Sooleb and Barca. The ruins of Medina are situated within this
territory; and supposing them to be actually the remains of Sort,
we may imagine that when this city lost its former name, it continued
to be distinguished as the city, (the Medina) of the district
to which its name of Sort had been transferred*.
This arrangement will place the city of Sort at least forty miles to
the eastward of its position according to the measurements above
stated from Edrisi : but a short distance in reckoning is always preferable
to a long one, and we should on that account prefer taking
the distance of Sort from Asna to reckoning it from Tripoly as
above. For the same reason the measurement of Abulfeda, from
the Promontory of Kanem to Asna, is more likely to be correct than
that of Edrisi from Tripoly to the city of Sort.
Thè. Gulf of Eodaik (or Kodakiah) might have served to elucidate
this question had there been anything like it remaining ; but it will
be seen, on a reference to the chart, that there is no appearance on
this part of the coast which can at all be considered as a gulf ; and
this will of course equally apply to the Sinus Zadic of Edrisi.
We will not at present pursue this subject further, but leaving
our readers to judge, from the data already given, how far we may
be authorized in placing the city of Sort in the position we have
ventured to suggest for it, we will proceed to notice some remains
which are found in the neighbourhood of Zaffran.
* The remains of Medinet Sultàn are .on a larger scale than those of Medina, and
might on that account have been termed Sttltàn ; but they are rather, those of an
important military station than of a city, and we prefer taking Medina as the position
of S ort for this reason.
In traversing this part of the Syrtis, Signor Della Celia discovered
a square column of tolerable height and placed upon a pedestal.
I t was composed, he says, of sandstone, but so corroded by time
that the characters which entirely covered its four sides had become
altogether unintelligible. Ah hour afterwards he arrived at a
second, and, after a similar interval, at a third of these erections, all
equally covered with writing and so much decayed that, what with
the little time which he had at his command, and the state of ruin
in which the pillars were found, he could not succeed in putting
together a single word of their inscriptions. “ Opposite to the first
of these columns” (he adds) “ on the part next the sea, rise the
remains of a tower surmounted with a cupola, and this spot is called
Elbenia*.”
The Doctor confesses himself at a loss to decide for what purpose
these pillars could have been erected; but suggests that, supposing
Zaffran to be Aspis, the ancient tower with a cupola which is near it,
ahd, “ as Strabo says, tronyjK to Aspis,” must inevitably be the irvpyos,
or tower named Euphrantas of that geographer. From this conclusion
he is induced to suspect that, as the tower of Euphrantas was
the boundary of the Cyrenaic and Carthaginian territory under the
Ptolemies, the three pillars above mentioned were erected to mark
the limits of those countries, as well as to record other matters which
(he says) were usually engraved by the ancients on objects of this
nature.
Finding his courage rise at this happy coincidence of ancient with
* Viaggio da Tripoli, &c., p. 77, 78.