The Ports and Portals of the Zelaznids (19 page)

[1]
Also called Seyh Galip (1757-1799).
 

[2]
See
Beauty and Love
, Victoria Rowe Holbrook, trans. (MLA, 2005).

[3]
The last major battle in history to feature navies comprised entirely of sailed vessels.

[4]
Refers to Keykānlū in the mountainous border region of northern Iran.

[5]
The Himalayas.

[6]
As previously noted, ‘Ikhu’ is likely the Turkish poet Ikraam Huda (1789?-1827).

[7]
French chemist Louis Nicholas Vauquelin discovered this element in 1797.

[8]
As someone who had traveled through several regions of the Ottoman Empire, Huda would have been aware of the habits of the Christian population.

[9]
Ancient sites along the Nile.

[10]
China.

[11]
The kursh (qurush) was the standard silver coin of the Ottoman Empire for centuries; Huda refers to the fact that much of the Gobi Desert consists of rock, rather than sand.

[12]
Swedish explorer Lorenz Lange, in the employ Peter the Great, explored eastern Russia and China (1717-1719), publishing his journal in the 1720s.  See Friedrich Christian Weber,
The
Present State of Russia, Volume 2: Journal of Laurence Lange’s Travels to China
(W. Taylor, 1723). 

[13]
The Xiongnu or Hsiung-nu ruled a vast region stretching from southern Siberia to areas south of Mongolia, from 209 BCE to 460 CE.

[14]
In some arid regions, people put pebbles in their mouths to stimulate the saliva glands.

[15]
‘Strange bull.’

[16]
The Himalyas.

[17]
This refers to the Taklamakan Desert, which lies northwest of the Tibetan Plateau.  ‘Takla Makan’ literally means “place from which no one returns.”

[18]
Argan, on the Tarim River.

[19]
The Tarim River is unusual in that it is part of an endorheic basin, in which the water is self-contained, feeding into no other river or ocean system.  As such, the Tarim River is widest near its source in the Himalayas and narrows as it winds around the western and northern edge of the Taklamakan, losing water through seepage and evaporation.

[20]
Hasalbag, which sits on the Tarim River at the foot of the Himalayas.

[21]
This story seems
to be a
reference
to
Heliocles, who ruled the Indo-Bactrian kingdom (northern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India) until his death in 130 BCE.  The provinces mentioned here devolved into civil war in the years following the king’s death.  If Huda’s story is at all true, it suggests that the descendants of Alexander’s army ranged further than historians currently believe.

[22]
The Han Dynasty ruled China (202 BCE – 220 CE).

[23]
They were following
a
branch of the Tarim, which means that this gorge might have been the Shaksgam River.  That would make the peak in question K2, the highest spot on Earth after Everest.  If true, then Zelaznu’s journey represents the first known sighting of K2, which
was not formally surveyed
until 1856.

[24]
Approximately 20 C.E.

[25]
Huda has his facts slightly confused here.  The Mongols extended their empire into the western Tarim River basin in 1258 under the command of Kublai, who was at that time one of two generals fighting on behalf of his brother, Möngke.  Kublai did not become khan until 1260.  The author’s hostility likely stems from the atrocities committed throughout the Near East by the Mongols, namely the destruction of Baghdad in February 1258.   

[26]
Qutughai translates loosely as ‘coming from holiness or dignity.’

[27]
Again, this likely refers to the destruction of Baghdad in 1258.  Baghdad was, until that time, the capital of the Islamic, thus intensely monotheistic, Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258).

[28]
Mongol God of the Sky.

[29]
Mongol creator deities.

[30]
According to the Mongols,
Ot
was both the Goddess of Marriage and the Queen of Fire.

[31]
Morin khuur – a type of fiddle native to Mongolia.

[32]
Kashmir.

[33]
The Himalayas are a formidable barrier to weather.  This is why the Tarim Basin is largely desert, with snow much more prevalent on the southern and western slopes than on the north and east.  Thus from late spring to early autumn it would not be unusual to find
fairly little
snow in the mountains near Salabad.

[34]
Today the city of Feyzabad is part of the northern Hindu Kush region of northeastern Afghanistan.

[35]
The Ilkanate, tenuously under the control of Kublai Khan and his successors, reached north and west to the vicinity of Kabul, an
area which
was alternately controlled by the Mongols and various warlords up until the rise of Timur-lung (Tamerlane), ca.1370.

[36]
Muhammad (610-632).  Yemen came under his control around 630.

[37]
Jabal
an
Nabi Shu’ayb (the mountain of Shu’ayb) is the tallest peak in Yemen and stands close the city of Sanaá.  Shu’ayb or Shoaib (ca.1550 BCE) was a prophet of Islam mentioned in the Qur’an, said to be the great-grandson of Abraham.

[38]
Huda is slightly mistaken here.  The events
being described
would have occurred in the 500s CE and were related by Abdul Hazred in the mid to late 1200s, yet the Portuguese did not introduce the caravel until the 1400s, when it became the preferred vessel for long-distance sea travel.

[39]
Modern sources usually refer to Abd-al-Hazred as Abdul Alhazred (695-738).  Arabic naming standards suggest that Huda’s spelling is likely the correct one.

[40]
The Umayyad Caliphate (661-750) ruled the Muslim empire from their capital, Damascus.

