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2.6  Problems of Correct Identification

Pietro della Valle travelling in the Middle East in the early 17th century wrote in his diary of the difficulty of obtaining the correct geographical names and spellings. Others, before and after, have had the same problem. An earlier example of misplaced names occurs in the writings attributed to Don John of Clafo and related by Purchas. He gives in his rutter about 1541 a description of the town of Toro which he identifies to the Elana of Ptolemy and the Ailan of the bible and then refers to the Strait of Ormuz being in the same area as the following extract indicates:

 

The Citie of Toro is ƒeated upon the Sea-ƒide, alongƒt a very faire and lond ƒtrand, and before wee camer at it about a Canon ƒhot, it hath twelve Palme-trees cloƒe together very neere the Sea, and from them inward to the Land. There runneth a plaine field till it commeth to the foot of certaine high Hils, theƒe Hils are thoƒe which come from within the Streight of Ormuz, called in times paƒt, The Perƒian Gulfe, the which hereto came running along the coaƒt, very high over the Sea, and as farre as Toro, they leave the Sea-coaƒt, and with great and ƒudden violence, they returne from hence to the Mayne toward the North-eaƒt, is angry and wearied of ƒo continual and long Neighbour-hood with the waters, by theƒe Mountaines is divided the Stonie Arabia, from Arabia Felix. And on the higheƒt tops of them, are ƒome Chriƒtians at this day leade a holy life, but a little beyond Toro, by the borders of the Sea, there beginneth a Mountaine to ariƒe by little and little, the whole thruƒting a bigge and high Point into it, it ƒeemeth to them that are in the Towne or Port of it, that it endeth there, and goeth no further, and remayneth, making a ƒhew of three great and mightie Mountaines ƒepoarate the one from the other. This Towne is ƒmall and very pleaƒant, and well ƒeated, all the people are Chhriƒtians and ƒpeak Arabicke, it hath a Monaƒterie of Friers of the Order of Monferrat, in which the Oracle or Image is of the bleƒƒed Virgin Saint Katherine of Mount Sinai.^[1]

 

The area that he is describing however is between Suez and Mecca. The town of Toro is located on the south west coast of the Sinai peninsular and Carsten Niebuhr who travelled in the same area about 1750 places on one of his maps a monastery set on the slopes of the mountain to the north of Tor (Toro).^[2] (Carsten Niebuhr had drawn a detailed of the Persian Gulf entitled ‘Sinus Persicus’^[3] to which he gave the name ‘Sea of Curses’.^[4] This was completed in 1765 after finishing a less detailed map of the Oman, ‘Terræ Omân’, whilst residing in Muscat.) The inference is that Don John of Clafo did not travel or see at first hand for himself the places he describes and that in all probability he merged two stories together. This confusion in places as well as dates and other details surfaces in other accounts later in the book so a short examination of maps will not only provide some background material but as we shall see will also provide us with some of the first illustrations of Hormuz.

In 1470 Jacopo d’Angelo, in Florence, produced a map of the Arabian peninsula in the manner of Ptolemy ^[5] some 1300 years after Ptolemy. Ptolemy’s treatise is considered to be the most accurate of ancient geographical works and the most comprehensive even though such areas as the Persian Gulf are distorted.^[6] No early Arabic translation of the text of Ptolemy exists but in the reign of Caliph al-Ma’mun (c. ad 813-833) translations of Greek geographical work made them aware of the works of Ptolemy.