(1) Galen: Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (129 – c. 216 CE), was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire.

(2) Ibn Sina: in the West Avicenna (c. 980 – 1037) was a Persian and the most significant physician of the Islamic Golden Age. See my webpage ibn Sina (1037).

(3) Qanun: See my webpage ibn Sina (1037).

Ibn Al-Hijazi: Majmue Yahtawi alNiyl alSaeid;

(Collection about the Happy Nile) (1470)

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Taken from: مجموع لطيف يحتوي على تاريخ النيل السعيد وما قيل في ذلك من by شهاب الدين أحمد بن محمد/الحجازي الخزرجي

 

P42

(In the days of Al-Walid bin Al-Rayana, the King of Egypt; - he was the Pharaoh in the days of Joseph; who was sold by his brothers as slave).

 

Among its (=Egypt) virtues and wonders is the “tail.” It was mentioned that its spring is from behind the equator. From a mountain there known as “Mountain of the Moon” and it was mentioned that it stood still. And it was said: Rather, it is bubbling in the water. In the time of increase it spreads out on the earth in an orderly manner, but this is a weak hadith. And it was said: It comes from behind the equator by eleven degrees to the south, and ends at Alexandria and other (places) in the north who are at a latitude of thirty degrees, from its beginning to its end forty-two degrees - each degree is approximately fifty-six miles - so its length: Two thousand three hundred and eighty miles.

 

P43

A river that flows from south to north other than the Tail, and there is no other river in the world that flows into the sea of Rum, China, and India. There is no river in this world that flows to the north other than the Nile. There is no river in the world that flows in the hottest conditions other than Al-Tail: There is no river in this world that increases or subtracts according to its order other than the Nile.

 

P49

He mentioned the Nile Misr, which is the great and famous river which has no equal in existence. (1) Ibn Sina (16) described it, saying: It is unique in three characteristics among all the other rivers on earth. One of them is that it is the longest river on earth from its beginning to its end. This necessitates its gentleness due to the abundance of flow. The second is that it flows through the sands and rocks, leaving the soil without dirt and sludge, and the mud that can hardly be devoid of in a river. The third is that the stone in it is not green as it is green in others. (2) It increases in the days of drought in rivers and its increase is from the rains that fall in those countries at its beginning and its beginning is the wilderness which is south of the equator, and therefore it was difficult to locate it, and nobody contacted us with his news except what was reported from Greece.

It was attributed to Ptolemy that it “descends from Jabal al-Qamar” from ten streams. There is a degree between each river and the other, with the western one at forty-eight in length and the second at forty-nine in length, and so on until the river is over.

The tenth of them is at fifty-seven lengths. These ten rivers flow into two Batiha: Every five rivers flow into a Batiha, and they were mentioned previously in the south, then there comes out from each of the two water bodies four rivers, and two of them flow into the neighbor rivers the last ones becoming six rivers. The rivers move toward the north until they empty in a round lake at the equator, which is Lake Kura, from which the Nile of Egypt emerges to the north and passes through the country of Sudan, and first passes through Zaghawa, then over Nubia and its city Dongola at a length of fifty-two and a width of seventeen, then it passes towards the west and is set at a length of fifty and a width of seventeen as it is. It grows, passing west by a few miles to the north, to a length of thirty-two and a width of nineteen

 

P50

then returns upward to the length of fifty-one and then passes to the north and east to Aswan, at fifty-five in length and twenty-two in width, and then it passes north to a length of fifty-three and a width of twenty-four, then it reaches to a length of fifty-five, then it is added to Egypt at a length

Fifty-four and thirty wide and goes beyond Egypt to a village on its shore called Shatanov. Then the tail will split in two, and the western part of it will pass to a town called Rashid it pours into the sea where the length is fifty-three and the breadth is thirty-one. The eastern one also splits in two at a village called Jawjra, and the western one passes through and the two of them reach Damietta from the west, empty into the sea, and the eastern one passes to Ashmoum Tanah flows into a lake there in the east of Damietta called Tenis and Lake Damietta; Damietta is between these two parts, the western part of which flows into Damietta, where the length is fifty-three and twenty-five minutes, and the eastern part empties into Lake Tanis, where the length is fifty-four and thirty minutes and the width thirty and forty minutes, and this is what we have prepared for mentioning the Nile, which is the Nile of Egypt.