[41]
The Roba El Khaliyeh or ‘Empty Space’ is the name by which ancient Arabs referred to the southern portion of the Arabian Desert.  In modern
sources
it is sometimes also called the ‘Dahna’ or ‘crimson’ desert.

[42]
This lost city and its pillars
are mentioned
(as Irem, Iram, or Irâm) in several sources, including: the
Qur’an
,
Arabian Nights
, and Omar Khayyam’s
Rubaiyat
.  Subsequent archaeological evidence has linked Irem to the ancient city of Ubar.  See Nicholas Clapp,
The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands
(Houghton Mifflin, 1999).

[43]
This is the
Necronomicon
, which
has been variously banned, burned, and lost through the centuries
.  Abd-al-Hazred composed this infamous work in Damascus around the year 730.  

[44]
Although suppressed upon publication, the
al-Azif
was translated
into Greek in 950 by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople. 
It was Philetas who gave it the name by which it became widely known: the
Necronomicon
or “Concerning the Dead.”
  Under this title, Olaus Wormius translated the work into Latin in 1228.  The Greek and Arabic versions have since been lost.  Today, the only known copies are in Latin: one copy of a 15
th
century edition is housed at the British Museum; and four copies of a 17
th
century edition are kept at the Widener Library at Harvard, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the University of Buenos Aires, and at Miskatonic University.

[45]
There are conflicting reports of Abd-al-Hazred’s death.  Most colorful is the story related by 13
th
century biographer Ebn (Ibn) Khallikan, who claimed: “Alhazred was seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses.”
Quoted in H.P. Lovecraft,
History of the Necronomicon
, (1938).

[46]
Huda seems to forget the Zelaznids who vanished near Sanaá, Yemen.  It is possible that he is only including those Zelaznids who still resided in this world.

[47]
As mentioned in the Preface, Ikraam Huda’s father traveled throughout the empire in the administration of his duties.  According to the scant biographical data offered by the preface of
Earlie Days in the Light
(1816), the poet accompanied his father on these travels.

[48]
Baba (“Father”) Hamparsum was the affectionate name by which the Armenian people referred to composer Hampartsoum Limondjian (1768-1839).  He was a favorite of Selim III, having tutored the sultan in music.

[49]
Hamparsum collected the Turkish folk songs of the Sufi Dervishes, particularly those of the Mevlevi order. 

[50]
The founder of Sufism was Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi (1207-1273), more commonly known as Rumi.

[51]
Rumi’s lifespan corresponds roughly to the time during which the Zelaznids made their way across the Khorasan
district
.  However, the mystic lived
there
during his youth, while his father
was
serv
ing
as a regional official.  By the time the Zelaznids left Sang-e, Rumi was quite elderly and living in Konya (central Turkey), placing him well out of their path.  Even so, the fact that this story places the Zelaznids
close to where they later settled
is suggestive.  It is possible that someone else
’s encounter only
later came to be associated with Rumi. 

[52]
Huda may be referring to Rumi’s supposed meeting with a people the poet suggests could be the Zelaznids.  Again, while there may have been Zelaznids in the area in question, it is highly unlikely that the founder of Sufism encountered them directly.

[53]
The Quizilbash were the armed forces of the Safavids in Persia.

[54]
Shaybani is one name for Abu al’Fath Muhammad (c.1451-1510), an Uzbeki descendant of Genghis Khan who drove the Timurids out of northern Afghanistan.

[55]
Presumably, Huda means that the Zelaznids settled in early spring to plant crops, then uprooted themselves and moved west after harvest each year.

[56]
Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire before it became the center of the Byzantine Empire.  As such, many in the Middle East referred to the Byzantines as the Rúm (Romans).  Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453 and was renamed Istanbul.

[57]
The Battle of Chaldiran (1514).

[58]
Shāh
Ismā'il
Abu'l-Mozaffar bin Sheikh Haydar bin Sheikh Junayd Safawī
(1487-1524), Shia leader and founder of the Safavid Dynasty in Iran.

[59]
The Janissaries, Ottoman infantry formed from the personal guard of the sultan, were the elite troops of the empire from the 14
th
century until they
were abolished
in 1826.

[60]
After the battle, Selim I ordered the execution of tens of thousands of Quizilbash. 
Although t
he Safavid dynasty would survive into the 19
th
century, the Ottomans capture
d
Tabriz and much of eastern Iran in the months
following the battle
.

[61]
Although no nation had yet mastered the use of the submarine, the British, French, and even the American colonists, had built and used underwater ships for military purposes, largely without success.

[62]
The Tigris and Euphrates.

[63]
“Sag-giga”
is
the name the Sumerians gave themselves
;
it
means ‘black-headed people.’

[64]
The Sumerians, who emerged in Sumer in the late 5000s BCE, may have been the first organized civilization but they were
not
the
earliest
culture.  That distinction belongs to the Ubaid or Eridu peoples of southern Iraq.

[65]
Huda’s theory that t
he Sumerians came from another ‘port’
, while ridiculous, may have some basis in fact.  Early accounts describe the Sumerians as unusually dark-skinned, while Berossus (
Babyloniaca
, ca.
290-278 BCE) specifically referred to them as "black-faced foreigners”.  In light of this, it is possible that the Sumerians migrated there, perhaps from the central coast of Africa.

[66]
This is likely a reference to the writings of Abdul Alhazred, particularly in the
al-Aziz
.