442 A KAZEM-BEG, 
$ 2. 
The causes of the variety of versions of the Derbend-nâmeh. 
The variety of the Turkish versions of the Derbend-nâmeh arises from the following 
causes. 1. The susceptibility of the Arabic characters to different changes through the 
least neglect or ignorance: of the copyists. 
Î can positively affirm, that there does not exist in any of the Mahommedan coun- 
tries, a single copied MS., whether in Arabic, Persian, or Turkish, that cannot be, 
more or less, charged with this defect; — the only correct MSS. are the few that 
are banded down to us in their original forms. Even the Koran, notwithstanding the 
great care and _assiduity with which it has been preserved since the days of its author, 
has been subjected to similar inaccuracies during the first periods of Muhammedanism 7. 
This variety of versions of the eastern vwritings is in some cases of little importance, 
but in others renders the subject totally obscure: — it arises chiefly from the degree of 
estimation in which any particular composition is held among the Musulmans, as also 
from its popularity, and to these causes consequenily may be attributed the care or neg- 
ligence with which a MS. is transcribed. It is for this very reason that one of the 
great poets of the East, Mulla Muhammed Baghdädi-Fuzouli, after having finished his 
beautiful Divan, which he calls «the only offspring of his thoughts», at the time when 
he prepared «to send it into the world», invoked the blessing of God upon it and com- 
mitted it to His protection. He prayed the Almighty to preserve that beautiful production 
from all evil and corruption, — especially from three great misfortunes, viz: 1— bad 
copyists: — 2 — bad readers; and 3 — from false pretenders to criticism. The follow- 
ing is his curse on the first class of corrupters : 
ble 3 LS} Jgs C2 >) qe as” pére un Jsl J U y») 5 p 
oh D sf dboge ab bo » LL (cel 44h45 abbsë, cie df 
May the hand of that evil transcriber be cut off, whose orthography changes our 
7 After the first Khalif had compiled the Koran, not only. from the Palm-tree.leaves and pieces of skin on 
which they were originally written, but also from the lips of those followers of Muhammed who had committed 
them to-memory, there soon appeared various versions of the whole in the hands of the primitive Mussulmans. 
The third Khalif in order to put an end to this variety, took care, with the assistance of some of.the com- 
panions of Muhammed, to take exact copies from the Koran of Abü-bekr, which had been carefully preser- 
ved under the guardiauship of Hafadzeh (the daughter of Omar and one of the wives of the Prophet) and 
to disperse them in several provinces: this being effected the old copies were ordered to be suppressed. — 
After the appearance of the vowel characters, there again arose great disputes between the scholars of Basrah 
and Aûfah, and their various readings are marked down in some Korans to this day. We refer our readers 
to Sale’s Koran Vol. L. Prel. dis. p. 74 — 92. and to the Korans in folio generally published in Kazan: on their 
margins may be found the variations, 
