Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 58, October 2006, pp. 1-13. | Page 4

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i. Sir Alfred Pease reported that lions still existed west of Aleppo, Syria, in 1891 (Kinnear
1920).
j. Lions occurred in the vicinity of Mosul, Iraq in the 1850s. The Turkish governor's bag
of two in 1914 is the last report of them from the area (Kinnear 1920).
k. Lions were reported to be numerous in the reedy swamps bordering the Tigris and the
Euphrates rivers in the early 1870s. The last known lion in Iraq was killed in 1918 on the
lower Tigris (Hatt 1959).
l. The valley of Dashtiarjan, 57 km west of Shiraz in Iran, was famous for its lions in the
late 1800s.
m. The last known report of lion presence in Iran was a 1942 observation of a pair near
Dizful, by American engineers building a railway (Heaney 1943).
n. There are no confirmed records of lion presence in central or eastern Iran, nor
Afghanistan or Baluchistan.
o. The last known lion in Pakistan killed near Kot Deji in Sind province in 1810.
p. However, a British admiral travelling by train reported seeing a maneless lion near
Quetta, north-western Pakistan in 1935, eating a goat: "It was a large lion, very stocky,
light tawny in colour, and I may say that no one of us three had the slightest doubt of
what we had seen until, on our arrival at Quetta. Many officers expressed doubts as to its
identity, or the possibility of there being a lion in the district" (Guggisberg, 1961).
q. The lion's range may have extended as far east as Bihar and Orissa states in India: a
lion was reportedly killed in the district of Palamau (Bihar) in 1814.
r. Last lion recorded from the southern end of its Indian range killed at Rhyl in Damoh
district, near the Narmada River, in the cold season of 1847-1848 (Kinnear 1920).
s. Fifty lions were killed in the district of Delhi, India between 1856-1858. Twenty-five
years later Blanford (1891) wrote that "in India the lion is verging on extinction."
Note: Historical Range source is Guggisberg (1961) unless otherwise stated. (Reference:
www.asiatic-lion.org/distrib.html).
Asiatic Lions in Europe:
The Asiatic lion used to live also in Europe. Aristotle and Herodotus wrote that lions
were found in the Balkans in the middle of the first millennium B.C. When Xerxes
advanced through Macedon in 480 B.C., several of his baggage camels were killed by
lions. Lions are believed to have died out within the borders of present-day Greece in
A.D. 80-100. And also there was a population in the Caucasus that became extinct in the
10th century. It remained widespread elsewher