274

THE TAESCHNER COLLECTION (Or. 12.423, cont., 12.424)

ewel 1107 (26 October 1695) and 9 Ztl-hicce [11]22 (29 January 1711) (161b); and two pious texts in Arabic (165a). *** Rebound in black boards with gold-tooled insets on the outer front cover; glazed white paper; moisture damage at the upper part of most folios; (1)+169+(1) folios; 192x130 mm; various scripts (cf. above); occasional red headings, rubrics and lines; the inscription ‘Franz Taeschner Ms. Nr. 107’ is found on f. la.

Cod.Or. 12.424 A miscellany The volume contains three undated works by, it seems, one copyist. (1) ff. lb-63a A history of the Ottoman dynasty The anonymous, partly legendary, history, written in simple Turkish, covers a period from before the foundation of the Ottoman Empire up to the enthronement of Sultan Selim I in 817 (1512). No title is given. Other manuscripts with this text have titles like: ‘Hikdyet-i zuhür-i Al-i ‘Osman’, 'Der beyan-i Tevarih-i Al-i ‘Osman’ or ‘Tarih-i Fatih’ (in an early 19th-century copy in the private collection of Hedda Reindl-Kiel, Bonn). The text is incomplete: folio 17 has been tom out. The history begins with the appearance of the Ottoman dynasty in the surroun dings of Tabriz. ‘Osman’s grandfather was a certain Ahmed Beg, who was the leader of a band of 10,000 well-armed Turcomans. He married the daughter of the Shah Muhammad’s mufti - the shahs were not yet kizdbaj, as the author assures his readers -, after he, the mufti, had satisfactorily explained a dream about his, Ahmed Beg’s, glorious offspring (in more conventional chronicles attributed to Ertugrul). His son, Erdogdi, then, moved to Rüm with 8000 of his men (3b). There his son ‘Osman was bom in a place called ‘Osmancik. He distinghuished himself as a fighter against the infidels and soon succeeded Sultan ‘Ala ad-DIn of Konya in 699 (1299-1300) (5a). The history continues in a chronological fashion relating the stories of the following reigns and the