text: Firdausi and the Court Poets of Ghazni, AKM88, The Aga Khan Museum
  AKM88, Firdausi and the Court Poets of Ghazni
  Accession Number:AKM88
  This was originally the fourth folio in a volume of Firdausi's Shahnameh (Book of Kings) that was copied and illustrated in 1341 in the city of Shiraz, then governed by Inju administrators on behalf of Iran's ruling Ilkhanid or Mongol dynasty (1256–1353). It would have appeared before the beginning of Firdausi's epic poem, which recounts the story of Iran from mythical times through to the arrival of the Muslim Arabs in the 7th century AD. The text on both the folio's recto and verso (seen here) is part of a largely prose preface to the poem that appears in several other 13th- and 14th-century volumes. It has been variously called the Old Preface, the Older Preface, and the Abu Mansur Preface. Abu Mansur was a 10th-century Iranian official responsible for the initial compilation of a "book of kings" in prose, which Firdausi used in writing his own, much more extensive, Shahnameh.
  At some point in the manuscript's later history, someone attempted to write a word or two next to the figure of Firdausi. Although it is possible to make out several letters, the "inscription" seems more like graffiti.