Of the African Ramme

“There is no difference betweene these rammes of Africa and others, saue onely in their tailes, which are of a great thicknes, being by so much the grosser, but how much they are more fatte, so that some of their tailes waigh tenne, and other twentie pounds a peece, and they become fatte of their owne naturall inclination: but in Egypt there are diuers that feede them fatte with bran and barly, vntill their tailes growe so bigge that they cannot remooue themselves from place to place: insomuch that those which take charge of them are faine to binde little carts vnder their tailes, to the end they may haue strength to walke. I my selfe saw at a citie in Egypt called Asiot, and standing vpon Nilus, about an hundred and fiftie miles from Cairo, one of the saide rams tailes that weighed fowerscore pounds, and others affirmed that they had seene one of those tailes of an hundred and fiftie pounds weight. All the fatte therefore of this beast consisteth in his taile; neither is there any of them to be founde but onely in Tunis and in Egypt.” (Leo Africanus, edited by Dr. Robert Brown, III., 1896, Hakluyt Society, p. 945.)

XVIII., pp. 97, 100 n.

Dr. B. Laufer draws my attention to what is probably the oldest mention of this sheep from Arabia, in Herodotus, Book III., Chap. 113:

“Concerning the spices of Arabia let no more be said. The whole country is scented with them, and exhales an odour marvellously sweet. There are also in Arabia two kinds of sheep worthy of admiration, the like of which is nowhere else to be seen; the one kind has long tails, not less than three cubits in length, which, if they were allowed to trail on the ground, would be bruised and fall into sores. As it is, all the shepherds know enough of carpentering to make little trucks for their sheep’s tails. The trucks are placed under the tails, each sheep having one to himself, and the tails are then tied down upon them. The other kind has a broad tail, which is a cubit across sometimes.”

Canon G. Rawlinson, in his edition of Herodotus, has the following note on this subject (II., p. 500): —

“Sheep of this character have acquired among our writers the name of Cape Sheep, from the fact that they are the species chiefly affected by our settlers at the Cape of Good Hope. They are common in Africa and throughout the East, being found not only in Arabia, but in Persia, Syria, Affghanistan, Egypt, Barbary, and even Asia Minor. A recent traveller, writing from Smyrna, says: ‘The sheep of the country are the Cape sheep, having a kind of apron tail, entirely of rich marrowy fat, extending to the width of their hind quarters, and frequently trailing on the ground; the weight of the tail is often more than six or eight pounds’ (Fellows’s Asia Minor, p. 10). Leo Africanus, writing in the 15th century, regards the broad tail as the great difference between the sheep of Africa and that of Europe. He declares that one which he had seen in Egypt weighed 80 lbs. He also mentions the use of trucks which is still common in North Africa.”

XVIII., p. 98. “Camadi.—Reobarles.—In this plain there are a number of villages and towns which have lofty walls of mud, made as a defence against the banditti, who are very numerous, and are called Caraonas. This name is given them because they are the sons of Indian mothers by Tartar fathers.”

Mirzá Haïdar writes (Tárikh-i-Rashidi, p. 148): “The learned Mirzá Ulugh Beg has written a history which he has called Ulus Arbaa. One of the ‘four hordes’ is that of the Moghul, who are divided into two branches, the Moghul and the Chaghatái. But these two branches, on account of their mutual enmity, used to call each other by a special name, by way of depreciation. Thus the Chaghatái called the Moghul Jatah, while the Moghul called the Chaghatái Karáwánás.”

Cf. Ney Elias, l.c., pp. 76–77, and App. B, pp. 491–2, containing an inquiry made in Khorasán by Mr. Maula Bakhsh, Attaché at the Meshed Consulate General, of the families of Kárnás, he has heard or seen; he says: “These people speak Turki now, and are considered part of the Goklán Turkomans. They, however, say they are Chingiz-Kháni Moghuls, and are no doubt the descendants of the same Kárnás, or Karávanás, who took such a prominent part in the victories in Persia.

“The word Kárnás, I was told by a learned Goklan Mullah, means Tirandáz, or Shikári (i.e. Archer or Hunter), and was applied to this tribe of Moghuls on account of their professional skill in shooting, which apparently secured them an important place in the army. In Turki the word Kárnás means Shikamparast—literally, ‘belly worshippers,’ which implies avarice. This term is in use at present, and I was told, by a Kázi of Bujnurd, that it is sometimes used by way of reproach.... The Kárnás people in Mána and Gurgán say it is the name of their tribe, and they can give no other explanation.”

XVIII., pp. 98, 102, 165. “The King of these scoundrels is called Nogodar.”

Sir Aurel Stein has the following regarding the route taken by this Chief in Serindia, I., pp. 11–12: —

“To revert to an earlier period it is noteworthy that the route in Marco Polo’s account, by which the Mongol partisan leader Nigūdar, ‘with a great body of horsemen, cruel unscrupulous fellows,’ made his way from Badakhshān ‘through another province called Pashai-Dir, and then through another called Ariora-Keshemur’ to India, must have led down the Bashgol Valley. The name of Pashai clearly refers to the Kāfirs among whom this tribal designation exists to this day, while the mention of Dīr indicates the direction which this remarkable inroad had taken. That its further progress must have lain through Swāt is made probable by the name which, in Marco Polo’s account, precedes that of ‘Keshemur’ or Kashmīr; for in the hitherto unexplained Ariora can be recognized, I believe, the present Agrōr, the name of the well-known hill-tract on the Hazāra border which faces Bunēr from the left bank of the Indus. It is easy to see from any accurate map of these regions, that for a mobile column of horsemen forcing its way from Badakhshān to Kashmīr, the route leading through the Bashgol Valley, Dīr, Talāsh, Swāt, Bunēr, Agrōr, and up the Jhelam Valley, would form at the present day, too, the most direct and practicable line of invasion.”

