The Greeks in Bactria and India c27.15

c27.15

Here comes in Barthold’s Arab evidence.⁷ He says that only two Arab writers are independent witnesses, Kasvin in the fourteenth century and Kafizi-Abru in the fifteenth; both agree that in their day the Oxus entered the Aral by several mouths but sent a branch (whose route I cannot identify) over a waterfall and into the Caspian; and both state that in former times the whole river entered the Aral, the change having coincided with the appearance of the Mongols in the country. Now in Babylonia the Mongols utterly destroyed the irrigation system. If they did the same in Bactria, then the Oxus would suddenly increase in volume and might seek a new outlet, though it would remain strange that the new water got as far as Kwarizm before finding one. What knowledge of antiquity these two writers may have had I have no idea, neither do I know if their statements have been subjected to the necessary critical analysis; but evidently they met with no tradition that the Oxus had ever done this before, and so far as they go they are therefore against Herrmann’s view.