Author: Jake Benson

Soudavar Research Fellow for Persian Collections, John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester. Freelance Postdoctoral Researcher, GlobalDecoPaper Project, Ludwig Maximilian University.

by Jake Benson August 12, 2023 1

Elephants and Mahouts in Persianate South Asia

We celebrate World Elephant Day (12 August) with a guest blog post by Professor Fabrizio Speziale (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris-Marseille), on a Persian text about the origin of the mahout, or elephant keeper.

Detail of Persian MS 27, fourth right flyleaf b side (f. ivb)

by Jake Benson October 6, 2022 0

Collections Long read Research

Iranian Languages and Scripts

This blog post discusses the history and development of Iranian languages and scripts in relation to manuscripts and documents preserved in the Rylands collections.

by Jake Benson September 17, 2021 3

Collections Long read Research

Cataloguing Persian Manuscripts at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library

Jake Benson, Research Associate discusses his work of cataloguing the roughly 1,000 Persian manuscripts that are held in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library’s collections.