Page 130 - Arabian Studies (II)

122 Arabian Studies II
at some length on the place. It was, however, already a ruin in his
day, but had once been a great town in the area of KhadTr. Its name
at that time, he said, was HabTl al- R y bah (vocalisation?) in which
there were the remains of a great town. The dross of iron, cuttings of
silver, gold, ornaments and coins were all to be found in it. 2 6 KhadTr
is in the region of Wadi’ 1-Jannat and the chief settlements of the area
in medieval times were al-Dumluwah and al-Juwwah.27 Kirsh2 8 and
al-Janad29 were not far away. A modern geographical source,
al-Ways!,30 indicates a place called Sabir al-Habll (vocalisation?) in
KhadTr which is also known as Jabal al-R y bah. Saluq then, to be
more precise close to the town of Ta‘izz to the south east (see map,
Fig. 1), was a centre for the mining of metals, and coats of mail
became the prime industry. As well as these, the place gave its name
to a breed of hunting dog.31 It might be mentioned here that there is
so far no trace of the town of Saluq in the pre-Islamic South Arabian
inscriptions.32 One might have expected mention of an important
town in the inscriptions, as also in earlier Islamic sources.
But there was also a place named Saluq in the area of al-Lan on
the border of Armenia, adjoining the territory of the Khazar, that is
to say to the west of the Caspian Sea (Fig. I).3 3
Apart from the two possibilities above, the Arabic sources
mention two towns with the name Saluqlyah, from which the nisbah
saluql might have been derived. The first is a town on the coast near
Antioch and it may be that the coats of mail and the hounds derived
their name from there.34 The second, more commonly called
Sallqlyah, is placed in Byzantine territory and is undoubtedly the
Silifke of modem Turkey (Fig. 1). It was also called Salaqyah. 3 5
The final possible origin of the name saluql finds no place in the
Arabic sources. That is that it is derived from Seleucia (Saluqlyah in
Arabic), a city on the west bank of the Tigris downstream from
Baghdad and founded by Seleucus I (305-281 B.C.) in 312 B.C. The
city was the capital of the Seleucid dynasty which survived down to
ca. A.D. 65.3 6
We may now therefore take our choice. The name saluql may be
derived from Saluq, a town of the Yemen or lying to the west of the
Caspian, or from Saluqlyah, on the Mediterranean coast near
Antioch or the modern Silifke, or again the city in Iraq. It must be
stressed here that this discussion has concerned the origin of the
name of the hound in Arab tradition, not of the origin of the hound
itself. The saluki type was clearly employed as a hunter from very
early days throughout the area of the Near and Middle East and no
serious attempt can now be made to ascertain its precise origin. 3 7

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