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Mongol Place-Names in Mukri Kurdistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

My article written some twenty years ago had a twofold purpose: to insist on the importance of a systematic study of the toponymy of Persia and, by way of example, to examine the Mongolian stratum of placenames in the southernmost area of the Persian province of Azarbayjan.

Much of what I said in the first part of the original draft has happily become superfluous in view of the appearance of a very welcome series of volumes which, in the years 1328–32/1949–53, was published by the Persian Army Survey, under the title of Farhang-i joghrāfiyāyi-yī Irān. The production of this series is chiefly due to the enlightened endeavours of the former chief of the Survey, General Hosayn ‘Ali Razmārā (brother of the assassinated premier).

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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1957

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References

page 58 note 1 These terms will be further referred to under abbreviations: sh., b., and d.

page 59 note 1 Non-Persian (Turkish, Kurdish, Aramaic) names are transcribed according to the Persian pronunciation, and some of them purely theoretically, as they looked in the misleading Arabic script (iv, 221: Dorlce-Targun for *Dürge-Tärkävün; iv, 290: Qariq for *Qiriq (?); iv, 523: Nalus for *Nālōs etc.). Nor is the alphabetical order of the lists always correct.

page 59 note 2 It takes some time to realize that the new name Shāhpūr stands for the time-honoured Salmās and Dilmān (Dīlmaqān). The earlier registers and histories contain many archaic forms. Thus Bāsminj (east of Tabriz, FJ, iv, 74) appears in the ‘Alam-ārā, 657, as Fahūsfaj. Somewhat inconsistently in FJ, v, 307, one finds the name of the present-day village of Parispe (west of Eamadan) restored as Farsafaj.

page 59 note 3 In Indogermanische Forschungen, xvi, 1904, 197490Google Scholar. Another systematic study of local toponymy is Hartmann's, M.Bohtān (with notes by C. F. Andreas), 1886.Google Scholar

page 02 note 4 ‘Das Gebiet d. heutigen Landschaften Armenien, Kurdistân und Westpersien’, Zeit. f. Assyriologie, xiv, 1899, 103–72.Google Scholar

page 60 note 1 The articles do not go beyond the letter A. Some literature on historical geography (before 1900) is quoted in Grundriss der iran. Philologie, II, 371–3, 387–94 (Geiger, W.)Google Scholar, and 605–11 (F. Justi).

page 60 note 2 The main object of O. Paul, VIII, 1932, 105–10; x, 1934, 206–15 and J. Schnetz, x, 1934, 215–21, is to reject the alleged connexion of the names Γερμáυioi and Kirmān.

page 60 note 3 Der alte Name des persischen Neujahrfestes’, Akad. d. Wiss. u. d. Lit. in Mainz, Abhandl. d. Geistes- u. Sozialwiss. Kl., 1953, Nr. 2 (see Index)Google Scholar; Der Name Demavend’, Archiv Orientáini, XXII, 1954, 267–374;Google Scholar xxrv, 1956, 183–224.

page 60 note 4 Nām-hā-yi shahr-hā va dīh-ha-yi Īrān, I, 1929, 21 pp.Google Scholar (Tehrān, Shamirān, etc.); II, 1931, 31 pp. (on the endings: -vān, -gān, -hān, -khān, -dān, -zān, -lān, -rān).

page 60 note 5 Only the name of the district Shūlistān and some other place-names in Fars remind one of the Shūl who were still known in the thirteenth-fourteenth century.

page 61 note 1 See Hudūd al- ‘Alam, 374; cf. W. Ivanow on the dialects of the Central desert, JBAS, 1926, 405–31, and Acta Orientalia, VIII, 1927, 4561Google Scholar (cf. in the dialect of Khūr: gīs for bīst ‘20’, god for bād ‘wind’). I have tried to show that the name of the Armenian capital Dvin was due to the Parthians coming from the steppes of the present-day Turkmenia, see my ‘Transcaucasiea’ in J.As., juillet 1930, 41–51. In my opinion the eastern (Soghdian ?) -kanθ was also brought to Azarbayjan and Transcaucasia by the Oghuz Turks during their westward migration, see below, p. 78.

