This signification would embrace a large number of passages in which the term is used, though certainly not all.  It would account for the mode or sale by the piece, and frequent use of the expression a buckram, for its habitual application to coltre or counterpanes, its use in the auqueton of Baudouin, and in the jackets of Falstaff’s “men in buckram,” as well as its employment in the frocks of the Mongols and Tibetans.  The winter chapkan, or long tunic, of Upper India, a form of dress which, I believe, correctly represents that of the Mongol hosts, and is probably derived from them, is almost universally of quilted cotton.[1] This signification would also facilitate the transfer of meaning to the substance now called buckram, for that is used as a kind of quilting.

The derivation of the word is very uncertain.  Reiske says it is Arabic, Abu-Kairam, “Pannus cum intextis figuris”; Wedgwood, attaching the modern meaning, that it is from It., bucherare, to pierce full of holes, which might be if bucherare could be used in the sense of puntare, or the French piquer; Marsh connects it with the bucking of linen; and D’Avezac thinks it was a stuff that took its name from Bokhara.  If the name be local, as so many names of stuffs are, the French form rather suggests Bulgaria. [Heyd, II. 703, says that Buckram (Bucherame) was principally manufactured at Erzinjan (Armenia), Mush, and Mardin (Kurdistan), Ispahan (Persia), and in India, etc.  It was shipped to the west at Constantinople, Satalia, Acre, and Famagusta; the name is derived from Bokhara.—­H.  C.]

(Della Decima, III. 18, 149, 65, 74, 212, etc.; IV. 4, 5, 6, 212; Reiske’s Notes to Const.  Porphyrogen. II.; D’Avezac, p. 524; Vocab.  Univ.  Ital.; Franc.-Michel, Recherches, etc.  II. 29 seqq.; Philobiblon Soc.  Miscell. VI.; Marsh’s Wedgwood’s Etym.  Dict. sub voce.)

[Illustration:  Castle of Baiburt.]

NOTE 2.—­Arziron is ERZRUM, which, even in Tournefort’s time, the Franks called Erzeron (III. 126); [it was named Garine, then Theodosiopolis, in honour of Theodosius the Great; the present name was given by the Seljukid Turks, and it means “Roman Country”; it was taken by Chinghiz Khan and Timur, but neither kept it long.  Odorico (Cathay, I. p. 46), speaking of this city, says it “is mighty cold.” (See also on the low temperature of the place, Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, II. pp. 258-259.) Arzizi, ARJISH, in the vilayet of Van, was destroyed in the middle of the 19th century; it was situated on the road from Van to Erzrum.  Arjish Kala was one of the ancient capitals of the Kingdom of Armenia; it was conquered by Toghrul I., who made it his residence. (Cf.  Vital Cuinet, Turquie d’Asie, II. p. 710).—­H.  C.]

Arjish is the ancient Arsissa, which gave the Lake Van one of its names.  It is now little more than a decayed castle, with a village inside.