Description
IN the Journal for the year 1902 a summary was given of the description of Persia and Mesopotamia found in the Nuzhat-al-Qulub, a geographical and cosmographical work written by Hamd- Allah Mustawfi. in 740 (1340)J In the course of next year I hope to publish (in the series of the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Fund) the Persian text of the geographical chapters of this work, and this will be followed by a full translation, with notes to elucidate geographical questions, Hamd- Allah, ■who is our earliest Systematic geographer writing in Persian, collected his materials from the works of the earlier Arab geographers, and from, various Persian monographs which had been written each to describe a single province of the Moslem Empire. The Paris copy is indeed of little use except to show how a Persian people of the present day read the older MS., and as occasionally giving us a word that has disappeared, partially or wholly, in the mending process to which the B.M. MS. was subjected when it came a few years ago, after presentation in loose leaves, to be bound for the Museum use. This part of the work is merely an anient Persian version of Hamzah Isfahani, and contains, apparently, nothing new.