CHAPTER XXVIII.
OF TAICAN, AND THE MOUNTAINS OF SALT. ALSO OF THE
PROVINCE OF CASEM.
After those twelve days’ journey you come to a fortified place called
TAICAN, where there is a great corn market.{1} It is a fine place, and
the mountains that you see towards the south are all composed of salt.
People from all the countries round, to some thirty days’ journey, come
to fetch this salt, which is the best in the world, and is so hard that
it can only be broken with iron picks. ’Tis in such abundance that it
would supply the whole world to the end of time. [Other mountains there
grow almonds and pistachioes, which are exceedingly cheap.]{2}
When you leave this town and ride three days further between north-east
and east, you meet with many fine tracts full of vines and other
fruits, and with a goodly number of habitations, and everything to be
had very cheap. The people are worshippers of Mahommet, and are an evil
and a murderous generation, whose great delight is in the wine shop;
for they have good wine (albeit it be boiled), and are great topers; in
truth, they are constantly getting drunk. They wear nothing on the head
but a cord some ten palms long twisted round it. They are excellent
huntsmen, and take a great deal of game; in fact they wear nothing but
the skins of the beasts they have taken in the chase, for they make of
them both coats and shoes. Indeed, all of them are acquainted with the
art of dressing skins for these purposes.{3}
When you have ridden those three days, you find a town called CASEM,{4}
which is subject to a count. His other towns and villages are on the
hills, but through this town there flows a river of some size. There
are a great many porcupines hereabouts, and very large ones too. When
hunted with dogs, several of them will get together and huddle close,
shooting their quills at the dogs, which get many a serious wound
thereby.{5}
This town of Casem is at the head of a very great province, which is
also called Casem. The people have a peculiar language. The peasants
who keep cattle abide in the mountains, and have their dwellings in
caves, which form fine and spacious houses for them, and are made with
ease, as the hills are composed of earth.{6}
After leaving the town of Casem, you ride for three days without
finding a single habitation, or anything to eat or drink, so that you
have to carry with you everything that you require. At the end of those
three days you reach a province called Badashan, about which we shall
now tell you.{7}
NOTE 1.—The _Taican_ of Polo is the still existing TALIKAN in
the province of Kataghan or Kunduz, but it bears the former name
(_Tháîḳán_) in the old Arab geographies. Both names are used by
Baber, who says it lay in the _Ulugh Bágh_, or Great Garden, a
name perhaps acquired by the Plains of Talikan in happier days,
but illustrating what Polo says of the next three days’ march.
The Castle of Talikan resisted Chinghiz for seven months, and met
with the usual fate (1221). [In the Travels of Sidi Ali, son of
Housaïn (_Jour. Asiat._, October, 1826, p. 203), “Talikan, in the
country of Badakhschan” is mentioned.—H. C.] Wood speaks of Talikan
in 1838 as a poor place of some 300 or 400 houses, mere hovels; a
recent account gives it 500 families. Market days are not usual
in Upper India or Kabul, but are universal in Badakhshan and the
Oxus provinces. The bazaars are only open on those days, and the
people from the surrounding country then assemble to exchange
goods, generally by barter. Wood chances to note: “A market was
held at Talikan.... The thronged state of the roads leading into
it soon apprised us that the day was no ordinary one.” (_Abulf._
in _Büsching_, V. 352; _Sprenger_, p. 50; _P. de la Croix_, I. 63;
_Baber_, 38, 130; _Burnes_, III. 8; _Wood_, 156; _Pandit Manphul’s
Report_.)
The distance of Talikan from Balkh is about 170 miles, which gives
very short marches, if twelve days be the correct reading. Ramusio
has _two_ days, which is certainly wrong. XII. is easily miswritten
for VII., which would be a just number.
NOTE 2.—In our day, as I learn from Pandit Manphul, the mines of
rock salt are at Ak Bulák, near the Lataband Pass, and at Darúná,
near the Kokcha, and these supply the whole of Badakhshan, as well
as Kunduz and Chitrál. These sites are due _east_ of Talikan, and
are in Badakhshan. But there is a mine at _Chál_, S.E. or S.S.E.
of Talikan and within the same province. There are also mines
of rock-salt near the famous “stone bridge” in Kuláb, north of
the Oxus, and again on the south of the Alaï steppe. (Papers by
_Manphul_ and by _Faiz Baksh_; also _Notes_ by _Feachenko_.)
