Across Coveted Lands Part 49

By the numberless waves on the sand surface it seemed evident that the sand had acc.u.mulated from the N.N.W. side.

The village was small and miserable, with a few scraggy trees bowing low, like all trees of Sistan, towards the S.S.E., owing to the severe, N.N.W.

winds. Here instead of the everlasting domes, flat roofs were again visible--wood being, no doubt, available close at hand. More curious, however, were actual gable roofs, the first I had noticed in Persia in purely native houses. The ventilating apertures were not in the roof itself, as in the domed houses, but in the walls, which were of a much greater height than in the domed habitations. The doors and windows were invariably on the south wall, but to the north at the lower portion of the roof in each house one could observe a triangular, projecting structure, usually in the centre of the upper wall. This was a different type of wind-catcher, but in winter blocked up with sun-dried bricks and mud.

Between this village and Zaidan there was again a good deal of water to be crossed, and in some spots it was so deep that our horses sank into it up to their chests and we had to lie flat, with our legs resting on the animals' backs, to escape a ducking.

To our left--to the north--could be seen in the distance a high tower, which is said to have a spiral staircase inside, and must be of very great height, as even from where we were--eight miles away--it rose very high above the horizon, some 70 feet, as we guessed, and looked very big.

This tower stood alone several miles to the North of the princ.i.p.al Zaidan ruins for which we were steering, and I had not therefore time to visit it.

The pillar is locally called Mil-i-Zaidan, and is circular in shape, made of kiln-baked bricks cemented together by clay. On the summit, above a broad band with ornamentations and a much worn inscription can be seen the fragments of two smaller structures, also cylindrical, which may have been the supports of the dome of the minaret. There is said to be another illegible inscription about thirty feet from the ground.

According to Goldsmid, who visited this place in 1872, the tower then stood on a square foundation, and its circ.u.mference was 55 feet at the base and only 28 feet at the summit. The lower portion of the tower, as seen through powerful gla.s.ses, seemed very much corroded, and it will not be long before it collapses. There are various theories regarding this tower, which now rises directly above the flat desert. It is said by some to be one of a number of isolated watch towers, but this, I think, is incorrect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Citadel of Zaidan, the Great City.]

According to Major Sykes, who quotes from the Seljuk history: "Every three hundred paces a pillar twice the height of a man was built and two _minars_ between Gurz and Fahraj, one forty _gaz_ high, the other twenty-five, and _under_ each _minar_ a caravanserai and a tank." By the word "under" the historian evidently meant directly underneath the tower--which was the customary way of constructing such buildings. The _minars_ seldom rose from the ground, but were and are generally constructed on the roofs of buildings. A proof that this was the case in this particular instance was that when Goldsmid visited it in 1872, he stated that it "was built on a square foundation."

The caravanserai underneath this tower and the tank are evidently buried by the sand, as is the case with a great portion of the City of Zaidan.

That there is underneath the sand a city connecting the southern portion of Zaidan--still partly above ground--with the northern portion of Zaidan, and that this _minar_ rises above buried habitations, there can be little doubt, for all along the several miles of intervening sandy stretch the earth is covered with debris, ruins and fragments of tiles, bricks, &c., &c., showing the remains of a great city.

As we went along, leaving the pillar to the north and steering south-east for the main ruins of Zaidan, we saw close by on the north a very large structure forming the section of a cone--the lower portion buried in sand and the upper portion having collapsed,--which a Sistani who accompanied us said was an ancient ice-house. This theory may be correct, for it is probable that the climate of Sistan may have greatly changed; but it is also possible that the structure may have been a large flour-mill, for to this day mills are built in Persia on similar exterior lines to the ice-houses. Structures of the same kind are also to be observed as far south as Kala-i-Fath, the southern terminus of the great city.

No ice to speak of can be collected nowadays, either in Sistan or within a very large radius of country, and snow is seldom, almost never seen.

