The prologue to Shah Mohammad-e Mozahheb's album (moraqqa')

By examining several important 16th-century albums, this article is to address the practice of writing prologues and the history of the art of making albums. One of these prologues is the one prefixed to the Sepahsalar Library album, known as the Shah Mozahheb moraqqa’, which resembles the text of the forewords in several other albums. The article attempts to demonstrate the historical origins of the text of this prologue. Based on the introduction to Shah Mozahheb’s moraqqa’, which is another version of the prologue written by Mir Mohammad-Baqer, son of Mir Ali Heravi, and other documents, the study of the developments in the writing of introductory notes to know very little about his life-story. Not much of his poetry has remained either. There are a lot of matters worthy of discussion about him. He is the one who compiled Zahir Faryabi’s Divan of which the introduction was apparently written by him; this is, of course something that the editors of Zahir’s Divan have either overlooked or they may have mistaken Shams-e Kashi as the compiler of Zahir’s Divan. Amongst Sojasi’s other works, one is apparently Faraid alSoluk, published anonymously by its editors. In the present study, after giving an account of the life and works of Shams-e Sojasi, the small amount of his poetry that has survived in scattered sources will be presented. Then, important information from his unpublished monsha’at (letters) will be quoted and analysed.