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0489 The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2
マルコ=ポーロ卿の記録 : vol.2
The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 / 489 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000269
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of Saracens should lord it over good Christian people! Now you have heard the story.⁵

I have still some particulars to tell you of the same province. It abounds greatly in all kinds of victual; and the people live on flesh and rice and milk and sesame. They have plenty of elephants, not that they are bred in the country, but they are brought from the Islands of the other India. They have however many giraffes, which are produced in the country; besides bears, leopards, lions in abundance, and many other passing strange beasts. They have also numerous wild asses; and cocks and hens the most beautiful that exist, and many other kind of birds. For instance, they have ostriches that are nearly as big as asses; and plenty of beautiful parrots, with apes of sundry kinds, and baboons and other monkeys that have countenances all but human.⁶

There are numerous cities and villages in this province of Abash, and many merchants; for there is much trade to be done there. The people also manufacture very fine buckrams and other cloths of cotton.

There is no more to say on the subject; so now let us go forward and tell you of the province of Aden.

NOTE 1.—Abash (Abasce) is a close enough representation of the Arabic Haboh or Hubash, i.e. Abyssinia. He gives as an alternative title Middle India. I am not aware that the term India is applied to Abyssinia by any Oriental (Arabic or Persian) writer, and one feels curious to know where our Traveller got the appellation. We find nearly the same application of the term in Benjamin of Tudela:

“Eight days from thence is Middle India, which is Aden, and in Scripture Eden in Thelasar. This country is very mountainous, and contains many independent Jews who are not subject to the power of the Gentiles, but possess cities and fortresses on the summits of the mountains, from whence they descend into the country of Maatum, with which they are at war. Maatum, called also Nubia, is a Christian kingdom and the inhabitants are called Nubians,” etc. (p. 117). Here the Rabbi seems to transfer Aden to the west of the Red Sea (as Polo also seems to do in this chapter); for the Jews warring against Nubian Christians must be sought in the Talasha strongholds among the mountains of Abyssinia. His Middle India is therefore the same as Polo’s or nearly so. In Jordania, as already mentioned, we have India Tertia, which combines some characters of Abyssinia and Zanjibar, but is distinguished from the Ethiopia of Prester John, which adjoins it.

But for the occurrence of the name in R. Benjamin I should have supposed