Pādishāh-i shamshīrband: Jāmiʻ al-ḥikāyāt, nuskhah-yi kitābkhānah-yi Īndyā Āfīs-i Landan

Jāmiʻ al-ḥikāyāt, published under the title Pādishāh-i shamshīrband, is a scholarly edition of a classical Persian tale-cycle transmitted through a manuscript held in the India Office Library, London. The collection belongs to the tradition of Persian popular narrative literature, in which frame-tales circulate around a central figure — a legendary sovereign linked to the sword-binding motif giving the work its title. Prepared and annotated by Pigāh Khadīsh, the edition situates the London manuscript within the broader corpus of Persian storytelling collections, offering a critical apparatus alongside the transcribed text, with notes on variant episodes and narrative structure. The volume illuminates themes of kingship, cunning, magic, and moral instruction recurring throughout pre-modern Persian prose fiction. Scholars of Persian literature, folklore, and manuscript studies will find here a primary source with careful philological commentary on the manuscript's transmission history.