Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/133

 Darband, from the Persian Dar-hand, * Closer of the door ' or ' Closed door ' — a fitting appellation from its remarkable strate- gic position. 1 In olden times (as the quotations in my monograph will show) 2 it was most often called 'Iron Gate' (^Damir-Kapii in Turkish), or ' Gate of Gates ' (^Bdh al-Abwdh in Arabic), or, par excellence, ' The Gate ' (^Al-Bdl)),^ The Romans, who had to do with the pass in their wars and treaties with the Persians, knew it generally as the 'Caspian Gates' (^Oaspiae Portae) of the Caucasus — a designation that is to be carefully distin- guished, however, from the real, or historic, Caspian Gates, east of Rhagae, a day's journey from Teheran, through which Alexander passed in pursuit of Darius Codomannus, as I shall describe in Chapter VIII and discuss in a separate monograph to be published later.

The foundation of these walls of Derbent is ascribed to two heroes famous in history — to Alexander himself (d. 323 B.C.), or to the Sasanian monarch Khusru (Anushirvan the Just), more commonly known as Chosroes I (531-579 A.D.), the latter monarch being said to have been the real builder of the bul-

1 The second of these two meanings erences to this pass are Tacitus, An- is the one generally given, but the nals, 6. 33 ; Joannes Lydus, De Ma- former one, 'shutter of the gates, i.e. gistratibus, 3. 51-53 ; Priscus, Fragm. defender of the pass,' is insisted upon 31, 37 ; see also Spiegel, Erdnische by Kazem-Beg, Derbend JSfdmeh^ or the Alterthumskunde, 3. 372, n. 2. Ob- History of Derbend, translated from a serve, furthermore, that the Armen- select Turkish Version, p. 21, St. Pe- ians called the Pass of Derbent Pahak tersburg, 1851. This rare book is a Corai, or Kapann Corai ('Watch,' storehouse of information on the his- or 'Pass,' of Cor), as well as Honac toric side of Derbent, and I shall fre- Pahak (♦ Watch of the Huns ') and quently refer to it in this chapter, a number of other appellations, because Kazem-Beg, although a pro- From the Armenian Cor came the fessor at the University of St. Peters- Persian (and Pahlavi) (5or, which burg, was a native of Derbent, and he appears in the Arab geographers as writes with the knowledge and pride Sul, and in Byzantine writers as of one who knows well the home of TfoiJp ; while yet another Armenian his birth. name of the same pass, luroi Pahak,

2 This monograph is to be called is the source of the Byzantine 'lou- Caspiae Portae, or the Caspian Gates poenradx (see Marquart, Erdnsahr^ of Antiquity. p. 100-101).


 * Among the various classical ref-

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