'Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia, including a journey from Bagdad by Mount Zagros, to Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana, researches in Ispahan and the ruins of Persepolis, and journey from thence by Shiraz and Shapoor to the sea-shore. Description of Bussorah, Bushire, Bahrein, Ormuz, and Muscat, narrative of an expedition against the pirates of the Persian Gulf, with illustrations of the voyage of Nearchus, and passage by the Arabian Sea to Bombay.' [‎441] (472/582)

DOWN THE PERSIAN GULF The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. .
441
distinguished more than four leagues off; but Charrack Hill, on a
bearing of north-north-east, is a good mark for running right upon
it. When this hill at sun-rise bore east by north half-north, we
had the notch over Astola, bearing north by west, and were then
in forty fathoms water.
At noon the ship's place was in lat. 26° 19' north, and long.
26° 55' east, the weather dark and cloudy, Charrack Hill north-east
by east half-east, and soundings Measurements of the depth of a body of water. forty fathoms. In the afternoon we
had a light breeze from the north-west, which fell off at sun-set,
and the atmosphere was then so heavy that no land could be seen.
Our water deepened to forty-five fathoms at midnight.
Has Nabend, which is nearly opposite to this, is conceived to
be the place of the river Bagrada, of Ptolemy, which he makes
the boundary of Karmania, differing in this from Arrian, whose
limit, as we have seen, was opposite to Kaeese, and formed by the
range of hills ending at the sea, in the mountain of Charrack.
The name of the river Bagrada, in Africa, is derived by Bochart
from Barkatha, a pond, in the Hebrew and Dr. Vincent
says, that the characteristics of the Nabend in Persia, would suit
such a derivation very well. I could learn no other features of
this stream than that it was large, deep, and capacious; nor were
our informers able to say whether it had any name resembling
the supposed ancient one, either in sound or in signification. The
word ^ Burkah, which is evidently allied to the Hebrew Bar
katha, signifies the same thing both in Persian and Arabic, though
it belongs originally to the latter. Dr. Vincent did not seem
aware of this; for, in a note on a place called by Colonel Capper,
Birket Rahamah, he asks, ' What is Birket ? Birk, is a welland
adds, 4 If the traveller had given us this, we might have judged
whether it is yet a lake or dry.' He then proposes a query,
4 Whether it is not an error of the press for Bahr -el-Rahma, t e
sea of Rahama, or Birk -el-Rahama, like Birk-el-Hadji, in Egypt,
the lake of the Pilgrims, i. e. where they assemble for the pii-
* Shaw's Travels in Barbary, p. 77.
3 L