Both pistachioes and wild almonds are mentioned by Pandit Manphul;
and see _Wood_ (p. 252) on the beauty and profusion of the latter.
NOTE 3.—Wood thinks that the Tajik inhabitants of Badakhshan and
the adjoining districts are substantially of the same race as the
Kafir tribes of Hindu Kúsh. At the time of Polo’s visit it would
seem that their conversion to Islam was imperfect. They were
probably in that transition state which obtains in our own day
for some of the Hill Mahomedans adjoining the Kafirs on the south
side of the mountains the reproachful title of _Nímchah Musulmán_,
or Half-and-halfs. Thus they would seem to have retained sundry
Kafir characteristics; among others that love of wine which is so
strong among the Kafirs. The boiling of the wine is noted by Baber
(a connoisseur) as the custom of Nijrao, adjoining, if not then
included in, Kafir-land; and Elphinstone implies the continuance
of the custom when he speaks of the Kafirs as having wine of _the
consistence of jelly_, and very strong. The wine of _Kápishí_, the
Greek Kapisa, immediately south of Hindu Kúsh, was famous as early
as the time of the Hindu grammarian Pánini, say three centuries
B.C. The cord twisted round the head was probably also a relic of
Kafir costume: “Few of the Kafirs cover the head, and when they do,
it is with a narrow band or fillet of goat’s hair ... about a yard
or a yard and a half in length, wound round the head.” This style
of head-dress seems to be very ancient in India, and in the Sanchi
sculptures is that of the supposed Dasyas. Something very similar,
_i.e._ a scanty turban cloth twisted into a mere cord, and wound
two or three times round the head, is often seen in the Panjab to
this day.
The _Postín_ or sheepskin coat is almost universal on both sides
of the Hindu Kúsh; and Wood notes: “The shoes in use resemble
half-boots, made of goatskin, and mostly of home manufacture.”
(_Baber_, 145; _J. A. S. B._ XXVIII. 348, 364; _Elphinst._ II. 384;
_Ind. Antiquary_, I. 22; _Wood_, 174, 220; _J. R. A. S._ XIX. 2.)
NOTE 4.—Marsden was right in identifying _Scassem_ or _Casem_ with
the _Kechem_ of D’Anville’s Map, but wrong in confounding the
latter with the _Kishmabad_ of Elphinstone—properly, I believe,
_Kishnabad_—in the Anderab Valley. Kashm, or Keshm, found its way
into maps through Pétis de la Croix, from whom probably D’Anville
adopted it; but as it was ignored by Elphinstone (or by Macartney,
who constructed his map), and by Burnes, it dropped out of our
geography. Indeed, Wood does not notice it except as giving name
to a high hill called the Hill of Kishm, and the position even
of that he omits to indicate. The frequent mention of Kishm in
the histories of Timur and Humayun (_e.g._ _P. de la Croix_, I.
167; _N. et E._ XIV. 223, 491; _Erskine’s Baber and Humayun_, II.
330, 355, etc.) had enabled me to determine its position within
tolerably narrow limits; but desiring to fix it definitely,
application was made through Colonel Maclagan to Pandit Manphul,
C.S.I., a very intelligent Hindu gentleman, who resided for some
time in Badakhshan as agent of the Panjab Government, and from him
arrived a special note and sketch, and afterwards a MS. copy of a
Report,[1] which set the position of Kishm at rest.
KISHM is the _Kilissemo_, _i.e._ Karisma or Krishma, of Hiuen Tsang;
and Sir H. Rawlinson has identified the Hill of Kishm with the
Mount Kharesem of the Zend-Avesta, on which Jamshid placed the
most sacred of all the fires. It is now a small town or large
village on the right bank of the Varsach river, a tributary of the
Kokcha. It was in 1866 the seat of a district ruler under the Mír
of Badakhshan, who was styled the Mír of Kishm, and is the modern
counterpart of Marco’s _Quens_ or Count. The modern caravan-road
between Kunduz and Badakhshan does not pass through Kishm, which is
left some five miles to the right, but through the town of Mashhad,
which stands on the same river. Kishm is the warmest district of
Badakhshan. Its fruits are abundant, and ripen a month earlier
than those at Faizabad, the capital of that country. The Varsach or
Mashhad river is Marco’s “_Flum auques grant_.” Wood (247) calls it
“the largest stream we had yet forded in Badakhshan.”
