In my articles on Fakhr al-dīn Gurgānl's poem Vīs-u-Rāmīn 1 I made a point of its realistic geographical and historical background which, in my opinion, connects it with the Arsacid tradition. One of the important places in the story is the castle of Gūrāb in which the heroine Vis was kept and which belonged to the family of her future rival Gul. Muslim geographers still referred to this place lying at the junction of the roads from Hamadān and Nihāvand to Karaj, and Gūrāb is mentioned in the course of the military operations of the Seljuk Sulḍān Mas'ūd (towards 541/1146), see Rāḥal al-ṣudūr, 242. In more recent times its titles to distinction had been forgotten.
page91 note 1 SeeBSOAS., 1946, 11/4, and 1947, 12/1.Google Scholar
page91 note 2 Sultānābād (now called Erāg) is the medieval Karaj Abī-Dulaf, as indicated by the name of the river (i.e. * ) in its neighbourhood.
page91 note 3 See BSOAS., 11/4, p. 4.Google Scholar
page91 note 4 ii, 1932, p. 15 (in the R.A.S. Library). I leave aside 0. M. Freidenberg's special endeavour to interpret the poem as a cosmic myth (Sun-Water-Region Underground).
page91 note 1 Bailey, H. W., BSOAS., 13/2 (1950), p. 403,Google Scholar has added the name of * ‘ Tokharian horses ’ to my list of geographical epithets in the poem (BSOAS., 11/4, p. 23Google Scholar). Henning, W. B., Asia Major, 2/2 (1952), p. 178,Google Scholar has quoted the name Wērōy (Worōd) in support of my attribution of Vīs-u Rāmīn to the Parthian epoch. The name of the town Burūjird (south of Gūrāb) is derived from the same personal name. The Ẓafar-nāma, i, 586, 594, 812, still spells it :