Iran has a rich manuscript tradition in a number of ancient languages. The one relevant to today’s post, New Persian, has a manuscript tradition spanning over a millennium. The oldest Arabic-script Persian manuscript that has reached our days is a treatise on medical plants, copied by the famous classical writer and author of the “Garšāsp-nāme,” Alī b. Ahmad Asadī Tūsī (1055/6 AD).

In the following centuries, numerous gems of Islamic Iranian manuscript tradition were produced in various cultural centres of various empires. A prime example of excellent artisanship, for instance, is the Baysonghori manuscripts, produced under the patronage of Ghias-ud-dīn Baysonghor, the grandson of Tamerlane. Ghias-ud-dīn was a great appreciator of arts and an artist himself. He favoured the production of exquisite manuscripts, such as the manuscripts of Shahname of Ferdowsi or Golestān of Sa’adi (known as Baysonghori Shahname and Baysonghori Golestān accordingly).

Simply looking at these and other manuscripts fills the hearts of art-lovers with joy and admiration. Unfortunately, some of these priceless manuscripts were treated barbarically by some ignorant collectors in the West and have been torn apart.

Such is the case with another precious manuscript of the Shahname, the Shahnāme-ye Tahmāspī (mid-16th c.). You can read about it and see some of its digitized folios on the Metropolitan Museum’s webpage, where part of it is being preserved.

Below, I have compiled a list of websites of libraries and museums where a significant amount of Persian collections has been made available online. In some of them, you can have free access to entire volumes, while in others, only a few folios are displayed.