This article offers a new perspective on the relationship between manuscript production in Shiraz under the Timurids and in the Sultanate states of South Asia. During the so-called long fifteenth century, between Timur's invasion in 1398 and Humāyūn's return to India in 1555, there was a surge of creativity in the arts, despite the fractured political landscape of multiple courts. The resulting material culture is vibrant and diverse and belies prevalent historiography, which often portrays this period as culturally barren. The discussion will focus on an illustrated copy of the Shāhnāma of Firdausi dated 843/1440, currently in the Khuda Bakhsh Library in Patna, once owned by Muḥammad Shāh, Sultan of Gujarat. A study of this manuscript and its cultural context challenges the notion that ‘outmoded’ traits are the key criteria of a Persian manuscript's possible Sultanate origin. This article further aims to initiate a re-examination of the reception and dispersal of Persian manuscripts in the Indian Sultanates and the future lives of a particular group of manuscripts made in Shiraz.

Within the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, is a small, but especially interesting anthology of Persian poetry. Although the manuscript's colophon is missing, the stylistic evidence of its badly damaged illustrations and illuminations indicates that it was produced in Shiraz in the 1430s or 1440s. The discussion considers two unusual features of the manuscript, the first of which is that seven folios of a type of paper, generally thought to be of Chinese manufacture, are included among its 171 folios of otherwise Islamic paper. As is typical of this so-called Chinese paper, the folios are coloured—in this case an olive green—and one is decorated with a gold painted design of what appears to be an immature fruit of some sort, along with lobed leaves on a curling vine. Equally intriguing are the scenes and patterns, painted exclusively in gold, that fill the margins of the folios throughout the manuscript. No other such margins are known in any other contemporary manuscript.

This article presents a very rare manuscript of a Muntakhab al-Suwar (selection of Qur’anic chapters) calligraphed by Ibrāhīm Sulṭān b. Shāhrukh. This manuscript was transcribed in large format in Ramaḍān 830 AH/June 1427 AD and endowed to the holy shrine of Shāh-Chirāgh in Ramaḍān 834 AH/May‒June 1431 AD. Therefore, it is considered to be one of the last known works calligraphed by Ibrāhīm Sulṭān. It is kept in the Pars museum in Shiraz. In this article, the unique codicology and special characteristics of this masterpiece are studied, and the important historical aspects of Ibrāhīm Sulṭān and the art works attributed to him are elaborated. The style of his calligraphy will also be examined to find out the sources of inspiration for his distinct style.