page 61 note 2 See my early article ‘The Kela-shin and the earliest monuments in the basin of Lake Urmiya’ (in Russian) in Zap. Vost. Otd., xxiv, 1917, 145–84Google Scholar, and my articles Sawdj-bulaḳ in E.I., and Roman and Byzantine campaigns in Atropatene’, BSOAS, xi, 2, 1944, 243–65.Google Scholar

page 61 note 3 Shīlēr is the Kurdish name of a plant which at the Cambridge Botanic Garden has been identified as Fistiilaria imperialis ‘crown imperial’.

page 62 note 1 More to the south, the more easterly Jaghatū serves as such a borderline. Beyond the confines of Azarbayjan, the more southerly governorships of Kurdistan and Kermanshah are firmly occupied by Kurds.

page 62 note 2 The village Khalkhāl, 26 km. east of Kermanshah, the considerable district Khalkhāl, south of Ardabil, and the southern residence of the old Albanian kings (Transcaucasia), Moses Kalankatvats‘i, I, ch. 19, might indicate the dispersion of the Kharkhar people.

page 62 note 3 Jeremiah LI, 27: ‘the kingdoms of Ararat (Urartu), Minni (Manna), and Ashchenaz (Scythians)’. Strabo, 11, 14, 8, calls Lake Urmiya Mαντιανή Cf. Belck, W., ‘Das Reich d. Mannäer’, in Verhandl. d. Berl. Gesell. f. Anthropologie, 1894, 479–87Google Scholar, and Melikishvili, G., ‘Voprosi istorii Maneyskogo tsarstva’, in Vest, drevney istorii, 1949, No. 1, 5772.Google Scholar

page 63 note 1 Or perhaps of its frontier province Missi (Meishta ?), see Melikishvili, op. cit.

page 63 note 2 Konig, F.W., ‘Älteste Geschichte der Meder und Perser’, Der Alte Orient, XXXIII, 3/4, 1934Google Scholar. For the r61e of the local Zagros tribes in the formation of the Median kingdom cf. Aliyev, I., in Ocherki po drevney istorii Azerbayjana, Baku, 1956, 57169.Google Scholar

page 63 note 3 Thureau-Dangin, F., Une relation de la huitième campagne de Sargon, 1912.Google Scholar Cf. more recently Herzfeld, , ‘Bronzener Freibrief eines Konigs von Abdadana’, Arch. Mitt, aus Iran, ix, 3, 1938, 159–77Google Scholar (an independent revision of the Assyrian records), and Col. Wright, E.M., ‘The eighth campaign of Sargon II’, J. of Near Eastern Studies, II, 3, 1943, 173–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar (considered remarks by a former officer of the American Intelligence Service who closely studied the area and crossed Mt. Sahand over seven different trails). The recent work on the history of Urartu is by Professor Piotrovsky, B.B., Istoriya i kultura Urartu, Erevan, 1944, 364 pp.Google Scholar

page 63 note 4 50 km. east of Saqqiz, see Godard, A., Le tresor de Ziwie, 1950.Google Scholar

page 63 note 5 See Minorsky, , ‘Les origines des Kurdes’, in Actes du XXe Congrès des Orientalistes, Louvain, 1940, 143–52.Google Scholar

page 63 note 6 See Debevoise, N., A political history of Parthia, 1938Google Scholar, Index under Ariobarzanus, Artabanus III.

page 63 note 7 See also Moses of Khoren, n, chapters 50,52 (the Alāns in Artaz-Mākū), and 58; v. inf., p. 75.

page 64 note 1 See Balādhuri, 331, 1ṡṭ., 182, A. Kasravī, Padshāhān-i gum-nām, II, 34; Minorsky, Nirīz, Ushnū in E.I.

page 64 note 2 i.e. ‘those of Heδayyab (Erbil)’, see Mis‘ar’s, Abu-DulafSecond risala, ed. by Minorsky, V., Cairo, 1955, § 25.Google Scholar

page 64 note 3 See ‘Marāgha’ and ‘Tabrīz’ in E.I.

