Manuscript of Persia and the Persian Question (Continued) [‎41r] (81/690)

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A UlAHY ON q?IIE Kill RUN IIIVDR. It"
No more untoward' demonstration took place on this occasion than
the frantic shriekjs of the juvenile population who watched our
passage from the hanks. Originally the Shapur, commonly pro
nounced Shaour, River, which washes the western face of the great
mound of Shush or Susa (Shushan^ the palace), flowed into the
Karun from the north-west a little below After deserting
this bed it adopted a more southerly channel, joining the main river
near Ahwaz. Later again it struck northwards, and at the time of
Layard’s and Selby’s explorations in 1842, was found entering the
Ab-l-Diz or Dizful River at a point twelve miles above Bund-i-Kir . 1
The comparatively recent and well-ascertained history of this river,
whose various channels can be distinctly traced, is typical of that
of all the rivers of Susiana, including the Karun itself, and accounts
for the difficulty that has been felt by writers in identifying and
reconciling the obsolete descriptions of. the ancients.
For at least twelve miles above Wlal' the Karun is followed in a
rfectly straight line to Bund-i-Kir, where, for the first time since
leaving Mohammerah, we find the river split up into several con
fluents ; this being the point of junction of three streams, the Ab-i-
G^rg^r, or artificial canal that runs from Shuster on the east; the
Ab-i-Sh|iteit, or Karun proper, that runs also from Shunter in the
centre; and the Ab-i-Diz, or river of Dizful, that runs from Dizful
on the west. Comparing the singular straightness of the twelve-
mile stretch of water below the angle of confluence with the accounts
of old Arab geographers, who reported the artificial canal of the
Ab-i-G^rg^r as being continued to Ahwaz, IiioufcgiiMit Selby thought
that he' saw therein a survival of the latter work ; a hypothesis
whose likelihood is only invalidated by the complete absence of any
ancient bed, such as ought in that case to be forthcoming in the
neighbourhood ? of the main body of ffie Karun.
Bund-i-Kir, called by Kinneir Bundekeel, and by Loftus Bender-
ghil, signifies the bund or dyke of kir or bitumen, the stones of an
artificial dam which, like those of Shuster and Ahwaz, once spanned
the river at this point, and which tradition ascribes to Darius, having
doubtless been cemented by that material. The members of the
Euphrates Expedition found it in 1836 to be a small walled town,
with a population of nearly six—hundred ; and General Chesney’s
book contains an illustration of the place as it then existed from the
pencil of Major Estcourt (vol. i., p. 198). In 1850 Loftus
described it as a small Arab village of forty houses, entirely sup
ported by the traffic of the ferry which is maintained across the
various rivers at this spot ; 2 and his account holds good of the
present time. The hamlet is situated a little way inland on the
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(1) Journal of the Reyal Goo<jr**ph+eal Svcrri-t/, vol. xvi., p. 57.
(2) Travels and Researches mi by W. K. Loftus, p. 290.
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