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『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

of Greek ὕλη, « matter ». The name has passed into Y, II, 485. Qarā Hūlūn, however, can hardly
be anything else than a misreading of قاراڭولق Qarāŋγūlūq, « Darkness » in Turkish.

I do not think that the mention of the mares and the she-asses in one of Rašid's legendary
accounts of Oyuz-khan can serve to prove the great antiquity of the tale. Both Rašid's notices are
pervaded with Mussulman influence; on the contrary, nothing is said of the land of Darkness in
the Uighur legend of Oyuz-khan, which, though not earlier than Rašid, is free from any Mussulman
element (cf. TP, 1930, 349-358). In my opinion, both Rašid's source and Polo are in fact indebted,
at least indirectly, to some Oriental rifacimento of the romance of Alexander.

This connection of the legend of Alexander with the Oriental tradition concerning the land of
Darkness is, moreover, established by a passage of the Masālik al-Abṣār (middle of the 14th cent.) :
« Beyond that, you see no trace of habitation except a great tower built by Alexander, after which
there is nothing but Darkness » (cf. Y, II, 485; in this note, YULE, in agreement with QUATRE-
MÈRE [Not. et Extr., XIII, I, 275] says that « Julman » is supposed to be the region on the Kama and
Viatka; but this seems hardly reconcilable with the statement in Rašidu-'d-Dīn [QUATREMÈRE,
275-276], and with the text quoted by QUATREMÈRE himself, p. 278, which locates Čolman between
Sibir and Ibir [or Abar] to the west, and Qara-Qorum to the east; cf., however, MARQUART, Ueber
das Volkstum der Comanen, 134).

Ibn Baṭṭūṭah, when at Bulyār (= Uspenskoe, four miles east of the Volga, and about 90 miles
south of Kazan; see « Bolgara »), thought of visiting the « land of Darkness » (أرض الظلمة Arḍ-aẓ-
Ẓulmah; in other texts Arḍ aẓ-Ẓulmāt in the plural), but gave it up on account of the difficulty of
getting there; it lay forty days beyond Bulyār, and people had to travel in dog sledges; merchants
get there skins of sable, vair, and ermine through dumb trade, from people whom they never
see.

Instead of the « land of Darkness », earlier Mussulman writers, whose accounts go back to the
lost one of Ibn Faḍlān, mention the ويسو Visū, whose country lay three months beyond Bulyār;
Ibn Faḍlān was at Bulyār in A.D. 922. FRÄHN was the first, in his Ibn-Foszlan (written in 1823;
p. 205-233), to identify the Visū with the Finnish Ves' (pl. Vesi) in the Chronicle of Nestor, who,
in their turn, are probably the same as the Vas of Jordanes (c. A. D. 552) and the Wilzi (read Witzi
or Wizzi) of Adam of Bremen († 1076 A. D.). This solution is now universally accepted (cf. Y, II,
486; MARQUART, Osteurop. und ostasiat. Streifzüge, 10; Über das Volkstum der Komanen, 29;
FERRAND, in JA, 1925, II, 24, 118, 238, 270). According to Ibn Faḍlān, the king of Bulyār had
written to the Wisū who, in their answer, stated that they were at three months' distance from Gog
and Magog (FRÄHN, 207-208). Nestor expressly says that the Ves' country lay in the region of the
Béloe Ozero, or « White Lake »; this is considered to be identical with the present Béloe Ozero,
in the northern part of the Novgorod Government, on the southern bank of which is Bélozersk.
Perhaps drawing from a lost source which may ultimately be Ibn Faḍlān, Qazwīnī († 1283) is first
(FRÄHN, 210) to ascribe to the Wisū the dumb trade which, a little later, Abū-'l-Fīda (II, I, 284)
and Ibn Baṭṭūṭah describe almost in the same terms, but without giving the name of any nation.
Qazwīnī adds that the same is said to be practised in southern countries with the negroes. Bākuwī
(FRÄHN, 205) merely copies Qazwīnī. The other Qazwīnī, Ḥamdullah Mustawfī, writing in 1339,
certainly also mentioned the Wisū in connection with the land of Darkness; but the names are