Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. I, Part I: History of Gujarat c19.33.1

c19.33.1

miles) These he states are on the shore of the sea to the east of Tána (the modern Thána).¹ After describing the coast of Makrán till its reaches Debal² (Karáchi or Thátta) Abu Rihán comes to the coast of Kachh³ and Somnáth, the population of which he calls the Bawárij because, he says, they commit their piratical depredations in boats called Baira.⁴ He gives the distance⁵ between Debal (Karáchi or Thátta) and Kachh the country that yields mukl (gum or myrrh)⁶ and bádrud (balm) as six farsakhs (24 miles); to Somnáth (from Debal) fourteen (56 miles); to Kambáya thirty (120 miles); to Asáwal the site of Ahmedábád (from Cambay) two days' journey; to Bahrúj (Broach) (from Debal)⁷ thirty, to Sindán or St. John (from Debal) fifty; to Subára (Sopára) from Sindán six⁸; to Tána (from Sopára) five. Rashid-ud-dín in his translation (A.D. 1310) of Al Bírúni (A.D. 970-1031) states⁹ that beyond Gujarát are Konkan and Tána. He calls Tánah the chief town of the Konkans and mentions the forest of the Dángs as the habitat of the sharwa an animal resembling the buffalo, but larger than a rhinoceros, with a small trunk and two big horns with which it attacks and destroys the elephant. Al Idrisi,¹⁰ writing about the end of the eleventh century but with tenth century materials, places¹¹ in the seventh section of the second climate, the Gujarát towns of Mámhal (Anhilwára), Kambáya (Cambay), Subára (apparently Surára or Surat), Sindán¹² (Sanján in Thána), and Saimúr (Chewal or Chaul).