ARAB GEOGRAPHERS 



brownies), they live on plants that the earth produces of itself. 

 There was a further large island " al-Gaur," with abundance 

 of grass and plants of all kinds, where wild asses and oxen with 

 unusually long horns lived in the thickets. There was the Isle 

 of Lamentation (" gazirat al-mustashkin"), which was in- 

 habited, and had mountains, rivers, many trees, fruits, and 

 tilled fields; but where there was a terrible dragon, of which 

 Alexander freed the inhabitants. On the island of " Kalhan " 

 in the same sea the inhabitants have the form of men but 

 animal heads; another island was called the Isle of the Two 

 Heathen Brothers, who practised piracy and were changed into 

 two rocks. He also names the Island of Sheep and " Raka," 

 which is the Island of Birds (cf. pp. 51, 55). 



" To the islands in this sea belongs also the island of " Shasland " [presum- 

 ably Shetland, perhaps confused with Iceland], the length of which is fifteen 

 days' journey, and the breadth ten. It had three towns, large and populous; 

 ships put in and stayed there to buy ambra [amber?] and stones of various 

 colors; but the majority of the inhabitants perished in dissensions and civil 

 war which took place in the country. Many of them removed to the coast of 

 the European continent, where large numbers of this people still live. . . ." 



What is here said about this island is approximately the 

 same as Edrisi elsewhere states about the island of Scotland, 

 following the " Book of Wonders," which is attributed to 

 Mas'udi. 



It will be seen that he has a very heterogeneous mixture of 

 islands in this western ocean. Some of them, like the Island 

 of Sheep and that of Birds, as already suggested (p. 55), 

 probably came from Ireland, and this whole archipelago is 

 evidently related to the numerous islands of Irish legend, and 

 points to an ancient connection, which may have consisted in 

 reciprocal influence; while many of these conceptions traveled 

 from the East through the Arabs to western Europe and Ireland, 

 the Arabs again may have received ideas from the Irish and 

 from western Europe and carried them to the East. Thus 

 Edrisi relates that, according to the author (Mas^udi) of the 

 "Book of Wonders," the king of France sent a ship (which 



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