Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.98

English (machine translation) 13.98

Language
English

13.98.1

The wonderful bahramān ruby is found only in this town. Some of it comes out of the inlet, and this is prized by them, and some is dug for. In the island of Saylān rubies are found in all parts of it. The land is privately owned, so a man buys a plot of it and digs for rubies, and finds whitish, branching stones; it is inside these that the rubies form. He gives them to the polishers, who rub them down until they split open to reveal stones

13.98.2

The white elephant, after al-Qazwīnī in his book ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt — Royal Asiatic Society —

13.98.3

of ruby, some red, some yellow and some blue, which they call nīlam — with a after the n and the l, and the y (the last letter) unvowelled.

13.98.4

Their custom is that any ruby stone whose price reaches a hundred fanam — with a after the f and the n — belongs to the sultan, who pays its price and takes it, while whatever is below that value belongs to its owners. A hundred fanam are equivalent to six gold dinars.

13.98.5

All the women in the island of Saylān have necklaces of coloured rubies, and they put them on their hands and feet in place of bracelets and anklets. The sultan's slave-girls make a net of them which they put on their heads. I saw on the forehead of the white elephant seven of these stones, each larger than a hen's egg, and I saw with Sultan Ayrī Shakrawatī a dish the size of the palm of the hand made of ruby, containing aloe-wood oil. I began to marvel at it, and he said, 'We have ones larger than that.'

13.98.6

Then we travelled from Kunakār and halted at a cave known by the name of Usṭā Maḥmūd al-Lūrī — with u after the l — who was one of the pious; he had dug out that cave at the foot of a mountain beside a small inlet there. Then we left it and halted at the inlet known as the Inlet of Būzna — with the b (with one dot), w, n and h; and būzna

13.98.7

means monkeys.

Linked texts (1)