Biddulph’s Dialects of the Hindū-kush, JRAS.
Gazette of India, 1907, art. Jalalābād.
Bellew’s Races of Afghānistān.
F.—ON THE NAME DARA-I-NŪR
Some European writers have understood the name Dara-i-nūr to mean Valley of Light, but natural features and also the artificial one mentioned by Colonel H. G. Tanner (infra), make it better to read the component nūr, not as Persian nūr, light, but as Pushtū nūr, rock. Hence it translates as Valley of Rocks, or Rock-valley. The region in which the valley lies is rocky and boulder-strewn; its own waters flow to the Kābul-river east of the water of Chitrāl. It shews other names composed with nūr, in which nūr suits if it means rock, but is inexplicable if it means light, e.g. Nūr-lām (Nūr-fort), the master-fort in the mouth of Nūr-valley, standing high on a rock between two streams, as Bābur and Tanner have both described it from eye-witness,—Nūr-gal (village), a little to the north-west of the valley,—Aūlūgh-nūr (great rock), at a crossing mentioned by Bābur, higher up the Bārān-water,—and Koh-i-nūr (Rocky-mountains), which there is ground for taking as the correct form of the familiar “Kunar” of some European writers (Raverty’s Notes, p. 106). The dominant feature in these places dictates reading nūr as rock; so too the work done in Nūr-valley with boulders, of which Colonel H. G. Tanner’s interesting account is subjoined (P.R.G.S. 1881, p. 284).
“Some 10 miles from the source of the main stream of the Nur-valley the Dameneh stream enters, but the waters of the two never meet; they flow side by side about three-quarters of a mile apart for about 12 miles and empty themselves into the Kunar river by different mouths, each torrent hugging closely the foot of the hills at its own side of the valley. Now, except in countries where terracing has been practised continuously for thousands of years, such unnatural topography as exists in the valley of Nur is next to impossible. The forces which were sufficient to scoop out the valley in the first instance, would have kept a water-way at the lowest part, into which would have poured the drainage of the surrounding mountains; but in the Nur-valley long-continued terracing has gradually raised the centre of the valley high above the edges. The population has increased to its maximum limit and every available inch of ground is required for cultivation; the people, by means of terrace-walls built of ponderous boulders in the bed of the original single stream, have little by little pushed the waters out of their true course, until they run, where now found, in deep rocky cuttings at the foot of the hills on either side” (p. 280).
“I should like to go on and say a good deal more about boulders; and while I am about it I may as well mention one that lies back from a hamlet in Shulut, which is so big that a house is built in a fault or crack running across its face. Another pebble lies athwart the village and covers the whole of the houses from that side.”
G.—ON THE NAMES OF TWO DARA-I-NŪR WINES.
From the two names, Arat-tāshī and Sūhān (Suhār) -tāshī, which Bābur gives as those of two wines of the Dara-i-nūr, it can be inferred that he read nūr to mean rock. For if in them Turkī tāsh, rock, be replaced by Pushtū nūr, rock, two place-names emerge, Arat (-nūrī) and Sūhān (-nūrī), known in the Nūr-valley.
These may be villages where the wines were grown, but it would be quite exceptional for Bābur to say that wines are called from their villages, or indeed by any name. He says here not where they grow but what they are called.