page 64 note 4 The capital of Salmās until recently was called Dilmaqān (‘the Daylamites’), and Lāhījān is originally a well-known district of Gīlān. G. Hoffmann, Auszüge, 245, calls Salakh (now Lāhījān) ‘das Einfalls-Thor der dēlumitischen Barbaren, z. B. in das Bisthum Hnaithā.’. Cf. Minorsky, , La domination des Daïlamites, Paris, 1932.Google Scholar

page 64 note 5 See al-dīn, Rashīd, ed. Quatremère, under 660/1263; ed.Jahn, (Prag), 44: the family mourns the death of Abaqa on the Jaghātū, see the Life of Yabalāhā, below, p. 73, n. 2.Google Scholar

page 64 note 6 In another region (north of Ardabīl) closely connected with the Mongols one easily recognizes the name of the Mongol tribe Üngüt, Rashld, VII, 145, in the name of the district Ongūt, FJ, iv, 52. See below, p. 72.

page 64 note 7 ຓafar-nāma, I, 628. I also presume that the name of the plain quoted in the same chapter should be read Dasht-i Qulāghay (in Mong. ‘a thief’).

page 65 note 1 Sultan Mir Muqaddam was appointed to Marāgha after the destruction of the Mukri chiefs, ‘Alam-ārā, 574.

page 65 note 2 See Roosevelt, A.Jr., ‘The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad’, Middle East Journal, i, 3, 1943, 247–69.Google Scholar

page 66 note 1 As in the fluvial system of the European part of Russia.

page 66 note 2 Which can even belong to the pre-Mongol Seljuk Turks who in the eleventh century settled in the north-western provinces of Iran. For a short period in the fourteenth century the Chaghatay Turks of Timur rebaptised the Safīd-rūd as Aq-say (‘the white river’), ຒafar-nāma, I, 627. This Aq-say should not be confused with the tributary of the Kur in Transcaucasia, of which Rashīd al-dīn, ed. Jahn (Prag), p. 9, says: ‘The Chaghān-mūrān which they calle Aq-su’ (in which aq translates Mongol chaghān/tsaghān ‘white’).

page 66 note 3 See above, p. 62, n. 1.

page 66 note 4 At present the ancient name of the Jaghatu has been restored as Zarīn-rūd ‘Gold river’, and concurrently the Tata'ū has been given the name Sīmīn-rūd ‘Silver river’.

page 66 note 5 Nuzhat al-qulūb, 223: ‘Jaghatū ( see also ຒafar-nāma, II, 371) rises in the mountains of Kurdistan in the neighbourhood of the village Sihāy-kūh; having flowed past the province of Marāgha, (together) with the rivers SafI and Taghatū, it discharges into the salt lake of Tasfū (i.e. Lake Urmiya)’. The author of the Syrian Life of Yabalāhā III, transl. by Chabot, 1895, p. 121, says that in 1296, after the persecution of the Christians in Maragha the Christian queen Burghachin (Bulaghan ?) hid the Catholicos and his bishops in her house. Then they went to a place called Shāqātu and on to Mt. Siyāh-kūh, to be received by the king near Hamadan. Shāqātu seems to be but another spelling for Jaghātu, and Siyāh-kūh the range east of Shīlēr which forms the watershed between the Jaghātū and the Qīzïl-özän.

page 66 note 6 On which see my Roman and Byzantine campaigns’, BSOAS, xi, 2, 1944, 248.Google Scholar

page 66 note 7 Equivalent to Turkish -lu. The suffix -lu tends now to become - and the no more comprehensible -tu seems to follow the same evolution towards -, as the late A. Kasravi (himself an Azarbayjan Turk) heard it. Having no idea of Mongol suffixes, he then quite erroneously tried to explain - as ‘a mountain’ in the old Azarbayjan tongue!

page 67 note 1 The Life of Yabalāhā at one place (see above) has Shāqātu (*Chaghatu ?) but later gives Jaghatuy, in conformity with the present-day pronunciation.

page 67 note 2 In the report on the visit of Shaykh Ṣafi (A.D. 1252–1334) to the Mukri Kurdistan the Ṣafvat al-Ṣafā, ed. 1329/1911, p. 333, spells the names of the two rivers . In the Jihān-nümā, Istanbul, 1145, p. 388, the names are disfigured J.f.t and T.f.tū, while the latter follows the pattern of the Nuzhat.

