5 20 Some original Passages on the early [No. 151. 



Azraky, of whom we possess a history of Mekka,* gives no extracts 

 from them it is very likely that every trace of the information which 

 Madayiny and other diligent traditionists have gathered, is lost. 



Abu 'Othroan 'Amr Bin Mahbub Kenany Jahiz la^ls^I f a man 

 of great learning, but of a very eccentric tendency of mind, wrote a 

 book on commerce g^i , ^ k ^jj, ^J£ which ig frequently quot . 



ed by Novayry, who died in A. H. 732, (A. D. 1331,) and it appears 

 therefore, that copies of this interesting book were still extant in the 

 fourteenth century. It seems, that most of the extracts which I have 

 collected on the commerce, flow originally from the same source, the 

 work of Jahiz. 



The object of this Memoir being merely to publish inedited frag- 

 ments, the information which Masudy Edrisy and other authors give, 

 whose works have lately been published, can find no place in it. 



I propose to give in another Memoir, some further notices on the 

 commerce of the Arabs with China and Polynesia, and of their geo- 

 graphical knowledge of the South seas. 



/. — A passage from Ibn Khordadbeh. — On the Mercantile Roads. 



Abu-1-kasim 'Obaydullah Bin Abdullah Ibn Khordadbeh, flou- 

 rished towards the end of the third century ; this author has been the 

 object of considerable controversies among the orientalists of Europe. 

 Yet the two principal, nay, only passages on his life, having escaped 

 even the learning of De Sacy, it will be interesting if I insert here 

 one of the two; the other is contained in the second part of Al- 

 mas'udy, and I shall therefore translate it in the progress of that work. 



In the Fihrist (MSS. of Paris, folio 202, recto,) which has been written 

 in A. H. 377, the following notice is given of Ibn Khordadbeh : — 



v Li;Jt < >U£ L-£)Ll! u-&Lfc*)J u^U'i (j* JJ! v_A*«JJ ^♦^ t—J*'^ 



* There are several MSS. of this ancient work in Europe, one is at Cambridge which 

 has been left by Dr. Burckhardt, who in the preface to his Travels in Arabia, professes 

 to have largely made use of it. 



f Jahiz died in A. H. 255, (A. D. 868,) at an age of ninety-six years. 