Near this mill or ice-house, whichever it was, another high building in ruins was to be observed, but I could not afford the time to deviate from my route and inspect it. It appeared like a watch-tower, and was not dissimilar to two other round towers we had seen before on the south,--very likely they were all outer fire-signalling stations, so common all over Asia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Zaidan West Towers and Modern Village.]

After a brisk ride of some four hours we arrived at the main portion of the ruins of Zaidan--an imposing fort on a clay hill, which must have formed the citadel. At the foot of the hill was the modern village of Zaidan--about fifty houses, some with flat, others with gabled, roofs, such as we had seen at the previous villages, and a few with domed roofs.

There were a few cultivated fields in which wheat was raised.

CHAPTER XXII

An ancient city as big as London--The citadel--Towers--Small rooms--The walls--Immensity of the city--Sand drifts--Why some parts are buried and some are not--An extensive wall--Great length of the city--Evidence that the habitations were continuous--The so-called Rud-i-Nasru--Its position--A double outer wall--A protected road--Interesting structures--An immense graveyard--Tombs--Sand drifts explained--A former gate of the city--The _Chil-pir_ or tomb of forty saints--Interesting objects found--Beautiful inscriptions on marble and slate--Marble columns--Graceful lamps--Exciting digging--A tablet--Heptagonal tower--A ghastly figure.

As we approached the ruins we could not help being impressed by their grandeur. They were certainly the most imposing I had so far come across in Persia. The high walls and towers of the fort could be seen from a great distance, and for the benefit of my readers a photograph is reproduced in this book to show how the citadel of this great city appeared as one drew near it from the west. The photograph was taken half a mile away from the fortress.

We entered the citadel by a short incline on the northern side of the main fort and found ourselves in a huge court, the sides of which were much blocked towards the wall by sand drifts. Contrary to what has been stated by others, the citadel is not inhabited to-day, nor are there any signs of its having been inhabited probably for a great many years. There is nothing whatever to be seen in the centre of this yard, which is covered with acc.u.mulated sand far above its original level, and at the sides, too, of the court, where buildings would have very likely been, everything is smothered in sand up to a great height of the wall. In other places the wall has collapsed altogether.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Towers of the Citadel, Zaidan.]

Remains of small rooms high up near the top of the wall can be seen. The inside of the inner fort enclosed by the highest wall is quadrangular, and has ten towers round it, eight of which are still in wonderful preservation considering their age. Those at the angles of the quadrangle had large, somewhat elongated, windows ending in a point cut into them in two tiers, as may be seen in the ill.u.s.tration. Curiously enough, while the windows were six feet in height, the doors were never more than five feet. There were rooms in all the towers, but all were extremely small.

The largest averaged eight feet square. The walls of the towers were of mud bricks with layers of kiln-baked bricks, and were three to four feet deep and of very great strength.

As can be seen by the ill.u.s.tration, a fragment of an archway was to be found on the summit of the wall and there were often signs that a covered pa.s.sage, such as may be found in other northern forts of this great city, must have been in existence when the place was in all its glory.

As one stood on the highest point of the wall and looked around one got a fair idea of the former immensity of the city. It evidently stretched from south-east to north, forming an obtuse angle at the citadel on which I stood. To the south-east of the fortress, where sheltered from the terrific north winds and from the sand drifts, the ruins were in better preservation and less covered with sand, which here indeed made quite a depression, while the northern aspect now displays a continuous ma.s.s of fine sand interrupted only by some of the higher buildings projecting above it.

One could distinguish quite plainly where the wall of the city continued for a long distance to the south-east with occasional towers, but this portion of the wall, as seen in the ill.u.s.tration facing page 208, is now in a sad state of decay and fast being covered with sand. The first three hundred yards of it, which are the best preserved, however, will show what a place of great strength Zaidan must have been. The towers appear to have been enormous, as shown by the base of the nearer one in the foreground of the photograph, and also by the second one, a portion of which still remained standing.

The city boundary made a detour to the south-east at the third tower, all the buildings visible being on the east of the wall and none to the west.

The modern village of Zaidan should, of course, be excepted.

