Art. IV.—Description of Persia and Mesopotamia in the Year 1340 A.D

49 ART. IV.—Description of Pers-in and Mesopotamia in the year 1340 A.D. from tlie Nuzhat-al-Kulub of Hamd-Allah Mustawfi, with a summary of the contents of that work. By Gr. LE STRANGE. IT is very generally a matter of complaint that the lithographed editions of Persian and Arabic works published in the East are, for the most part, unprovided with any index or full table of contents; and, further, that when the book treats of geography or history, the proper names of both persons and places are too often given in a manner that at first sight defies identification. Half a loaf, however, is proverbially better than no bread, and, until from some quarter funds are forthcoming to defray the cost of printing Persian texts in Europe, scholars would often be able to make use of the editions lithographed in India or elsewhere, if the true reading of the proper names were fixed by a collation of the best manuscripts, and if a full table of contents were available for purposes of reference. In many cases also a Persian work will only contain one part, or a series of chapters, that pre-eminently is of interest to Western scholars: and the remark, of course,- applies more especially to the Cosmographies where the geographical chapters alone are of first-rate importance, as also to those numerous Universal Histories where only the concluding sections, dealing with the author's own time, can in any way be considered as of primary authority. An instance in point is, I consider, the cosmographical work of Hamd-Allah Mustawfi, which forms the subject of the present article, and of which a lithographed edition appeared in Bombay in 1894 (A.H. 1311) under the editorship of Mlrza Mahdi ShirazI, being published by Mlraa Muhammad ShirazI, surnamed Malik-al-Kuttab, or the Chief of the Scriveners. J.K.A.S. 1902. 4 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 12 Oct 2018 at 07:18:35, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00157089 50 PERSIA UNDER THE MONGOLS. Hamd-Allah Mustawfi and his two principal works—the history called the Tarikh-i-Guzidah, and the Nuzhat-al-Kulub, which last is now under discussion—were fully noticed by Mr. E. G. Browne in this Journal in a paper on "The Sources of Dawlatshah " (J.R.A.S. for January, 1899), and more recently (October, 1900) he has given us a translation of the section on the " Biographies of the Persian Poets" from the Guzidah, with a detailed account of the contents of that historical work, of which he hopes later on to publish an edition of the Persian text. As a complement and commentary to the Guzidah, the geographical part of the Nnzhat-al-Kulub is of considerable importance. Further, and from the point of view of historical geography, it is of special interest, since it gives us a detailed description of Persia in the age immediately succeeding that of the travels of Marco Polo. The first half of the fourteenth century A.D. may indeed be regarded as a turning-point in the history of Western Asia, being a period of comparative calm coming between the epoch-marking conquests of the Mongols under Changhiz Khan and the no less revolutionary period of conquest by Timur. From a geographical point of view it was a time of transition. Before this we have the lands of Islam under the Abbasid Caliphs, as described by the Arab geographers Istakhri, Ibn Hawkal, and MukaddasT; after this there is Western Asia, as shown on our present maps, which last may be held to date from the changes I effected by the conquests of Timur and the subsequent partition of his empire among his descendants and successors. Nearly forty years ago Monsieur Barbier de Meynard (now director of the Mcole des Langues Orientates Vivantes in Paris) gave us the translation of the greater part of the geographical section of the Nuzhat-al-Kulub in the notes to his well- known Dictionnaire de la Perse,1 which is based on the geographical encyclopaedia of Yakut. To the information contained in this book I must express my great indebtedness, and I may take the occasion of bearing witness to the 1 Small 4to. Paris, Imprimerie Imperiale, 1861. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 12 Oct 2018 at 07:18:35, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00157089 PERSIA UNDER THE MONGOLS. 