JOURNAL 



OF 



THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



No. 35. — November, 1834. 



I. — Extracts from the Mohtt, that is the Ocean, a Turkish work on 

 Navigation in the Indian Seas. Translated by the Baron Joseph 

 Von Hammer, Prof. Orient. Lang. Vienna, Hon. Mem. As. Soc. 8$c. 



[Presented in Manuscript, and read at the Meeting of the 5th instant.] 

 Si'di' Ai> Chelebi, captain of the fleet of Sultan Suleiman, the legis- 

 lator in the Red Sea, is already known in Europe and India, by the 

 notice given of his journey overland from the Indian shores to Constan- 

 tinople*, and by the titles of his works recorded in the history of the 

 Ottoman empiref. The two principal ones are, first, the description of 

 his above-mentioned journey, which bears the title, Mirror of Countries\ - y 

 the second, his work on navigation in general, and particularly in the 

 Indian seas, which forms the subject of this notice. 



My attention to the high interest of this nautical work having been 

 first roused thirty years ago, by the article mentioning it in Haji' 

 Calfa's Bibliographic Dictionary, I spared no kind of exertion to find 

 a copy of it, whether in the libraries, or among the book- sellers of 

 Constantinople : but all my researches were baffled for more than 

 twenty years, until at length I lighted upon it in the library of the 

 Museo Borbonico at Naples, in the year 1825 ; and after an investiga- 

 tion of seven years more, I was at last fortunate enough to buy at 

 Constantinople, the manuscript serving for this notice. It is written in 

 the fair Neskhi hand, bearing the stamp of Sultan Suleiman's age, and is 

 stated to have been copied but fouryears after the composition of the ori- 

 ginal, 'which was finished at Ahmedabdd, the capital of Gujerat, in the last 



* Tn the Transactions of the Bombay Literary Society ; in the Asiatic Journal ; 

 and the Journal Asiatique ; and printed separately, 

 t Tom. iv. p, 416. + Miret-ul-memdlik. 



3 A 



