500 Sino-Iranica 



text to this effect may be noted here. Ibn al-Faqih, who wrote in 

 a.d. 902, has this account: "In Kirman there is wood that is not burnt 

 by fire, but comes out undamaged. 1 A Christian 2 wanted to commit 

 frauds with such wood by asserting that it was derived from the cross of 

 the Messiah. Christian folks were thus almost led into temptation. A 

 theologian, noting this man, brought them a piece of wood from Kir- 

 man, which was still more impervious to fire than his cross-wood." 

 According to P. Schwarz, 3 to whom we owe the translation of this 

 passage, the question here is of fossilized forests. Most assuredly, how- 

 ever, asbestos is understood. The above text of the Wei lu is thus by 

 far the earliest allusion to asbestos from an Iranian region. 



The following notes may serve as additional information to my 

 former contribution. Cou Mi M $? (1230-13 20), in his Ci ya Van tsa 

 c'ao Je£ #i ^ H ^, mentions asbestine stuffs twice. 4 In one passage 

 he relates that in his house there was a piece of fire-proof cloth (hwo 

 hwan pu) over a foot long, which his maternal grandfather had once 

 obtained in Ts'uan Cou ^. 'M (Fu-kien Province). 5 Visitors to his house 

 were entertained by the experiment of placing it on the fire of a brazier. 

 Subsequently Cao Mon-i fit j£l HI borrowed it from him, but never 

 returned it. In the other text he quotes a certain Ho Ts'ih-fu W. W ^ 

 to the effect that fire-proof cloth is said to represent the fibres of the 

 mineral coal of northern China, burnt and woven, but not the hair of 

 the fire-rodent (salamander). This is accompanied by the comment 

 that coal cannot be wrought into fibres, but that now pu-hwei-mu 

 -T J^ ?fc (a kind of asbestos) is found in Pao-tih (Ci-li). 6 A brief notice 

 of asbestos is inserted in the Ko ku yao lun, 7 where merely the old fables 

 are reiterated. Information on the asbestos of Ci-li Province will be 



1 Qazwlnl adds to this passage, "even if deft in fire for several days." 



a Qazwlnl speaks in general of charlatans. 



3 Iran im Mittelalter, p. 214. 



1 Ch. A, p. 20 b; and Ch. B, p. 25 b (ed. of Yue ya Van ts'un Su). 



5 This locality renders it almost certain that this specimen belonged to those 

 imported by the Arabs into China during the middle ages (p. 331 of my article). 

 The asbestos of Mosul is already mentioned in the Lin wai tai ta (Ch. 3, p. 4). 



8 The term pu-hwei-mu ("wood burning without ashes, incombustible wood") 

 appears as early as the Sung period in the Cen lei pen ts'ao (Ch. 5, p. 35): it comes 

 from San- tan (south-east portion of San-si and part of Ho-nan), and is now found 

 in the Tse-lu mountains : \$fc |JL| . It is a kind of stone, of green and white color, 

 looking like rotten wood, and cannot be consumed by fire. Some call it the root of 

 soapstone. 



7 Ch. 8, p. 4 (ed. of Si yin Man ts'un $u). In Ch. 7, p. 17, there is a notice on 

 pu-hwei-mu stone, stated to be a product of Tse-cbu and Lu-han in San-si, and em- 

 ployed for lamps. 



