1854.] Literary Intelligence. 387 



Literary Intelligence. 



Defremery's paper on the reign of the Seldjuk Sultan Barkiarok, 

 1092 — 1104 A. D. is concluded in No. 7, (September and October, 

 1853) of the Journal Asiatique. The materials for this contribu- 

 tion to history have been drawn from Arab Authors, and principally 

 from Ibn Djouzy and Ibn Alathir, whose statements are in many 

 places opposed to these of Mirkhond, Khandemir, &c. The 3rd vol. 

 of Weil's History of the Khalifs, lately published, has supplied many 

 omissions in Herbelot's article, but it does not give such particu- 

 lars as are to be found in this notice. 



Sedillot reviews the recent translation by "Wcepcke* of a treatise 

 by Omarkheiam, a celebrated mathematician and astronomer of the 

 11th century, who reformed the Persian Calendar by command of 

 the Seldjuk Melikshah. His object is to determine if possible the 

 point up to which the Arabs carried their knowledge of mathema- 

 tics, a first acquaintance with which science thev derived, he thinks 

 rather from the Greeks than from India. However this may be, 

 and though the Siddhanta had been translated in the reign of the 

 Caliph Almansor (754 A. D.) it is certain, he says, that the Greek 

 system of Algebra was what prevailed in the schools of Bagdad 

 during the 9th and 10th centuries. "W. Bland, in an interesting 

 letter to G. de Tassy, brings evidence te show that Masoud 

 (d. 1130 A. D.) wrote a complete diwan of Hindooee guzzals, and to 

 the letter is appended an observation by de Tassy in reply to 

 Dr. Sprenger's doubts as to whether Saadi had ever composed in 

 Eekhta. See this Journ. Vol. XXI. p. 513. Both these poets, it 

 seems, wrote Arabic verses, and others of their countrymen have 

 written Turkish verses, the latter language, as Mr. Bland points out, 

 standing much in the same relation to Persian as does Urdu. 



No. 8, of the same journal (Nov. and Dec.) opens with an extract 

 from an incomplete memoir by Mr. Belin on the origin and consti- 



* The Oriental Translation Committee are apparently about to bring out 

 another translation by this author of an interesting commentary on the 10th Book 

 of Euclid, an Arabic MS. of which has lately been found in the Imp. Lib. a 

 Paris. 



