The Burgess MS 43 manuscript of Sai'di's Bustan and Gulistan, now at the University of Oregon Special Collections Archive, was created in 1615 CE in Persia. It was later transported to Europe, where the original Persian leather binding was swapped for a more European style: soft, red velvet with two silver clasps. John Ruskin, the preeminent art theorist of Victorian England, once held this manuscript in his own private collection. Ruskin’s view of a Persian manuscript eloquently depicts the richly decorated first page, "wrought with wreathed azure and gold, and soft green and violet, and ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure resplendence. It is wrought to delight the eyes only; and it does delight them.” The intricate illuminated ornaments open a window to the Safavid dynasty. In this paper, I will reconstruct the manuscript's original historical and cultural context, returning us to seventeenth-century Shiraz.
