The materials for a literary history of this period, especially of its poets, are therefore singularly copious Copious materials for literary history of this period and authoritative, for besides Bábur's incidental notices of which we have just spoken, we have the voluminous Memoirs of the Poets compiled by Dawlatsháh in 892/1487, and Mír 'Alí Shír's Turkí Majálisu'n-Nafá'is, completed about four years later, of the contents of which some account has been given above. * As a pendant to these is the later work of another royal author, Sám Mírzá, son of Sháh Isma'íl the Ṣafawí, who was born in 923/1517 and put to death in 984/1576-7, and who in 957/1550 wrote his Tuḥfa-i-Sámí, * a somewhat rare book which will be considered in the subsequent volume. In addition to these are the copious biographical notices contained in Khwándamír's Ḥabíbu's-Siyar. Of all these, however, Bábur is the most amusing and the most in­structive, because he possesses both humour and a critical faculty lacking in the other biographers, who, by indis­criminate eulogies, deprive their appreciations of all real value.