who at the end of the thirteenth century links the karkadann's horn with poison, in his ʿAjā'ib al-makhlūqāt wa gharā'ib al-mawjūdāt. He lists a few beneficial effects: holding the horn opens up the bowels to relieve constipation, and it can cure epilepsy and lameness. Later authors have the horn perspire when poison is present, suggesting the horn is an antidote and connecting it to alicorn, though this connection is not made by all writers. In the 14th century, Ibn Battuta, in his travelogue, calls the rhinoceros he saw in India a karkadann, and describes it as a ferocious beast, driving away from its territory animals as big as the elephant; this is the legend that is told in One Thousand and One Nights, in the "Second Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor". The karkadann is referred to by Elmer Suhr as the "Persian version of the unicorn". The name appears also in medieval European bestiaries, such as those from Escorial and Paris, where the name karkadann appears in the captions of unicorn illustrations. Horn Al-Qazwini, one of the earliest authors to claim the horn is an antidote to poison, also notes that it is used in the manufacturing of knife handles. According to Chris Lavers, The Natural History of Unicorns, khutu, a somewhat enigmatic material possibly consisting of ivory or bone, had been ascribed alexipharmic properties. Both of these "enigmatic horns," Lavers argues, were used in making cutlery, and so became associated; this is how in the 13th century Al-Qazwini could consider karkadann horn as an antidote, and this is how the karkadann became associated with the unicorn. Name The name karkadann is a variation of the Kurdish name which means donkey with one horn [Kar kit Dan]. Persian kargadan, or Sanskrit kartajan, which is said to mean "lord of the desert". Fritz Hommel suspects that the word entered Semitic languages via Arabs from Abyssinia. Other spellings and pronunciations include karkaddan, kardunn, karkadan, and karkend. It has been conjectured that the mythical karkadann may have an origin in an account from the Mahabharata. The initial portion of Persian kargadan resembles the Sanskrit word "khaRga" for rhinoceros also meaning sword, where "R" represents a retroflex flap sound. The rhinoceros is "sword horned". The karkadann in modern scholarship and culture Scholarship on the karkadann Much of the available material on the karkadann was collected by Richard Ettinghausen in his 1950 publication The Unicorn,