One of the most complete and entertaining accounts of the instruments of music of Turkey is that given by the chatty and voluble, though highly imaginative writer, Ewliyā Chelebī 1611– ca. 1669. Although his family held high appointments at the Ottoman court, yet young Ewliyā yearned for a literary career and, like many such Parnassian aspirants, began his public life as a ḥāfiẓ in Aya Sofia on the Lailat al-kaḍr of 1045 (=A.D. 1636), whenhe attracted the notice of Sultan Murād IV, who took him into the royal household. Here he was specially favoured, mainly on account of his musical and literary gifts. He had been taught music and singing by one of the best masters of the day, the Khalwatī dervish 'Umar Gulshanī, who lived to the great age of 140 years, himself having been taught by the eminent shaikh Ibrāhīm Gulshanī (d. 1533–4) of Cairo. After two years' service as a muṣāḥib, Ewliyā began his travels which have made him famous.

The curious ancient figure illustrated in the last paragraph of Part I of this paper, ingeniously conjectured by Mr. Hsü-Chung-shu to stand for the modern character chüeh, in its sense of nobility, servesto introduce us to a peculiar word and its character, often used in Chinese texts dealing with the old-time agriculture.

The MS. consists of 203 folios; but the first leaf bears only the title of the work. Size of the written page is 8½ in. by 5½ in.: thirty to thirty-one lines to a page. On the titlepage appear the words , which are of a much later date than the MS. itself, and added probably by some bookseller. The colophon, which is written in the same hand as the text, contains the date 7th Sha'bān, 547. The whole MS. is very closely written and with hardly any diacritical points or vowelsigns. The absence of these and the peculiar style of the writing make it rather difficult reading. Unfortunately the work is not complete in this MS. The whole work was divided into twenty-three sections (), of which the last ten sections (14–23) are given here complete and the greater part of section 13, of which only a page or two seem to be missing. Thus the first portion of the MS. comprising more than half the work is missing.

In his al-Munkidh min al-Ḍalāl al-Ghazālī states that he studied the works of al-Muḥāsibī, together with those of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, al-Junayd, Shiblī, and Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī, and of these Ḥārith b. Asad al-Muḥāsibī (ob. 243/857) was the earliest and the most prolific writer, and to him al-Ghazālī owes more of his teaching than has been generally realized, and much that has been attributed to al-Ghazālī as representing his original ideas, is in fact based upon the earlier teaching of al-Muḥāsibī and, in many instances, is directly borrowed from him.