422 General Meeting of the Asiatic Society of Paris. [No. 125. 



in the use of a work, abounding with names of men and places ; and 

 he also joins to it a certain number of critical and explanatory notes. 

 This work will require much more extensive commentaries, if the variety 

 of subjects to which allusion is made by Masoudi, shall be elucidated ; 

 but the first thing is a complete translation, and it is highly desirable, 

 that Mr. Sprenger should continue his useful and excellent undertaking. 



Since the conquest of Algiers by the French, the history of Northern 

 Africa has become a subject of great interest, and we are presented in 

 the past year with many works relating to it, and others we are pro- 

 mised, so that this portion of the history of the Arabs, about which we 

 only possess the very imperfect labours of Cardonne, will soon be num- 

 bered with those best known to us. Mr. de Slane has published in the 

 Asiatic Journal, the history of the first Masulman dynasties in Africa, 

 and has advanced it to the Aglabites, where Mr. Noel Desvergers takes 

 it up in a work entitled " Histoire de l'Afrique sous la dynastie des 

 Aglabites, et de la Sicile, sous la domination Musulmane." 15 He gives 

 the text and translation of the narrative of lbn Khaldoun, accompany- 

 ing it with notes, principally taken from Nowairi and Ibnal-Athir. 

 The Aglabites, after having governed the eastern part of the coast of 

 Barbary during the whole third century, were dispossessed of it by the 

 dynasty of the Fatimites, which in their turn for nearly three centuries 

 possessed the greatest part of Moghreb. Mr. Nicholson 16 has edited at 

 Tubingen, an English translation of the history of the establishment of 

 this dynasty, taken from a manuscript of the library at Gotha, errone- 

 ously attributed to Masoudi. The work of the unknown writer seems 

 to have served as basis to the narratives, as well of Nowairi as of Ibn- 

 Khaldoun, and he enters into more details than these two authors have 

 done on this great event of the history of the Khalifat, an event which 

 threatened the existence of the Arabian empire, and to which Europe 

 perhaps owes its escaping from a Musulman conquest. 



The French government, well aware of the importance of the history 

 of North-Africa, has for some years made efforts to procure all the 

 means for elucidating it. With much propriety it has attached a great 

 value to that portion of the great work of lbn- Khaldoun, which under 



15, Paris, chez Didot. 1840, in 8vo. 



16. An account of the establishment of the Fatimite Dynasty in Africa, by J. Nichol- 

 son. Tubingen and Bristol, 1840, in 8vo. 



