The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c7.s4.46

c7.s4.46

Rashid-ud-Din about A.D. 1300 mentions Konkan, of which the capital is Tana on the sea-shore. But further on he mentions Gujarát as a large country within which are Cambay, Somnát Kankan, 'Tana and several other cities and towns;' and again 'Beyond Gujarát are Kankan and Tana, beyond them the country of Malabar.'⁵ The question as to the dependence of the Konkan on Gujarát will be considered in the next section. It is sufficient here to say that the above extracts prove that the Konkan was a separate province with a capital called Thána, which is mentioned as a town on the coast by the traveller Al Masudi who died in A.D. 956.⁶ By Al Idrisi in the twelfth century the following itinerary of the coast is given: "From Baruk (Broach) to Sindhábur⁷ along the coast four days. From hence to Bana (Thána) upon the coast four days. This is a pretty town upon a great gulf where vessels anchor and from whence they set sail."⁸ Gildemeister has no doubt that the ancient and modern places are the same, and thinks that Thána is the only port known to the Arabs between Broach and Goa of which the situation can be exactly ascertained.⁹ When it is considered that, at no very distant time, the sea must have filled the whole space between the hills on the east of the Thána creek and those on the west of it, and must have flowed also over a very wide expanse of country between Thána and Bassein, it seems that these descriptions may have been tolerably correct for the Thána of eight hundred years ago. The last of these early Arabian