Lavishly illustrated Kashmiri Shahnameh

Firdawsi, Abu’l-Qasim. Kitab-i Shahnameh.

€ 75,000.00

An outstanding copy of Firdawsi’s Shahnameh, remarkable for its massive size, its completeness and unusually extensive pictorial cycle. Illustrated with eighty-four miniatures, the manuscript was conceived as an ambitious, unified project. Distributed throughout the text, the illustrations cover a wide range of episodes, reflecting sustained artistic planning and significant patronage.

Produced in Kashmir or Northern India around the turn of the 18th century, the manuscript belongs to a Persianate cultural environment in which the Shahnameh continued to function as a central text of kingship, history, and literary authority. Composed around 1010 CE by Firdawsi of Tus after more than three decades of labour, the epic recounts the legendary and historical past of Iran from the creation of the world to the Arab conquest and rapidly achieved canonical status across Iran, Central Asia, and South Asia.

In this context, large and fully illustrated copies such as the present manuscript were valued not only as literary texts but as expressions of cultural continuity and elite ideals, combining visual magnificence with the transmission of ethical and political concepts embedded in the epic narrative.