INTRODUCTORY NOTICE

It 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 RashÍd, otherwise Rashíd-ud-dín, son of 'Imád-uddaulah Abu'l Khair, was born at Hamadan about a.d. 1247.