It is very notable that in Ramusio, in Pipino, and in one passage
of the G. Text, the name is written _Scasem_, which has led some
to suppose the _Ish-Káshm_ of Wood to be meant. That place is much
too far east—in fact, beyond the city which forms the subject of
the next chapter. The apparent hesitation, however, between the
forms _Casem_ and _Scasem_ suggests that the Kishm of our note may
formerly have been termed S’kăshm or Ish-Kăshm, a form frequent
in the Oxus Valley, _e.g._ _Ish-Kimish, Ish-Káshm, Ishtrakh,
Ishpingao_. General Cunningham judiciously suggests (_Ladak_,
34) that this form is merely a vocal corruption of the initial
_S_ before a consonant, a combination which always troubles the
Musulman in India, and converts every Mr. Smith or Mr. Sparks into
Ismit or Ispak Sahib.
[There does not seem to me any difficulty about this note:
“Shibarkhan (Afghan Turkistan), Balkh, Kunduz, Khanabad, Talikan,
Kishm, Badakhshan.” I am tempted to look for Dogana at
Khanabad.—H. C.]
NOTE 5.—The belief that the porcupine _projected_ its quills at
its assailants was an ancient and persistent one—“_cum intendit
cutem missiles_,” says Pliny (VIII. 35, and see also _Aelian. de
Nat. An._ I. 31), and is held by the Chinese as it was held by the
ancients, but is universally rejected by modern zoologists. The
huddling and coiling appears to be a true characteristic, for the
porcupine always tries to shield its head.
NOTE 6.—The description of Kishm as a “very great” province is
an example of a bad habit of Marco’s, which recurs in the next
chapter. What he says of the cave-dwellings may be illustrated by
Burnes’s account of the excavations at Bamian, in a neighbouring
district. These “still form the residence of the greater part of
the population.... The hills at Bamian are formed of indurated
clay and pebbles, which renders this excavation a matter of little
difficulty.” Similar occupied excavations are noticed by Moorcroft
at Heibak and other places towards Khulm.
Curiously, Pandit Manphul says of the districts about the Kokcha:
“Both their hills and plains are productive, the former _being
mostly composed of earth, having very little of rocky substance_.”
NOTE 7.—The capital of Badakhshan is now Faizabad, on the right
bank of the Kokcha, founded, according to Manphul, by Yarbeg, the
first Mír of the present dynasty. When this family was displaced
for a time, by Murad Beg of Kunduz, about 1829, the place was
abandoned for years, but is now re-occupied. The ancient capital
of Badakhshan stood in the Dasht (or Plain) of Bahárak, one of
the most extensive pieces of level in Badakhshan, in which the
rivers Vardoj, Zardeo, and Sarghalan unite with the Kokcha, and
was apparently termed _Jaúzgún_. This was probably the city called
Badakhshan by our traveller.[2] As far as I can estimate, by the
help of Wood and the map I have compiled, this will be from 100 to
110 miles distant from Talikan, and will therefore suit fairly with
the six marches that Marco lays down.
Wood, in 1838, found the whole country between Talikan and Faizabad
nearly as depopulated as Marco found that between Kishm and
Badakhshan. The modern depopulation was due—in part, at least—to
the recent oppressions and _razzias_ of the Uzbeks of Kunduz. On
their decline, between 1840 and 1850, the family of the native
Mírs was reinstated, and these now rule at Faizabad, under an
acknowledgment, since 1859, of Afghan supremacy.
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[1] Since published in _J. K. G. S._ vol. xlii.
[2] Wilford, in the end of the 18th century, speaks of Faizabad as
“the new capital of Badakhshan, built near the site of the old
one.” The Chinese map (_vide_ _J. R. G. S._ vol. xlii.) represents
the city of _Badakhshan_ to the east of Faizabad. Faiz Bakhsh, in
an unpublished paper, mentions a tradition that the Lady Zobeidah,
dear to English children, the daughter of Al-Mansúr and wife of
Ar-Rashid, delighted to pass the spring at Jaúzgún, and built a
palace there, “the ruins of which are still visible.”