page 67 note 3 However, in my 1911 diary I noted: ‘a cold ferruginous spring’, at half-an-hour's distance the west of Sāvuj-bulaq near the confluence of its two headwaters.

page 67 note 4 For the reduction of ji (chi) to j (ch) one might quote the names of the Uyghur months used by the Mongols: altïnch, onunch.

page 67 note 5 Thus spelt in the report of Dervish-pasha, Istanbul, 1287, p. 61. In Gamazov's additions Col. Chirikov's Putevoy zhurnal, SPb., 1875, 545: Qï;rïh-daban; Khurshïd-efendi, Seyāhatname-i ḥudūd, trans, by Gamazov, 393: Qïraž-daban.

page 68 note 1 The name of the mountain Arqati which Kasravi quotes (with the present-day change of the sequence a-u into a-ï) would be Arqa-tu ‘related to wiles, strategems’. Cf. ‘false fires, stratagems’ in Mirkhond's report on Ulugh-beg's campaign in Mughulistan.

page 68 note 2 In this section we are brought to mention also some other neighbouring districts lying east and south of the Mukri area properly so called.

page 69 note 1 It would be interesting to have an exact enumeration of all the four tribes, one of which must surely be the Oyrāt.

page 69 note 2 The name of Sirīl lying close by is mysterious but it would be too risky to compare it with Mong. shāril ‘a part of Buddha's relics’, cf. Rashīd al-din, ed. Jahn (Prag), 67.

page 69 note 3 See Rashīd, ed. Berezin, VII, 82, on the Chaghān-Tātār ‘White Tatar’ chiefs in Iran. Another Qaralar exists near Kalkhorān (Ardabīl).

page 70 note 1 Close to Indirqash lies the ancient rook-cut chamber of Faqraqā.

page 71 note 1 South of Marāgha, cf. Sharaf-nāma, I, 294; apparently Sarii-qurghan in the district of Takāb (formerly Tikān-tapa), on the road from Sa’in-qal‘a to Bījār.

page 71 note 2 It remains to be seen whether this form is purely imitative or has any philological grounds, cf. Pelliot, , ‘Les mots à H initiale, aujourd’hui amuïe’, J. As., avril, 1925, 193263. In view of the h- and -tu, the name can hardly be derived from the Turkish oba ‘a felt hut’.Google Scholar

page 72 note 1 This is the Turkish form of the Mongol Suldus, see Rashīd al-dīn, ed. Berezin, VII, 224, which is reflected in Kurdish Sundus or Sindus, see Mann, O., Die Mundart der Mukri-Kurden, 1906, 15, 258.Google Scholar

page 72 note 2 See Haussig, H.W., ‘Theophylakts Exkurs über die skytisehen Völker’, Byzantion, XIII, 1953, 282, etc.Google Scholar

page 72 note 3 Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-hiue occidentaux, 230, etc.

page 72 note 4 In his Addenda, p. 431, Haussig restores Movk pí as *Movkaī, which should refer to the neighbours of the Tabghach, called Mu-küan, whose name is further confronted with Mong. moghay ‘a snake’. This complicates the problem still more.

page 72 note 5 Cf. also Piano Carpini, ed. C. R. Beazley, 1903, 80, on the distinction between Merkat and Metrit (ed. Riseh, 1930, 109, Merkit and Mecrit), of whom the former were pagans and the latter Christians.

page 72 note 6 Were the two groups, M.rkīt/M.krīt and B.krīn/M.krīn, of the same Tunguz origin ?

page 72 note 7 It is not clear whether this refers to the old home of the Uyghurs on the Orkhon, or to the later kingdom near the T‘ien-shan, Rashīd, VII, 161–6. The chapter on the B.krīn follows immediately on that on the Uyghurs.

page 73 note 1 However, the FJ, iv, 492, mentions a Margīd near Marand, and another one on the road Tabrīz-Ahar !

page 73 note 2 Histoire de Mar Jabalaha III, tr. by Chabot, 1895, ch. XVIII, pp. 122–30Google Scholar, 152–77. Sir Budge, E.A. Wallis, The monks of Kūblāi Khān, 1928Google Scholar, 230, 260: ṭūrāyê kāyājīyê.

