So After Travelling For Six Days As I Have Told You, You Come To A City
Called SAPURGAN.
It has great plenty of everything, but especially of the
very best melons in the world.
They preserve them by paring them round and
round into strips, and drying them in the sun. When dry they are sweeter
than honey, and are carried off for sale all over the country. There is
also abundance of game here, both of birds and beasts.[NOTE 1]
NOTE 1. - SAPURGAN may closely express the pronunciation of the name of the
city which the old Arabic writers call Saburkan and Shaburkan, now
called Shibrgan, lying some 90 miles west of Balkh; containing now some
12,000 inhabitants, and situated in a plain still richly cultivated,
though on the verge of the desert.[1] But I have seen no satisfactory
solution of the difficulties as to the time assigned. This in the G. T.
and in Ramusio is clearly six days. The point of departure is indeed
uncertain, but even if we were to place that at Sharakhs on the extreme
verge of cultivated Khorasan, which would be quite inconsistent with other
data, it would have taken the travellers something like double the time to
reach Shibrgan. Where I have followed the G. T. in its reading "quant
l'en a chevauches six jornee tel che je vos ai contes, adunc treuve l'en
une cite," etc., Pauthier's text has "Et quant l'en a chevauchie les vi
cites, si treuve l'en une cite qui a nom Sapurgan," and to this that
editor adheres.
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