51 admirable accuracy of Monsieur B. de JVIeynard's work, which, it should be remembered, had to be entirely based on manuscript material, being translated directly from the Paris MSS. of the Mu'jam-al-Buldan. Since 1861 the whole text of Yakut has been edited by Professor Wiistenfeld ; also, in his Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, Professor de Groeje has now given us admirable editions of nearly all the earlier Arab geographers: it is therefore very easy to verify, by a reference to the texts, the translations given by Monsieur B. de Meynard ; and it will be remembered that the Dictionnaire de la Perse is still the only portion of Yakut's great Encyclopaedia of which a complete translation exists in any European language. Seeing, therefore, that we have here a translation of all the longer articles in the Nvzhat which treat of the towns described by Hamd-Allah, I shall only attempt in this paper to complete his lists of names, referring my readers to the pages of the Dictionnaire de la Perse for all further information in detail. My arrangement of the materials will, however, be somewhat different, for the Dictionnaire de la Perse being set in. alphabetical order, no account is taken of the enumeration of the places as grouped by Hamd-Allah, under the various provinces, and this arrangement, for the elucidation of the historical geography of the period, is, I deem, of much importance. Then, again, Monsieur B. de Meynard, as he acknowledges in his preface,1 has made no attempt to identify the sites of places mentioned by Hamd-Allah, as, indeed, this was inevitable forty years ago, for our maps of Persia were then in many parts a blank. Since that time, however, a host of travellers and explorers have filled in the names, and at the present day most part of the great plateau of Iran has been explored. I need only mention the numerous excellent maps published by General Houtum indigenes. J'espere qu'il me sera donne un jour de travailler a ] difficile probleme, au moins, en ce qui touche la Perse: aujourd'hui je l'ai ecarte de propos delibere." • Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 12 Oct 2018 at 07:18:35, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00157089 52 PERSIA UNDER THE MONGOLS. Schindler in the Berlin Zeitschrift der Gesellscha/t fur Erdkunde, and the maps given by Monsieur J. de Morgan in his Mission Scientifique en Perse—which last is still in course of publication—as instances of completed surveys of the individual provinces under investigation ; while in the numerous papers devoted to Persia contained in recent volumes of the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society I have found much to aid me in the identification of ancient with modern sites. My mainstay, however, has been the great Map of Persia, in six sheets, on the scale of sixteen miles to the inch, published by the War Office Intelligence Department in 1886. For the true spelling of the place-names1 I have had re- course to the systematic Itineraries given by Ibn Khurdadbih and Kudamah, supplemented by the detail of routes found in the works of Ya'kubl, Ibn Rustah, Istakhrl, Ibn Hawkal, and MukaddasI, all of which date from the middle of the third to the last quarter of the fourth century A.H. (ninth and tenth centuries A.D.). These mediaeval Arab Road- books have enabled me to correct, and hence profit by, the very full Itinerary which Hamd-Allah himself gives at the close of his description of Iran. This Persian Itinerary is now published for the first time, and it has made the location of a number of mediaeval towns and districts possible, all traces of which have long since disappeared from the modern map. As an instance I may mention the Mint-city of Saburkhwast in Luristan, which Hamd-Allah shows to be not the modern Khurramabad, as has often been supposed; then some important details are given about Slrjan, the capital of Kirman, and about Old Hurmuz; and we are now enabled to fix approximately by these Persian Itineraries the positions of many lost towns such as Talikan and Faryab of south-eastern Khurasan ; also Kaghaz-Kunan and Bajarvan, 1 The spelling of Persian place-names is far from being consistent. The Persian for ' village,' now written and pronounced Dih (vowel short), is generally in the MSS. written Dih, with the vowel long. Other common variations are Isfahan or Isfahan, Hnrmuz or Hurmuz, Tihran or Tihriin, Kuhistan or Klihistan. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 12 Oct 2018 at 07:18:35, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00157089 I'ERSIA UNDER THE MONGOLS. 53 once important cities on the great northern high road from Adharbayjan towards the Caucasus frontier, besides many villages and post-stations.

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