Introducing and examining the oldest known manuscript of Qorrat al- ayn (Book of Sayings and Aphorisms)

Qorrat al-’ayn or Qorrat al-’oyun, is one of the old Persian texts written on the comparison of Arabic sayings with their Persian counterparts and with Qor’anic verses. The writing of this book seems to have taken place around the latter half of the 6th H./12 CE, probably by an author named Qāzi ūsh. Of this work there are a good number of copies in various libraries all over the world, the oldest of which, until recently, was believed to be the MS dated 722 H. at the Fāteh Librar y, Istanbul. Nonetheless, there exists a MS in a collection belonging to Jalal al-Din Homā’i that is dated 651 H. presently kept at Iran’s National Library.
In this article, the features of the manuscript and its importance in conducting a second emendation of the Qorrat al-’ayn and the establishing of its composition date have been inspected.