EVALUATION OF KŪSHNĀMA AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE IN REGARD TO DESCRIPTIONS OF BASĪLĀ

Abstract

This article examines the descriptions of Basila in the Kushnama and determines the credibility of those descriptions as historical evidence. Kushnama is a Persian epic and part of a mythical history of Iran written by Hakim Iranshan b. Abi alKhayr between 1108 and 1111 CE. Many scholars argue that Basila in Kushnama can be identified with the Silla Kingdom (57 BCE-935 CE) of ancient Korea for many reasons. First, the descriptions of Basila in Kushnama largely correspond to those of Sila/al-Sila in contemporary Islamic texts. Second, in some Muslim historical and geographical works such as Masalek wa Mamalek by Saed bin Ali Jorjani (1476 CE), and Ajayib al-Makhlughat by Muhammad bin Ahmad Tusi (1161-1178 CE), we find that Basila is used, together with Sila/ al-Sila, to describe the same area of the Korean peninsula. With the advent of Islam, references to Korea found in twenty-three Islamic sources written between the ninth and sixteenth centuries by eighteen Muslim scholars, including Ibn Khurdadbih (d. 886 CE), Sulaiman al-Tajir (written around 850 CE), and al-Mas'udi (d. 957 CE), suggest that Muslims' influence had already reached the Korean peninsula by that time. 2 Before the discovery of Kushnama, however, no documents or epics had been found that describe ancient relations between Iran and Silla in such a detailed manner. In this sense, an in-depth study of Kushnama focusing on its descriptions of "Basila" will contribute to expanding our understanding of pre-modern relations between the Middle East and Korea. Because both historical events and mythological beliefs of ancient Persia are incorporated in Kushnama, this article will consider to what extent we can accept descriptions within Kushnama to be reliable historical evidence.