Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/85

 close by it, ' flows night and day with white naphtha,' and that all the ground round about was rendered highly inflammable by the presence of oil.^ The inscriptions on the buildings in the citadel, as given below, show that in medieval times Baku possessed wealthy and influential men, for only such citizens could have erected edifices so imposing.

As early as the thirteenth century European travelers began to visit Baku and to mention its oil products. The renowned Venetian, Marco Polo, in the second half of that century speaks of the territory in such terms as to leave no doubt that he means Baku, when he says : —

' On the confines towards Georgiana there is a fountain from which oil springs in great abundance, insomuch that a hundred shiploads [y.l. camel-loads] might be taken from it at one time. This oil is not good to use with food, but 'tis good to burn, and is also used to anoint camels that have the mange. People come from vast distances to fetch it, for in all the countries round about they have no other oil.' ^

Two centuries later another Venetian, Josafa Barbaro, who traveled in Persia in 1474 up from Tabriz (' Thauris ') to Derbent on the Caspian, where he spent several months, refers to ' Bachu ' and ' the sea of Bachu,' as follows : —

Bachu, whereof the sea of Bachu taketh name, neere vnto which citie there is a mountaigne that caste th foorthe blacke oyle, stynkeng horryblye, which they, nevertheless, vse for furnissheng of their lights, and for the annoynteng of their camells twies a yere. For if they were not anoynted they wolde become skabbie.' *
 * Vpon this syde of the [Caspian] sea there is an other citie called

1 For Yakut's statements see Bar- next paragraph). Inl404Clavijo(Hak- bier de Meynard, Diet. geog. p. 78, luyt Soc, pp. 93, 95) mentions the and compare Le Strange, Eastern ' sea of Bakou. '

Caliphate, pp 180-181. ^ ggg Josafa Barbaro, Travels to

2 Marco Polo, ed. Yule, 1. 48, Lon- Tana and Persia, tr. and ed. Thomas, loc. concerning rubbing the camels (Hakluyt). The date, 1474, is given with oil; a similar statement is made in on p. 50 of that work.

another connection by Barbaro (see

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