In a paper on Marco Polo’s Account of a Mongol inroad into Kashmir (Geog. Jour., August, 1919), Sir Aurel Stein reverts again to the same subject. “These [Mongol] inroads appear to have commenced from about 1260 A.D., and to have continued right through the reign of Ghiasuddin, Sultan of Delhi (1266–1286), whose identity with Marco’s Asedin Soldan is certain. It appears very probable that Marco’s story of Nogodar, the nephew of Chaghatái, relates to one of the earliest of these incursions which was recent history when the Poli passed through Persia about 1272–73 A.D.”

Stein thinks, with Marsden and Yule, that Dilivar (pp. 99, 105) is really a misunderstanding of “Città di Livar” for Lahawar or Lahore.

Dir has been dealt with by Yule and Pauthier, and we know that it is “the mountain tract at the head of the western branch of the Panjkora River, through which leads the most frequented route from Peshawar and the lower Swāt valley to Chītral” (Stein, l.c.). Now with regard to the situation of Pashai (p. 104):

“It is clear that a safe identification of the territory intended cannot be based upon such characteristics of its people as Marco Polo’s account here notes obviously from hearsay, but must reckon in the first place with the plainly stated bearing and distance. And Sir Henry Yule’s difficulty arose just from the fact that what the information accessible to him seemed to show about the location of the name Pashai could not be satisfactorily reconciled with those plain topographical data. Marco’s great commentator, thoroughly familiar as he was with whatever was known in his time about the geography of the western Hindukush and the regions between Oxus and Indus, could not fail to recognize the obvious connection between our Pashai and the tribal name Pashai borne by Muhammanized Kafirs who are repeatedly mentioned in mediæval and modern accounts of Kabul territory. But all these accounts seemed to place the Pashais in the vicinity of the great Panjshir valley, north-east of Kabul, through which passes one of the best-known routes from the Afghan capital to the Hindukush watershed and thence to the Middle Oxus. Panjshir, like Kabul itself, lies to the south-west of Badakshān, and it is just this discrepancy of bearing together with one in the distance reckoned to Kashmir which caused Sir Henry Yule to give expression to doubts when summing up his views about Nogodar’s route.”

From Sir George Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India we learn that to the south of the range of the Hindukush “the languages spoken from Kashmir in the east to Kafiristan in the west are neither of Indian nor of Iranian origin, but form a third branch of the Aryan stock of the great Indo-European language family. Among the languages of this branch, now rightly designated as ‘Dardic,’ the Kafir group holds a very prominent place. In the Kafir group again we find the Pashai language spoken over a very considerable area. The map accompanying Sir George Grierson’s monograph on ‘The Pisaca Languages of North-Western India’ [Asiatic Society Monographs, VIII., 1906], shows Pashai as the language spoken along the right bank of the Kunar river as far as the Asmar tract as well as in the side valleys which from the north descend towards it and the Kabul river further west. This important fact makes it certain that the tribal designation of Pashai, to which this Kafir language owes its name, has to this day an application extending much further east than was indicated by the references which travellers, mediæval and modern, along the Panjshir route have made to the Pashais and from which alone this ethnic name was previously known.”

Stein comes to the conclusion that “the Mongols’ route led across the Mandal Pass into the great Kafir valley of Bashgol and thus down to Arnawai on the Kunar. Thence Dir could be gained directly across the Zakhanna Pass, a single day’s march. There were alternative routes, too, available to the same destination either by ascending the Kunar to Ashreth and taking the present ‘Chitral Road’ across the Lowarai, or descending the river to Asmar and crossing the Binshi Pass.”

From Dir towards Kashmir for a large body of horsemen “the easiest and in matter of time nearest route must have led them as now down the Panjkora Valley and beyond through the open tracts of Lower Swāt and Buner to the Indus about Amb. From there it was easy through the open northern part of the present Hazara District (the ancient Urasa) to gain the valley of the Jhelam River at its sharp bend near Muzzaffarabad.”

The name of Agror (the direct phonetic derivative of the Sanskrit Atyugrapura) = Ariora; it is the name of the hill-tract on the Hazara border which faces Buner on the east from across the left bank of the Indus.

XVIII., p. 101.

Line 17, Note 4. Korano of the Indo-Scythic Coins is to be read Košano. (Pelliot.)

XVIII., p. 102.

On the Mongols of Afghanistān, see Ramstedt, Mogholica, in Journ. de la Soc. Finno-Ougrienne, XXIII., 1905. (Pelliot.)

XIX., p. 107. “The King is called Ruomedan Ahomet.”

About 1060, Mohammed I. Dirhem Kub, from Yemen, became master of Hormuz, but his successors remained in the dependency of the sovereigns of Kermán until 1249, when Rokn ed-Din Mahmud III. Kalhaty (1242–1277) became independent. His successors in Polo’s time were Seïf ed-Din Nusrat (1277–1290), Mas’ud (1290–1293), Beha ed-Din Ayaz Seyfin (1293–1311).

XIX., p. 115.