سخني چند از اختيارات شهنامه

An Old Anthology of Select Lines from Ferdowsiʹs Sahname

"Ektiyarat-e Sahname" is the title of an anthology of select lines from the Sahname, which was compiled in 474 A.H./1081-82 C.E. by a certain `Ali ibn Ahmad for Malek Shah, the Seljuk monarch. The selected lines, 2417 couplets to be exact, have been divided into thirteen chapters on the basis of their subject and the selection is preceded by a prologue of 139 couplets and succeeded by an epilogue of 61 couplets composed by the compiler himself. A single manuscript of this work has survived; it was copied in the 9th/15th century for the Ottoman Sultan Muhammad Fatih, and it is now being kept in the Gotha Library in Germany. And now the text of this book has been published in Iran by the Centre for the Study of Khorasan in. Mashad, co-edited by Mostafa Jeyhnni and Mohammad Fe araki. In this paper, the author examines "Ektiyarat-e Sahname" at length, discusses the bookʹs merits, and also the poetical quality of the prologue and the epilogue, and finally finds the work on the whole useful for the difficult process of preparing a definitive edition of the Sahname.