“Schyachin” is a name that slightly recalls to mind Sheykh Mahmoud, sultan in 1421; he was successor to the caliph Abbas al-mustein Billahy who reigned for a few months after the death of Faradj in 1412; but Sheykh Mahmoud died a natural death at an advanced age, and could not therefore have been the ruler whose execution Schiltberger describes so minutely, that he must have been a witness to his torments. None of Boursbaï’s predecessors—Ahmed, the eldest son of Mahmoud—Tater, an old Mamelouk—or Mohammed, the youngest son of Mahmoud, deposed by Boursbaï, met with the fate of “Schyachin”, a name intended perhaps for Azahiri, governor of Safad, who raised the standard of revolt at the very commencement of Boursbaï’s reign. He was deserted by his followers, and having surrendered was put to torture, 1422, perhaps enduring the sufferings to which “Schyachin” was subjected.—BRUUN. (2.) “his title and superscription.”—Neumann believes that this letter, with the titles it confers on the sultan, was the invention of the Armenians who communicated it to the author; but there is nothing very extraordinary or improbable in the statement, that Boursbaï had sent letters to various Christian potentates upon the occasion of his daughter’s marriage, because that sovereign entertained diplomatic and commercial relations with the maritime republics of Italy, with the kings of Aragon and Cyprus, and the emperor of Byzantium, to each of whom, and not to the Pope, was addressed the letter to “Rom”, a word allowably substituted for Roum, a name which included Greece and the Turkish possessions in Europe.—BRUUN. (3.) “the all-powerful of Carthago.”—Boursbaï certainly committed an anachronism in styling himself the autocrat of Carthage, for he could only have possessed the ruins of that city. As the successor of the Fatimites, or protector of the Abbasside caliphate, the sultan may have claimed Tunis, built partly at his own expense, near the remains of Rome’s ancient rival, whose renown in Africa must have survived, and whose name may therefore have been preferred to that of Tunis. But I am more inclined to substitute for Carthage that noted sanctuary of Islam, Kairvan, called by Aboulfeda, Cayroan, and which was considered the most beautiful city in Magreb.—BRUUN. (4.) “Lord of Zuspillen, Lord of the highest God in Jherusalem.”—“Zuspillen” is applicable either to Sicily, which at one time belonged to the Aghlabites, or still more so to Seville, called Ishbilia by the Persians. In a letter to Shah Rokh the son of Timour, in 833 of the Hegira, the sultan Boursbaï styles himself Lord of Jerusalem; possibly the sense of the passage turned by Schiltberger into “ain herr des obristen gots,” which, being an imitation of the Hebrew, was Hebrew to him.—BRUUN.