New Findings on the Jami‘ al-tawarikh Manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Supplément Persan 1113)

The first volume of Rashid al-Din’s Jamiʿ al-tawarikh (Compendium of chronicles) deals with the history of Mongolian tribes and kings from Ughuz, the legendary Khan, to Ghazan Khan’s death in 1304. An important illustrated copy of this volume is preserved in the National Library of France that has received much attention by both textual scholars and art historians. While textual scholars emphasise its early fourteenth-century provenance, art historians date it to the first half of the fifteenth century. A codicological analysis of the codex and its comparison with other contemporary manuscripts reveals that it consists of two distinct portions. While the first portion was transcribed in the fourteenth century, the second portion, which treats Ghazan Khan’s history, was penned by Hafiz-i Abru, the court historian of the Timurid ruler Shahrukh. It was in fact, therefore, a fourteenth-century illustrated manuscript that was completed and refurbished in Shahrukh’s library.