NOTE 5.—­A like description of the effect of the Simum on the human body is given by Ibn Batuta, Chardin, A. Hamilton, Tavernier, Thevenot, etc.; and the first of these travellers speaks specially of its prevalence in the desert near Hormuz, and of the many graves of its victims; but I have met with no reasonable account of its poisonous action.  I will quote Chardin, already quoted at greater length by Marsden, as the most complete parallel to the text:  “The most surprising effect of the wind is not the mere fact of its causing death, but its operation on the bodies of those who are killed by it.  It seems as if they became decomposed without losing shape, so that you would think them to be merely asleep, when they are not merely dead, but in such a state that if you take hold of any part of the body it comes away in your hand.  And the finger penetrates such a body as if it were so much dust.” (III. 286.)

Burton, on his journey to Medina, says:  “The people assured me that this wind never killed a man in their Allah-favoured land.  I doubt the fact.  At Bir Abbas the body of an Arnaut was brought in swollen, and decomposed rapidly, the true diagnosis of death by the poison-wind.”  Khanikoff is very distinct as to the immediate fatality of the desert wind at Khabis, near Kerman, but does not speak of the effect on the body after death.  This Major St. John does, describing a case that occurred in June, 1871, when he was halting, during intense heat, at the post-house of Pasangan, a few miles south of Kom.  The bodies were brought in of two poor men, who had tried to start some hours before sunset, and were struck down by the poisonous blast within half-a-mile of the post-house.  “It was found impossible to wash them before burial....  Directly the limbs were touched they separated from the trunk.” (Oc.  Highways, ut. sup.) About 1790, when Timur Shah of Kabul sent an army under the Sirdar-i-Sirdaran to put down a revolt in Meshed, this force on its return was struck by Simum in the Plain of Farrah, and the Sirdar perished, with a great number of his men. (Ferrier, H. of the Afghans, 102; J.  R. G. S. XXVI. 217; Khan.  Mem. 210.)

NOTE 6.—­The History of Hormuz is very imperfectly known.  What I have met with on the subject consists of—­(1) An abstract by Teixeira of a chronicle of Hormuz, written by Thuran Shah, who was himself sovereign of Hormuz, and died in 1377; (2) some contemporary notices by Wassaf, which are extracted by Hammer in his History of the Ilkhans; (3) some notices from Persian sources in the 2nd Decade of De Barros (ch. ii.).  The last do not go further back than Gordun Shah, the father of Thuran Shah, to whom they erroneously ascribe the first migration to the Island.

One of Teixeira’s Princes is called Ruknuddin Mahmud, and with him Marsden and Pauthier have identified Polo’s Ruomedam Acomet, or as he is called on another occasion in the Geog.  Text, Maimodi Acomet.  This, however, is out of the question, for the death of Ruknuddin is assigned to A.H. 675 (A.D. 1277), whilst there can, I think, be no doubt that Marco’s account refers to the period of his return from China, viz. 1293 or thereabouts.