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(e.g. Cod.Or. 12.345), there are a few illustrated items: Codices Or. 12.363 (a Cihan-nüma, lavishly furnished with coloured maps); 12.365(3) (a Tarih-i Hind-i Garhf with a series of exquisite miniatures); and 12.415 (a manual on chiromancy with drawings of handpalms). A late 19th-century map of Istanbul with underground lines, never realized, is found in Cod.Or. 12.369. As far as can be established, the oldest manuscript was copied in 1491 (Or. 12.407) and the youngest in 1931 (the aforementioned Cod.Or. 12.440). Not long after his death, Taeschner’s library, comprising 1915 items in all, had been obtained by the Leiden firm of E.J. Brill and was offered for sale by them in 1970; the manuscripts (item No. 1011) were offered for ƒ22,000.-. They were not, as is clear from the missing numbers given above, all manuscripts that had once been part of his library; four manuscripts with miniatures, MSS Nos. 112-5, given on loan to the Staatliche Museen in Berlin in 1937, seem to have disappeared from Berlin in 1945 (cf. the correspondence in Cod.Or. 12.583i, below, among them (No. 114) a 17th-century album which Taeschner had published as Alt-Stambuler Hof- und Volksleben; Ein türkisches Miniaturenalbum aus dem 17. Jahrhundert in Hannover in 1925. What happened to the other missing items is not known. The manuscripts first arrived in the Leiden library in early September 1970; the bill was paid on 16 October. With the collection came two handlists, partly in Franz Taeschner’s handwriting. Literature: ‘Franz Taeschner, Schriftenverzeichnis’, in Der Islam, pp. 261-70; Hans-Joachim Kissling, ‘Franz Taeschner (1896-1967’, 'mZDMG 118(1968), pp. 14-7; Heinz Grotzfeld, ‘Professor Dr. Franz Taeschner’, in Belleten 32/126 (1968), pp. 293-5; E.J. Brill. Catalogue No. 426. Turcica from the Collection of Prof. Franz Taeschner (Leiden 1970); Jan Schmidt, ‘Franz Taeschner’s Collection of Turkish Manuscripts in the Leiden University Library’, in The Joys of Philology. Studies in Ottoman Literature, History and Orientalism (1500-1923) II (Istanbul 2002), pp. 237-45. I am also grateful for information received from Dr Ludmila Hanisch of Halle University in letters of 20.11., 1.12. & 20.12.2000.

Cod.Or. 12.338 er-Risalet el-mensübe ila ?-§eyh Mehmed Murad el-Ma ‘sümi el-Buliari en- Nak§bendf J- %«. ; A 3-.lt 4)) jl>4 ju-ujl yJI AJj) HI *« 4II An undated copy of a short treatise or letter on mysticism, in particular on the duty for sufls to adhere to the way of the Prophet (siinnet), attributed to, as the title has it, the Nak§bendr shaykh Muhammad Murad Ma‘süm of Bukhara who