Bah! What grass, what grain, what water!
Bah! Bah!
['If there be a Paradise on the face of the Earth,
This is it! This is it! This is it!'"] - (I. 209.)
(See Fraser, 405, 432-433, 434, 436.)
With reference to the dried melons of Shibrgan, Quatremere cites a history
of Herat, which speaks of them almost in Polo's words. Ibn Batuta gives a
like account of the melons of Kharizm: "The surprising thing about these
melons is the way the people have of slicing them, drying them in the sun,
and then packing them in baskets, just as Malaga figs are treated in our
part of the world. In this state they are sent to the remotest parts of
India and China. There is no dried fruit so delicious, and all the while I
lived at Delhi, when the travelling dealers came in, I never missed
sending for these dried strips of melon." (Q. R. 169; I. B. III. 15.)
Here, in the 14th century, we seem to recognise the Afghan dealers
arriving in the cities of Hindustan with their annual camel-loads of dried
fruits, just as we have seen them in our own day.
[1] The oldest form of the name is Asapuragan, which Rawlinson thinks
traceable to its being an ancient seat of the Asa or Asagartii.
(J. R. A. S. XI. 63.)
CHAPTER XXVII.
OF THE CITY OF BALC.
Balc is a noble city and a great, though it was much greater in former
days. But the Tartars and other nations have greatly ravaged and destroyed
it. There were formerly many fine palaces and buildings of marble, and the
ruins of them still remain. The people of the city tell that it was here
that Alexander took to wife the daughter of Darius.
Here, you should be told, is the end of the empire of the Tartar Lord of
the Levant. And this city is also the limit of Persia in the direction
between east and north-east.[NOTE 1]
Now, let us quit this city, and I will tell you of another country called
DOGANA.[NOTE 2]
When you have quitted the city of which I have been speaking, you ride
some 12 days between north-east and east, without finding any human
habitation, for the people have all taken refuge in fastnesses among the
mountains, on account of the Banditti and armies that harassed them. There
is plenty of water on the road, and abundance of game; there are lions
too. You can get no provisions on the road, and must carry with you all
that you require for these 12 days.[NOTE 3]
NOTE 1. - BALKH, "the mother of cities," suffered mercilessly from
Chinghiz. Though the city had yielded without resistance, the whole
population was marched by companies into the plain, on the usual Mongol
pretext of counting them, and then brutally massacred. The city and its
gardens were fired, and all buildings capable of defence were levelled.
The province long continued to be harried by the Chaghataian inroads. Ibn
Batuta, sixty years after Marco's visit, describes the city as still in
ruins, and as uninhabited: "The remains of its mosques and colleges," he
says, "are still to be seen, and the painted walls traced with azure." It
is no doubt the Vaeq (Valq) of Clavijo, "very large, and surrounded by a
broad earthen wall, thirty paces across, but breached in many parts." He
describes a large portion of the area within as sown with cotton. The
account of its modern state in Burnes and Ferrier is much the same as Ibn
Batuta's, except that they found some population; two separate towns
within the walls according to the latter. Burnes estimates the circuit of
the ruins at 20 miles. The bulk of the population has been moved since
1858 to Takhtapul, 8 miles east of Balkh, where the Afghan Government is
placed.
(Erdmann, 404-405; I. B. III. 59; Clavijo, p. 117; Burnes, II.
204-206; Ferrier, 206-207.)
According to the legendary history of Alexander, the beautiful Roxana was
the daughter of Darius, and her father in a dying interview with Alexander
requested the latter to make her his wife: -
"Une fille ai mult bele; se prendre le voles.
Vus en seres de l'mont tout li mius maries," etc.
(Lambert Le Court, p. 256.)
NOTE 2. - The country called Dogana in the G. Text is a puzzle. In the
former edition I suggested Juzgana, a name which till our author's time
was applied to a part of the adjoining territory, though not to that
traversed in quitting Balkh for the east. Sir H. Rawlinson is inclined to
refer the name to Dehgan, or "villager," a term applied in Bactria, and
in Kabul, to Tajik peasantry[1]. I may also refer to certain passages in
Baber's "Memoirs," in which he speaks of a place, and apparently a
district, called Dehanah, which seems from the context to have lain in
the vicinity of the Ghori, or Aksarai River. There is still a village in
the Ghori territory, called Dehanah. Though this is worth mentioning,
where the true solution is so uncertain, I acknowledge the difficulty of
applying it. I may add also that Baber calls the River of Ghori or
Aksarai, the Dogh-abah. (Sprenger, P. und R. Routen, p. 39 and Map;
Anderson in J. A. S. B. XXII. 161; Ilch. II. 93; Baber, pp. 132,
134, 168, 200, also 146.)
NOTE 3. - Though Burnes speaks of the part of the road that we suppose
necessarily to have been here followed from Balkh towards Taican, as
barren and dreary, he adds that the ruins of aqueducts and houses proved
that the land had at one time been peopled, though now destitute of water,
and consequently of inhabitants.
