1665.—"Banarou is a large City, and handsomely built; the most part of the Houses being either of Brick or Stone ... but the inconveniency is that the Streets are very narrow."—Tavernier, E. T., ii. 52; [ed. Ball, i. 118. He also uses the forms Benarez and Banarous, Ibid. ii. 182, 225].
BENCOOLEN, n.p. A settlement on the West Coast of Sumatra, which long pertained to England, viz. from 1685 to 1824, when it was given over to Holland in exchange for Malacca, by the Treaty of London. The name is a corruption of Malay Bangkaulu, and it appears as Mangkoulou or Wénkouléou in Pauthier's Chinese geographical quotations, of which the date is not given (Marc. Pol., p. 566, note). The English factory at Bencoolen was from 1714 called Fort Marlborough.
1501.—"Bencolu" is mentioned among the ports of the East Indies by Amerigo Vespucci in his letter quoted under [BACANORE].
1690.—"We ... were forced to bear away to Bencouli, another English Factory on the same Coast.... It was two days before I went ashoar, and then I was importuned by the Governour to stay there, to be Gunner of the Fort."—Dampier, i. 512.
1727.—"Bencolon is an English colony, but the European inhabitants not very numerous."—A. Hamilton, ii. 114.
1788.—"It is nearly an equal absurdity, though upon a smaller scale, to have an establishment that costs nearly 40,000l. at Bencoolen, to facilitate the purchase of one cargo of pepper."—Cornwallis, i. 390.
BENDAMEER, n.p. Pers. Bandamīr. A popular name, at least among foreigners, of the River Kur (Araxes) near Shiraz. Properly speaking, the word is the name of a dam constructed across the river by the Amīr Fanā Khusruh, otherwise called Aded-ud-daulah, a prince of the Buweih family (A.D. 965), which was thence known in later days as the Band-i-Amīr, "The Prince's Dam." The work is mentioned in the Geog. Dict. of Yāḳūt (c. 1220) under the name of Sikru Fannā-Khusrah Khurrah and Kirdu Fannā Khusrah (see Barb. Meynard, Dict. de la Perse, 313, 480). Fryer repeats a rigmarole that he heard about the miraculous formation of the dam or bridge by Band Haimero (!) a prophet, "wherefore both the Bridge and the Plain, as well as the River, by Boterus is corruptly called Bindamire" (Fryer, 258).
c. 1475.—"And from thense, a daies iorney, ye come to a great bridge vpon the Byndamyr, which is a notable great ryver. This bridge they said Salomon caused to be made."—Barbaro (Old E. T.), Hak. Soc. 80.
1621.—"... having to pass the Kur by a longer way across another bridge called Bend' Emir, which is as much as to say the Tie (ligatura), or in other words the Bridge, of the Emir, which is two leagues distant from Chehil minar ... and which is so called after a certain Emir Hamza the Dilemite who built it.... Fra Filippo Ferrari, in his Geographical Epitome, attributes the name of Bendemir to the river, but he is wrong, for Bendemir is the name of the bridge and not of the river."—P. della Valle, ii. 264.
1686.—"Il est bon d'observer, vue le commun Peuple appelle le Bend-Emir en cet endroit ab pulneu, c'est à dire le Fleuve du Pont Neuf; qu'on ne l'appelle par son nom de Bend-Emir que proche de la Digue, qui lui a fait donner ce nom."—Chardin (ed. 1711), ix. 45.