II. The Tārīkh-Baghdād (Vol. XXVII) of the Khaṭīb Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. 'Alī b. Thābit al-Baghdādī Short Account of the Biographies

Among the recent acquisitions of the India Office Library is a volume of the Tārīḫ Baghdād of the Ḫaṭīb containing biographies of men with the names of 'Umar, 'Uthmān, and 'Alī. The MS. is acephalous, the end is missing, and many leaves have been lost, so that an edition of the whole text is out of the question. Paper and writing point to the beginning of the seventh century of the Hiğrah. This volume of the extensive biographical dictionary of the Ḫaṭīb does not appear to exist in other European libraries, the greater portion of the work having been lost. Salmon published in 1904 the geographical introduction of the book with a French translation; in his introduction he gives an account of the known MSS. and a biography of the author. With regard to the MSS. enumerated by Salmon, it must be noted that Amar (JA., vol. xi, 237, 1908) has shown that the MSS. Bibl. Nat. 2130 and 2131 are not the original work of the Ḫaṭīb, but parts of an amplification of his work by Ibn an-Nağğār (d. 643 a.h.). The fact that No. 2131 is called the twenty-eighth volume, and contains biographies of men named 'Alī following later, according to the alphabetical arrangement of the Ḫaṭīb, than those contained in the India Office MS., seems to prove that the latter is a portion of the twenty-seventh volume.