And from what I also quoted from the book of Calendar of Countries “Taqwim al-Buldan” (17) from another place, it mentioned Jabal al-Qamar, but the exact spelling is differed, as some of them make it in addition to the moon that is in the heaven with the opening of the qaf and the mim. I saw it in Yaqut’s book (1220), which he called Al-Mushtaqar. The different position is ḍafa and is suffixed with a ḍammah of the qaf. And a sukun of the mim is also mentioned. Al-Zang Island is in the far south, and it is mentioned that its name is the Island of the Moon, with the ḍammah of the Qaf and the sukun of the mim, and I also saw it in the book of Ibn Said al-Maghribi (3), with the dhammah of the qaf

 

P51

Ibn Mutarrif (18) mentioned it in Al-Tarbiyyah (18), but he did not specify it.  Rather, he said: It is derived from Qamar al-Tarf. It is a mountain in the southern wilderness, and its width is one and ten degrees south of the equator and from it come the sources of the Nile of Egypt from ten streams descending from it; and it was not proven that anyone reached it, rather they watched it from a distance (4).

 

Nasir al-Tusi said in al-Tadhkirah: (5) They saw it from afar while it was whiter than the snow that was on it. And he, according to me, is prepared, for the width of eleven degrees is very hot, and it is considered to be like on the northern width of eleven. It is the width of Aden in Yemen. The occurrence of snow at the width of Aden was unheard of in time immemorial. And the south side is like the north but hotter, especially in the sun.

 

And from the book 'Drawing the Earth' (Rasm al'ard)(19) it said: The aforementioned western tip of the Mountain of the Moon is forty-six and a half (deg) long and eleven and a half south wide. It said: It extends brightly until its eastern tip, where the length is sixty-one and a half degrees.

The latitude is eleven and a half degrees south of the equator. Accordingly, its length from its western end to its eastern end is approximately fifteen degrees. It said in 'Rasm al-Ard':

Its color is red and its head is towards the south. I say this narration contradicts what Al-Nasir (5) narrated about whiteness. (6)

He said; the author of this book, Ahmed Al-Hijazi: I said that there is no contradiction between the two traditions. As Al-Nuwayri (7) reported in his history that the increase in the Nile “originated from the snow melted by the summer, so the snow on Mount Moon may be an extraordinary peculiarity.”

Considering that the country is extremely hot, it is said that the lower level at night is extremely cold and extremely hot during the day at all times, let alone in Upper Egypt and further.

 

P52

……… According to this assessment, it is red (the Mountain of the Moon) from the origin of creation. And it is seen that it is white due to the accumulation of snow on it, and then the variance disappears. And also the exclusion of the author of the Calendar of Countries (Taqwim al-Buldan) or the words of al-Nasir al-Tusi (6) that seeing it as white is due to the abundance of snow disappears.  God knows what that was. And from what I quoted from the book “Taqim al-Buldan” (17) from another place in the discussion about the lake, I quoted from it a mention of what relates to the lakes that are connected to the Nile. It said Al-Buhaira and Al-Batiha have the same meaning, meaning the combined waters that are in the cistern and not the seas. So from that are the two batihas that are south of the equator, and from them is the Nile of Egypt on the Equator and five rivers descending from the Moon Mountain enter it, which is the origin of the Nile of Egypt, as mentioned above.

 

P53

And an eastern lake in the south of the equator, with its center at longitude of fifty-seven (deg).

Seven degrees width south of the equator; It is east of the Western Lake mentioned above, and five rivers enter it descending from the Mountain of the Moon, as mentioned above. And Lake Kura, on the authority of Abn Said, who said: It is a lake at the equator, and from it emerges the Nile of Egypt in the north and the Nile of Mogadishu on the sight and the Nile of Ghanah is west, and around its eastern-southern side is a mountain called Jabal al-Maqsam (8). From beneath it emerges the Maqdishu Nile, and the rivers coming from the two water bodies mentioned above.

As for Al-Sharif Al-Idrisi (1150), he narrated what Ibn Said (1250) said about the Nile Ghanah emerging from the aforementioned Lake Kura. Then he said: Ptolemy denied this and claimed that nothing would come of it except the one attaining Egypt. And the Nile Ghana comes from under a mountain there ……

And it is said in the book Rasm al-Ma’mur (19) that this lake - I mean Lake Kura - It is situated at the equator, and it is a round plate with diameter of two degrees. Its center is at fifty-three and a half (deg) lengths. And the width is half of it, and it was said that it is two degrees to the north, so its western side is at fifty-two degrees, and its eastern side is at fifty-four degrees.

