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Art. IX.—Description of Persia and Mesopotamia in the year 1340 A.D. from the Nuzhat-al-Ḳulūb of Ḥamd-Allah Mustawfi, with a summary of the contents of that work
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
What had of old been the province of Media the Arabs named Al-Jibāl—‘ the Mountains ’—a perfectly appropriate name, as will be seen by a glance at the map, for the great mountain region separating the plains of Mesopotamia from the highlands of Persia. In the time of the Saljūḳ princes, by some misnomer, this, their capital province, came to be called ‘Irāḳ ‘Ajamī, or Persian ‘Irāḳ, a name that was totally unknown to the earlier Arab geographers. Hence in after days Al-‘Irāḳayn, ‘The Two ‘Irāḳs,’ were taken to mean Media and Lower Mesopotamia, which last for distinction was thenceforth called Arabian ‘Irāḳ — ‘Ir¯ḳ ‘Arabī. Originally, it is to be observed, Al-‘Irāḳayn had been a term applied to the two great cities of (Arabian) ‘Irāḳ, namely, Kūfah and Baṣrah; but the Saljūḳs had affected the title of Sulṭān of the Two ‘Irāḳs, which in consequence, as explained above, came to be applied to the two provinces, but as Abu-l-Fidā (p. 408) writes “among the vulgar,” and wrongfully (see also Yāḳūt, ii, 15, and Lane, Dictionary, s.v. ‘Irāḳ). The name, however, has continued in use down to the present time.
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References
page 239 note 1 The numbers in square brackets refer to the Map.
page 240 note 1 Otherwise called Ḥusayn, a son of the eighth Imām, ‘Alī-ar-Riḍā. Ṭabarik is also the name of the Castle of Isfahān, which, according to ‘Alī of Yazd (Ẓafar Nāmah, i, 431), was occupied by Timur, and of which the ruins still exist. The foundation of Ḳal'ah Ṭabarik of Ray is ascribed by Ẓahīr-ad-Dīn (Dorn, Muhammedanische Quellen, i, p. 15 of the Persian text) to Manūchahr the Ziyārid, at the beginning of the fifth century (the eleventh A.D.), and he states that Tabarik means a ‘ hillock,’ being the diminutive form of Tabar, signifying a ‘ hill or mountain,’ in the Ṭabaristān dialect. According to Yāḳūt (iii, 507), Ṭabarik of Eay was destroyed in 588 (1192 A.D.) by Tughril II, the last Saljūḳ Sulṭān of ‘Irāḳ, and Yāḳūt gives a long account of the siege of the famous castle.
page 243 note 1 Meaning ‘ the Castle of Sāin,’ possibly called after Ṣāin, otherwise Bātū Khān, grandson of Changhīz Khān.
page 245 note 1 The paragraph is given at the end of Section xi of Chapter IV, immediately before the Section devoted to the Mongols. It is wanting in many MSS., but occurs in the old MS. of which I made a copy in Shīrāz in 1880, and also is found in the British Museum MSS. numbered Add. 7,630, Add. 22,693, and Egerton, 690.
page 248 note 1 The Arab geographers generally give Ardabīl as the capital city; and this became also the capital of Persia under the earlier Safavī kings, until Shāh ‘Abbās removed his court to Isfahān.
page 249 note 1 The MSS. vary greatly as to the spelling of the name; Janjast, Janjīsh, Khujant, and Ḥanjast appear with other variants. The mediæval Arab geographers knew of the lake also under various names : thus Mas‘ūdī (i, 98) and Ibn Ḥawḳal (p. 247) call it the Lake of Kabūdhān, Iṣṭakhrī (p. 181) writes of the Buḥayrab-ash-Sharāt, and in Muḳaddasī (p. 380) it is called merely the Lake of Urmīyah. Abu-l-Fidā (p. 42) knows it as the Lake of Tilā ; and according to Ḥāfiẓ Abrū (MSS., folio 27a) the island in the middle of the lake (now the Shāhī peninsula, which only becomes an island at flood-water: see Günther, R. T., Geographical Journal for 1899, p. 516Google Scholar) was crowned by the castle known as Ḳal‘ah Tilā, said to have been built by Hūlāgū Khān. He had stored his treasures here, and after his death his tomb was made in this castle, which henceforth was called Gūr-Kal‘ah, or ‘ Tomb-Castle,’
page 249 note 2 Both spellings are given in the MSS. and occur on the present maps. In the map to the paper referred to in the previous note, Mr. Günther gives the name as Turseh.
page 252 note 1 Part of its course is now known as the Ḳizil Uzen, which in Turkish has the same meaning. For the Mongol words see Mongolisch-Deutsch Wörterbueh, by J. J. Schmidt, pp. 52b and 223c. From this and other passages, it is clear that Mustawfi uses Mughāl (Mongol) and Turk indifferently.
page 252 note 2 This stream is now called the Shāhrūd, like the great right bank affluent from the mountains north of Ḳazvīn, with which it must not be confounded.
page 252 note 3 These are described by General Schindler in the Berlin Zeischrift für Erdkunde, 1883, p. 338, and a plan is there given.
page 261 note 1 Ḳulūniyah of the Arab geographers is generally identified with Colonia, founded by Pompey as described by Procopius, which the Armenians call Aghoyendzor, or Goghonia, and which lies about 60 miles north-west of Kamḳḥ. See Saint Martin, Mémoire sur l'Arménie, i, 189.
page 264 note 1 Not to be confounded with Ḥadīthah on the Euphrates, mentioned in Chapter 1.
page 264 note 2 British Museum MSS., Add. 7,708, 16,737, and 23,543. Not to be confounded with Arzan-ár-Rūm, otherwise Erzerum. In the Ẓafar Nāmah (i, 665) the name is spelt Arzin.
page 264 note 3 Unless for Bāṣsaydah we read Bāṣabdah, which might be merely another way of spelling Bāzabdā (as the name is given by Yāḳūt, i, 466), the well-known town on the eastern bank of the Tigris opposite Jazīrah Ibn ‘Omar, which had been the Roman fortress of Bezabda.
page 265 note 1 Those cited above, and others.