The Romance of MahsatÄ« and AmÄ«r Aḥmad - written in a mixture of prose and quatrains - deals with the adventures of the legendary Persian poetess and her lover, the son of the ḫatÄ«b of GanÄa. The present volume completes Fritz Meier's former study on the Diwan of MahsatÄ«. An appendix contains the quatrains of the oldest dated manuscript of the romance, which at the time was not available to Meier. This contribution to Persian literary history includes valuable folklore material allowing new insight into medieval Iranian material culture and evaluates a first-rate source of Iranian social history. This publication renders accessible a further study by Fritz Meier, outstanding specialist in Persian Literature. Benedikt Reinert's additional contribution offers his latest research on the genesis of the Persian quatrain.
Gudrun Schubert, Ph.D. (1994) in Islamic Studies, Basel University, is Academic Researcher, responsible for the Islamic Dept. of the University Library of Basel and teaches at the Dept. of Religious Studies. She has published on medieval Persian and Arabic sufism, philosophy, and Arabic codicology.