Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/102

 camels and sheep, and the framework of a few huts, which carefully piled on the beach in readiness for the ensuing year."

15. The Bluffs of Azania are the rugged coast known as El Haẓin, ending at Ras el Kyl, 7° 44′N., 49° 40′E.

15. The Small and great beach is the Sif el Tauil or "low coast," ending at Ras Aswad, 4° 30′N., 47° 55′E.; but this is actually a longer course than the bluffs, whereas the Periplus rates them both as six days' journey.

15. The Courses of Azania are the strips of desert coast extending below the equator. The Arabs divide this coast into two sections, the first called Barr Ajjan (preserving the ancient name), the second Benadir, or "coast of harbors." Sarapion may be the modern Mogdishu, 2° 5′N., 45° 25′E. Nicon is, perhaps, the modern Barawa, 1° 10′N., 44° 5′E. The "rivers and anchorages" are along the modern El Djesair or "coast of islands."

Concerning the name Azania, R.N. Lyne, in his Zanzibar in Contemporary Times, and Col. Henry Yule, in his edition of Marco Polo, have much of interest. The name survives in the modern Zanzibar (the Portuguese form of Zanghibar), which Marco Polo applied not only to the island, but to the whole coast; and it is popularly derived from bar, coast, and zang, black: "land of the blacks." But the name seems to be older, and to refer to the ancient Arabic and Persian division of the world into three sections, Hind, Sind and Zinj, wherefrom even European geographers in mediaeval times classified East Africa as one of the Indies, and Marco Polo located Abyssinia in "Middle India." Cosmas Indicopleustes, writing in the 6th century A.D., indicates that the whole "Zingi" coast, to a point certainly below Mogdishu, was subject to the Abyssinian Kingdom. Yule notes that the Japanese Encyclopaedia describes a "country of the Tsengu in the S.W. ocean, where there is a bird called pheng, which in its flight eclipses the sun. It can swallow a camel, and its quills are used for water casks." This is doubtless the Zanghibar coast, the name and legend reaching Japan through the Arabs.

The lack of distinction in ancient geography between Asia and Africa goes back to the dawn of letters. Hecataeus in the 6th century B.C. divided the world into two equal continents—Europe, north of the Mediterranean; Asia, south of it. Around them ran the ocean stream. The distinction is supposed to have been based on temperature. Tozer (History of Ancient Geography, p.69) refers it to ancient Assyria, açu (sunrise) and irib (darkness) frequently occurring in inscriptions there.