For many years before he passed away, Professor Mohammad Ja’far Mahjoub (1923-1996) spent a great deal of his time preparing a critical edition of the collected Works of ‘Obayd Zakani, the celebrated 14th-century Iranian poet, social critic, and ribald satirist.

In 1303/1885-6 an edition of a collection of Zakani’s works was printed in Constantinople for private circulation in a limited edition of one hundred copies, with a preface by Mirza Habib Esfahani (see Moshar’s Bibliography of Persian Printed Books, vol. I, col. 1549). A selection of Zakani’s satirical works and facetiae was also published in 1886 by H. Ferté in Constantinople, and its several reprints increased the poet’s popularity, establishing him not only as Persia’s foremost satirist but also as one of the great prose stylists of the Persian language.

In 1942, a collection of his serious poems, mostly qasidas and ghazals,was published in Tehran with an introduction, including Zakani’s biography, by the late Abbas Eqbal Ashtiyani. However, no critical edition of the collected works of Zakani had be- en attempted before Prof. Mahjoub, eminently qualified for the job, undertook the task. Photocopies of the oldest manuscripts from Tajikistan, Paris, London, Cairo, Tehran, Istanbul, and Vienna which he described at length in two articles published in Iranshenasi (VI, 1994, pp. 139-59, 287-304), were procured, collected, and an edition was prepared for publication. The edited text was typeset in Tehran thanks to a grant by the Keyan Foundation of Los Angeles. Prof. Mahjoub corrected the proofs, but unfortunately did not live long enough to see through a work to which he had intermittently devoted some twelve years of his fruitful life.