“Then, according to a custom which they have, they were wont and still continue to make copies from that book in Account of Chinese print­ing from the Ta'ríkh-i­Banákatí such wise that no change or alteration can find its way into the text. And therefore when they desire that any book containing matter of value to them should be well written and should re­main correct, authentic and unaltered, they order a skilful calligraphist to copy a page of that book on a tablet in a fair hand. Then all the men of learning carefully correct it, and inscribe their names on the back of the tablet. Then skilled and expert engravers are ordered to cut out the letters. And when they have thus taken a copy of all the pages of the book, numbering all [the blocks] consecutively, they place these tablets in sealed bags, like the dies in a mint, and entrust them to reliable persons appointed for this purpose, keeping them securely in offices specially set apart to this end on which they set a particular and defi­nite seal. Then when anyone wants a copy of this book he goes before this committee and pays the dues and charges fixed by the Government. Then they bring out these tab­lets, impose them on leaves of paper like the dies used in minting gold, and deliver the sheets to him. Thus it is impossible that there should be any addition or omission in any of their books, on which, therefore, they place complete reliance; and thus is the transmission of their histories effected.”

A third minor history of this period is the Majma'u'l-Ansáb (“Collection of Genealogies”) of Muḥammad ibn The Majma'u'l­Ansáb 'Alí of Shabánkára, who, like Fakhr-i-Baná-katí, was a poet as well as a historian. Of this book there seem to have been two editions, the first issued in 733/1332-3, the second three years later and one year after the death of Abú Sa'íd. This work contains a summary of general history from the Creation to the time of writing, but I have unfortunately been unable to obtain or read a copy, and am indebted for these meagre par­ticulars to Rieu's admirable Persian Catalogue, pp. 83-4. According to Ethé * the original edition perished when the house of Rashídu'd-Dín's son Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Muḥammad was pillaged, and the author rewrote the book from memory, completing this second edition, according to Ethé, in 743/ 1342-3.

Two rhymed chronicles of this period also deserve notice, the Sháhinsháh-náma (“Book of the King of Kings”), or Chingíz-náma (“Book of Chingíz”), of Aḥmad of Tabríz, containing the history of the Mongols down to 738/1337-8 in about 18,000 verses, and dedicated to Abú Sa'íd; and the Gházán-náma of Núru'd-Dín ibn Shamsu'd-Dín Mu-ḥammad, composed in 763/1361-2. Both works are very rare. Rieu has described a MS. of the first, copied in 800/ 1397-8, acquired by the British Museum at the sale of the Comte de Gobineau's library in 1885; * and I possess a fine MS. of the latter, copied at Tabríz in 873/1468-9 for the Royal Library of Abu'n-Naṣr Ḥasan Beg Bahádur Khán, and given to me in August, 1909, by Dr Riḍá Tawfíq, then Deputy for Adrianople in the Turkish Parliament. Both works are written in the same metre (the mutaqárib) as the Sháh-náma of Firdawsí, of which they are imitations, but the second is only about half the length of the first (some­thing between 9000 and 10,000 couplets). * Neither of these two works appears to be of any exceptional merit either as history or poetry, though useful information about the period of which they treat could no doubt be extracted from them by patient examination.