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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
I20
MARCO POLO BOOK I.
in India who live in the Terrestrial Paradise, and lead the life of the Golden Age... . The sun is so hot 'that they remain all day in the river !
The heat in the Straits of Hormuz drove Abdurrazzak into an anticipation of a verse familiar to English schoolboys : " Even the bird of rapid flight was burnt up in the heights of heaven, as well as the fish in the depths of the sea ! " ( Tavern. Bk. V. ch. xxiii. ; Ain. Exot. 716, 762 ; 11liiller, Geog. Gr. Min. II. 514 ; India in X V Cent. p. 49.)
NOTE 5.-A like description of the effect of the Sizzzum on the human body is given by Ibn Batuta, Chardin, A. Hamilton, Tavernier, Thévenot, etc. ; and the first of these travellers speaks specially of its prevalence in the desert near Hormuz, and of the many graves of its victims ; but I have met with no reasonable account of its poisonous action. I will quote Chardin, already quoted at greater length by Marsden, as the most complete parallel to the text : " The most surprising effect of the wind is not the mere fact of its causing death, but its operation on the bodies of those who are killed by it. It seems as if they became decomposed without losing shape, so that you would think them to be merely asleep, when they are not merely dead, but in such a state that if you take hold of any part of the body it comes away in your hand. And the finger penetrates such a body as if it were so much dust." (III. 286.)
Burton, on his journey to Medina, says : " The people assured me that this wind never killed a man in their Allah-favoured land. I doubt the fact. At Bir Abbas the body of an Arnant was brought in swollen, and decomposed rapidly, the true diagnosis of death by the poison-wind." Khanikoff is very distinct as to the immediate fatality of the desert wind at Khabis, near Kermán, but does not speak of the effect on the body after death. This Major St. John does, describing a case that occurred in June, 1871, when he was halting, during intense heat, at the post-house of Pasangan, a few miles south of Kom. The bodies were brought in of two poor men, who had tried to start some hours before sunset, and were struck down by the poisonous blast within half-a-mile of the post-house. " It was found impossible to wash them before burial. . . . Directly the limbs were touched they separated from the trunk." (Oc. Highways, ut. sup.) About 179o, when Timúr Sháh of Kabul sent an army under the Sirdár-i-Sirdárán to put down a revolt in Meshed, this force on its return was struck by Simúm in the Plain of Farrah, and the Sirdár perished, with a great number of his men. (Ferrier, H. of the Afghans, 102 ; J. R. G. S. XXVI. 217 ; Khan. Mém. 210.)
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NOTE 6.—The History of Hormuz is very imperfectly known. What I have met with on the subject consists of—(I) An abstract by Teixeira of a chronicle of Hormuz, written by Thurán Sháh, who w as himself sovereign of Hormuz, and died in 1377 (2) some contemporary notices by Wassáf, which are extracted by Hammer in his History of the Ilkhans ; (3) some notices from Persian sources in the 2nd Decade of De Barros (ch. ii.). The last do not go further back than Gordun Sháh, the father of Thurán Sháh, to whom they erroneously ascribe the first migration to the Island.
One of Teixeira's Princes is called Ruknuddin Mahzlzud, and with him Marsden and Pauthier have identified Polo's Ruomedam Acomet, or as he is called on another occasion in the Geog. Text, llfaimodi Acomet. 'This, however, is out of the question, for the death of Ruknuddin is assigned to A.H. 675 (A.D. 1277), whilst there can, I think, be no doubt that Marco's account refers to the period of his return from China, viz. 1293 or thereabouts.
We find in Teixeira that the ruler who succeeded in 1290 was Amir lllasa'zrd, who obtained the Government by the murder of his brother Saifuddin Nazrat. Masa'úd was cruel and oppressive ; most of the influential people withdrew to Baháuddin Ayaz, whom Saifuddin had made Wazir of Kalhát on the Arabian coast. This Wazir assembled a force and drove out Masa'úd after he had reigned three years. He fled to Kermán and died there some years afterwards.
Baháuddin, who had originally been a slave of Saifuddin Nazrat's, succeeded in
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