The flyleaf contains the following note by Jones: "So extraordinary a book as the Mesnavi was never, perhaps, composed by man: it abounds with beauties and blemishes equally great; with gross obscenity and pure ethicks; with exquisite strains of poetry and flat puerilities; with wit and pleasantry mixed with dull jests; with ridicule on all established religions, and with a vein of sublime pietry: it is like a wild country in a fine climate, overspread with rich flowers and with the ordure of beasts. I know of no writer to whom the Maulavi can be compared except our Chaucer and Shakespeare."

Jones commissioned the six volumes of the Mas̱navī which make up MSs RSPA 35-40. This is clear from a note on f1r, in which he acknowledges the scribe: "Written by Maulavī Aâzzu'ddīn began 21 Jan 1790. Began 21 Jan. 1790 25S.R. a month, asked; 30S.R. given".

Colour portrait of Rumi in profile, with an enormous turban and wearing robes. Around the edge is written, in a European hand, "Mowlana Djelaleddin, a Turk of Anatolia, who wrote in elegant Persian verses that famous treatise on ethics sung all over the land and called Mesnevi Romi, or the Roman on Turkish mesnevi". Below the painting, Jones has written "Mohammaed Jalalu'ddin of Balkh, called Rumi because he settled in Lower Asia." Jones has also written around the margin "The Author of the Mesnavi, composed about Y.C. 1202, Y.H. 600". f. 1r