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The names of authors and titles of Manuscripts will be found, wherever they first occur, printed in their proper Arabic or Persian characters; and as those names and titles are crowded together in the text, without any respect for alphabetical arrangement, an Index seemed necessary. One is therefore subjoined, which comprehends the names and titles of kings or eminent persons with those of authors; another is an Index of books; and one has likewise been added, showing the names of countries, cities, and rivers, mentioned in the course of this work, and of the notes with which it is illustrated. Each Index I have endeavoured to compile with accuracy, and hope that all may prove useful.

J. C.

c used in some cases by Sir William Jones, the Oriental

Translation Committee has recommended the substitution of k:-thus, keh for ceh (5), &c.

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CRITICAL ESSAY

ON

VARIOUS MANUSCRIPT WORKS,

ARABIC AND PERSIAN, &c.

الله الرحمن الرحيم بسم

In the name of God, the clement, the merciful!

AFTER all due praises to GoD, and benedictions on his holy Prophet, be it known to those who delight in historical researches, and therefore seek information respecting the most useful and excellent chronicles, that they must not expect to find any single work comprising such ample and detailed accounts of all the successive dynasties of kings and princes, who have reigned in different countries, as would render unnecessary the inspection of other records; because, if any ingenious writer who undertook a general compilation of that extensive nature had accomplished his

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design, the work would have amounted to a hundred volumes of considerable size, or even to a greater number.

Thus the author of that celebrated chronicle entitled the "Habib al Siyar," whose object was

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Of this work the author was KHONDEMIR حبيب السير

(or, more literally, KHÁVEND EMÍR) the son of MÍRKнOND, respecting whose name some remarks shall be offered in another note. It has been usual among European writers to express the title of this work by Habib al Seir, as D'Herbelot styles it in his Bibliothéque Orientale, translating those Arabic words" l'Ami du Voyage ;" and he adds, "c'est ce que nous appellons dans l'usage du vulgaire un Veni mecum:" some English Orientalists also have entitled it Habib al Sir, or the "Friend of Travellers." But, on the authority of two learned Orientalists, Mr. Von Hammer and the Baron de Sacy, as well as of native Asiatics, it may be here observed that Siyar represents more properly the word than Seir or

سیر

سيرة

Sir in this title, for Siyar appears to be the plural of "a particular life, or biography," and rhymes with the word

bashar

according to an affectation frequent among Eastern

authors. This is confirmed by the full title—

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signifying, "The Friend of Biographies, comprising the history of persons distinguished among men." In this title there is also a play on the first word, alluding to a great personage

a comprehensive and general compilation, has treated but superficially, and in the manner of an abridgment, concerning many royal dynasties; and of some kings, more particularly those who reigned in Maghreb (or the north-western parts of Africa) and in Hind, or India, he has not made

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named HABÍB ALLAH, at whose request KHONDEMİR COMposed his work in the year of the hejrah (or Muhammedan era) 927 (of Christ, 1521). See the "Notice de l'Histoire Universelle de Mirkhond," by M. Am. Jourdain, in the ninth volume of " Extraits et Notices des Manuscrits de la Bibliot. Imperial, &c. Paris, 1812, p. 163.

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مغرب

صور البلدان

The West, in a general sense, but here implying more particularly the countries which form what we call Barbary and Mauritania, occupied by Muselmáns. A very curious Map, illustrating that rare and ancient Work, the "Súr al buldan," described in the Catalogue of Sir William Ouseley's Oriental MSS., No. 709,) divides Africa into the Belád al Maghreb, () the NorthWestern (or Muhammedan) territories above mentioned, and the Belad al Sudán, (l) or “Country of the Blacks," lying towards the South. We learn from D'Herbelot, that, among the Arabs, this word (Maghreb) is used to express not only all that space of country which they conquered in this part of the world, that is, Africa, from the western borders of Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean, but even Spain, with those Islands of the Mediterranean that are situated between Candia and the Strait of Gibraltar.

هندوستان) or Hindustan هند 3

as the author in some

places denominates India.

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