The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 67

(_Erdmann_, 404-405; _I. B._ III. 59; _Clavijo_, p. 117; _Burnes_, II.

204-206; _Ferrier_, 206-207.)

According to the legendary history of Alexander, the beautiful Roxana was the daughter of Darius, and her father in a dying interview with Alexander requested the latter to make her his wife:--

"Une fille ai mult bele; se prendre le voles.

Vus en seres de l'mont tout li mius maries," etc.

(_Lambert Le Court_, p. 256.)

NOTE 2.--The country called _Dogana_ in the G. Text is a puzzle. In the former edition I suggested _Juzgana_, a name which till our author's time was applied to a part of the adjoining territory, though not to that traversed in quitting Balkh for the east. Sir H. Rawlinson is inclined to refer the name to _Dehgan_, or "villager," a term applied in Bactria, and in Kabul, to Tajik peasantry[1]. I may also refer to certain pa.s.sages in Baber's "Memoirs," in which he speaks of a place, and apparently a district, called _Dehanah_, which seems from the context to have lain in the vicinity of the Ghori, or Aksarai River. There is still a village in the Ghori territory, called _Dehanah_. Though this is worth mentioning, where the true solution is so uncertain, I acknowledge the difficulty of applying it. I may add also that Baber calls the River of Ghori or Aksarai, the _Dogh_-abah. (_Sprenger, P. und R. Routen_, p. 39 and Map; _Anderson_ in _J. A. S. B._ XXII. 161; _Ilch._ II. 93; _Baber_, pp. 132, 134, 168, 200, also 146.)

NOTE 3.--Though Burnes speaks of the part of the road that we suppose necessarily to have been here followed from Balkh towards Taican, as barren and dreary, he adds that the ruins of _aqueducts_ and houses proved that the land had at one time been peopled, though now dest.i.tute of water, and consequently of inhabitants. The country would seem to have reverted at the time of Burnes' journey, from like causes, nearly to the state in which Marco found it after the Mongol devastations.

_Lions_ seem to mean here the real king of beasts, and not tigers, as hereafter in the book. Tigers, though found on the S. and W. sh.o.r.es of the Caspian, do not seem to exist in the Oxus valley. On the other hand, Rashiduddin tells us that, when Hulaku was reviewing his army after the pa.s.sage of the river, several lions were started, and two were killed. The lions are also mentioned by Sidi 'Ali, the Turkish Admiral, further down the valley towards Hazarasp: "We were obliged to fight with the lions day and night, and no man dared to go alone for water." Moorcroft says of the plain between Kunduz and the Oxus: "Deer, foxes, wolves, hogs, and _lions_ are numerous, the latter resembling those in the vicinity of Hariana" (in Upper India). Wood also mentions lions in Kulab, and at Kila'chap on the Oxus. Q. Curtius tells how Alexander killed a great lion in the country north of the Oxus towards Samarkand. [A similar story is told of Timur in _The Mulfuzat Timury_, translated by Major Charles Stewart, 1830 (p. 69): "During the march '(near Balkh)' two lions made their appearance, one of them a male, the other a female. I (Timur) resolved to kill them myself, and having shot them both with arrows, I considered this circ.u.mstance as a lucky omen."--H. C.] (_Burnes_, II. 200; _Q. R._ 155; _Ilch._ I. 90; _J.

As._ IX. 217; _Moorcroft_, II. 430; _Wood_, ed. 1872, pp. 259,260; _Q. C._ VII. 2.)

[1] It may be observed that the careful Elphinstone distinguishes from this general application of Dehgan or Dehkan, the name _Deggan_ applied to a tribe "once spread over the north-east of Afghanistan, but now as a separate people only in Kunar and Laghman."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

OF TAICAN, AND THE MOUNTAINS OF SALT. ALSO OF THE PROVINCE OF CASEM.

After those twelve days' journey you come to a fortified place called TAICAN, where there is a great corn market.[NOTE 1] It is a fine place, and the mountains that you see towards the south are all composed of salt.