page 73 note 3 Niຓām al-dīn Shāmī, ed. Tauer, 282, was the witness of their exploit. Sharaf al-dīn, ຒafarnāma, II, 527, praises the M.krīt ‘who in mountaineering (kūh-ravī) have no rivals in the world (az Qāf tā, Qāf)’.

page 73 note 4 Sharaf-khān does not seem to know anything of the Hadhbānī (‘those of Heδāyyeb’, i.e. Adiabene-Arbela) and the chapter on the Zarzā, is missing in all the MSS of his work. On the Hadhbānī see Minorsky, Studies in Caucasian history, 1953, 129.Google Scholar

page 74 note 1 See Quatremère, , Notices et Extraits, XIII, 1838, 300–29.Google Scholar

page 74 note 2 The difference in the ending is explainable by Mongol suffixes. Final -n in Mongol is easily elided: morin > mori, and -t is a plural ending. A sept (affiliated to Goklan Turkmans) is called Mukri, see Jarring, G., On the distribution of Turk tribes in Afghanistan, Lund, 1939, 39Google Scholar (quoting Tumanovich), and a village Mukri is shown on the Amu-darya, south of Kerkī. The form Mukri, whether original, or secondary (under the influence of a labial initial) is very suggestive for our case. Are these Mukri too a splinter of the qayachi ? I cannot say whether the name of the Uzbek clan Murkut, which according to Khanïkov, Opisaniye Bukharskogo khanstva, SPb., 1843, 61, existed in Bukhara, refers to the same element, or to the ‘Merkit’.

page 74 note 3 In the Turkish kaza of Saray (west of Persian Qotur) one finds a small tribe called Muqurī (or Muqrī). According to Sir Sykes, M., The Caliph's last heritage, 1915, 564Google Scholar, these ‘Mukeri [sic. V.M.] are said to have migrated to Persia 50 years ago’. This vague statement might lead to misunderstandings. The Kurd Maḥmūd-efendi of Bāyezid, who collaborated with A. Jaba (Notices et récits kurdes, St. Petersbourg, 1860, Kurdish text, p. 5) clearly spells the name as and adds that this group belongs to the Shikākī (Shekkāk) tribe. The Muqurī are separated from the nearest point of the Mukri region by some 225 kms. and many mountains and, unless some historical facts are produced, it is not easy to establish any link between the two tribes.

page 74 note 4 Die Mundart, i, p. XVIII: ‘Die ackerbauenden Klassen, die ra‘îyät, nennen sich grössenteils zum Stamme der Dêbokrᇮ gehörig und man darf wohl vermuten, dass diese Dêbokrî, welche in grösseren Massen die östlichen Teile des Mukrilandes, den Distrikt Shâr-wêrân, und die nach Miân-dû-âb hin gelegenen Täler des Tatâû und Jagatû bewohnen, die Reste der einstigen Bevölkerung darstellen, die von den stammes- und spraehverwandten Mukrî aus dem Besitze verdrängt worden ist’.

page 74 note 5 In FJ, iv, 226, mis-spelt: Dehbogr.

page 75 note 1 In the sh. of Bam (Kerman) there exists a village called Deh-Bakrī, whose inhabitants speak Persian, FJ, VIII, 169.

page 75 note 2 I have been unable to ascertain the origin of the Russian family name , which is certainly not Kurdish but might point to Turco-Mongol affinities.

page 75 note 3 The difference between g and q also makes a difficulty.

page 75 note 4 The name of the village Süsnāvā, outside the Mukri area—in the district of Mergever (west of Urmiya-Rizāiya)—points to a colony of the same tribe.

page 76 note 1 cf. Rashīd al-dīn's correspondence, ed. M. Shafi, 177: Harbatān.

page 76 note 2 Hāflຓ-i Abrū, ed. Bayānī, 60: amir Alghū, atābek of Abū-Sa ‘īd, etc.

page 76 note 3 Rashīd, ed. Berezin, vn, 163: Barchuq, an Uyghur chief, etc.

page 76 note 4 See BSOAS, x, 3, 1941, 786.Google Scholar

page 76 note 5 Several princesses were called Bul(a)ghan ‘sable-marten’.

