Note 12 — SECTION FIFTH

Moreover, the Text seems in Doctor Landauer’s opinion to need an emendation, in this Allegory, which is furnished by the Latin Translation preserved in Florence. According to the text, we get a wholly superfluous intermediary notion, to wit the Post, which disturbs the parallel and similitude of the allegory. Instead of barîd, we should read wazîr = Latin, inter vicarium principis. If this is done, the whole passage becomes clearer, and hangs together better. Yet, for all this, the barîd was in those days a highly important branch of the government service: witness, the office of câheb-ul-barîd.