People from all the countries round, to some thirty days' journey, come to fetch this salt, which is the best in the world, and is so hard that it can only be broken with iron picks. 'Tis in such abundance that it would supply the whole world to the end of time. [Other mountains there grow almonds and pistachioes, which are exceedingly cheap.][NOTE 2]

When you leave this town and ride three days further between north-east and east, you meet with many fine tracts full of vines and other fruits, and with a goodly number of habitations, and everything to be had very cheap. The people are worshippers of Mahommet, and are an evil and a murderous generation, whose great delight is in the wine shop; for they have good wine (albeit it be boiled), and are great topers; in truth, they are constantly getting drunk. They wear nothing on the head but a cord some ten palms long twisted round it. They are excellent huntsmen, and take a great deal of game; in fact they wear nothing but the skins of the beasts they have taken in the chase, for they make of them both coats and shoes. Indeed, all of them are acquainted with the art of dressing skins for these purposes.[NOTE 3]

When you have ridden those three days, you find a town called CASEM,[NOTE 4] which is subject to a count. His other towns and villages are on the hills, but through this town there flows a river of some size. There are a great many porcupines hereabouts, and very large ones too. When hunted with dogs, several of them will get together and huddle close, shooting their quills at the dogs, which get many a serious wound thereby.[NOTE 5]

This town of Casem is at the head of a very great province, which is also called Casem. The people have a peculiar language. The peasants who keep cattle abide in the mountains, and have their dwellings in caves, which form fine and s.p.a.cious houses for them, and are made with ease, as the hills are composed of earth.[NOTE 6]

After leaving the town of Casem, you ride for three days without finding a single habitation, or anything to eat or drink, so that you have to carry with you everything that you require. At the end of those three days you reach a province called Badashan, about which we shall now tell you.[NOTE 7]

NOTE 1.--The _Taican_ of Polo is the still existing TALIKAN in the province of Kataghan or Kunduz, but it bears the former name (_Thaikan_) in the old Arab geographies. Both names are used by Baber, who says it lay in the _Ulugh Bagh_, or Great Garden, a name perhaps acquired by the Plains of Talikan in happier days, but ill.u.s.trating what Polo says of the next three days' march. The Castle of Talikan resisted Chinghiz for seven months, and met with the usual fate (1221). [In the Travels of Sidi Ali, son of Housan (_Jour. Asiat._, October, 1826, p. 203), "Talikan, in the country of Badakhschan" is mentioned.--H. C.] Wood speaks of Talikan in 1838 as a poor place of some 300 or 400 houses, mere hovels; a recent account gives it 500 families. Market days are not usual in Upper India or Kabul, but are universal in Badakhshan and the Oxus provinces. The bazaars are only open on those days, and the people from the surrounding country then a.s.semble to exchange goods, generally by barter. Wood chances to note: "A market was held at Talikan.... The thronged state of the roads leading into it soon apprised us that the day was no ordinary one."

(_Abulf._ in _Busching_, V. 352; _Sprenger_, p. 50; _P. de la Croix_, I.

63; _Baber_, 38, 130; _Burnes_, III. 8; _Wood_, 156; _Pandit Manphul's Report_.)

The distance of Talikan from Balkh is about 170 miles, which gives very short marches, if twelve days be the correct reading. Ramusio has _two_ days, which is certainly wrong. XII. is easily miswritten for VII., which would be a just number.

NOTE 2.--In our day, as I learn from Pandit Manphul, the mines of rock salt are at Ak Bulak, near the Lataband Pa.s.s, and at Daruna, near the Kokcha, and these supply the whole of Badakhshan, as well as Kunduz and Chitral. These sites are due _east_ of Talikan, and are in Badakhshan. But there is a mine at _Chal_, S.E. or S.S.E. of Talikan and within the same province. There are also mines of rock-salt near the famous "stone bridge"

in Kulab, north of the Oxus, and again on the south of the Ala steppe.

(Papers by _Manphul_ and by _Faiz Baksh_; also _Notes_ by _Feachenko_.)

Both pistachioes and wild almonds are mentioned by Pandit Manphul; and see _Wood_ (p. 252) on the beauty and profusion of the latter.

NOTE 3.--Wood thinks that the Tajik inhabitants of Badakhshan and the adjoining districts are substantially of the same race as the Kafir tribes of Hindu Kush. At the time of Polo's visit it would seem that their conversion to Islam was imperfect. They were probably in that transition state which obtains in our own day for some of the Hill Mahomedans adjoining the Kafirs on the south side of the mountains the reproachful t.i.tle of _Nimchah Musulman_, or Half-and-halfs. Thus they would seem to have retained sundry Kafir characteristics; among others that love of wine which is so strong among the Kafirs. The boiling of the wine is noted by Baber (a connoisseur) as the custom of Nijrao, adjoining, if not then included in, Kafir-land; and Elphinstone implies the continuance of the custom when he speaks of the Kafirs as having wine of _the consistence of jelly_, and very strong. The wine of _Kapishi_, the Greek Kapisa, immediately south of Hindu Kush, was famous as early as the time of the Hindu grammarian Panini, say three centuries B.C. The cord twisted round the head was probably also a relic of Kafir costume: "Few of the Kafirs cover the head, and when they do, it is with a narrow band or fillet of goat's hair ... about a yard or a yard and a half in length, wound round the head." This style of head-dress seems to be very ancient in India, and in the Sanchi sculptures is that of the supposed Dasyas. Something very similar, i.e. a scanty turban cloth twisted into a mere cord, and wound two or three times round the head, is often seen in the Panjab to this day.

