CHAPTER XXV.

(1.) “Samabram.”—Ibn Haukal describes Shabran as being, in his time, a small place, but “pleasant, and well supplied with provisions”. This town appears as Sabran, in Castaldo’s map, 1584, and De Wit’s atlas, 1688, and is called Schabran by Olearius (_Voyages_, etc., 1038). It has now totally disappeared, its ruins being on the Shabran-tchaï, a small river flowing into the lake Ak-Sibir on the Caspian shore.

Schiltberger states that the prince passed through “Strana”, “Gursey”, “Lochinschan”, “Schurban”, “Samabram”, and “Temurtapit”; but as the king’s son was sent for, to return forthwith to his own country, it is more probable that he selected a short route, in which case he would have travelled, if the names are here correctly interpreted, through Astara, Shirwan, Shabran, Georgia, Lezghistan, and the Iron Gate, undoubtedly Derbent, which divided Persia from Tatary.

“Strana” I take to be intended for Astara, for the following reasons. It is stated in the last chapter, that Aboubekr took a country called “Kray”; probably Kars, which had been occupied by Timour in 1393, after laying siege to the fortress of Alindsha. Aboubekr than proceeded to “Erban”, Erivan, where he seized upon his brother “Mansur”, and strangled him. “Zegra”, being with Aboubekr, was therefore apparently in Armenia, and must have travelled northwards by keeping close to the Caspian, instead of traversing the heart of the Christian kingdom of Georgia.—ED.

(2.) “Temurtapit.”—According to Sprengel (_Gesch. der wichtigsten Geog. Entd._, etc., 362, 99), the Iron Gate through which the author passed when on his way from Persia into Tatary, was not the Iron Gate at Derbent, in the Caucasus, but the Caspian Gate in Khorasan. Malte Brun (_Précis de la Géog. Univ._, i, 188) and Sreznevsky (_Hojdenye za try mory’a_, etc., 241) are of similar opinion, while Neumann has no doubt that the Gate of Derbent, called Demyr kapou, Iron Gate, by the Turks, is the “ysen tor” of the text, which, had it been other than that at Derbent, would hardly have been described as being near Georgia and Shabran.—BRUUN.

(3.) “a river called Edil.”—Neumann attempts, but in vain, to identify the city of “Origens”, described as being in the middle of the river “Edil”, with Astrahan, although it is clear that the author was not ignorant of the real name of the latter place, Hadjy-tarkhan being included among the cities he visited in Tatary (“Haitzicherchen”, see