The Latter Word In One Form Or Another,
Bolghar, Borghali, Or Bulkal, Is The Term Applied To That Material To
This Day Nearly All Over Asia.
Ibn Batuta says that in travelling during
winter from Constantinople to the Wolga he had to put on three
Pairs of
boots, one of wool (which we should call stockings), a second of wadded
linen, and a third of Borghali, "i.e. of horse-leather lined with
wolf-skin." Horse-leather seems to be still the favourite material for
boots among all the Tartar nations. The name was undoubtedly taken from
Bolghar on the Wolga, the people of which are traditionally said to have
invented the art of preparing skins in that manner. This manufacture is
still one of the staple trades of Kazan, the city which in position and
importance is the nearest representative of Bolghar now.
Camut is explained by Klaproth to be "leather made from the back-skin of
a camel." It appears in Johnson's Persian Dictionary as Kamu, but I do
not know from what language it originally comes. The word is in the Latin
column of the Petrarchian Vocabulary with the Persian rendering Sagri.
This shows us what is meant, for Saghri is just our word Shagreen, and
is applied to a fine leather granulated in that way, which is much used
for boots and the like by the people of Central Asia. [In Turkish saghri
or saghri is the name both for the buttocks of a horse and the leather
called shagreen prepared with them.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 1133 of 1256
Words from 308589 to 308845
of 342071
