FOREWORD.

II. Liber Fundatorum monasteriorum in regno Persarum et Arabum Book of the Founders of Monasteries in the Kingdom of the Persians and Arabs.

It seemed useful to us to place this small collection after the one we have just discussed. The points of resemblance are numerous, and one complements the other.

Abbot Chabot published an edition of this small work under the title Livre de la chasteté Book of Chastity. This title was provided to him by the catalogue of the books of Abd-Ischo of Nisibis, which Assemani provides to us (¹). But as this title does not exist in the manuscript that we obtained from Mosul and which we used (²), we preferred to leave it with the one it carries, which is much better adapted to the subject.

In publishing his Livre de la chasteté, Mr. Chabot translated it into French; he marked at the end of his publication the variants he found in other manuscripts. The sympathetic Dr. Goussen generously placed at our disposal those he had copied from the manuscript of the Strasbourg library.

Despite all these variants, we take the liberty of saying that we are inclined to believe that it is always the same manuscript, copied and recopied by more or less skilled hands, or perhaps by the same copyist, more or less attentive, who made this collection a commercial export article for Europe. We have vocalized this publication as best we could.

We have adopted Mr. Chabot's numbers up to the

(¹) B. o. III. I. p. 196.      (²) Nor in any other manuscript. Ed. Note.