Zafarnameh Margin, an Authentic Manuscript of Shahnameh

Ferdowsi's Shahnameh has been written in the margins of two manuscripts of Hamadollah Mostowfi's Zafarnameh. The first edition, dated back to 807 AH can be found in the British Library in London, and the second, dated 808 AH, was in the Museum of Islamic and Turkish Art in Istanbul. The version dated 807 was published in Tehran in 1998 and it was found relatively  important in the context of Shahnameh; in particular, the intellectuals considered the margin of Zafarnameh dated 807 to be the same version that Hamadollah Mostowfi corrected between 714 and 720. However, this manuscript has not been seriously studied and evaluated so far. Therefore, in this article, we examined the preface of Shahnameh in this manuscript and measured it with the correction of Dr. Khaleghi Motlagh in order to determine its relative validity based on this scope of study. This manuscript is in almost good condition in terms of recording verses, and the number of added verses is not very large; in such a way that the preface is 209 verses in the corrected Shahnameh of editor, Dr. Khaleghi Motlagh and 222 verses in the margin of Zafarnameh. In terms of vocabulary recording, the situation of this manuscript in this section is appropriate and desirable, and its difference with the corrected Shahnameh of the editor, Khalegh Motlagh is not great. The manuscripts are not in good condition and they are very clumsy; in such a way that in addition to the back and forth verses  in front of and behind the headlines, the headline of praise of Mahmoud includes the praise of Amirak Mansour and the headline of the kingdom of Kiomars contains the praise of Mahmoud. Ignoring a few such mistakes and the occasional inaccuracies of the scribe in punctuation, the margin of Zafarnameh can be considered as a clean and reliable version of Shahnameh that should be paid more attention in the textual research of Shahnameh.