No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
It is very generally a matter of complaint that the lithographed editions of Persian and Arabic works published in the East are, for the most part, unprovided with any index or full table of contents; and, further, that when the book treats of geography or history, the proper names of both persons and places are too often given in a manner that at first sight defies identification. Half a loaf, however, is proverbially better than no bread, and, until from some quarter funds are forthcoming to defray the cost of printing Persian texts in Europe, scholars would often be able to make use of the editions lithographed in India or elsewhere, if the true reading of the proper names were fixed by a collation of the best manuscripts, and if a full table of contents were available for purposes of reference. In many cases also a Persian work will only contain one part, or a series of chapters, that pre-eminently is of interest to Western scholars: and the remark, of course,- applies more especially to the Cosmographies where the geographical chapters alone are of first-rate importance, as also to those numerous Universal Histories where only the concluding sections, dealing with the author's own time, can in any way be considered as of primary authority.
page 50 note 1 Small 4to. Paris, Imprimerie Impériale, 1861.
page 51 note 1 Op. cit., Préface, p. xx: “Les questions si délicates de topograpbie ancienne ne peuvent être abordées avec sûreté qu'après l'étude préalable des documents indigènes. J'espère qu'il me sera donné un jour de travailler à la solution de ce difficile problème, an moins, en ce qui touche la Perse: aujourd'hui je l'ai écarté de propos délibéré.”
page 52 note 1 The spelling of Persian place-names is far from being consistent. The Persian for ‘village,’ now written and pronounced Dih (vowel short), is generally in the MSS. written Dīh, with the vowel long. Other common variations are Iṣfahān or Isfahān, Hūrmūz or Hurmuz,ihrān or Tihrān, Ḳuhistān or K
histān.
page 54 note 1 Reckoned in currency-dīnārs (four of these being about equivalent to the pound sterling), and in the year 35 of the Īlkhānī Era (A.D. 1335), Arabian ‘Irāḳ paid 3,000,000 dīnārs ; Rūm (Asia Minor), 3,300,000 ; Armenia, 390,000 ; Upper Mesopotamia, 1
million dīnārs ; Kurdistān, 201,500 ; Khūzistān, 325,000 ; Fārs, 2,871,200 ; Shabānkārah, 266,100 ; and Kirmān, 676,500 dīnārs. The list of provinces, it will be observed, is not complete. Mustawfi further, in many cases, records the revenues of former periods, notably for Saljūḳ times during the later centuries of the Abbasid Caliphate, but these seem hardly worth tabulating, for the sums mentioned are not likely to be very reliable.
page 56 note 1 The British Museum MS. of the Fārs Nāmah is that numbered Or. 5,983 ; the work by Hāfiẓ Abrū is that numbered Or. 1,577 ; and this last is described in vol. i, p. 421, of the Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum, by Dr. Rieu. The British Museum MSS. of the Nuzhat that I have used are those numbered Add. 7,708, 7,709, 7,710, 16,735, 16,736, 16,737, 23,543, and 23,544 (cf. op. cit., p. 418). The Oxford MSS. are those numbered 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, and 411 in the Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts edited by Messrs. Ethé and Sachau. The two Cambridge MSS. are those given under the numbers Add. 2,624 and 3,146; these are described on pp. 201, 202 of the Cambridge Persian Catalogue written by Mr. E. G. Browne. The two Cambridge MSS. I had the very great convenience of collating at my London lodgings in June and July, 1900, for, with exceptional generosity, the authorities of that University consented to grant these MSS. to me on loan, Mr. E. G. Browne giving security for their safe return. I must take this occasion of rendering him my thanks for this friendly action in my behalf; to the Vice-Chancellor, and to Mr. Jenkinson, the Librarian of the University Library, also I feel very deeply indebted for the loan. For the Fārs Nāmah M S. I must express my thanks to Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the British Museum, who drew my attention to this new acquisition.
page 57 note 1 In quoting the spelling of names, the references are to the edition of the Persian text of the Ẓafar Nāmah published in the series of the Bibliotheca Indica (Calcutta, 1887). The French translation, called Histoire de Timur-Bec, was printed in four volumes 12mo, Paris, 1722.
page 57 note 2 The Turkish text of the Jihān Numā (to which my quotations refer) was printed in Constantinople a.h. 1145 (1732) by Ibrāhīm Efendi, and a Latin translation of this work was made by M. Norberg, and published in 1818 at Londini Gothorum (Lund), in two volumes ; but the place-names in this translation are not, as a rule, spelt correctly.
page 59 note 1 The references (for distinction, where any ambiguity may occur, more especially marked L.) are to the lithographed edition, already indicated, of the Nuzhat. This contains in all 372 pages of text, which, for some unexplained reason, are not numbered consecutively. The pagination runs from pp. 1 to 48, this being followed by an inset of pp. 1 to 112, after which comes p. 49, thence running on continuously to the close of the work, which is numbered p. 260. Each page contains twenty-five lines of text, which for convenience I refer to under the letters of the alphabet: thus 132z and 133a indicate the last line and the first line of the text on these two pages respectively.
page 59 note 2 The Persian text of the chapters marked * has been printed by Schefer, C. in his Supplément au Siasset Nameh, Paris, 1897, pp. 141–230Google Scholar. Of those marked † the text is given by Dorn, B. in vol. iv of his Muhammedanische Quellen, St. Petersburg, 1858, pp. 81–87.Google Scholar
page 61 note 1 Here, and in many other instances, the form of the name given is Āb-i-Safīd-Rūd, literally ‘Water (or River) of the White-river,’ the word tor river being repeated twice.
page 66 note 1 See Map of Mesopotamia as described by Ibn Serapion. In order to save needless repetition the letters I.S. will mark a reference to the volume of this Journal for 1895 where, in the notes to my paper on Ibn Serapion, details of many of the towns here mentioned will be found.
page 66 note 2 See Baghdad during the Caliphate, p. 8, note 1. Since writing this I have found in Purchas' Pilgrims (folio, 1625, vol. v, p. 1411)Google Scholar that in 1581 John Newberie apparently travelled down from Baghdad to Baṣrah by the present, castern, course of the Tigris. The change, therefore, from the Wāsiṭ channel to that at present followed must have already taken place, in all probability, before the middle of the sixteenth century a.d. Nothing certain is to be learnt from the Narratives of Cæsar Frederic in 1563 (Purchas, v, p. 1702), John Eldred in 1583 (Hakluyt Travels, 4to edit., ii, p. 404), or the anonymous Portuguese traveller, circū 1555, whose MS. is in the possession of Major M. Hume (see Athenœum for 25th March, 1901, p. 373).
page 71 note 1 This place may be ‘Askar-al-Mu'taṣim, or the Camp Quarter, at Sāmarrā, where the Alid shrines stood : see Yāḳūt, iii, 675; Mushtarik, 309; Marāṣid, ii, 5.