Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp

The Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp (Persian: شاهنامه تهماسپی‎‎) or Houghton Shahnameh is one of the most famous illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Greater Iran, and a high point in the art of the Persian miniature. It is probably the most fully illustrated manuscript of the text ever produced. As created, it had 759 pages, 258 with a miniature. The page size is about 48 x 32 cm, and the text written in Nastaʿlīq script of the highest quality. It was broken up in the 1970s and pages are now in a number of collections.

It was created in Tabriz at the order of Shah Ismail I by the most prominent artists of Safavid Persia, either intended as a gift to Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, or perhaps to celebrate the return of his son Tahmasp from a period as governor of Herat. The work began in the 1520s, before the death of Ismail I in 1524, and was probably mostly complete by the mid-1530s, in the reign of Tahmasp I. It was finally given to the then Ottoman Sultan, Selim II, in 1568, presented by a delegation. It long remained in the Topkapı Palace library in Istanbul, but appeared in the collection of Edmond James de Rothschild by 1903.

The manuscript once contained 258 miniatures, but was split up by Arthur Houghton II, who acquired it in 1959, and the miniatures sold individually. Houghton donated 78 paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972, and others were sold individually. The Metropolitan's miniatures have been the subject of an exchange agreement with the National Museum of Iran. The dispersed miniatures are in several collections, including the Khalil collection.

...
Wikipedia