1921.] Timur’s Apocryphal Memoirs. 203 
and Davy edition of the. Memoirs that he actually puts for- 
ward the admitted mystery of the finding and disappearance 
of the Turkish manuscripts as perhaps the strongest possible 
proof of the genuineness of Abu Talib’s find! See extract 
from letter, p. x of Major Stewart’s preface to the Malfizat. 
A much stronger evidence against the genuineness of the manu- 
script is to be found in the way that Shah Jahan at first treated 
Abu Talib’s communication, 
Instead of reverencing it as the composition of his great 
ancestor, he makes it over to another man to correct and to 
bring it into harmony with Sharafu-d-din’s Zafarnima, That 
is to say, to bring it into accord with the work of a man who 
had apparently never seen Timur and was the contemporary 
not of Timur but of his grandson Ibrahim and who did not 
write his history till twenty years after Timur’s death! And 
the corrector Afzal Bokhari, a well-known officer of Shah 
Jahan’s Court altered Abu Talib’s version accordingly, striking 
out what he thought wrong, adding where there were omissions 
and correcting the dates. It is true that Shah Jahan afterwards, 
wanting to give good advice to his son Aurangzeb when he 
was in charge of the Deccan from 1636—44 sent him an extract 
from Abu Talib’s work about the duties of a governor. 11 
appears in Vol. I, Part II, p. 289, of the Bib. Ind. edition 
ofthe Badshahnama. And what rubbish this supposed advice 
of Timur’s is! It is thoroughly unpractical and reminds 
us of Bentley’s description of the once famed letters of 
Phalaris, as the work of a pedant dreaming at his desk, and 
ee 
Graf’s edition of the Bostan, p. 287. And this is followed by 
a number of common-places which could be of no help to a 
young governor. : 
The instructions alleged to have been sent by Timur and 
sent by Shah Jahan for the edification of Aurangzeb do not 
appear in the Zafarnama of Sharafu-d-din, but appear in Abu 
Talib’s manuscript Or 158 of the B M., and in Afzal Bokhari’s 
amended edition, B.M.M.S Add. 16,186 p. 208’. They pro- 
appointment of Pir Muhammad and the names of the officers 
who were to assist him but as stated above does not give the 
instructions. The quotation from the Bostan appears also 
both in Or. 158 and in Add. 1686. ea, : 
Though I regard Abu Talib’s work as a forgery 1t 18 quite 
possible that he may have had access to some records of Timur's 
