The manuscript expert at the Astan Quds Razavi Library’s Manuscripts Department in Mashhad said on the sidelines of the unveiling ceremony: this copy dates back to around 720–760 AH, written in 27 lines per page, across 347 folios, and was endowed to the sacred shrine in Mordad 1311 (August 1932 CE) by Mirza Reza Khan Naeini.
Seyed Amir Mansouri added: in total, there are 234 handwritten works of Rumi preserved at the Astan Quds Razavi Library. Of these, 112 are centered on Rumi’s Masnavi and 12 are related to Rumi’s Divan-e Kabir.
He continued: Rumi’s works were first transcribed in Anatolia. Among them, the first manuscript of Rumi written in Iran dates back to 774 AH in Shiraz, nearly a century after Rumi’s passing.
The expert further stated: about 500 manuscripts of Rumi’s Divan-e Kabir exist worldwide, of which 43 percent are kept in Iran, 31 percent in Turkey, and the rest in other countries.
The Organization of Libraries, Museums, and Documentation Center of Astan Quds Razavi — with 58 libraries in Mashhad and other cities, several thousand museum artifacts, 2 million periodicals, 106,000 manuscripts, 65,000 lithographic books, and 13.5 million historical documents — is among the largest and most comprehensive libraries in the Islamic world.
Currently, more than 8,200 manuscripts in literature, in Persian and Arabic, are preserved in the Central Library’s Manuscripts Department of Astan Quds Razavi. The oldest in this category is the Sharh-e Divan of Tamim ibn Muqbil in Arabic, dating back to 380 AH.
