Mohammadali Mirzaee
Some time ago, on Wednesday, September 3, 2025, Dr. Jalal Khaleghi-Motlagh entrusted all the manuscripts of his critical edition of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh—including both the initial drafts and the fair copies—to the Department of Iranian Studies at the University of Hamburg.
In this meeting, which was held in the presence of Professor Dr. Shervin Freidenzhad at the University of Hamburg, Dr. Khaleghi-Motlagh spoke briefly about the method of editing the Shahnameh, the process of textual collation, the arrangement of footnotes, variant readings, and related matters.
In the first draft, numerous corrections and revisions of earlier writings can be observed, and the footnotes have undergone extensive modification and review. On page number 1, which contains the opening verses of the Dībāče-ye Shahnameh, the date “5.7.81” is visible.
The sigla (abbreviated symbols) of the manuscripts are written in Latin script, and in cases where the paper was insufficient to complete the text, an additional sheet has been attached with adhesive.
Since another copy of the same section—the preface of the Shahnameh—exists in a different folder without a date, this indicates that the initial drafts (at least of this section) were written two or more times before the final fair copy was made.
Since not all of these manuscripts have been available to the author, no further information can be provided about their full extent or condition. However, more details can be given regarding the fair copies that were in my possession.
Before presenting additional information about these fair copies, it should be mentioned that they are organized in binders, and the total number of pages in the final fair copies is too large to allow for a one-to-one comparison between each binder and the published volumes of the Shahnameh. Therefore, the published volumes of the Shahnameh have been taken as the basis for this report, so that the contents of the existing fair copies can be described accordingly.
Volume I: Completely preserved.
Volume II: Completely preserved.
Volume III: Entirely missing (possibly four binders).
Volume IV: Preserved up to the end of the section “On Jahn’s Arrival,” while the rest (possibly one binder) is missing. This part includes the story of the Great War.
Volume V: The stories of Lohrasp, Esfandiar’s Seven Trials, and Rostam and Esfandiar are missing (possibly two binders).
Volumes VI and VII: These sections are also absent among the available fair copies, as their editing was undertaken by Dr. Mahmoud Omidsalar and Dr. Abolfazl Khatibi.
Volume VIII: Completely preserved.
In total, seventeen binders exist. As far as the author has determined, the fair copies corresponding to Volume III are unavailable because the originals were sent to the printing house. However, according to Dr. Khaleghi, some of the fair copies that are missing from the sequence of binders have been “lost.”
یک نمونه از کلاسورهای موجود .
پاکنویس شاهنامه داستان پادشاهی گشتاسپ.
تصویری از دستنویس اولیۀ تصحیح شاهنامه .دیباچ ۀ شاهنامه.
A few images of the manuscripts follow.
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