'The lands of the Eastern Caliphate Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem conquest to the time of Timur' [‎443] (488/586)

XXXI]
THE OXUS.
443
described (see p. 404), was the town of Akhsisak, whence a high
road went to Nakhshab. Ibn Hawkal describes Akhsisak as a small
city, its inhabitants going over to Zamm for the Friday prayers,
for there was no mosque in their town. The surrounding lands,
enclosed on all sides by the desert, were extremely fertile, and the
pasture for sheep and camels excellent. Near the right bank
of the Oxus, lower down again, and opposite Amul or Amtiyah,
stood Firabr, on the road to Bukhara, likewise surrounded by
a fertile district, and many populous villages. Mukaddasi writes
that Firabr was a league distant from the north bank of the Oxus,
and that it was protected by a fortress with guard-houses. The
Friday Mosque stood at the town gate towards Bukhara, and there
was a Musalla, or praying station, with a hostelry outside this
where travellers were entertained and a dole given. The grapes
of the place were famous. Firabr was also known as Kariyat
£ Ali, or Rubat Tahir ibn 'All, the village or guard-house of
these persons 1 .
After passing between Firabr and Amuyah, the Oxus held its
course for about 140 miles, still through the desert, till it reached
Tahiriyah, where the cultivated lands of the delta began. From
this point the great river took its course to the Aral Sea, throwing
off for nearly 300 miles many irrigation canals which watered the
rich province known as Khwarizm during the middle-ages. Since
the date of the first Arab conquest the Oxus, in these delta lands,
has of course frequently shifted its bed, and the bursting of the
great dykes at the time of the Mongol invasion in the 7th (13th)
century caused a change in its lower course which will be
described later. From the description of the earlier Arab
geographers, however, it is still possible roughly to reconstruct
the map of Khwarizm in the 4th (10th) century, and it is
evident that the Oxus in those days followed a single channel,
navigable for boats, down to the swamps on the southern shore of
the Aral, which sea the Arabs called the Lake of Khwarizm
(Buhayrah Khwarizm).
The Aral, which was shallow and full of reeds, appears not
1 1st. 298, 314. I. H. 349, 350, 363. Kud. 203. Muk. 291. Yak,
iii. 862; iv. 229. Mst. 189.
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