550 Sino-Iranica 



San-fu-ts'i (Palembang) and Malabar. 1 In vain also should we look in 

 Chinese books for anything on the subject that would correspond to the 

 importance attached to it in the West. 



Garcia da Orta (1562) held it for certain that "all the rhubarb 

 that comes from Ormuz to India first comes from China to Ormuz by 

 the province of Uzbeg which is part of Tartary. The fame is that it 

 comes from China by land, but some say that it grows in the same 

 province, at a city called £amarcander (Samarkand) . 2 But this is very 

 bad and of little weight. Horses are purged with it in Persia, and I 

 have also seen it so used in Balagate. It seems to me that this is the 

 rhubarb which in Europe we called ravam turquino, not because it is 

 of Turkey but from there." He emphasizes the point that there is no 

 other rhubarb than that from China, and that the rhubarb coming to 

 Persia or Uzbeg goes thence to Venice and to Spain; some goes to 

 Venice by way of Alexandria, a good deal by Aleppo and Syrian Tripoli, 

 all these routes being partly by sea, but chiefly by land; 3 the rhubarb 

 is not so much powdered, for it is more rubbed in a month at sea than in 

 a year going by land. 4 As early as the thirteenth century at least, as we 

 see from Ibn al-Baitar, what was known to the Arabs as "rhubarb of 

 the Turks or the Persians," in fact hailed from China. In the same 

 manner, it was at a later time that in Europe "Russian, Turkey, and 

 China rhubarb" were distinguished, these names being merely in- 

 dicative of the various routes by which the drug was conveyed to 

 Europe from China. 5 Also Christoval Acosta notes the corruption 

 of rhubarb at sea and its overland transportation to Persia, Arabia, 

 and Alexandria. 3 



1 Hirth, Chau Ju-kua, pp. 61, 88. 



2 Probably Rheum ribes, mentioned above. 



s Leonhart Rauwolf (Beschreibung der Raiss inn die Morgenlander, 1583, 

 p. 461) reports that large quantities of rhubarb are shipped from India to Aleppo 

 both by sea and by land. 



4 Cf . Markham, Colloquies,, pp. 390-392. 



5 In regard to the Russian trade in rhubarb see G. Cahen, Le livre de comptes 

 de la caravane russe a P£kin, p. 108 (Paris, 191 1). 



6 Reobarbaro (medicina singular, y digna de ser de todo el linage humano ve- 

 nerada) se halla solamente dentro de la China, de donde lo traen a vender a Cataon 

 (que es el puerto de mas comercio de la China, donde estan los Portugueses) y de 

 alii viene po« mar a la India: y deste que viene por mar no se haze mucho caso, por 

 venir, por la mayor parte corropido (por quanto el Reobarbaro se corrope co mucha 

 facilidad enla mar) y dela misma tierra d e tro de la China, lo lleuan a la Tartaria, 

 y por la prouincia de Vzbeque lo lleua a Ormuz, y a toda la Persia, Arabia, y Alex- 

 adria: de dode se distribuye por toda la Europa (Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas 

 de las Indias Orientales, p. 287, Burgos, 1576). Cf. also Linschoten (Vol. II, 

 p. 101, ed. of Hakluyt Society), who, as in most of his notices of Indian products, 

 exploits Garcia. 



