diagonal) script and several pretty page decorations, especially on pages preceding paintings.
The ms. is described, with several illustrations, by Abolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Court, pp. 71-7.
Preliminary investigation by ChM., Aprill 2006.
