Jami' al-tawarikh
The lavish illustrations and calligraphy required the efforts of hundreds of scribes and artists, with the intent that two new copies (one in Persian, and one in Arabic) would be created each year and distributed to schools and cities around the Ilkhanate, in the Middle East, Central Asia, Anatolia, and the Indian subcontinent. Approximately 20 illustrated copies were made of the work during Rashid al-Din's lifetime, but only a few portions remain, and the complete text has not survived. The oldest known copy is an Arabic version, of which half has been lost, but one set of pages is currently in the Khalili Collection, comprising 59 folios from the second volume of the work. Another set of pages, with 151 folios from the same volume, is owned by the Edinburgh University Library. Two Persian copies from the first generation of manuscripts survive in the Topkapı Palace Library in Istanbul. The early illustrated manuscripts together represent "one of the most important surviving examples of Ilkhanid art in any medium", and are the largest surviving body of early examples of the Persian miniature.
Book of Job in Byzantine illuminated manuscripts
The earliest and most important text, especially with regard to the illustration of the Book of Job in this category, is the pseudepigraphical Testament of Job, which has survived in its oldest version in Greek, in the Slavonic translation derived from Greek and, in its latest form, from the Syrian and Arabic variants.[12] The earliest mention of the Testament of Job is in the decree of Pope Gelasius, promulgated about AD 496, in which it is condemned as apocryphal: “Liber qui appellatur Testamentum Job apocryphus”.[13]
Literally, it belongs to the “testaments”, an apocryphal body of writings which were compiled to preserve the teachings and the histories of great, usually Biblical, figures whose names they bear.[14] Within this group the Testament of Job is, in its general complexion, more related to the Testament of The Twelve Patriarchs, while, like the Testament of Moses, it is characterized by a close adherence to the Bible text. Each constitute a haggadic commentary upon a canonical book – in other words, a midrash.[15]