ILLUSTRATIONS (23). MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON. 115 



name of the mountains regarded by Leo Africanus as furnish- 

 ing the sources of the Nile, has generally been rendered 

 ' Mountains of the Moon,' and I have adhered to the same 

 practice. I do not know whether the Arabs originally bor- 

 rowed this denomination from Ptolemy. It may indeed be 

 inferred that at the present day they understand the word 

 4.3 in the sense of moon, pronouncing it kamar; I do not think 



however, that such was the practice of the older Arabs, who 

 pronounced it komr, as has been proved by Makrizi. Aboul- 

 feda positively rejects the opinion of those who would adopt 

 the pronunciation kamar, and derive the word from the name of 

 the moon. As, according to the author of Kamous, the word 

 komr, considered as the plural of ^s\ , signifies an object 



of a greenish or dirty white colour, it would appear that some 

 authors have supposed that this mountain derived its name 

 from its colour." 



The learned Reinaud, in his recent excellent translation of 

 Abulfeda (t. ii., p. i., pp. 81, 82), regards it as probable that 

 the Ptolemaic interpretation of the name of Mountains of the 

 Moon (5prj asXrjj/ala) was that originally adopted by the 

 Arabs. He observes that in the Moschtarek of Yakut, and in 

 Ibn-Said, the mountain is written al-Komr, and that Yakut 

 writes in a similar manner the name of the Island of Zendj 

 (Zanguebar). The Abyssinian traveller Beke, in his learned 

 and critical treatise on the Nile and its tributaries,* endea- 

 vours to prove that Ptolemy, in his at\i]vr}Q Spec, merely fol- 

 lowed the native name, for the knowledge of which he was 

 indebted to the extensive commercial intercourse which then 

 existed. He says, " Ptolemy knew that the Nile rises in the 

 mountainous district of Moezi, and in the languages which 

 are spoken over a great part of Southern Africa (as, for in- 

 stance, in Congo, Monjou, and Mozambique), the word 

 moezi signifies the moon. A large tract of country situated 

 in the south-west was called Mono-Muezi, or Mani-Moezi, i.e., 

 the land of the King of Moezi (or Moon-land); for in the 

 same family of languages in which moezi or muezi signifies 

 the moon, mono or mani signifies a king. Alvarezf speaks 



* See Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. 

 xvii., 1847, pp. 7476. 



f Viaggio nella Ethiopia (Kamusio, vol. i., p. 249). 



I 2 



