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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
500 SING-IRANICA
text to this effect may be noted here. Ibn al-Fagih, who wrote in A.D. 902, has this account : "In Kirmâ,n there is wood that is not burnt by fire, but comes out undamaged.' A Christiana wanted to commit frauds with such wood by asserting that it was derived from the cross of the Messiah. Christian folks were thus almost led into temptation. A theologian, noting this man, brought them a piece of wood from Kir-man, which was still more impervious to fire than his cross-wood." According to P. SCHWARZ,3 to whom we owe the translation of this passage, the question here is of fossilized forests. Most assuredly, however, asbestos is understood. The above text of the Wei §u is thus by far the earliest allusion to asbestos from an Iranian region.
The following notes may serve as additional information to my
former contribution. Cou Mi N (123o-132o), in his Ci ya ran tsa
`ao . it, mentions asbestine stuffs twice.4 In one passage he relates that in his house there was a piece of fire-proof cloth (hwo hwan pu) over a foot long, which his maternal grandfather had once
obtained in Ts`üan èou »ti (Fu-kien Province).5 Visitors to his house
were entertained by the experiment of placing it on the fire of a brazier.
Subsequently Cao Mon-i borrowed it from him, but never
returned it. In the other text he quotes a certain Ho Ts`in-fu ill A to the effect that fire-proof cloth is said to represent the fibres of the mineral coal of northern China, burnt and woven, but not the hair of the fire-rodent (salamander) . This is accompanied by the comment that coal cannot be wrought into fibres, but that now pu-hwei-mu
* X * (a kind of asbestos) is found in Pao-tin (Ci-li).6 A brief notice of asbestos is inserted in the Ko ku yao lun,7 where merely the old fables are reiterated. Information on the asbestos of Ci-li Province will be
1 Qazwini adds to this passage, "even if left in fire for several days."
2 Qazwini speaks in general of charlatans. Iran im Mittelalter, p. 214.
4 Ch. A, p. 20 b; and Ch. B, p. 25 b (ed. of Yüe ya l'an ts`ult Su).
5 This locality renders it almost certain that this specimen belonged to those imported by the Arabs into China during the middle ages (p. 331 of my article). The asbestos of Mosul is already mentioned in the Lin wai tai to (Ch. 3, p. 4).
s The term pu-hwei-mu (" wood burning without ashes, incombustible wood") appears as early as the Sung period in the Celt lei pen ts`ao (Ch. 5, p. 35) : it comes from ;an-tan (south-east portion of san-si and part of Ho-nan), and is now found
in the Tse-lu mountains ,` ~ 4 . It is a kind of stone, of green and white color,
looking like rotten wood, and cannot be consumed by fire. Some call it the root of soapstone.
7 Ch. 8, p. 4 (ed. of Si yin hüan ts`un Su). In Ch. 7, p. 17, there is a notice on pu-hwei-mu stone, stated to be a product of Tse-6ou and Lu-nan in san-si, and employed for lamps.
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