309

THE TAESCHNER COLLECTION (Or. 12.432, cont., 12.433)

Copyist’s verses {ibidem): jISjL pijj 3^». 513 Oj * jUjjj Ü>»*LU13 U.j fj* 4iyL * Catalogue entries: Flemming 344, 345, where other MSS are mentioned. Literature: ‘OM I, p. 304.

Cod.Or. 12.433 Kissat ‘Anter bin §eddad JjU ^ ^ An undated copy of an anonymous translation of four volumes of the Arabic Strot Antar, a picturesque romance about a pre-Islamic warrior, half Arab and half Abyssinian, set in southern Arabia. A few Arabic poems are found in the Turkish prose text. The title, preceded by the word ‘min’, occurs in a heading on f. lb; the paper right of the ‘min’ has been rubbed off, and may well have contained the word ‘hikdyat' or, more likely, the number of the volume. The work is also known as “Antere hakOyesi’, cf. Levend, p. 200. For a detailed analysis of the Arabic original, see Heller’s article. The manuscript contains the 15th, 16th (79b), 17th (137a), and 18th (232a) volumes (did), indicated, with the exception of the first, 15th, in headings. Only one other manuscript containing these volumes is documented: Blochet S 638, which shows a similar erasure in the first heading A few marginal corrections and additions. There are also marginal notes by, probably, two readers, partly erased by trimming; they indicate the dates on which certain parts of the work had been read. We find 1140 (1727-8, lb), and read for the second time’, without date; Muharrem [1] 136 (October 1723) with the note ‘ 'ommen okunmifdur’ (2a); 5 Safer [1]145 (28 July 1732), ‘read by BakI EfendT, with a tailed signature, and 5 §abOn [1145] (21 January 1733), ‘read for the second time’ (232a, see plate). A note with the same tailed signature, found elsewhere, occurs on f. 79a, with two dates, the second mentioning 5 §a‘bQn, read for the second time’, but without a year; another note (‘bum dahi okunmujdur') with the same signature has no date (137a). Rebound in dark green boards with dark green embossed leather back and edges in late Ottoman style; slight worm damage; the first two folios look tattered but have been crudely restored, whereby a new sheet of paper was pasted on the ori-