PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Raban Sauma died in Baghdad on January 10, 1294. Mar Jab-alaha, for his part, was subjected to harsh trials. After having suffered several persecutions, he was a witness to the massacre of the Christians of Arbel. He died in Maragha on November 15, 1317, as I stated above.

The book that I am publishing for the first time is so rare that I know of no manuscript of it in Europe. It is to M. Salomon, a Chaldean Lazarist from Kurdistan, that I owe the good fortune of possessing a copy. My colleague, having seen this book in the hands of a young man from Tkhouma (Turkish Kurdistan), recognized its value and had a copy made in Ourmiah, in Persia, in the month of March 1887. The possessor of the manuscript has since disappeared with his book; and I have had at my disposal only the copy that was made in Ourmiah, without having been able to learn anything about the age or the provenance of the original. This copy is very faulty. I have corrected the vowels of almost every word; but I have kept the doubtful expressions, while adding, in parentheses, the reading that seemed to me the best, or the word that seemed to be omitted. The proper names are especially mangled by the copyists; I have had