CHAPTER XXVI.

CONCERNING THE CITY OF SAPURGAN.

On leaving the Castle, you ride over fine plains and beautiful

valleys, and pretty hill-sides producing excellent grass pasture, and

abundance of fruits, and all other products. Armies are glad to take

up their quarters here on account of the plenty that exists. This kind

of country extends for six days’ journey, with a goodly number of

towns and villages, in which the people are worshippers of Mahommet.

Sometimes also you meet with a tract of desert extending for 50 or 60

miles, or somewhat less, and in these deserts you find no water, but

have to carry it along with you. The beasts do without drink until you

have got across the desert tract and come to watering places.

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.{1}

NOTE 1.—SAPURGAN may closely express the pronunciation of the

name of the city which the old Arabic writers call _Sabúrḳán_

and _Shabúrḳán_, now called _Shibrgán_, 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 Shibrgán. Where I have

followed the G. T. in its reading “_quant l’en a chevauchés six

jornée tel che je vos ai contés, adunc treuve l’en une cité_,”

etc., Pauthier’s text has “_Et quant l’en a chevauchié_ les vi

cités, _si treuve l’en une cité qui a nom Sapurgan_,” and to this

that editor adheres. But I suspect that _cités_ is a mere lapsus

for _journées_, as in the reading in one of his three MSS. What

could be meant by “_chevauchier les_ vi _cités_”?

Whether the true route be, as I suppose, by Nishapúr and Meshid,

or, as Khanikoff supposes, by Herat and Badghis, it is strange

that no one of those famous cities is mentioned. And we feel

constrained to assume that something has been misunderstood in

the dictation, or has dropt out of it. As a _probable_ conjecture

I should apply the six days to the extent of pleasing country

described in the first lines of the chapter, and identify it with

the tract between Sabzawur and the cessation of fertile country

beyond Meshid. The distance would agree well, and a comparison

with Fraser or Ferrier will show that even now the description,

allowing for the compression of an old recollection, would be well

founded; _e.g._ on the first march beyond Nishapúr: “Fine villages,

with plentiful gardens full of trees, that bear fruit of the

highest flavour, may be seen all along the foot of the hills, and

in the little recesses formed by the ravines whence issues the

water that irrigates them. It was a rich and pleasing scene, and

out of question by far the most populous and cultivated tract that

I had seen in Persia.... Next morning we quitted Derrood ... by a

very indifferent but interesting road, the glen being finely wooded

with walnut, mulberry, poplar, and willow-trees, and fruit-tree

gardens rising one above the other upon the mountain-side, watered

by little rills.... These gardens extended for several miles up the

glen; beyond them the bank of the stream continued to be fringed

with white sycamore, willow, ash, mulberry, poplar, and woods that

love a moist situation,” and so on, describing a style of scenery

not common in Persia, and expressing diffusely (as it seems to me)

the same picture as Polo’s two lines. In the valley of Nishapúr,

again (we quote Arthur Conolly): “‘This is Persia!’ was the vain

exclamation of those who were alive to the beauty of the scene;

‘this is Persia!’ _Bah! 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 Shibrgán, Quatremère cites

a history of Herat, which speaks of them almost in Polo’s words.

Ibn Batuta gives a like account of the melons of Khárizm: “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.

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[1] The oldest form of the name is _Asapuragán_, which Rawlinson thinks

traceable to its being an ancient seat of the _Asa_ or _Asagartii_.

(_J. R. A. S._ XI. 63.)