INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
I-T has appeared desirable to present these extracts here, both as an appropriate variety, and as in some measure at least a sample of the literature which flourished under one of the Mongol dynasties to which we have so often occasion to refer.
The translation is borrowed from the French, chiefly 'from that published by Klaproth in the Journal Asiatique for 1833 (ser. ii, tom. xi, pp. 335-358, and 447-470). This was put forth in correction of a previous version by Von Hammer Purgstall, with which Klaproth found much fault, especially in the defective decypherment of proper names, of outlandish expressions, and sometimes even of simple Persian words ; but in some of these respects he would himself also seem occasionally to have missed the mark. There is another translation, with considerable omissions and some additional matter, by D'Ohsson, in the Appendix to the second volume of his history of the Mongols, and I have followed that wherever it appeared to give better sense than Klaproth's version. An elaborate introduction to a paper of so little pretension as a translation thus prepared would be quite out of place, and a few paragraphs of explanation as to the author and his works are all that need be given.
FAZL-ULLAH RASHID, otherwise Rashid-ud-clln, son of 'Imâd-uddaulah Abu'l Khair, was born at Hamadan about A.D. 1247. His enemies, in the latter part of his life, called him a Jew both by birth and religion.' The latter part of the assertion is disproved, both as to himself and his immediate predecessor, but Quatremère is inclined to think that he was possibly of Jewish descent, as he shows an acquaintance with Jewish rites and customs singular for a Mahomedan statesman.
Ibn Batuta (ii, 116), who saw Rashid's son attending as Wazir on Abu Said Khan at Baghdad, says that "the father Khwaja Rashid had been an emigrant Jew." Saiduddaulat, the chief minister and favourite of Argun the father of Oljaitu, was a Jew (I<To(t. Univ. History in Fr. trans., iii, 646).
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