They Are Described As
Having Had Their Original Seats On The Mountains North Of The Chinese Wall
Near Karaun Jidun Or Khidun; And Their Special Accomplishment In War
Was The Use Of Naphtha Fire.
Rashiduddin mentions the Karanut as a
branch of the great Mongol tribe of the Kungurats, who certainly had their
seat in the vicinity named, so these may possibly be connected with the
Karaunahs.
The same author says that the Tuman of the Karaunahs formed the
Inju or peculium of Arghun Khan.
Wassaf calls them "a kind of goblins rather than human beings, the most
daring of all the Mongols"; and Mirkhond speaks in like terms.
Dr. Bird of Bombay, in discussing some of the Indo-Scythic coins which
bear the word Korano attached to the prince's name, asserts this to
stand for the name of the Karaunah, "who were a Graeco-Indo-Scythic tribe
of robbers in the Punjab, who are mentioned by Marco Polo," a somewhat
hasty conclusion which Pauthier adopts. There is, Quatremere observes, no
mention of the Karaunahs before the Mongol invasion, and this he regards
as the great obstacle to any supposition of their having been a people
previously settled in Persia. Reiske, indeed, with no reference to the
present subject, quotes a passage from Hamza of Ispahan, a writer of the
10th century, in which mention is made of certain troops called
Karaunahs. But it seems certain that in this and other like cases the
real reading was Kazawinah, people of Kazvin.
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