Editing Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (section)

===Real and fictional places===
[[File:LocationUqbar (1917).png|thumb|300px|Possible location of Uqbar{{dubious|date=June 2016}}]]
'''Uqbar''' in the story is [[Story within a story|''doubly'' fictional]]: even within the world of the story it turns out to be a fictional place. The [[fictitious entry]] described in the story furnishes deliberately meager indications of Uqbar's location: "Of the fourteen names which figured in the geographical part, we only recognized three – [[Khorasan Province|Khorasan]], [[Armenia]], [[Erzerum]] – interpolated in the text in an ambiguous way."  Armenia and Erzerum lie in the eastern highlands of [[Asia Minor]] (in and near modern [[Turkey]], perhaps corresponding to [[Urartu]]), while Khorasan is in northeastern [[Iran]], though there is also a [[Horasan]] in eastern Turkey.  However, it was said to have cited an equally nonexistent German-titled book – ''Lesbare und lesenswerthe Bemerkungen über das Land Ukkbar in Klein-Asien'' ("Legible and valuable observations about the land of Uqbar in Asia Minor") – whose title claims unambiguously that Uqbar was in [[Asia Minor]].

The boundaries of Uqbar were described using equally nonexistent reference points; for instance, "the lowlands of Tsai Khaldun and the Axa Delta marked the southern frontier".  This would suggest that the rivers of Borges' Uqbar should rise in highlands to the north; in fact, the mountainous highlands of eastern Turkey are where not one but two Zab Rivers rise, the [[Great Zab]] and the [[Little Zab|Lesser Zab]].  They run a couple of hundred miles south into the [[Tigris]].

The only points of Uqbar's history mentioned relate to religion, literature, and craft.  It was described as the home of a noted [[heresiarch]], and the scene of religious persecutions directed against the orthodox in the thirteenth century; fleeing the latter, its orthodox believers built obelisks in their southerly place of exile, and made mirrors – seen by the heresiarch as abominable – of stone.  Crucially for the story, Uqbar's "epics and legends never referred to reality, but to the two imaginary regions of Mlejnas and Tlön."

Although the culture of Uqbar described by Borges is fictional, there are two real places with similar names. These are:

# The medieval city of [[Ukbara|‘Ukbarâ]] on the left bank of the [[Tigris]] between [[Samarra]] and [[Baghdad]] in what is now [[Iraq]].  This city was home to the great [[Islam]]ic [[grammar]]ian, [[philology|philologist]], and religious scholar [[Al-Ukbari|Al-‘Ukbarî]] (c. 1143–1219) – who was blind, like Borges's father and like Borges himself was later to become – and to two notable early [[Jewish]]/[[Karaite Judaism|Karaite]] "[[heresiarch]]s" (see above), leaders of Karaite movements opposed to [[Anan ben David]], [[Ishmael al-Ukbari]] and [[Meshwi al-Ukbari]], mentioned in the ''[[Jewish Encyclopedia]]'' of 1901–1906.<ref>Singer, Isidore and Broydé, Isaac,  [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=504&letter=M Meshwi al-‘Ukbari], ''[[Jewish Encyclopedia]]'', 1901–1906. Accessed online 9 September 2006.</ref>
# ‘Uqbâr in the [[Atlas Mountains]] of [[Algeria]]; the [[minaret]]s of the latter's area might relate to the "obelisks" of Uqbar in the story.

''Tsai Khaldun'' is undoubtedly a tribute to the great historian [[Ibn Khaldun]], who lived in [[Andalusia]] for a while; his history focuses on [[North Africa]] and was probably a major source for Borges.  Additionally, "tsai" most likely comes from Turkish "çay" which is an uncommon word for river.