An illustrated and illuminated leaf from a manuscript of Firdausi's Shahnameh (The Freer Shahnameh): The combat between Hujir and Sepahram, Persia or Baghdad, Ilkhanid, circa 1300-40

This miniature originates from a dispersed copy of Firdausi's Shahnameh generally known as the 'Freer Shahnameh', which in turn belongs to a group known as the 'small Shahnamehs'. Over the years these manuscripts have been attributed to Western India, Shiraz and Tabriz around 1340, but detailed study in the late 1970s pointed to an origin in Baghdad at the turn of the fourteenth century (Simpson 1979). For a reference to this group of Shahnamehs, see the exhibition catalogue Komoroff and Carboni 2002, pp.150-5. These important manuscripts are proof of a commitment by the Ilkhanid rulers to Firdausi’s epic and a development of its form from a more oral tradition to a structured illustrated manuscript intended for reading to a less literate crowd (Simpson 1978, p.320-3).

The majority of the manuscript was with Hagop Kevorkian at the beginning of the twentieth century. He sold most of them to the Freer Gallery in 1928, 1930 and 1940. Other leaves were sold in these rooms during the 1970s and 1980s (1 December 1969, lots 31-35; 7 December 1970, lots 19-20; 7 July 1975, lot 24; 3 April 1978 lots 19-20, 23 April 1979 lots 34-37; 21 April 1980 lots 32 and 33, and more recently 24 October 2018, lot 54), and many are now in private collections including the Art and History Trust Collection and the Nasser D. Khalili Collection, London.