TEHRAN -- A high-quality facsimile edition of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Book of Kings), produced through collaboration between Iranian and Italian specialists, has been presented to Iran’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts in a move aimed at preserving and promoting one of the country’s most important literary and artistic treasures.
Muhammad-Taghi Amini, director-general for Europe and America at the Islamic Culture and Communication Organization and Iran’s former cultural counselor in Italy, presented the volume to Deputy Minister of Cultural Heritage Ali Darabi, during a meeting at the ministry in Tehran on Sunday.
Amini said the reproduction has been developed in cooperation with a specialist Italian institution, with support from the ministry’s cultural heritage department.
According to Amini, three specialist teams from the Italian institution travelled to Tehran to examine the original manuscript at Golestan Palace. 
Their research focused on its artistic and material details, including miniature paintings, facial depictions, gilding and other decorative features, with the aim of achieving the closest possible reproduction of the original.
He highlighted Italy’s considerable expertise in the printing and reproduction of rare and valuable manuscripts, adding that the project had required substantial investment of both time and resources. The collaboration, he said, was also intended to strengthen cultural relations between Iran and Italy.
The original manuscript preserved at Golestan Palace is described by Amini as a particularly significant and exceptionally complete example of the Shahnameh. It comprises 700 pages and contains 22 distinguished miniature paintings. 
Although other important copies of Ferdowsi’s epic are held in collections in Italy, France and the United States, he said the completeness of the Golestan manuscript gives it a distinctive position among surviving examples.
The project is also expected to generate further scholarly research. Amini announced plans to publish a collection of specialist articles relating to the reproduction, while a formal presentation of the facsimile is planned in Italy following its unveiling in Iran, in accordance with an agreement between the two parties.
Darabi welcomed the initiative, praising Amini’s efforts during his previous tenure as Iran’s cultural counselor in Italy and describing the Shahnameh as an enduring masterpiece and a defining document of Iranian cultural and historical identity.
He also drew attention to the epic’s emphasis on national identity and wisdom, noting that the words for Iran and wisdom appear more than 1,200 and 650 times respectively in the text. 
The poem famously opens with the invocation, Be nam-e Khodavand-e jan-o kherad — “In the name of the Lord of life and wisdom” — reflecting the central place of wisdom in Persian intellectual and literary tradition.
Darabi said that cultural and historical works are among the most important foundations of national identity and have played a crucial role in preserving Iranian cultural continuity across centuries.
The newly presented facsimile will be transferred to the collection of the Golestan Palace World Heritage Site, where it is scheduled to be formally unveiled.
Composed by the Persian poet Ferdowsi around the turn of the 11th century, the Shahnameh is one of the world’s great epic poems. Its stories, spanning legendary and historical accounts of ancient Iran, have profoundly influenced Persian literature, visual culture and artistic traditions. 
Its richly illustrated manuscript tradition also represents a major chapter in the history of Persian bookmaking and miniature painting.
The Iranian-Italian project brings together this literary legacy and contemporary specialist reproduction techniques, offering a further opportunity to study and share the artistic heritage embodied in one of Iran’s most treasured manuscripts.