 

P55

Then it is said: And in these rivers, what flows (9) “from south to north like a river.”

The Nile, Gihon, (10) and the Kura River, and we will mention the famous ones: As for the Nile River, Qudamah bin Jaafar (14) claimed that its source is from Mount Moon, behind a line of the equator from a spring from which ten rivers flow, each five of which flow to a batiha. Then two rivers emerge from each batiha and the four rivers flow to a large swamp (=batiha) in the first region. From this batiha emerges the Nile River.(11)

 

The author of “The Journey of the Longing to Break Through Horizons” (Nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq) (12) said: This lake It is called Lake Kura, attributed to a group from the Sudan, around which savages live. They eat people who come across them. From this lake comes out the river Ghana, and the river Abyssinia, and when the Nile emerges from it, it splits the country of Kura, then the country of Nanha (13) (Sect of Sudan as well, and they are between Kanem and Al-Thuba). When he reached Dongola (the city of Nubia) ……

 

P123

Because the people of knowledge unanimously agreed that; There is no river in the world longer than the Nile; He runs a month's journey through a country of Islam and two months in Nubia and four in the wilderness where there is no building until where he emerges from the mountain of the moon behind the equator and there is no river in the world that flows from the south to the north, as the Nile; and also none exists in the world, which swells during the most violent heat, when all other rivers suffer a water reduction, and swells in a sequence of stages, while the others decrease.(15)

 

(1) Kawkab Al-Rawdah: Kawkab al-rawdah fi tarikh al-Nil wa-Jazirat al-Rawdah al-Tabah: see my webpage on Suyuti (1505).

(2) Kawkab Al-Rawdah.

(3) Ali bin Musa bin Abd al-Malik bin Said al-Ansi, al-Andalusi, al-Gharnati. Al-Maghribi Abu Al-Hassan A writer, a linguist, a poet. He was born in Granada and traveled to the East, entering Damascus, Mosul and Baghdad ….

(4) See: Kawkab Al Rawdah.

(5) see my webpage Nasir Al Din Al Tousi (1274)

(6) See: Al Tadhkira al-Nasiriya (The encyclopaedia of al-Nasir) (1274)

(7) see my webpage: Nuwayri : Nihayat al-Arab (1333) (Arab Encyclopedia.) from Egypt.

(8) Jabal al-Muqassim (or Almacsam); Jabal Makhasam: The mountain Muqasam El-Moquecem; Muqassim: literally symmetrically divided, close to the source of the Nile; also found in Ibn Al Wardi (1348); Hafiz I Abru (1420); Ibn Said al Maghribi (1250); Al Idris; Ouns al Moubhadj (1192), al Harrani (1300); Abu al-Fida (1331).

(9) Nihayat al Arab: its flow from the east to the west “like the Nahavand River and the Sijistan River”

(10) See: Kawkab al-Rawdah, al-Maqrizi’s Khitat, and Hasan alMuhadara (good lecture)

(11) Nihayat al Arab; Kawkab Al-Rawdah.

(12) The book of al Idrissi (1150). See also: Kawkab Al Rawdah.

(13) In Kawkab Al Rawdah: Nandu.

(14) See my webpage Qadama (930) Kitab al Kharadj wa Sanat al katib (Book of taxes and of secretarial work) Syriac Scholar.

(15) This he copied from: Al-Qazwini(d. 1283). 'Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa-ghara'ib al-mawjudat (Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing) from Kazwin in Persia.

(16) See my webpage Ibn Sina (1037).

(17) Prince Abu al-Fida (or Abulfida) (1273-1331) Taqwim al-Buldan (Geography of countries) (he was governor of Hanah in Syria)

(18) Kitab al-Tartib fi al-Llughat; he book Arrangement in the Language by Ahmed bin Mutarrif bin Ishaq bin Hammad Al-Kanani, who died in the year 1022AD

(19) also mentioned by Abulfeda (1331). Kitab rasm al-ard: Might be of Al Kindi (866): Kitab fi rasm al - ma'mur min al Ard. Book of the drawing of the inhabited world. (not extand).