Art. IV.—Description of Persia and Mesopotamia in the year 1340 a.d. from the Nuzhat-al-Ḳulūb of Ḥamd-Allah Mustawfi, with a summary of the contents of that work

Abstract

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.