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A Greek crossing on the Oxus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

V. Minorsky
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Extract

The present notice is merely an annex to V. V. Barthold's article on Ḥfiẓ-i Abr which has stood the test of 70 years.

Ḥfiẓ-i Abr, a Khorsnian by birth, was a distinguished historian of Timrid times. He belonged to the class of those learned men whom rulers liked to attach to their courts. He studied in Hamadn, and worked under the patronage of Tmr, Shhrukh, and Prince Baysunqur. He died in Zanjn in 83414301.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , February 1967 , pp. 45 - 53
Copyright
Copyright School of Oriental and African Studies 1967

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References

1 Hafiz-i Abru i yego sochineniya in the Festschrift to Baron Victor Rosen entitled al-Muẓaffarya (Muẓaffar = Victor), St. Petersburg, 1896, 128.

2 A summary of what is known of him and his works will now be found in C. A. Storey's Persian literature, il, 869, i2, 12356 (historical works), ii, 1323 (geography). See especially his references to F. Tauer's articles.

3 First (by order of Shahrukh) of a Majm'a of the historical works of Ṭabari (Bal'ami)Rashd al-DnNizm-shh with insertions of the periods lacking between thesedown to 8281425, and then (by invitation of Prince Baysunqur) of a Majma al-tavrkh containing an independent rearrangement of the universal history (in four volumes, of which the fourth dedicated to the reign of Shhrukh bears the special title of Zubdat al-tavrkh The cream of histories; last year mentioned 83014267).

4 See Rieu, I, 4201, Storey, II1, 131.

5 See its text published in facsimile with a preface by Y. E. Borshchevsky, Moscow, 1960, and its printed reproduction by M. A. Riyahi, Tehran, 13421963.

6 Abu 'l-Ḥasan al-Gharnt = Ibn Sa'd, see Barthold's article Geografiya Ibn Saida in Recueil des travaux rdigs en mmoire de D. Chwolson, St. Petersburg, 1899, 22641, and Krachkovsky, , Izbranniye sochineniya, iv, 3528.Google Scholar

7 In the catalogue of the Bodleian Library (1, 224), though published in 1889, ten years after Rieu, i, MS Fraser 155, to which Eth refers as Elliot 357, was wrongly taken for Ḥfiẓ-i Abr's work Zubdat al-tavrkh. The acknowledgment of this mistake appears among the Addenda, p. xi.

8 Written as a special paragraph.

9 Shr is certainly a lion but the term often applies to tigers which alone were found in the reed-beds of the Oxus even at the beginning of our century. On tigers in the Oxus region see Juvayn, Jahn-gush, I, 103, transl. Boyle, I, 130. Cf. Pelliot, Paul, Notes sur le Turkestan de W. Barthold, T'oung Pao, xxvii, 1930, 17, on Marco Polo's confusion of lions with tigersGoogle Scholar.

10 The Klif crossing is situated some 140 km. down-stream from Tirmidh where the Oxus changes its course from east-west to south-north-west.

11 Ibn al-Faqh, Balkh, Iṣṭakhr, Ibn Ḥauqal, the Ḥudd al-'lam, Muqaddas, Mustaufi's Nuzhat al-qulb.

12 Similar to Narshakh's Trkh-i Bukhr which, as is known, has preserved much valuable ancient material and a number of traditions.

13 Barthold, art. cit., 23, transcribes the name in Russian as . He may have been under the influence of the name of Burdaliq which he quotes in Irrigation, 74. The village of this name lies inland to the north-west of Tirmidh; its name seems to be of Turkish origin.

14 Written in Arabic in 3329434, which after numerous revisions has reached us in a Persian version of Ab Naṣr Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Qubw made in 52211289.

15 See H. A. R. Gibb, The Arab conquest in Central Asia, 15.

16 In Watters, On Yuan Chwang, I, 103, the text is abridged. I owe to the kindness of Professor Pulleyblank the exact translation, running as follows: the characters (of the language) originate from 25 words. They are turned and mutually give birth and are used to express all things. The books are read horizontally from left to right. As Professor Pulleyblank judiciously adds, the Chinese traveller referred to the letters not in their phonetic sense but as signs, groups of which represented words.

17 See below.

18 Contrariwise successions of one + two or two + one dots under a letter (or letters) are sometimes joined into a single group of three dots.

19 Such as Old Spanish alhndiga, Modern Spanish fonda, Catalan alfndec, Levantine French fonde, Italian fndaco shop etc., see Meyer-Lbke, Romanisches etymologisches Wrterbuch, 1935, 295, No. 3424 (kindly looked up for me by my friend Dr. I. Gerehevitch).

20 Viz. that of the Pontus (seaboard). I am indebted to Professor H. W. Bailey for reminding me of the learned article on the vegetation of the southern coast of the Black Sea by Planhol, Geographica Pontica, JA, CCLI, 34, 1963, 2956: vulgar , Turkish fndq.

21 I had already mentioned them in my article Pr-i Bah and his poems, in Tauer, Kubikov, and Hrbek (ed.), Charisteria orientalia, Praha, 1956, see its reprint in my Iranica, 1964, p. 300, n. 2.

22 See Masson, V. M. and Romodin, V. A., Istoriya Afganistana, Moscow, 1964, 215 (quoting J. Hackin)Google Scholar.

23 Abu '1-Ḥasan Al b. Zayd, a native of Sabzavr (near Juvayn), was called shortly Ibn Funduq, but according to Yqt's biographical dictionary it was actually his ancestor in the fifth generation who was called al-imm Funduq.

24 A. A. Semenov, in the joint effort volume Tajikistan, Tashkent, 1925, 145.

25 G. Wiet, La configuration de la terre, 1964, 458.