linguistic:paraphrasing, quality:correction, quality:corruption
Illustrated copies

Illustrated copies of the work are among the most sumptuous examples of Persian miniature painting. Several copies remain intact, although two of the most famous, the Houghton Shahnameh and the Great Mongol Shahnameh, were broken up for sheets to be sold separately in the 20th century. A single sheet from the former was sold for £904,000 in 2006. The Baysonghori Shahnameh, an illuminated manuscript copy of the work (Golestan Palace, Iran), is included in UNESCO 's Memory of the World Register of cultural heritage items.

The Mongol rulers in Iran revived and spurred the patronage of the Shahnameh in its manuscript form. The "Great Mongol" or Demotte Shahnameh, produced during the reign of the Ilkhanid sultan Abu Sa'id, is one of the most illustrative and important copies of the Shahnameh.

The Timurids continued the tradition of manuscript production. For them, it was considered proper for the members of the family to have personal copies of the epic poem. Consequently, three of Timur 's grandsons— Baysunghur, Ibrahim Sultan, and Moḥammad Juki —each commissioned such a volume. Among these, the Baysunghur Shahnameh is one of the most voluminous and artistic Shahnameh manuscripts.

The production of illustrated Shahnameh manuscripts in the 15th century remained vigorous under the Qara Qoyunlu (1380–1468) and Aq Qoyunlu (1378–1508) Turkman dynasties. Many of the extant illustrated copies, with more than seventy or more paintings, are attributable to Tabriz, Shiraz, and Baghdad beginning in about the 1450s–60s and continuing to the end of the century.

A resurgence of Shahnameh manuscript production occurred in the Safavid era. Shah Ismail I used the epic for propaganda purposes: as a gesture of Persian patriotism, as a celebration of renewed Persian rule, and as a reassertion of Persian royal authority. The Safavids commissioned elaborate copies of the Shahnameh to support their legitimacy. Among the high points of Shahnameh illustrations was the series of 250 miniatures commissioned by Shah Ismail for his son's Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp. Two similar cycles of illustration of the mid-17th century, the Shahnameh of Rashida and the Windsor Shahnameh, come from the last great period of the Persian miniature.

In honour of the Shahnameh ' s millennial anniversary, in 2010 the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge hosted a major exhibition, called "Epic of the Persian Kings: The Art of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh ", which ran from September 2010 to January 2011. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC also hosted an exhibition of folios from the 14th through the 16th centuries, called "Shahnama: 1000 Years of the Persian Book of Kings", from October 2010 to April 2011.

In 2013 Hamid Rahmanian illustrated a new English translation of the Shahnameh (translated by Ahmad Sadri) creating new imagery from old manuscripts.