Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/150

 15’N., 53° 30′E.). The "mountains, high and rocky and steep, inhabited by cave-dwellers," are the modern Jebel Kamar and Jebel Gara, reaching altitudes of over 3,000 feet.

The name "Omana," the same as the modern Oman, seems to have extended at the time of the Periplus over a larger area, including much of the south shore of the Persian Gulf as well as the coast of South Arabia as far as Ras Hasik; all of which seems to have been subject to the Parthians, but recently—for Isidorus of Charax Spasini, writing in the time of Augustus, speaks of "Goaesus, King of the Omanitae in the Frankincense Country." The coast between Ras Hasik and Ras Fartak, likewise associated with the name Omana in the Periplus, had fallen to the Chatramotitae in the recent partition of the Incense-Land.

32. The harbor called Moscha.—This is identified with Khor Reiri (17° 2′N., 54° 26′E.), a protected inlet (now closed at low tide by a sand-bar); into which empties the Wadi Dirbat. It is a couple of miles east of the modern town of Taka, in the eastern part of the plain of Dhofar, a fertile strip of some 50 miles along the coast between Ras Risut and Ras Mirbat, surrounded by the Gara Mountains. Marco Polo describes it (III, xxxviii) as "a very good haven, so that there is a great traffic of shipping between this and India." It is, no doubt, the "harbor of the Abaseni" of Stephanus Byzantius. The ancient capital, Saphar (whence the modern name of Dhofar, confused by many mediaeval geographers with Saphar or Zafar, the capital of the Homerites in Yemen) lay probably in the western part of the plain, near the modern Hafa.

Saphar seems to mean no more than "capital" or "royal residence," so that the true name of the ancient city is unknown. Ptolemy calls it Abissa Polis, "City of the Habashat."

The Plain of Dhofar, and the mountains behind it and for some distance beyond on either side, are the original, and perhaps always the most important, Incense-Land of Arabia. We are fortunate in having a vivid description of the whole region, by J. Theodore Bent (Geographical Journal, VI, 109–134, with a map facing page 204; reprinted in his Southern Arabia) with careful corrections by Glaser (Die Abessinier in Arabien und Afrika, 182–192). The plain is alluvial soil washed down from the mountains, which are of limestone, cavernous, and high enough to attract the rains; so that instead of the sandstone and volcanic rocks elsewhere on the south coast, here is "one large oasis by the sea," abundantly watered the year round, and producing crops of all kinds. The encircling mountains are the source of many streams, gathering in lakes on the upper levels and falling to