Ispahan.
“We parted in the streets of Ispahan,
I stopped my camel at the city gate.
Why did I stop? I left my heart behind.
* * * * *
I meet the caravans when they return.
´What news?’ I ask. The drivers shake their heads.
We parted in the streets of Ispahan.”
Richard Henry Stoddard, The Book of the East (1871)
Is´sachar, in Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, is meant for Thomas Thynne, of Longleate Hall, a friend to the duke of Monmouth. There seems to be a very slight analogy between Thomas Thynne and Issachar, son of Jacob. If the tribe (compared to an ass overburdened) is alluded to, the poet could hardly have called the rich commoner “wise Issachar.”