IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Overland to India : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
YI.VIII
PERSIAN DEPRESSIONS 185
In his narrative of his fifth journey in Persia,' Sykes has partially modified his views of the etymology of the two words. He says that the Arabian writers and the Persian also, to some extent, used the word mafdza (waste), which was afterwards replaced by the word kevir or kefe. Kevir signifies salt desert, but its etymology is uncertain. The word was used on all Persian maps till quite recently, to indicate the whole desert, but now it is replaced by the word lut ; kevir is now applied only to tracts which are salt. Sykes acknowledges that some Persians still derive the word from lut (bare) ; but now he considers it beyond
i dispute that the name comes from Lot, Abraham's nephew,
for in an Arabic geography, published in 1903, the name of
I the desert is spelt in the same way as Lot's, not as in lut,
t bare. He therefore holds that the question of nomenclature
I is definitely decided. This conclusion seems somewhat
i hasty, and it is quite wrong to let the name Lut on the
P accompanying sketch-map embrace the whole of the
I northern desert. Even if an Arabic geography uses a
I spelling which suggests such an interpretation, it is certain
I that the name lut is not applied to the northern desert, but
I that this is exclusively known by the name kevir, like all
other salt depressions, unless they are called instead darya-
ii i-nemek or nemek-sar.
m Lastly, it may be mentioned that Huntington translates
b darya by lake, hamun by swamp or a lake partly open,
partly filled with reeds ; he quite correctly identifies a
II nemek-sar with a temporary salt lake, which is also true of
a kevir, though this is drier.
1 GeographicalJournal, vol. xxviii. (1906), P. 451.
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