The Khamsa is bound, not born

Registered against the in-house Fihrist ContainedText × ManuscriptRecord layer (triage: adjacent; the separate composition of Nizami's five poems is documented, e.g. de Blois, but the codicological-stratification test was not located). Claim under test, per the conjecture's own registered prediction: the Khamsa is a bibliographic afterlife, not an authorial architecture — among manuscripts securely datable before 750 AH, copies containing only one or two of the five poems outnumber complete-quintet codices by at least 3:1, while among 9th-century-AH copies complete quintets predominate.

Resolution criteria: POPULATION: distinct ManuscriptRecord rows (Fihrist / catalogue source) carrying >=1 ContainedText attributed to NIZAMI GANJAVI THE POET. Homonym exclusion fixed here at registration (spotted at coverage time): EXCLUDE Taj al-din Hasan Nizami (the Taj al-Ma'athir historian, d. 1217) and his work — the poet is identified by author_authority_key resolving to Nizami Ganjavi (c. 1140-1202/03) where present, else by author string containing 'Ganjav'/'گنجو' OR a ContainedText title in the KHAMSA POEM SET, AND never solely by a 'Taj al-Ma'athir'/'Hasan Nizami' attribution. KHAMSA POEM SET (5 poems, each mapped from its title/normalized_title/title_variants): (1) Makhzan al-asrar; (2) Khusraw u Shirin / Khosrow o Shirin; (3) Layla u Majnun / Layli u Majnun; (4) Haft Paykar / Bahram-nama; (5) Iskandarnama (its two parts Sharafnama + Iqbalnama each count toward poem 5). A ContainedText whose title is 'Khamsa'/'Khamsah'/'Panj Ganj'/'five poems' = a COMPLETE quintet entry. PER-MANUSCRIPT CLASS: a manuscript is COMPLETE if it carries a quintet-title entry OR its union of individual-poem memberships covers all 5; PARTIAL if the union covers 1-2 poems; MIDDLE if 3-4 (reported, not verdict-bearing). DATE: from ManuscriptRecord date fields; a manuscript is DATED iff it has a securely parseable production date (ranges accepted; use the range end). Hijri cutoffs converted to CE: '750 AH' = 1349 CE; '9th century AH' = 1398-1495 CE. Windows: PRE = securely datable strictly before 1349 CE; NINTH_AH = 1398-1495 CE inclusive. CLAUSE PRECEDENCE, evaluated strictly in order: (1) INCONCLUSIVE BY DESIGN if fewer than 8 dated manuscripts fall in the PRE window (date coverage too thin to test the primary claim — flagged as a live risk at registration). (2) KILLED if, in the PRE window, complete-quintet manuscripts already equal or outnumber partial ones (partial:complete ratio <= 1.0) — the opposite of the prediction. (3) SUPPORTED if the PRE-window partial:complete ratio is >= 3.0 AND in the NINTH_AH window complete manuscripts are >= partial manuscripts (complete predominates late). (4) otherwise INCONCLUSIVE. Narrative (non-binding): the full partial/middle/complete counts per window; and the secondary ordering test — among the 10 earliest quintet codices by date, whether >=2 distinct orderings of the 5 poems appear in their ContainedText.sequence.

Known priors disclosure: Seen at registration: the shepherd triage (adjacent) records that the separate composition of Nizami's five poems across three decades for different patrons, and the Khamsa as a later assembled package, are documented (de Blois, Persian Literature vol. V); the specific codicological stratification test (pre-750 AH partial:complete >= 3:1; complete predominating by the 9th c AH; >=2 orderings among the earliest quintets) was not located. Data SHAPE confirmed at the coverage check (NOT the verdict): ~257 ContainedText rows attributable to Nizami-ish authors, the five Khamsa poems are identifiable by title, a manuscript FK exists, and the Hasan-Nizami homonym is present and must be filtered (now fixed in the criteria above). The partial-vs-complete ratio, the per-window counts, and the date distribution were NOT computed before this registration. Noetic prior honestly held: the general expectation that luxury illustrated quintets are a later codicological phenomenon than single-poem copies is exactly the conjecture's own reasoning; the test is whether OUR held manuscript sample, with its date coverage, actually shows it at the staked 3:1 threshold.