82 



A brief notice of the 



[July 



" The heavens exclaimed Ahsan, (most excellent) 

 " The prince cried, zih ! (bravo)" 



saying that Ahsan was an Arabic word. Firdousi admitted it, but 

 observed, " It was not /, but Heaven that said it ;" meaning that it 

 would have been improper, to have put any other language than Ara- 

 bic, into the mouth of any celestial personification : it being the lan- 

 guage of divine revelation,/, e. according to the followers of Mahomed. 



The Shah-ndmeh has been translated into Arabic prose by Kaium- 

 {iddin Fateh Abu Ali At Hindi Isfahdni, who undertook the task by 

 order of Sultan Malek-al-azem Issa, son of Malek-al-adil of the house 

 of the Aiubites. A. H. 675. 



There is also a prose abridgment called the Shah-ndmeh-nasr, made 

 for the learned Dr. Hyde by a Parsi of Surat, of which there is a copy 

 in the British museum marked Hyde-Rayal. 16. B. XIV. Translated 

 extracts from this work, comprizing the loves of Khosru and Shir in, 

 the romance of Kai Kous, Rustavi* s seven adventures, &c. made by W. 

 Ouseley, Esq. will be found in vol. I. and II. of the Oriental Collections. 



Mr. Ouseley also mentions a prose and verse abridgement, which 

 he calls, the Montekheh Shemshir Khani, or Towarikh Shah-ndmeh 

 Turvukkul Beg. Of this work I once possessed a copy, purporting to 

 have been abridged from the Shah-ndmeh by Turvukkul Beg, by order 

 of Shamshir Khdn Hakim of Ghazneh, under the auspices of Dara 

 Shekoh, son of the emperor Shah-Jehan. It is also called K hulas eh-i- 

 Shah-ndmeh. 



There is another abridgment in use, with the native Persian dilet- 

 tanti of India, by one Ghulam Hussain of Bijapur. 



D'Herbelot, mentions four works under the title of Shah-nameh. The 

 first " Livre Turc, comprenant une histoire de tous les anciens Rois de 

 1'orient, en trois cens volumes, compose par Ferdoussi Al Thaouil, 

 Poete Turc." This composition was presented by the author to Bajazet 

 the second, Sultan of the Osmanidss. The second — " Autre livre Turc 

 en vers, qui contient quatre mill Beits, compose par Schohoudi, qui 

 mourut 1'an 943 de 1'hegire, et dedia son auvrage au Sultan Seliin, fils de 

 Bajazet." The third — A history or panegyric on Shah Ismael, com- 

 posed in Persian verse by Cassim Gunabadi, and the fourth, entitled 

 Al Kadim " compose en langue Arabique, par Ali Ben Mohammed, 

 Ben Ahmed, Al Balk hi, surnomme, Al Schder, c. a. le Poete. 



Perfect copies of Firdousi* s Shah-nameh in verse, are now very rare in 

 India, and large prices are asked for them. The copy, mentioned 

 by Mr. Ouseley in his catalogue of the Arabic, Persian and Turkish 

 manuscripts belonging to the British museum, is described by him tobe 

 decorated with ninety one very beautiful miniature paintings, executed 

 in the best style of Indian artists, of whom several have been employed, 



