Mount Qaf

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The Mountain Qaf ( Persian كوه قاف, DMG Kūh-i Qāf , Arabic جبل القاف, DMG Ǧabal al-Qāf ), in Iranian mythology is a ring mountain surrounding the world, beyond which the infinite nothingness begins. The same cosmogonic concept exists among numerous Altai- speaking peoples in Central and North Asia . Damavand in Iran and Kuh-e Ghor (Ghwor) as well as Hindu Kush in Afghanistan, the Caucasus and Urals come into question as possible localizations of the mountains.

Localizations

The name of the Caucasus is not only in the languages ​​of the Islamic peoples of the region - Azerbaijani Qafqaz , Turkish Kafkas or Persian قفقاز, DMG Qafqāz , but also the Christian peoples derived from the mythological mountain Qaf: Russian Кавказ , Kawkas or Armenian Kavkáz ( Kapkoh ). The Arabic name for the Caucasus Ǧabal al-Qāf is a takeover from Middle Persian. In the Turkic languages , Qaf stands for the real mountain range and at the same time for the mythological ring mountain range. The Tian Shan Mountains in Central Asia are also referred to in this way on Russian-language maps . The Kyrgyz call a central mountain range in the Tian Shan, the summit of which is over 5000 meters high, Köyqap or Qap-too . This naming is more recent, because it does not appear in the Kyrgyz national epic Manas , which was only passed down orally by epic singers ( Manaschis ) until the 19th century. Only in a version of Manas from 1920 is Köyqap mentioned as the boundary between the human world and the world of the elves ( Peris ) and monsters.

In the Middle Persian cosmogonic writings of the Bundahishn , which were published in the 8./9. The Elburs Mountains are located accordingly. They were compiled in the 18th century, but their core dates back to the time before Zarathustra .

The Persian author Hamdullāh Mustawfī-i-Qazwīnī described in his 14th century cosmography Nuzhat al-qulūb a long mountain range running from west to east that stretched from Arabia to Turkestan and which he understood as part of the great ring mountain range Qaf. This also included the Elburs Mountains. The Arab geographer Ibn Ḥawqal (second half of the 10th century) wrote of a mountain range that spanned the world, stretching from China via the Hindu Kush, Elburz and Caucasus to Syria and North Africa. Both authors considered the Caucasus and Elbors to be connected.

Koh-e Qāf was considered a spiritual place for Sufi poets. It was still mystified in the 19th century and in a story recorded by the Pashtuns in the 1980s as a forbidden garden with strange beings in it. A reference to the Hindu Kush can be seen in the naming Koh-i-Kaf for an "unbelieving" people in Kafiristan in northeast Afghanistan. Their name Kafiri (now Nuristani ) is mostly derived from the Arabic kāfir ("unbeliever"). In general, Qaf stood for the most remote place on earth, with the Central Asian mountains combined with mythological ideas in medieval Islamic geography.

Myth of the Ring Mountains

The myth of a ring mountain spanning the earth goes back a long way to pre-Islamic times. In the ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh , the hero Gilgamesh arrives across the vast steppe to Mount Mašu, an intellectual forerunner of the Ring Mountains, beyond which the vault of heaven rises. The Mansi , who live north-east of the Urals, know a mythical first person who saw that the earth floating on the water like a slice or a loaf of bread could not come to rest and turned to the god of heaven for advice. This gave the primitive man a belt studded with silver, with which he should tie the earth. When he had done this, the earth bulged at the edge and the ring mountain formed, which in this case is the Urals.

Similar ideas led the Russians on the Pechora River to call the mountains around them zemnoi pojas ( Russian "earth belt"), which Siegmund von Herberstein describes in his travelogues from the 16th century in Latin cingulus mundi ("world belt") calls and connects with the Urals. The European Russians presumably received this world model, which can also be connected to a central world mountain , from peoples living further east.

A belt with which the world is spanned can also be found as an “iron mountain ring” among the Mongols and in Tibet ; Among the Tatars, a mythical hero rides until he reaches a high mountain at the end of the world.

Qaf in Persian mythology

Qaf serves as a mythical motif for Persian poetry, especially for the epic Shāhnāme of Firdausi and for the poem The Conference of Birds by Fariduddin Attar , two great poets of the Persian language and literature. This mountain is known as the bird's nest for Simurgh or Cenmurv and as the destination of his self-recognition. Firdausi brings the mountain with him in his shāhnāme ( Persian باختر) Bactria (today Afghanistan ) in context, so that the great heroes of Iranian mythology, but also the poets come from this mountain range.

The legend of Simurgh (also "Saena"), which is similar to the phoenix story of the West and actually describes a difficult journey with seven obstacles into the inner self, is an allegory. The story is a difficult one, with seven Journey of 1000 birds connected to valleys, who set out to Kuh-e Kaf to find their king Simurgh in an unreachable place behind the mountain with an unpronounceable name. Only 30 birds reached the destination, at which they had to find out that the king bird Simurgh - hence its name "Thirty Birds" - is actually already in them in their mind, that the inner and the outer world are one.

See also

literature

  • Daniel G. Prior: Travels of Mount Qāf: From Legend to 42 ° 0 'N 79 ° 51' E. In: Oriente Moderno, Nuova serie, Anno 89, No. 2. (Studies on Islamic Legends) 2009, p. 425 -444

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ al-Ḳabḳ. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. 4, EJ Brill, Leiden 1997, p. 341
  2. ^ Daniel G. Prior, p. 437
  3. ^ Daniel G. Prior, p. 427f
  4. ^ Daniel G. Prior, p. 433f
  5. ↑ Uno Harva : The religious ideas of the Altaic peoples. FF Communications N: o 125.Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki 1938, p. 23f
  6. ↑ MANTEQ-ot-teir . Bird talks by the poet Attar
  7. ↑ Seven is a magical number in Zoroastrianism and eight in Buddhism .
  8. ↑ Simorg. In: Encyclopædia Iranica