Mr. Abbott Adds The Names Of Nine
Villages, Which He Was Not Able To Verify By Comparison.
These are Puz,
Tarz, Gujard, Aspaj, Kuh-i-Gabr, Dahnah, Bughin, Bassab, Radk.
The
position of Kuh Banan is stated to lie between Bahabad (a place also
mentioned by Yakut as producing Tutia) and Ravi, but this does not help
us, and for approximate position we can only fall back on the note in Mr.
Abbott's field-book, as published in the J. R. G. S., viz. that the
District lay in the mountains E.S.E. from a caravanserai 10 miles S.E.
of Gudran. To get the seven marches of Polo's Itinerary we must carry the
Town of Kuh Banan as far north as this indication can possibly admit,
for Abbott made only five and a half marches from the spot where this
observation was made to Kerman. Perhaps Polo's route deviated for the sake
of the fresh water. That a district, such as Mr. Abbott's Report speaks
of, should lie unnoticed, in a tract which our maps represent as part of
the Great Desert, shows again how very defective our geography of Persia
still is.
["During the next stage to Darband, we passed ruins that I believe to be
those of Marco Polo's 'Cobinan' as the modern Kuhbenan does not at all fit
in with the great traveller's description, and it is just as well to
remember that in the East the caravan routes seldom change." (Captain P.
M. Sykes, Geog.
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