The tazkira – or biographical dictionary of poets – has always been one of the basic sources for Persian literary history. E.G. Browne was heavily reliant on the tazkiras at his disposal while writing his Literary History of Persia. No scholar of Persian cultural history has been able to ignore the tazkira sources. These are texts that tell us who were the most prominent literary figures in given places and time periods, and provide us with examples of their work, which is sometimes only extant in such anthologies. We can use tazkiras to reconstruct cultural trends; to learn about courtly patronage networks; and so forth. In recent years, scholars such as Paul Losensky and Ertugrul Ökten have made innovative use of tazkiras to enhance our understanding of literary history in the late Timurid and early Safavid-Mughal periods. Fortunately for aspiring students, there remain a number of these sources that have barely been utilized in the secondary literature. In this paper, I will discuss one such text: the Tuhfa-yi Sami. Completed in 1550 CE, the Tuhfa-yi Sami is a fascinating work in several respects. Its author, Sam Mirza, was one of the brothers of the Safavid Shah Tahmasp I (r. 1524-76). Sam Mirza was a poet in his own right, in addition to being an avid collector of literary information. Beyond the unique position of its author, the Tuhfa-yi Sami stands out as perhaps the only major tazkira written in Iran during Tahmasp’s reign. While this text is a rare contemporary source on Iran in the mid-16th century CE, it has been utilized sparsely in both historical and literary scholarship. I will provide an overview of this tazkira and begin to address some of the basic questions surrounding it, such as: What can we tell about Sam Mirza’s goals in the compilation of this work? How does he view himself in relation to previous tazkira authors and literary figures? What are his aesthetic priorities when assessing the work of other poets? Finally, how is the text organized; and in particular, what are some of the difficulties that it presents to readers who hope to glean historical data from it? My aim, consistent with current trends in Persian literature scholarship, is to probe the ways that the Tuhfa-yi Sami might be used to learn more about the cultural history of the early Safavid period, which remains poorly understood.