Samples of Translated Texts 493
contradictory high orders contrary to the facts, and if they are accountants in the
royal treasury they cause with one dot a hundred disorders, perhaps even several
thousand finely-spun tricks. By making mistakes in the recording of dates, by
entering a date contrary to the truth they certainly cause damage to the super-
intendants, and these will take care to again indemnify themselves of this loss
by taking from the poor population. In this manner constant and concatenated
frauds become consolidated like the entries in the register of revenues and inter-
locked like the figures in the ledger of expenses, and thus lead to decline-bound
disintegration.
Therefore, it is incumbent upon the caliph of God and appropriate for his
alert statesmen to watch this group carefully as one would inspect a pen-case ...
They should not allow them to become as hopelessly confused as the pieces of
silk put in the inkstand nor as black and bleak of outlook as their pen-cases are.
If the revenues they receive as secretaries do not cover their necessary expenses,
one should make all efforts to favor them with certain services and to improve
their situation so as to prevent them from greedily writing documents that con-
tradict the truth ... in their urge of acquisition abandoning the straightness of
the letter alif and bending down to crookedness like the letter lam.[Verses] by the author:
Could the number of the stars be whole
If one left out the dot of the celestial pole?
That dot, the writer of the sky cannot delete
Or else the system remains incomplete.
In the circle of scribes it is the same:
That ominous dot is the center of shame!From Mevâidü’n-nefâis fi kavâidi’l-mecâlis (“Tables of delicacies concerning the rules of
social gatherings”), translated by Douglas S. Brookes:15
To ensure that the workshop known as the Ottoman state, or the foundation of
the Seljuk or Samanid sultanates, should not suffer damage through bribery, and
that those great wheels of fortune continue to turn according to their established
rules, and that established practice continue to be observed, learned persons
have compared this heavy task to that great revolving wheel, which always rev-
oles vigilantly. That is to say, it revolves through an art ... Furthermore, by using
intelligent and learned persons, and persons manifesting physical strength, one15 Ali – Brookes 2003, 59–60.