Note 93 — EL IDRISI COMPARED WITH EL BEKRI.

The text stating the distance of Kúghah from Ghánah to be a month and a half, occurs in the Abridgment of El Idrísí (Hartmann’s Idrísí, p. 42), but is wanting in the larger work. There is good reason for believing it to be an interpolation. From Ghánah to Seghmárah, according to El Idrísí, was eighteen days; thence to Sámaḳanda eight days; and thence to Kúghah ten days. So that if these places be all arranged in a straight line from west to east, Kúghah will be still only thirty-six days from Ghánah, instead of forty-five. But while El Idrísí expressly traces eastwards the route from Ghánah to Seghmárah, and sets Kúghah eastward of Sámaḳanda, he says nothing of the bearing of Sámaḳanda from Seghmárah; so that we are at liberty to set the former place west by south from the latter, under the guidance of El Bekrí, whose Sámaḳanda was only four days from Ghánah. The two authors will then be found to coincide in general design, and El Idrísí’s Kúghah will be not above twenty days from Ghánah. It would be easy, were it worth while, to explain why the epitomator, trying to supply an apparent deficiency in his author’s ill-connected details, should have separated Kúghah from Ghánah by a month and a half’s journey.