Barbarikon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kushana. With the seaport of ancient Barbarikon in the north-west.

Barbarikon (also known as Barbarike ) was the name of a port near today's city of Karachi , Pakistan . The port was important for trade in the Indian Ocean and especially for Indian trade during the Hellenistic and Roman Empire periods .

The port is briefly mentioned in the Periplus Maris Erythraei :

This river, [the Indus ] has seven mouths, very shallow and swampy, so that they are not navigable, the one in the middle is an exception, where the trading place Barbaricum lies on the coast. In front of it is a small island and inland is the capital of Scythia , Minnagara . Periplus, chap. 38.

It also says there:

The ships are anchored in Barbaricum, but all are driven on the river to the city [Minnagara], to the king. The following are particularly worth importing: Light clothing, patterned linen , topazes , corals, Styrax , containers made of glass or gold and silver sheet, incense and, to a limited extent, wine. To export are Costus , Bdellium [: of an aromatic resin, similar Note myrrh ] Wolfberry [Note .: Lycium barbarum ] nard , turquoise , lapis lazuli , cotton dresses , silk and indigo suitable. In the month of July, which corresponds to Epihpi , the ships sail there with the Indian Etesia winds; it is more dangerous at this time, but these winds make the journey more direct and faster. Periplus, ap. 39.

The port is also in the geography of Ptolemy as Barbarike mentioned. It apparently acted as a port for Minnagara and served for both imports and exports. The exact location is unknown, but the place is probably identical to the later Banbhore , which was known as Dib / Dab in late antiquity .

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Ptolemy 7: 1, 59.
  2. ↑ See Lionel Casson: The Periplus Maris Erythraei. Princeton 1989, pp. 188ff.
  3. ^ The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity . Vol. 1 (2018), p. 203 (article Banbhore ).