This chronicle was compiled by Maḥmūd b. Ibrāhīm al-Ḥusaynī al-Jāmī for Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī (also known as Abdālī, r. 1747-73), a commander under Nādir Shāh Afshār (1688 - 1747 C.E) and his successor as ruler, and who is often considered to be the founder of Afghanistan.

The work is styled to be reminiscent of Mīrzā Mahdī Astarābādī’s Durrah-yi Nādirah while referring to the Shāhnāmah. The work combines both verse and prose, naẓm u nas̲r, and includes hundreds of couplets in the same form and metre as Ferdowsī's Shāhnāmah. For this reason, the work was sometimes referred to as the Shāhnāmah-yi Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī. The author had seved Aḥmad for 20 years and was an eye-witness to many of the events that he relays.

The present manuscript is a 76-folio fragment of the work. It is finely written on gilt lines in gilt frames, each page having coloured borders. The decoration is somewhat roughly executed in places and appears to be only partially complete.

In the margin of folio 76b, an annotation in an Indian style shikastah-yi ta’liq reads: دو صد و سی سه ورق مکتوب از نظم و نثر

This suggests that the note's author had 233 folios at his disposal and was unable to identify the work. Therefore, when complete this manuscript is likely to have comprised 233 folios. The 76 folios included in this volmue have been bound in an order that is, at times, erroneous.