[96] Narshakhi, ed. Schefer, p. 39.
[97] Bellew and Vambéry both call him “Muslim,” a reading which has been adopted in the Russian translation of Narshakhi, published in Tashkent in 1897. The latter, indeed, contains a note to the effect that the name is written “Salm” in Arabic sources. It is also the spelling in the Persian Tabari. Salm was twenty-four years of age on his appointment. His father was `Ubaydullah, the famous governor of Basra.
[98] This warrior held command of the Arab troops in Central Asia under several viceroys in succession, and thus gained the confidence of his troops and an intimate knowledge of Khorāsān and the adjoining tracts. The stability in the office of generalissimo went far to neutralise any disadvantages occurring from the frequent changes in that of viceroy.
[99] Tabari (II. p. 394) tells us that Salm took his wife Umm Mohammed with him, and that she was the first Arab woman to cross the Oxus. She bore him a son, who was surnamed the “Soghdian.”
[100] £55 reckoned in our currency.
[101] Narshakhi’s account of these events brings the lack of discipline among the Arabs into a strong light, and serves to account for the vicissitudes of their rule in Central Asia.
[102] This curious custom still survives in Merv. “One day,” writes O’Donovan, “the town-crier, accompanied by half a dozen other Turcomans, entered my hut, each to present me a new-born child. I could not catch the exact words; all I could understand was that one of the infants was O’Donovan Beg, another O’Donovan Khan, a third O’Donovan Bahadur. I forget what the others were. It turned out that the Tekkes’ newly born children are, as a rule, called after any distinguished strangers who may be on the oasis at the time of their births, or have resided there a short time previously, or after some event intimately connected with the tribe” (The Story of Merv, p. 329).
[103] Cf. Aug. Müller, Der Islam, p. 411, who gives the date as A.H. 85.
[104] An entertaining account of this cruel and witty governor will be found in d’Herbelot, under the article Heggiage-ben-Josef-al-Thakefi.
[105] Merv has been styled by almost all European writers on the subject, “The Queen of the World.” Now the origin of this high-sounding title is the expression Merv-i-Shāhijān, a title used to distinguish this town from Merv er-Rūd. This word Shāhijān has been taken as a corruption of Shah-i-jahān, or “Queen of the World.” Yakūt says that Shāhijān means “Soul of the King.” The form as it now stands is probably “Arabicised” from an old Persian form Shahgūn, “what appertains to a king.” Cf. Rückert, Gram. Poet. und Rhet. der Perser (Gotha, 1874), p. xix. The mistranslation, if such it be, has shared the fate of most mistranslations of the kind, and become universal among Europeans.