CASPIAN. Caspian Mountains. This term is not to be met with expressly in the Text of the whole Bible, unless Esdras intended to have mentioned it in the following Ezra xiii. 17.passage, Misi eos ad Eddo, qui est primus in Casphiæ loco. I sent them to Iddo, the chief of those who dwelt at Casiphia. Esdras being upon the point of departing, in order to undertake a Journey into Palestine, desired to have some of the Nethenims to do service in the Temple of the Lord. He sent therefore to Iddo, the head of these Nethenims, who in all probability worked at the Mines in and about the Caspian Mountains, situated between Media and Hyrcania. In these Mountains many place the Caspian Gates, which are a very narrow strait, through which People pass out of Media into Albania, westward of the Caspian Sea. According to others, the Caspian Gates are in Mount Taurus, and make the Communication between Assyria and Media. The eastern People1 are of opinion, that Alexander the Great ordered a very long Wall to be built, so contrived at Places where the Mountain opened, as to shut up the Passage into Persia against the northern People, called by them Gog and Magog. There is a city near called Derbend, which in the Persian Language, signifies the Passage stop’d, or Barrier. The Turks give it the name of Demircapi, Iron Gates. The Wall which was built by Alexander sirnamed Dhoul- Carnein, different from Alexander the Great, is called by the Arabians, Alexander’s Bank, or Gog and Magog’s Rampart.
It was destroyed by Time, or some attempt of the Scythians, but Jezdegierd Son of Baharam King of Persia repaired it, and Chosroës, sirnamed Nuschirvan, one of his Successors, compleatly fortified it. The Province wherein the City of Derbend and the Wall we are speaking of stand, is called Schirvan. Formerly it went by the name of the Throne of Gold; because the King of Persia permitted the Governor of this Province to sit, while he was administring Justice, upon a Throne of Gold, in consideration of the Importance of the Post he held. It is said,2 that Artaxerxes Ochus having taken part of Judea, or rather having conquered Egypt, transplanted a great number of Jews from thence into Hyrcania, near the Caspian Sea. Orosius tells us, that the Jews transplanted upon the Coasts of this Sea, were very much increased there in his time, and were in hopes of returning from thence to people Judæa; and the Author of the History says, that Alexander the Great having found a great number of Jews in this Country, shut them up within the Caspian Gates above-mentioned.
The Caspian Sea, is a kind of large Lake, which has no Communication with any Sea; it is called a Sea, by reason of its vast extent. The Hebrews name all great Lakes thus, as that of Sodom and Genesareth. We have lately received an exact description of this Sea, and the Country adjacent, from the Memoirs sent by the late Czar of Muscovy, to the Gentlemen of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. The Waters of the Caspian Sea are salt and bitter, like those of other Seas, excepting on the Coast of Hyrcania, where they are neither sweet nor salt: This Sea abounds extremely with Fish. Several great Rivers, as the Volga, the Araxes, the Jaik, the Chesel, and the Jehan lose themselves in the Caspian Sea, and yet it Eccl. i. 1, 7.never seems to increase or diminish; and in this rather than any other, what Solomon says is sensibly verified: All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. It is the conjecture of some, that these waters run through subterraneous Channels, either into the Persian Gulph or Black Sea, or that they rise in several places in order to produce the Rivers Euphrates and Tygris, and that in their passage under Ground they are filtrated, and lose their saltness.
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