" /, Timur-pulad son of Mirza Rajab son of Pay-chin, bought this book Babur-nama after coming to Bukhara with [the] Russian Florio Beg Beneveni, envoy of the Padshah , . . whose army is numerous as the stars . . . May it be well received! A men ! 0 Lord of both Worlds ! "
Timur-pulad's hope for ia good reception indicates a definite recipient, perhaps a commissioned purchase. The vendor may have been asked for a history of Babur; he sold one, but '* Baburnama" is not necessarily a title, and is not suitable for the Compilation ; by conversational mischance it may have seemed so to the purchaser and thus have initiated the mistake of confusing the " Bukhara Babur-nama " with the true one.
Thus endorsed, the book in 1725 reached the Foreign Office ; there in 1737 it was obtained by George Jacob Kehr, a teacher of Turki, amongst other languages, in the Oriental School, who copied it-with meticulous care, understanding its meaning imperfectly, in order to produce a Latin version of it. His Latin rendering was a fiasco, but his reproduction of the Arabic forms of his archetype was so obedient that on its sole basis Ilminski edited the Kasan Imprint (1857). A collateral copy of the Timur-pulad Codex was made in 1742 (as has been said).
In 1824 Klaproth (who in 1810 had made a less valuable extract perhaps from Kehr's Codex) copied from the Timur-pulad MS. its purchaser's note, the Auzbeg?(?) endorsement as to the transfer of the " Kamran-docket " and Babur's letter to Kamran {Memoires relatif a I'Asie (Paris).
In 1857 Ilminski, working in Kasan, produced his imprint, which became de Courteille's source for Les Memoires de Baber in 1871. No worker in the above series shews doubt about accepting the Compilation as containing Babur's authentic text. Ilminski was in the difficult position of not having entire reliance on Kehr's transcription, a natural apprehension in face of the quality of the Latin version, his doubts sum up into his words that a reliable text could not be made from his source (Kehr's MS.), but that a Turki reading-book could and was. As has been said, he did not
