Masa’ud’s seeking help from Kerman to reinstate him is not the first case of the same kind that occurs in Teixeira’s chronicle, so there may have been some kind of colour for Marco’s representation of the Prince of Hormuz as the vassal of the Atabeg of Kerman ("l’homme de cest roy de Creman;” see Prologue, ch. xiv. note 2).  M. Khanikoff denies the possibility of the existence of any royal dynasty at Hormuz at this period.  That there was a dynasty of Maliks of Hormuz, however, at this period we must believe on the concurring testimony of Marco, of Wassaf, and of Thuran Shah.  There was also, it would seem, another quasi-independent principality in the Island of Kais. (Hammer’s Ilch. II. 50, 51; Teixeira, Relacion de los Reyes de Hormuz; Khan.  Notice, p. 34.)

The ravages of the Tartars which drove the people of Hormuz from their city may have begun with the incursions of the Nigudaris and Karaunahs, but they probably came to a climax in the great raid in 1299 of the Chaghataian Prince Kotlogh Shah, son of Dua Khan, a part of whose bands besieged the city itself, though they are said to have been repulsed by Bahauddin Ayas.

[The Dynasty of Hormuz was founded about 1060 by a Yemen chief Mohammed Dirhem Ko, and remained subject to Kerman till 1249, when Rokn ed-din Mahmud III.  Kalhati (1242-1277) made himself independent.  The immediate successors of Rokn ed-din were Saif ed-din Nazrat (1277-1290), Masa’ud (1290-1293), Bahad ed-din Ayaz Sayfin (1293-1311).  Hormuz was captured by the Portuguese in 1510 and by the Persians in 1622.—­H.  C.]

NOTE 7.—­The indications of this alternative route to Kerman are very vague, but it may probably have been that through Finn, Tarum, and the Sirjan district, passing out of the plain of Hormuz by the eastern flank of the Ginao mountain.  This road would pass near the hot springs at the base of the said mountain, Sarga, Khurkhu, and Ginao, which are described by Kaempfer.  Being more or less sulphureous they are likely to be useful in skin-diseases:  indeed, Hamilton speaks of their efficacy in these. (I. 95.) The salt-streams are numerous on this line, and dates are abundant.  The bitterness of the bread was, however, more probably due to another cause, as Major Smith has kindly pointed out to me:  “Throughout the mountains in the south of Persia, which are generally covered with dwarf oak, the people are in the habit of making bread of the acorns, or of the acorns mixed with wheat or barley.  It is dark in colour, and very hard, bitter, and unpalatable.”

Major St. John also noticed the bitterness of the bread in Kerman, but his servants attributed it to the presence in the wheat-fields of a bitter leguminous plant, with a yellowish white flower, which the Kermanis were too lazy to separate, so that much remained in the thrashing, and imparted its bitter flavour to the grain (surely the Tare of our Lord’s Parable!).