National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

and fine stoneware, unmistakably of Chinese make, and this helps to confirm the
approximate dating.

In years of good rainfall bāshkārī cultivation is carried on in the vicinity of both
these sites by people from Pariāb village, which lies farther north. That the
whole area had at one time supported a considerable population is made probable
by a succession of smaller debris-strewn patches of ground and traces of former
qanāts which were passed on our way to the village of Shāhdurmah. Its exten-
sive stretch of date-palm groves is watered by a lively stream, which descends
from the hills in the north-west and here passes through a gorge down to the
group of palm-girt hamlets collectively known as Gulāshgīrd.⁵

It is at this point, where the open valley ground extending unbroken to the
south-west through the Jīruft trough and Bulūk ends, that a point in Marco
Polo's account of his journey from Kermān to Hormuz may conveniently receive
notice. We have seen above that the 'city of Camadi' to which it brought him
can with certainty be located at the great ruined site near Behkīrd at the head of
Jīruft. It has long been recognized that the Venetian refers to the route leading
thence through Jīruft and Bulūk, where he tells us: 'The Plain of which we have
spoken extends in a southerly direction for five days' journey, and then you come
to another descent some twenty miles in length, where the road is very bad and
full of peril, for there are many robbers and bad characters about. When you
have got to the foot of this descent you find another beautiful plain called the
Plain of Formosa. This extends for two days' journey.' The subsequent men-
tion of a two days' ride to the seashore and a 'city with a harbour which is called
Hormos' makes it clear that Marco Polo must have reached the coast by the
route which, after descending the Gulāshgīrd valley and crossing the Rūdkhānehi-
duzdī, the 'Robbers' river-bed', reaches the coastal plain at Shamīl probably over
the pass of Nivargudār. From Mīnāb, where the only other route that can come
into consideration debouches, the port of old Hormuz would be only half a day's
journey.⁶

Now, just before recording these details of the route he followed, Marco Polo
relates his escape from a band of robbers: 'In this plain there are a number of
villages and towns with lofty walls of mud, made as a defence against the
banditti, who are very numerous and are called Caraonas.' Then, after being
given an interesting account of 'those scoundrels and their history' we are told
'that Messer Marco himself was all but caught by their bands . . . but, as it
pleased God, he got off and threw himself into a village hard by, called Cono-