page 76 note 6 Rashīd, ed. Berezin, VII, 59, etc.

page 77 note 1 The History of the Muzaffarids, GMS, xiv, 1, 642, in describing the war of the amir Mubāriz with the Aughān Mongols (not to be confused with the Afghāns) states that the latter ‘had a jāligh and worshipped it according to the Mongol custom, and made sacrifices to those [sic] idols (butān)’. Cf. also Chālīq near Ahar (II). Radloff, in, 1884, gives chalū ‘the shaman's tambourine, idol’ (Altai).

page 77 note 2 Daughter of Üljeytü, Sātī-beg, who reigned A.D. 1338–9, Tārīkh-i guzīda, 606, but also an amīr of the Jalayirs, Sātī-bahīdur (about 765/1364), Ibid, 691.

page 77 note 3 Perhaps: qotan, Turk. ‘enclosure for sheep’.

page 77 note 4 See Tārīkh-i guzīda, 533, daughter of Mangu-Timur, son of Hulagu. Hāfiz-i Abrū, ed. Bayānī, 131, 134, wife of amir Chopan.

page 77 note 5 The spelling in FJ, VI, 440, tries to imitate the sound of ü, but the Nuzhat al-qulüb, 82, spells Küyī. The Kūyīn (*Kü'in) were a branch of the Tātār tribe and Rashīd, ed. Berezin, VII, 82, quotes several Kīyīn in Iran.

page note 6 Rashīd, ed. Berezin, VII, 253, a Manqut, father of Qutlugh-shāh.

page 77 note 7 The Oghuz tribes who arrived in Azarbayjan together with the Seljuks, and in the fifteenth century were reinforced by their Turkman brothers, brought back from Armenia by the Qaraqoyunlu and Aq-qoyunlu rulers.

page 78 note 1 Originally Sogdian ! The Turks must have brought this term from Central Asia. It is common only in Azarbayjan and Transcaucasia.

page 78 note 2 Sora-pungān ‘red thistles’; shīlēr ‘crown imperial’, see above, etc.

page 78 note 3 cf. Rawlinson, op. cit., 17, who connects some of these names with those of the Nestorian bishops mentioned in these parts in the ecclesiastical sources (Assemani, Bar Hebraeus). Cf. also Qal‘a-Kōka in Lāhījān and the name of the church which Yabalāhā built in Baghdad, trans. Chabpt, 30, 42.

page 78 note 4 Also Bē;tās in El-tamur, Bēkōs in Mangūr, etc., but not perhaps Bēzhua which sounds Kurdish (one village of this name is found in Alān and another north of Ushnū).

page 78 note 5 See above, p. 70.

page 79 note 1 The Nirīz of Fārs near Lake Mahālū is in a similar category.

page 79 note 2 Already, in Rawlinson's time, op. cit., 12, the greater part of it was altogether destroyed. A ‘Missionsfeldprediger’ Faber carelessly removed the fragments which are now in the British Museum. The inscription was translated by W. Belck. See Lehmann-Haupt, C.F., Corpus inscriptionum Chaldicarum, Textband, I Lief. 1928, p. 45, No. 20.Google Scholar

page 80 note 1 See Minorsky, , ‘Roman and Byzantine campaigns in Atropatene’, BSOAS, xi, 2, 1944, 2441–5Google Scholar (where in stead of Theophanes read Theophylact, 317:

page 80 note 2 To the east of Dariausa-Sincar Ptolemy places the sources of his confused Strato, which at this place would look like the southern headwaters of the Amardus. In Pauli-Wissowa, E. Honigmann identifies Strato with Harhāz-pey in Mazandarān!

P.S. The three earlier articles in my series ‘Mongolica’ are:

page 81 note 1 A Mongol decree of 720/1320 to the family of Shaykh Zāhid’, BSOAS, xvi, 3, 1954, 515–27.Google Scholar

page 81 note 2 Pūr-i Bahā's “Mongol” ode’, BSOAS, XVIII, 2, 1956, 261–78.Google Scholar

page 81 note 3 ‘Pūr-i Bahā and hia poems’, Charisteria Orientalia, Praha, 1956, 186–201.