The only extant copy of Samak-e Ayyar is an illustrated manuscript preserved in three volumes (Ouseley 379, 380, 381) in the Bodleian library in Oxford.
Samak-e Ayyar contains many old Persian names, such as Khordasb Shido, Hormozkil, Shāhak, Gilsavār, Mehrooye, and Zarand.
It is a source of cultural and social information about medieval Persian and followed the structure of stories which belong to the oral tradition.
[6] In 1936, Ivan Shchukin categorized the images of the manuscript as belonging to the Injuid style,[7] an idea which is still generally accepted.
The first major English-language rendering of these tales, Samak the Ayyar, was translated by Freydoon Rassouli and adapted by Jordan Mechner for Columbia University Press.