The _Postin_ or sheepskin coat is almost universal on both sides of the Hindu Kush; and Wood notes: "The shoes in use resemble half-boots, made of goatskin, and mostly of home manufacture." (_Baber_, 145; _J. A. S. B._ XXVIII. 348, 364; _Elphinst._ II. 384; _Ind. Antiquary_, I. 22; _Wood_, 174, 220; _J. R. A. S._ XIX. 2.)

NOTE 4.--Marsden was right in identifying _Sca.s.sem_ or _Casem_ with the _Kechem_ of D'Anville's Map, but wrong in confounding the latter with the _Kishmabad_ of Elphinstone--properly, I believe, _Kishnabad_--in the Anderab Valley. Kashm, or Keshm, found its way into maps through Petis de la Croix, from whom probably D'Anville adopted it; but as it was ignored by Elphinstone (or by Macartney, who constructed his map), and by Burnes, it dropped out of our geography. Indeed, Wood does not notice it except as giving name to a high hill called the Hill of Kishm, and the position even of that he omits to indicate. The frequent mention of Kishm in the histories of Timur and Humayun (e.g. _P. de la Croix_, I. 167; _N. et E._ XIV. 223, 491; _Erskine's Baber and Humayun_, II. 330, 355, etc.) had enabled me to determine its position within tolerably narrow limits; but desiring to fix it definitely, application was made through Colonel Maclagan to Pandit Manphul, C.S.I., a very intelligent Hindu gentleman, who resided for some time in Badakhshan as agent of the Panjab Government, and from him arrived a special note and sketch, and afterwards a MS. copy of a Report,[1] which set the position of Kishm at rest.

KISHM is the _Kilissemo_, i.e. Karisma or Krishma, of Hinen Tsang; and Sir H. Rawlinson has identified the Hill of Kishm with the Mount Kharesem of the Zend-Avesta, on which Jamshid placed the most sacred of all the fires.

It is now a small town or large village on the right bank of the Varsach river, a tributary of the Kokcha. It was in 1866 the seat of a district ruler under the Mir of Badakhshan, who was styled the Mir of Kishm, and is the modern counterpart of Marco's _Quens_ or Count. The modern caravan-road between Kunduz and Badakhshan does not pa.s.s through Kishm, which is left some five miles to the right, but through the town of Mashhad, which stands on the same river. Kishm is the warmest district of Badakhshan. Its fruits are abundant, and ripen a month earlier than those at Faizabad, the capital of that country. The Varsach or Mashhad river is Marco's "_Flum auques grant_." Wood (247) calls it "the largest stream we had yet forded in Badakhshan."

It is very notable that in Ramusio, in Pipino, and in one pa.s.sage of the G. Text, the name is written _Scasem_, which has led some to suppose the _Ish-Kashm_ of Wood to be meant. That place is much too far east--in fact, beyond the city which forms the subject of the next chapter. The apparent hesitation, however, between the forms _Casem_ and _Scasem_ suggests that the Kishm of our note may formerly have been termed S'kashm or Ish-Kashm, a form frequent in the Oxus Valley, e.g. _Ish-Kimish, Ish-Kashm, Ishtrakh, Ishpingao_. General Cunningham judiciously suggests (_Ladak_, 34) that this form is merely a vocal corruption of the initial _S_ before a consonant, a combination which always troubles the Musulman in India, and converts every Mr. Smith or Mr. Sparks into Ismit or Ispak Sahib.

[There does not seem to me any difficulty about this note: "Shibarkhan (Afghan Turkistan), Balkh, Kunduz, Khanabad, Talikan, Kishm, Badakhshan."

I am tempted to look for Dogana at Khanabad.--H. C.]

NOTE 5.--The belief that the porcupine _projected_ its quills at its a.s.sailants was an ancient and persistent one--"_c.u.m intendit cutem missiles_," says Pliny (VIII. 35, and see also _Aelian. de Nat. An._ I.

31), and is held by the Chinese as it was held by the ancients, but is universally rejected by modern zoologists. The huddling and coiling appears to be a true characteristic, for the porcupine always tries to shield its head.

NOTE 6.--The description of Kishm as a "very great" province is an example of a bad habit of Marco's, which recurs in the next chapter. What he says of the cave-dwellings may be ill.u.s.trated by Burnes's account of the excavations at Bamian, in a neighbouring district. These "still form the residence of the greater part of the population.... The hills at Bamian are formed of indurated clay and pebbles, which renders this excavation a matter of little difficulty." Similar occupied excavations are noticed by Moorcroft at Heibak and other places towards Khulm.

