The library in Tashkent

Yes — there is a long-reported manuscript in Tashkent that ties Amir Khusrau and Hafiz together, and it very well could be the one Paul Smith is referring to in his book about Persian poetic styles.

📜 What the scholarly sources say

• Several academic references note a manuscript (dated 756 AH / 1355 CE) now in a library in Tashkent that contains poems by Amir Khusrau copied out by someone identified as Muhammad nicknamed Shams al-Hafiz al-Shirazi — i.e., Hafiz himself.

• This manuscript’s colophon explicitly states that Hafiz the Shirazi wrote it, which is why scholars believe it is genuinely in his hand rather than just attributed to him.

🧐 What this likely means

• Medieval poets often worked as scribes and copyists, so it was not unusual for someone like Hafiz — before he became famous — to copy earlier poets’ works both as practice and income.

• In this case, the manuscript isn’t Hafiz’s own poetry, but rather a copy of Amir Khusrau’s poems written by Hafiz’s hand — which makes it rare and historically interesting, but not an original poetic composition by Hafiz.

📍 About Tashkent

• Tashkent (now in Uzbekistan) has long been a major center for Persian manuscripts because of its historical position within the Persianate world.

• Its collections today include major literary manuscripts, including early copies of Persian poetry and other works. The evidence matches Paul Smith’s claim that such a manuscript is reported to survive there.

🧠 Scholarly caution

While the existence of the manuscript is plausible and cited in scholarship, there are important caveats:

• Modern critical editions of Hafiz’s own poetry (his Divān) do not include this as one of his poems — because it’s a copy.

• Some reports in secondary sources about this manuscript can be ambiguous about authorship, so historians treat the evidence carefully.

🧾 Summary

• Yes — many sources report a manuscript in Tashkent of Amir Khusrau’s poems copied by Hafiz.

• This would make it a very old, rare manuscript and plausible as what Paul Smith mentions.

• But it is a copy in Hafiz’s handwriting, not original poems by Hafiz about Khusrau.

If you want, I can point you toward specific manuscript catalogs and academic references that document this copy more precisely.