Note 125 — IBN BAṬÚṬAH’S JOURNEY.

Tegháza تَغَازَي is described, though not named, by El Bekrí (Not. et Extr. p. 436). The salt mines, he says, are two days from the Great Desert, over which passes the road to Ghánah, and twenty from Sijilmésah. Ibn Baṭúṭah, travelling slowly, found the latter distance to be a journey of twenty-five days. The Morabite general, Abú Bekr ben Omar, purchased Negro slaves at a place in the desert called Gasza, whom he sent to Spain, and exchanged for European slaves, to recruit his army (Conde, Hist. de la Dom. II. p. 86). The Gasza here mentioned is probably Tegháza mutilated in the original text, and further disfigured by the Spanish writer. El Idrísí (Rec. de Voy. p. 107) mentions a place in the desert called Taghíza. According to Cadamosto (c. XII. fol. 137 v), Tegháza signifies Cargadore, or a loader (an old word, ill changed into Caricatojo in the recent edition of Ramusio); importing that the place so called was the residence of those who loaded the camels, or furnished the freight for the trade with Negroland. Peritsol (Itinera Mundi, ed. by Hyde, p. 124), explains it otherwise, and translates Tegháza, earth loaded with gold. Ibn Baṭúṭah says, that at Aïwalátin the salt fetched from ten to eighteen mithḳáls the load, and at Málí twenty or thirty, or sometimes forty mithḳáls; and Leo states that when he was at Tomboktú, the price of a load of salt rose there to eighty ducats. Cadamosto quotes much higher prices. The ducat or mithḳál is valued by Jackson at 3s. 8d. Another writer informs us, that the load of salt (600 lb.), worth 4s. at Tegháza, paid 5l. duty at Gago (True Historical Discourse of Muley Hamet’s Rising, c. II.). It has been asserted by Jackson (Account of Morocco, p. 241), and too readily believed, that there is a second Tegháza near the coast. But that author’s meaning is explained by his map, in which we find written East Tarassa (Tegháza) and West Tarassa Arabs (the Trarzas, or, as Labat writes their name, Eteraza). According to Jackson’s orthographical system, the same Arabic name may be written Tegháza, Tegrassa, or Terassa. Caillié (Voy. &c. tom. II. p. 417,) came to some wells called Trarzas, or Trasas, within the region of loose sand, and which have been nevertheless mistaken for the site of Tegháza, whereas they obviously owed their name to the tribe that dug them.