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134 ISLAND OF KISH. 1,29
very few towns (^ j^) (in this region). When the king shows himself in
public, he rides a horse and has a black umbrella over him; he is accom-
panied by over an hundred retainers.
The people of the country are white and clean and eight feet tall. They
wear their hair loose under a turban eight feet long, one half of which hangs 5
down their back. Their clothing consists of a foreign-shaped jacket and an
outer wrap of light silken or woollen stuff, and red leather shoes. They make
use of gold and silver coins. Their food consists of wheaten cakes, mutton,
fish and dates. They do not eat rice. The country produces pearls and fine
horses. lo
Every year the Ta-shi send camels loaded with rose-water, gardenia
fiowers, quicksilver, spelter, silver bullion, cinnabar (5^ ^), red dye plants
(^ ^), and fine cotton stuffs, which they put on board ships on arriving
in this country (/^ 0) to barter with other countries^.
Notes. 15
1) Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, 257, says that the island of Kays, or, as
the Persians wrote the name, Kish, in the course of the twelfth century became the trade centre
of the Persian Gulf after the ruin of Siraf. «A great walled city was built in Kays island, where
water tanks had been constructed, and on the neighbouring sea-banks was the famous pearl
fishery. Ships from India and Arabia crowded the port, and all the island was full of palm 20
gardens The island lay about four leagues from the coast, where the port of embarcation
was Huzu, to which, in the thirteenth century, a caravan road came down from Shlraz through
Laghirs. A. W. Stiffe, Geog. Journal, VII, 644—649, says nine miles separate at the present time
the island from the Persian coast. The centre of old trade was on the north coast of the island.
See alsoMarcoPolo,I, 64, II, 324 and Ibn Batuta, IV, 168. Chinese writers of the Yuan period 25
transcribed the name of the island K'ie-shi ('[^ '^)- Bretschneider, Med. geography, II, 129.
2) The adjoining province of Fars was celebrated for the so-called attar of roses (atar
or 'itr in Arabic signifies 'a perfume' or 'essence'), which, of divers qualities, was more espe-
cially made from the roses that grew in the plain round Jiir or Firuzabad. — Le Strange, op.
cit., 293. Marco Polo, II, 324, refers to the importance of the horse trade of Kish. Barbosa 80
mentions vermilion and quicksilver among the exports from Jeddah, Aden and Ormuz. Duarte
Barbosa, Coasts of East Africa, etc., 23, 27, 42. (Hakluyt Soc. edit.).
The ored dye plants is madder. John Jourdain (1609) speaking of the trade of Aden says,
that the ships from India and Muscat carried back gum arabic, frankincense and myrrh, «and
an herbe which groweth here called fua or runa, which they carrie to the Indies to dye red 35
withall)). See the Journal of John Jourdain (Hakl. Soc. edit.) 177. A century before Jourdain,
Varthema, speaking also of Aden, said: ayeerely from the Citie of Aden, depart fifteene or twentie
ships laden with Kubricke, which is brought out of Arabia Felix». o^ fuwah is the Arabic
name for madder, runas, the Persian.
Kish carried on an important trade in slaves. Edrisi, I, 58 refers to the expeditions 40
which the Kish pirates sent to the Zanguebar coast on slave raids. Our author (infra, p. 137) says
it carried on trade with Basra.