Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/323

 THE SITE OF ANCIENT HECATOMPTLOS

��Kumis,' given to the sand-buried ruins which are also called Komiish, Kiimas, or Guraas by the natives.^ This inference may have been gathered already from what was said in the preceding chapter on the history of Damghan ; but it is emphasized here because it forms the special link that con- nects the portions of the present chapter.*

��1 That the district Komisene should be named after its principal city is quite natural ; such instances abound in Persia as elsewhere. The classic designation Hecatompylos, ' of hundred gates,' is possibly a Greek version of some such title for Kumis as Sad- darvdzah, 'hundred portals,' since the Orientals are fond of calling their cities by some honorific appellation, instead of using the actual name. So Mordt- mann, Hekatompylos, ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Geographie Persiens, in Sitzb. kgl. bayer. Akad. Wiss. zu Miinchen 1 (1869), p. 497, 536. More still will be found on this subject in my monograph on the Caspian Gates. I may also note that additional weight is given to the view expressed above regarding the likelihood of the identity of the site of Hecatompylos and that of the old town of Kumis by the kin- dred view of Houtum-Schindler, in JBAS. 1876, p. 427, and of the same authority in Zt. Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde, 12.216, Berlin, 1887. Asim- ilar opinion was held also by Kawlin- son, according to a note in Ferrier, Caravan Journeys in Persia, p. 69, n. 1, London, 1866. I may further- more add that I fear there is not suffi- cient evidence to support the view which has recently been put forward by my friend Major P. M. Sykes (in The GeographicalJournal, 37. 17-18, London, 1911), who suggests that Hec- atompylos may have been situated at Paras, more than fifty miles northeast

��of Astrabad, whereas the classical sources state that Alexander passed Hecatompylos before reaching Zadra- carta (Astrabad).

2 I repeat that this view (p. 162, n. 1) which draws a distinction be- tween Kumis proper, or Shahr-i Kumis, ' City of Kumis,' and Damghan, and considers one of the two adjacent places to have been supplanted by the other, as in the case of Rai-Teheran, Shahrud-Bustam, and the like, is simply my own opinion based upon observations on the spot. In corrob- oration of this view, among other evidences, may be cited the version of Tabari by Bel'ami (963 a.d.), tr. Zot- enberg, 3. 491, who mentions a routed army as 'rallied at Kumis and at Damghan ' and afterwards (3, 492) speaks in general of the ' territory of Kumis.' This would require a slight modification of the view held by such an authority as Le Strange (Eastern Caliphate, pp. 364-365), who wrote as follows : ' The capital town of the province [of Kumis] is Damghan, which the Arabs wrote Ad-Damghan, and which in accordance with their usage is often referred to as Kumis (sc. Madinah Kumis, "the City of Kumis"), the capital thus taking to itself the name of the province.'

I add here the chief references to Kumis and Damghan in the Arab and Persian geographers, the former name preponderating in the earlier itinera- ries (cf. Le Strange, p. 368). The

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