国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

times » in the YS. Apart from Kuo K'an's biography, I have noted it only once (43, 3 a), when
Jani-bāg in 1353 sent the Chinese Emperor a tent (察 亦 見 ch'a-i-êrh, read ch'a- [赤] ch'ih-êrh,
Mong. čačir < Turk. čatır [BROCKELMANN, Kāšyarī, 51] < Pers. čādar) of 撒 哈 剌 sa-ha-la (Mong.
saqalat < Pers. saqlāt and saqirlāt, « scarlet » [as the name of a woollen cloth before being that of
a colour]; cf. JA, 1925, II, 211), swords, bows, and coats of mail of 米 西 見 Mi-hsi-êrh, and two
pairs of western horses, one grey, the other white. Here again, the swords of Miṣr must be Syrian
swords of Damask make.

The Chinese transcription, based on Misir, represents the form which Miṣr had taken in Uighur.
Men were often called by names of countries, and the man « Misir » of a Uighur document of Turfan
(cf. RADLOV and MALOV, Uigur. Sprachdenkmäler, 286) must have borne the very name of Egypt.
In the Uighur legend of Oyuz-khan, Oyuz fights against a sovereign called « Masar »; despite BANG
and RACHMATI's opinion to the contrary (SPAW, 1932, 714), I still adhere to the view I expressed in
TP, 1930, 340, that « Masar » is probably miswritten instead of Misir. The name had passed under
the same form Misir into Mongolian : it occurs in Arγūn's famous Mongolian letter of 1289 to Phi-
lip the Fair. In « Sanang Setsen » (SCHMIDT ed., 100), misāri bolot is « Egyptian steel », with the
probable real value of Damask steel (the change in the second syllable from -i- to -ā- was to avoid a
pronunciation mišir-). The same holds good for Tibetan, where a particularly hard iron, probably
steel, is called mi-che-ri (ch- = aspirated ts-; cf. Sarat CHANDRA Das' Dictionary, 397; the word has
escaped LAUFER's researches in TP, 1916, 403-552). BLOCHET says (Bl, II, 339) that « miser » exists
in Tibetan; I have failed to trace it. In modern Turkī tales of Chinese Turkestan translated by Mrs.
E. DE ZACHARKO in Museon, XXXVI [1923], 297, 300, 301, mention is made of « Egyptian swords »,
called mizran, a form which I do not know, but which seems to be derived from Miṣr, perhaps
with a contamination due to Turk. (< Arabic) mīzraq, « spear ». Probably with the intermediary
of Osm. Mīṣīr (< Miṣr), Bulgar. mesiryak and Serb. misirka are the words for « turkey », not much
stranger than « turkey » itself or French « dinde » (= d'Inde) as names of that American fowl (cf.
LOKOTSCH, No. 1473).

Under the Ming dynasty, the Huang-ming hsiang-hsü lu, dated 1629, merely copied (5, 27 a)
the first part of Chao Ju-kua's notice of 1225. Yet two embassies at least came to China under the
Ming from Mi-hsi-êrh or Mi-ssŭ-êrh, one in the first quarter of the 15th cent., the second on 11 Oct.
1441. This second one had been sent by the Sultan Ašraf. If this be Ašraf Saifu-'d-Dīn Bars-bai,
the embassy was long on the way, since that sultan died in June 1438. But, contrary to the
opinion of BRETSCHNEIDER (Br, II, 308), many of the Burjī Mamlūk took the epithet of Ašraf,
and it may be that the one intended is Ẓāhir Saifu-'d-Dīn Yaqmaq. Mi-ssŭ-êrh also occurs in a Ming
itinerary across the whole of Asia (cf. Br, II, 332; 西 域 土 地 人 物 畧 Hsi-yü t'u-ti jên-wu lüeh,
in T'ien-hsia chün kuo li ping shu, 117, 4 a-9 b; BRETSCHNEIDER, China Rev., v, 227).

In Arabic, Miṣr was not only the name of Egypt, but also a designation of the capital. Although
Cairo was generally mentioned in the west as Babylon, or sometimes as Cairo, Schiltberger speaks
of the city of « Misser » which the Christians call « Cair » (LANGMANTEL ed., 78); the equivalence of
« Missir » and « Kair » occurs a second time (p. 82). So the traveller expresses himself in a very
loose way when he says elsewhere (p. 64) that he has been « in the kingdom Arabia », the capital of
which is called « Missir » by the heathen. But it is not correct to say, as HALLBERG does (p. 356),