213

THE TAESCHNER COLLECTION (Or. 12.406, cont.)

his house. At night the subayi conducted the prisoner, guarded by five guards, ases, to his house. While two of the guards were digging up the money, Ibrahim’s mother and five cdriyes, present in the house, raised a huge commotion in the neighbourhood and they, together with some neighbours - the local imam and mil ’e^in had also flocked to the scene - were able to set ibrahlm free. The grand vizier now wished to hang the suba$i instead of Ibrahim. The moral: greed does not pay off. Another two of these late stories (306a, 309b) are situated in Egypt in about the same period, and are meant to demonstrate the advantage of righteous government, in this case by the valt (and later grand vizier) ‘Ali Pa§a, who probably is to be identified with Yavuz ‘All Pa§a, vali of Egypt from 1011/1602-3 to 1013/1604-5 (d. 1013/1604, cf. SÓ 2 1, p. 296). In the second of these, a body of a murdered woman is found by a blind Arab in a basket near a mosque in Cairo. The pasha has the matter investigated and it appears that a miiteferrika officer had found her dead in his room after a night of drinking arak and eating honey. The woman, it also appears, had died of the bite of a snake hidden in the honey tub. Neither the officer nor the honey-seller were deemed guilty by ‘All Pa§a, and their lives were mercifully spared. (For a similar collection of stories, see Cod.Or. 1552.)

Begins (224b): '“*’*>*" c»Uj pi aLI jlj-id jiLsb * jLS-l JjJjl lÜSjyt- j Ends (334a):

... A^iS*A AiJÏ *11*111 aSjaJjI aAiti - .K~-

(2) ff. 334b-349a

Risale-i Mahmüd Pa§a UL a*^, #a1Uj A late 17th-centuiy copy of an anonymous biography of Mahmüd Pa§a (d. 879/1474). The title is found in a heading of dubious grammar (fully quoted below) which precedes the text on f. 334b. The brief work proposes, as the opening line has it, to tell the story of the famous man, nicknamed ‘Koca’ here, but better known as ‘Veil’, from his youth to his death. It is better known as Menakib-i Mahmud Pa$a-yi Veit. The biography is mostly legendary and deviates from accounts found in other sources. (For another copy of this work and a description of the contents, see Cod.Or.