■* See pp. 9 and 10 of this treatise.
5 Quoted by Schindler, Jahrb. k. k. geol. Reichs., vol. 36, 1X.SH, pp. 30.3-314.
^°-2" THE TURQUOIS— POGUE. 15

near-by Orient to that of Europe, asleep in the night of the Dark Ages.> Europe must wait
sereral hundred years before producing a description so complete. Ibn Mansur enumerates
the sources of the turquois, its different grades, and its imitations, and gives an account of
the Nishapur deposits and of famous stones, ending with a description of the value and supposed
virtues of this mineral.^

An interestmg Chinese work, "Cho keng lu,"' first published in 1366, contains a brief
account of the Mohammedan precious stones that were traded into China. These include
three kinds of tievr-tse, obtained respectively from Nishapur, Kerman, and Siang-yang (a city
and prefecture of Hu-pei Province, China). This statement probably represents "the oldest
Chinese reference to a turquois-producing locahty in China proper * * * ^nd the first
authentic use of a word for turquois in the Chinese language." *

An Arabian manuscript entitled Nozhat al Colub, by Hamdallah Cazwini, written between
1300 and 1400, deals in part 1, in a chapter on minerals and jewels, with the firuzdje (turquois).
It is here stated = that this precious stone was chiefly worn by women, and considered inferior
to the zumrud (emerald). Toward the middle of the fourteenth century Sir John Mandeville «
wrote of the turquois, referruig to two kinds, the one consisting of bone and the other coming
from the Orient and possessing wonderful properties.
In the fifteenth century the turquois finds its earhest description of moment in Hindu
literature, its supposed properties being briefly noted in a small treati(es written at one of the
native courts by Narahari,' a physician from Kashmir.
