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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. XVII. THE KINGDOM OF KERMÁN 91
On s,
quitting the city you ride on for seven days,
always finding towns, villages, and handsome dwelling-
b
houses, so that it is very pleasant travelling ; and there
is excellent sport also to be had by the way in hunting
and hawking. When you have ridden those seven days
over a plain country, you come to a great mountain ;
and when you have got to the top of the pass you find
a great descent which occupies some two days to go
down. All along you find a variety and abundance of
fruits ; and in former days there were plenty of inhabited
places on the road, but now there are none ; and you
meet with only a few people looking after their cattle
at pasture. From the city of Kerman to this descent
the cold in winter is so great that you can scarcely abide
it, even with a great quantity of clothing.6
NOTE 1. Kerman is mentioned by Ptolemy, and also by Ammianus amongst the cities of the country so called (Carmania) : " inter quas nitet Carmana omnium mater." (XXIII. 6.)
M. Pauthier's supposition that Sirján was in Polo's time the capital, is incorrect. (See N. et E. XIV. 208, 29o.) Our Author's Kermán is the city still so called ; and its proper name would seem to have been Kuwáshír. (See Reinaud, 111ém. sur l'Inde, 171 ; also Sprenger P. and R. R. 77.) According to Khanikoff it is 5535 feet above the sea.
Kermán, on the fall of the Beni Búya Dynasty, in the middle of the 11 th century, carne into the hands of a branch of the Seljukian Turks, who retained it till the conquests ' of the Kings of Khwarizm, which just preceded the Mongol invasion. In 1226 the Amir Borák, a Kara Khitaian, who was governor on behalf of Jaláluddin of Khwarizm, became independent under the title of Kutlugh Sultan. [He died in 1234.] The Mongols allowed this family to retain the immediate authority, and at the time when Polo returned from China the representative of the house was a lady known as the Pádishalz Khátún [who reigned from 1291], the wife successively of the Ilkhans Abal:a and Kaikhatu ; an ambitious, clever, and masterful woman, who put her own brother Siyurgutmish to death as a rival, and was herself, after the decease of Kaikhatu, put to death by her brother's widow and daughter [ 1294]. The Dynasty continued, nominally at least, to the reign of the Ilkhan Khodabanda (1304-13), when it was extinguished. [See Major Sykes' Persia, chaps. v. and xxiii.]
Kermán was a Nestorian see, under the Metropolitan of Fars. (Bch. passim ; Weil,
III. 454 ; Lequien, II. 1256.)
[ " There is some confusion with regard to the names of Kermán both as a town and as a province or kingdom. We have the names Kermán, Kuwáshír, Bardshír. I should say the original name of the whole country was Kermân, the ancient Kara-mania. A province of this was called Kúreh-i-Ardeshír, which, being contracted, became Kuwáshír, and is spoken of as the province in which Ardeshír Bábekán, the first Sassanian monarch, resided. A part of Kúreh-i-Ardeshír was called Bardshfr, or
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