National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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| 0090 |
Southern Tibet : vol.1 |
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CHAPTER IV.
THE ARABIAN GEOGRAPHERS.
Geography entered upon a flourishing era at the time of the highest develop-
ment of power in the Empire of the Caliphs, and from that time a whole series of
great Arabian scholars wrote their descriptions of the different countries of the earth.
Ptolemy's astronomy was translated under the title of Almagest and became a
kind of fundamental codex to the Arabian geographers. Great parts of their works
are devoted to Asia, and even the kingdom of Tibet did not escape their attention,
though they had only a very vague conception of that country. The Arabians who
have so much to tell us about India, Iran and Turan, and even something about
China, know Tibet only from hearsay, and have often rather fantastic ideas about
the mountainous country, its situation, and its character.
The Arabians reckoned the Tibetans amongst the Turks, as they did with all
more or less unknown nations and tribes in the east and north of Asia.¹
Richthofen has shown that much of the information which the Arabian writers
attributed to Tibet, in reality referred to Khotan; for even Edrisi's sources belong
to a time, when the name of this place was not known, and, as the nearest great
city of trade, it also represented the kingdom of Tibet to the conception of the
Arabs.²
In the following pages I have tried to collect some extracts from the more
important Arabian writers, in which will be found how far they knew our mountains
north of India, the kingdom of Tibet, and the sources of the great rivers.
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103
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113
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124
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137
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148
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159
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169
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180
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190
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201
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212
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222
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233
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246
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261
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277
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293
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306
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319
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331
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345
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358
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370
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381
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394
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405
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415
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425
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436
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454
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