Curiously, Pandit Manphul says of the districts about the Kokcha: "Both their hills and plains are productive, the former _being mostly composed of earth, having very little of rocky substance_."

NOTE 7.--The capital of Badakhshan is now Faizabad, on the right bank of the Kokcha, founded, according to Manphul, by Yarbeg, the first Mir of the present dynasty. When this family was displaced for a time, by Murad Beg of Kunduz, about 1829, the place was abandoned for years, but is now re-occupied. The ancient capital of Badakhshan stood in the Dasht (or Plain) of Baharak, one of the most extensive pieces of level in Badakhshan, in which the rivers Vardoj, Zardeo, and Sarghalan unite with the Kokcha, and was apparently termed _Jauzgun_. This was probably the city called Badakhshan by our traveller.[2] As far as I can estimate, by the help of Wood and the map I have compiled, this will be from 100 to 110 miles distant from Talikan, and will therefore suit fairly with the six marches that Marco lays down.

Wood, in 1838, found the whole country between Talikan and Faizabad nearly as depopulated as Marco found that between Kishm and Badakhshan. The modern depopulation was due--in part, at least--to the recent oppressions and _razzias_ of the Uzbeks of Kunduz. On their decline, between 1840 and 1850, the family of the native Mirs was reinstated, and these now rule at Faizabad, under an acknowledgment, since 1859, of Afghan supremacy.

[1] Since published in _J. K. G. S._ vol. xlii.

[2] Wilford, in the end of the 18th century, speaks of Faizabad as "the new capital of Badakhshan, built near the site of the old one." The Chinese map (vide _J. R. G. S._ vol. xlii.) represents the city of _Badakhshan_ to the east of Faizabad. Faiz Bakhsh, in an unpublished paper, mentions a tradition that the Lady Zobeidah, dear to English children, the daughter of Al-Mansur and wife of Ar-Rashid, delighted to pa.s.s the spring at Jauzgun, and built a palace there, "the ruins of which are still visible."

CHAPTER XXIX.

OF THE PROVINCE OF BADASHAN.

Badashan is a Province inhabited by people who worship Mahommet, and have a peculiar language. It forms a very great kingdom, and the royalty is hereditary. All those of the royal blood are descended from King Alexander and the daughter of King Darius, who was Lord of the vast Empire of Persia. And all these kings call themselves in the Saracen tongue ZULCARNIAIN, which is as much as to say _Alexander_; and this out of regard for Alexander the Great.[NOTE 1]

It is in this province that those fine and valuable gems the Balas Rubies are found. They are got in certain rocks among the mountains, and in the search for them the people dig great caves underground, just as is done by miners for silver. There is but one special mountain that produces them, and it is called SYGHINAN. The stones are dug on the king's account, and no one else dares dig in that mountain on pain of forfeiture of life as well as goods; nor may any one carry the stones out of the kingdom. But the king ama.s.ses them all, and sends them to other kings when he has tribute to render, or when he desires to offer a friendly present; and such only as he pleases he causes to be sold. Thus he acts in order to keep the Balas at a high value; for if he were to allow everybody to dig, they would extract so many that the world would be glutted with them, and they would cease to bear any value. Hence it is that he allows so few to be taken out, and is so strict in the matter.[NOTE 2]

There is also in the same country another mountain, in which azure is found; 'tis the finest in the world, and is got in a vein like silver.

There are also other mountains which contain a great amount of silver ore, so that the country is a very rich one; but it is also (it must be said) a very cold one.[NOTE 3] It produces numbers of excellent horses, remarkable for their speed. They are not shod at all, although constantly used in mountainous country, and on very bad roads. [They go at a great pace even down steep descents, where other horses neither would nor could do the like. And Messer Marco was told that not long ago they possessed in that province a breed of horses from the strain of Alexander's horse Bucephalus, all of which had from their birth a particular mark on the forehead. This breed was entirely in the hands of an uncle of the king's; and in consequence of his refusing to let the king have any of them, the latter put him to death. The widow then, in despite, destroyed the whole breed, and it is now extinct.[NOTE 4]]

The mountains of this country also supply Saker falcons of excellent flight, and plenty of Lanners likewise. Beasts and birds for the chase there are in great abundance. Good wheat is grown, and also barley without husk. They have no olive oil, but make oil from sesame, and also from walnuts.[NOTE 5]

[In the mountains there are vast numbers of sheep--400, 500, or 600 in a single flock, and all of them wild; and though many of them are taken, they never seem to get aught the scarcer.[NOTE 6]