524 Some original Passages on the early £No. 151. 



coast they like. The length of this sea is five hundred farsangs. Some- 

 times they transport their goods on camels from Jorjan to Bagdad. 



The following are the land roads of the merchants : they proceed 

 from Spain or France, and set over the Straits to Sus el-aqsa; from 

 thence they proceed to Tangiers ; thence to Ifrikyyah ; thence to Egypt ; 

 thence to Ramlah ; thence to Damascus ; thence to Kufah ; thence to 

 Bagdad ; thence to Basrah ; thence to the Ahwaz, ; thence to Fars ; 

 thence to Kerman ; thence to Sinde ; thence to India and China. 



Sometimes they go by the land road of Armenia (?) in the country 

 of the Sclavonians ; they proceed to the gulf of the town of the Kha- 

 zars ; thence they sail on the Caspian (to the mouth of the Oxus) ; 

 thence they proceed to Balkh and Ma-wara-n-nahr ; thence to Taghoz- 

 ghoz; thence to China.*" 



II. — Extract from the Kitab -et-boldan. — On the Mercantile Roads. 



The following extract has been copied from an Arabic MS. of the 

 British Museum, (add. MSS. N. 7496, folio 75, recto.) This volume 

 contains a very interesting work on geography, which as it appears 

 from its contents, was composed in the fourth century of the Hijrah. The 

 author's name is not mentioned, but in the fly page an opinion is ex- 

 pressed, that it is an extract from Bilazory' s Kitab Fotuh al-bolddn. 

 This opinion is not founded, for the work is not as ancient as Bilazory ; 

 moreover, I have read the Kitab al-Fatuh of Bilazory from one end to 

 the other, and I found that the two books have not one sentence in 

 common. 



The geographical work in question is the best Arabic work on geo- 

 graphy I know of. It contains in most instances the history of the 



* El-Mas'udi gives some details respecting this road to China, (vol. i. p. 333.) 

 From his account it appears, that there is a path from Samarkand over the mountain, 

 now called Kara Tagh and the desert. The distance of this way to the Chinese fron- 

 tier was forty days journey, but it was dangerous, and camels could not be taken on it. 

 The caravan road which avoided the mountains and desert was four months' journey. 



The latter road was known to the ancients. Cosmas gives even the distances, though 

 not very correctly. The distance from China to Persia (Balkh) is according to him, 

 150 days' journey to thirty miles each ; the way through Persia was eighty days' jour- 

 ney ; the road from Nisibis to Seleucia (Bagdad) was thirteen days. 



In another passage (Vol. II, p. J38,) Cosmassays, «* If you go from Persia to China 

 by land, you have a much shorter way,' for this reason you always find a large quan- 

 tity of silk in the Persian markets. 



