A charming and wonderfully untouched example of Indian craftsmanship, housed in a contemporary stamped Indian binding and presented here in an excellent state of preservation.

The text is a commentary drawing from two major literary works compiled in the 13th century: the Jawami ul-Hikayat which is a famous collection of Persian mythical and historical anecdotes compiled by Aufi, and the Aja'ib ul-Makhluqat (Wonders of Creatures and Marvels of Creation) by Qazvini. The text begins with descriptions of physical features of the world and then moves on to describe animals, these accompanied by extensive illustrations throughout the manuscript. Rather unusually, silver is used quite frequently in the drawings (particularly in the sections relating to fish and sea creatures) and this hasn't oxidised the way that colour usually does from manuscripts from this period: this may be a testament to the quality of the silvery used at the time of production.

The first and final endleaves are annotated in English and Farsi with the name Alfred Hutton. He was a soldier serving with the British Cavalry in the 1860's and there is a strong possibility that it was at his bequest that the manuscript was interfoliated with blanks in the 19th century. His contemporary annotations can be seen adorning the text of the first few gatherings, indicating that he used this manuscript as a tool to help him learn the language during his time in India.

The binding is an excellent example of a tooled and blind-stamped leather binding. Cartouches and ornamental devices have been used to form multiple borders around centrally stamped floral medallions, with a repeated stamp above and below reading the partially decipherable name 'Muhammad Azam' with the numbers '120'. There is a possibility of this being a reference to the date 1201 or 1200, which would place the manuscript in 1785/1786 AD.

Single volume, illuminated manuscript on polished paper, in Farsi, complete, 82 leaves, plus 4 contemporary endpapers at each end, 243 x 144 mm; single column, 17 lines bold black nasta'liq, important phrases in red, catch-words, two illuminated head-pieces, many illustrations in the text of human and animal figures (both natural and mythical), leaves double-ruled with wide margins, the first few leaves with early annotations to the text in English, interfoliated throughout with blank leaves (these near-contemporary) for use as tissue guards or possibly for the purpose of annotation, early ownership inscription to first and final folios, British Museum typed letter pasted to upper pastedown, a few small smudges, overall very clean and crisp internal condition; housed in a fine contemporary blind-stamped goat (?) over pasteboards, rebacked, spine ends worn, covers lightly rubbed, overall a very attractive copy.