Derbend-nämeh or the History of Derbend. 439 
un habitant de celte ville nommé Mahammed Awabi Ak-thâchi (lbs) ls) HS) de faire 
en langue turque pure, un extrait des meilleurs historiens Arabes et Persans qui traitent 
de l’histoire du Daghistan. Les circonstances étaient très-peu fasorables et empéchèrent 
pendant longtenps Muhammed de composer son ouvrage; toutefois il l’acheva etc. ?» 
With all due reverence to the memory of these two illustrious men, whose merito- 
rious labours we cannot but highly esteem and whose errors we must excuse, I feel 
compelled to make a few observations — 1. Both these learned men — though their 
names are cited as those of acknowledged authorities — should have informed us of 
the original source from which they borrowed their information on this subject. If 
both of them have drawn ît from one and the same original well-spring, which however 
we do not positively know, how is it that we find, in their respective assertions the 
difference which we have above remarked? — But if Klaproth consulted Bayer 
alone, why did he make his own additions? — additions, which, instead of explaining 
Bayer’s text, condure to render it still more indefinite. We do not permit ourselves 
to be guided by the latter conjecture, but ‘rather suppose the existence of some ori- 
ginal source common to the researches of both Bayer and Klaproth although to us 
unknown *. 
2. We do not find'in history that any of the khans of the Criraca conquered An- 
dery and Derbend. Et is true that some of these khans, at different periods and at the 
head of their brave Tartars, accompanied the Ottoman troops into Persia, and, more 
than once, visited many parts of Daghistan on their way; — but this was always done 
without either hostility or bloodshed proceeding from the authority of the khans them- 
selves, and the earliest period at which this intercourse between the Crimea and Daghis- 
tan commenced was about the close of the XVI century (1578 — 1583). 
3. The promulgation of Islam in Daghistan, undoubtedlÿ took place some centuries 
before even the first appearance of the title of Gherai; — and 
k. None of the versions of the Derbend-nâmeh, which we have as yet seen, ‘are 
written in the pure Turkish idiom. Even 4li-yér, who translated it into Persian about the 
beginning of the present century (see hereafter (. 3.), and who possibly had in his pos- 
session several versions of the original work, positively says, that the Turkish idiom, 
? Nouveau Journ. Asiat. for June 1829, T. IT. p. 439. 
$ This supposed original source of the researches of both Bayer and-Klaproth, might probably exist, 
either in some notes of Khantemir, Prince ,of Moldavia, who visited Derbend in company with Peter the 
Great, and to whom we are indebted for the learned dissertation of Bayer on the Wall of the Caucasus ; 
or in the MS of the Derbend-nâmeh which, according to Bayer’s assertion, was presented to Peter the 
Great in Derbend, and which was preserved in the Collese of Foreign Affairs (Is liber a praefecto urbis dono 
datus est Perro Augusto, atque nunc in collegio exterorum negotiorum asservatur. Comment. Acad, Scient. etc, 
T. L 14726. p. 459.): neither of which are within our reach. 
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