Castle of Talikan resisted Chinghiz for seven months, and met with the usual fate (1221). [In the Travels of Sidi Ali, son of Housain (Jour.  Asiat., October, 1826, p. 203), “Talikan, in the country of Badakhschan” is mentioned.—­H.  C.] Wood speaks of Talikan in 1838 as a poor place of some 300 or 400 houses, mere hovels; a recent account gives it 500 families.  Market days are not usual in Upper India or Kabul, but are universal in Badakhshan and the Oxus provinces.  The bazaars are only open on those days, and the people from the surrounding country then assemble to exchange goods, generally by barter.  Wood chances to note:  “A market was held at Talikan....  The thronged state of the roads leading into it soon apprised us that the day was no ordinary one.” (Abulf. in Buesching, V. 352; Sprenger, p. 50; P. de la Croix, I. 63; Baber, 38, 130; Burnes, III. 8; Wood, 156; Pandit Manphul’s Report.)

The distance of Talikan from Balkh is about 170 miles, which gives very short marches, if twelve days be the correct reading.  Ramusio has two days, which is certainly wrong.  XII. is easily miswritten for VII., which would be a just number.

NOTE 2.—­In our day, as I learn from Pandit Manphul, the mines of rock salt are at Ak Bulak, near the Lataband Pass, and at Daruna, near the Kokcha, and these supply the whole of Badakhshan, as well as Kunduz and Chitral.  These sites are due east of Talikan, and are in Badakhshan.  But there is a mine at Chal, S.E. or S.S.E. of Talikan and within the same province.  There are also mines of rock-salt near the famous “stone bridge” in Kulab, north of the Oxus, and again on the south of the Alai steppe.  (Papers by Manphul and by Faiz Baksh; also Notes by Feachenko.)

Both pistachioes and wild almonds are mentioned by Pandit Manphul; and see Wood (p. 252) on the beauty and profusion of the latter.

NOTE 3.—­Wood thinks that the Tajik inhabitants of Badakhshan and the adjoining districts are substantially of the same race as the Kafir tribes of Hindu Kush.  At the time of Polo’s visit it would seem that their conversion to Islam was imperfect.  They were probably in that transition state which obtains in our own day for some of the Hill Mahomedans adjoining the Kafirs on the south side of the mountains the reproachful title of Nimchah Musulman, or Half-and-halfs.  Thus they would seem to have retained sundry Kafir characteristics; among others that love of wine which is so strong among the Kafirs.  The boiling of the wine is noted by Baber (a connoisseur) as the custom of Nijrao, adjoining, if not then included in, Kafir-land; and Elphinstone implies the continuance of the custom when he speaks of the Kafirs as having wine of the consistence of jelly, and very strong.  The wine of Kapishi, the Greek Kapisa, immediately south of Hindu Kush, was famous