Hamdallah Mustaufi: Zafarnama - Abu´l-Qasim Firdausi: Sahnama (editorisch bearbeitet von H. Mustaufi)

Zafarnama: Hamdallah Mustaufi (approx. 680-744 h./1281-1344 AD) is known to many historians and persons interested in history and geography as a poet and historian of the late Ilhanides era, particularly through his two reliable works Tarih-i Guzide (730 h./1330 AD) and Nuzhat al Qulub (740 h./1340 AD). The publication of his historic epic Zafarnama now makes generally available a further historiographically relevant work from his pen. This poetic work of history, written in the bahr-i mutaqarib in the form of a masnawi after the model of Firdausi's Sahnama and completed in the year 735 h./1335 AD, after fifteen years of work, comprises 75.000 verses, 25.000 of which are dedicated to the history of Islam, 20.000 to the history of Iran and 30.000 to that of the Mongols. Consequently, the work is not only interesting for Iranian Studies but also for Arabic, Islamic, Tibetan and China Studies. The present facsimile edition, the first two pages being presented in colour on the basis of the original, has been made using a black and white microfilm of the double manuscript Or. 2833 of the British Library. The double manuscript comprises 779 folia with gilding, illuminations, text columns and decorative frames, and was completed in Shiraz on Friday, the 10th of the month of Ramazan in 807 h. (1405 AD). Sahnama: The decorative frame of the double manuscript Or. 2833 of the British Library, according to the current knowledge the oldest surviving manuscript of the work, contains 60.000 verses of Firdausi's Sahnama (10th/11th centuries AD). As Rastegar points out in the introduction to this epic, Mustaufi collated roughly fifty manuscripts to create a reliable and satisfactory text of the Sahnama. The first manuscript edition of the Sahnama has not been taken into account in any of the critical Sahnama editions published previously, and the publication of the double manuscript represents a new stimulus for Sahnama research. In accordance with Mustaufi's intention of maintaining the continuity of the poetic narration of history in Iran after Firdausi and of reporting on the events up to his own times, it can be agreed with E. G. Browne that Zafarnama is the first poetic Zail of the Sahnama. In this sense, the Or. 2833 double manuscript is both a document containing the mythical and legendary sagas and semi-historic and historic tales from pre-Islamic Iran, from the first mythical King Kayumars to the last Sassanian King Yazdgird III., as told by Firdausi, and a further source, written by Mustaufi, that communicates historic information about Iran from Islamisation up to the year 735 h. (1335 AD).