PUBLISHED FOR THE ORIENTAL TRANSLATION FUND BY RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. M.DCCC.XXXV. PREFACE. Ir is a principle now generally recognized, that in order to arrive at an accurate knowledge of past events, and to form a just estimate of the state of civilization existing in former times, the testimony of different witnesses should be compared: and, in accordance with this principle, we find that some eminent historians have recently endeavoured to avail themselves of the contrasted evidence of eastern and western sources of information, in order to elucidate some interesting periods in the history of Europe during the middle ages, which are treated of simultaneously, though with widely discrepant and almost opposite partialities and prejudices, in the Chronicles of Christian ecclesiastics, and of the Mohammedan writers of Western Asia. On similar grounds, A |