‘The Oriental geography of Ebn Haukal, an Arabian traveller of the tenth century’ [‎12] (27/388)

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PREFACE.
it may he necessary to account for a seeming anachronism;
as the reader who learns from Pococke*, D HERBELoxf, or
OckleyJ, that the venerable historian died early in the tenth
century will not readily believe that he could have quoted
the work of Ebn Haukal, whom 1 have assigned to the
middle of the same century, and consequently supposed to
have existed several years after Tabari, although it is
possible that they might have been contemporaries. But
the Chronicle of Tabari underwent a Persian translation;
which work, as it was performed by a man of learning and
ingenuity, (vizier to one of the Samanian princes J, and en
riched by him with much curious additional matter, M. D'Her-
belot prefers to the original Arabick\\. This, indeed, is not
* Specimen Hist. Arabum, 383, Oxford, quarto, 1650.
t Bibhot. Orient, article Thabari.
+ History of the Saracens. Vol. II. p. 350. %
§ Anno Hegira 310, (A. D. 922.)
jj On remarquera encore ici que ce vizir na pas seulement traduit le texte de Thabari
mais quil y d encore ajoute tout ce qu'il a cru pouvoir Venricher, et ce sont pour la plupart
des remarques et des fait s quil d tirez, csmme il le dit lui meme dans sa Preface, des Livres
des Astronomes, et des Histonens des Ghcbrcs, ou anciens Persans, adorateurs du feu, des
Juifs et des Musulmans : de sorte que cette traduction est beau coup plus eurieuse que le texte
Arahique." Bibliot. Orient ale, art. Thabari.
It was this passage which gave occasion to the following note in Mr. Gibbon's
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.— Chap. li. note 33.