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.
Elizabeth Lucar
In a work published in 1904, D.N. Carvalho referred to an essay on the subject of calligraphy written by Elizabeth Lucar in 1525, at the age of 15, entitled "Curious Calligraphy". This, he claimed, was the first English essay on that subject, and this claim has been repeated elsewhere. However the bibliographic or manuscript original of this supposed work "Curious Calligraphy" is not cited or apparent, and the term 'calligraphy' itself appears anachronistic for English usage of that date. Ballard, in his 1752 Memoir of Elizabeth Lucar, does not mention an essay but described her as 'a curious calligrapher'. It is possible that Carvalho, reading the line of her epitaph 'She wrought all Needle workes that women exercise', interpreted it to mean 'she wrote (of) all needle workes'. The duality of meaning of 'wrought' and 'wrote' has been recognized elsewhere, but in either sense, that line may only mean that she herself delineated the patterns which she afterwards rendered in needlework. The line 'Three manner hands could she write, them faire all' does however indicate that she could write beautifully in three different scripts.