Home » Iran » Iran - 2002

Iran - 2002

Iran - 2002

Jacek Pałkiewicz
2006-06-25 13:14:43

Displayed times (last time: )

to be a local modification of the Arabic kabir, great. Such a derivation, however, altogether loses sight of the saline characteristics, which are an essential connotation of the term as used in Persia. General Schindler, examining the various words from which it may be derived-(I) the Persian gav, a depression or hollow, the Persian gur or kur, a grave, pool, hollow, or plain (whence gurkhar, the wild ass or ass of the plain), and the Arabic kttfr, or kafreh (plural kufur), a word still in use to express a desert in Africa and Arabia-gives, the preference to the last. In its Persian application it invariably signifies a salt desert or saline swamp, and is bestowed both upon the Great Salt Desert of which I am now speaking, and also upon smaller kavirs or patches of saline waste, which are to be found in other parts of the country, and which may be regarded, in some cases as repetitions of the same phenomenon in detached localities, in others as bays or inlets of the Dasht-i-Kavir.

The theory has sometimes prevailed that the latter owes its origin solely to the drainage of saline streams from the highlands depositing, as they evaporate, a white crust or efflorescence upon the ground, and in some cases forming pools and swamps; and there is this to be said in favour of the hypothesis, that the streams of Persia are very frequently and largely impregnated with salt. On the other hand, tradition is so unanimous that the site of the Dasht-i-Kavir and, in fact, the entire, centre of Persia, were once occupied by a salt sea, and the present physical conditions accord so well with the theory, that we shall probably not err if we accept it. Legend asserts that this inland sea once extended from Kazvin to Kerman and the borders of Beluchistan. The ancient city of Rhages is said to have been upon its northern shore, Yezd to have been an island, and Kerman to have been upon its southern coast. The tower of Saveh is even identified as one of the lighthouses built to ...