There seems to have been a great s.p.a.ce intervening between this wall and the nearest habitations, but why that was would now be difficult to ascertain except by digging to a considerable depth. It seems hardly likely that a moat with water should have been constructed on the inside of the fortress, although at first sight one might be led to conclude that this was the case.

[Ill.u.s.tration: S.E. Portion of Zaidan City, showing how it disappears under distant sand acc.u.mulations.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Double Wall and Circular Unroofed Structures, Zaidan. In the distance high sand acc.u.mulations above City.]

The city does not seem to have had a great general breadth, and is mostly remarkable for its enormous length, although at several of the most important points it has indeed considerable width. It extended mostly like a long line, and one could still perceive, as far as the eye could see, partially destroyed domed roofs, fragments of walls, and in some cases entire structures still standing and bearing roofs. The ice-house, which we had pa.s.sed on the way, stood prominent to the north by north-west and also the pillar, the _minar_ of Mil-i-Zaidan.

Major Sykes makes a very quaint statement in the _Geographical Journal_ for February, 1902. He says: "I have seen it stated by previous travellers" (presumably Sir F. Goldsmid and Bellew) "that the ruins of Zaidan extend for fourteen miles, but the fact is that _there were villages lining the Rud-i-Nasru throughout its length_ (a length of 30 miles according to Major Sykes's maps), and these have been mistaken for suburbs of the capital of Sistan."

It seems to me that Major Sykes has only strengthened the contention of previous travellers and that, whether one calls them suburbs or a continuity of habitations, villages, or by any other name, the fact is that continuous miles of buildings can be traced. The Rud-i-Nasru ca.n.a.l, according to Major Sykes's own maps as given in the _Geographical Society's Journal_, is over 30 miles in length, and if the 30 miles are lined _throughout_ by villages surely that fact further establishes the continuity of the city.

Personally, however, I have my doubts whether Major Sykes is correct in placing the Rud-i-Nasru to the west of the city in Zaidan's days of glory. There are signs of a ca.n.a.l, but to the east of the city. The Hamun, too, I think, no more stretched across from east to west in the northern portion than it does to-day, but rather formed two separate lakes--the eastern one fed by the surplus water of the Halmund; the western filled by the Farah Rud. The s.p.a.ce between is liable to be occasionally flooded by the excess of water in these two lakes, but that is all.

All the evidence goes to show that the great city, under different local names, extended continuously northwards as far as Lash Yuwain, pa.s.sing between the two marshy lakes. In the next chapter I have brought undoubted evidence pointing to that conclusion, and if any one is still sceptical about it, all he has to do is to go there and see for himself.

In such a dry climate the ruins, although gradually being covered over with sand, will remain long enough for any one wishing to spend some time there and to make a thorough study of them.

To the east of the Zaidan fort, about 100 yards and 200 yards respectively, are the remains, still fairly well preserved, of a high double wall, castellated and with loop-holes half-way up the wall. These two walls, where free from sand, stand some 40 feet high, but in most portions the sand has acc.u.mulated to a height of 15 to 20 feet.

These parallel walls were somewhat puzzling. They were only a few feet apart and protected a road between them which went from north-west to south-east. Each wall was constructed very strongly of two brick walls filled between with beaten earth. The lower portion of the wall was much corroded by the wind and sand, but the upper part where it had not collapsed, was in good preservation. There were rows of holes at the bottom on the east side, where there appeared to have been extensive stables with mangers for horses. The lower portion of the wall was of kiln-baked bricks, and the upper part in horizontal layers of baked bricks every four feet and mud bricks between.

Of the two parallel walls the eastern one was not castellated, but the western or inner had a castellated summit. There was an outer moat or ca.n.a.l.

Only a comparatively small portion of this double wall stood up to its former height--merely a few hundred feet of it--but traces could be seen that it must have extended for a very long distance. It appeared to be tortuous and not in a straight line, its direction being plainly traceable even in the photograph reproduced in the ill.u.s.tration facing page 208. Only one tower of a quadrangular shape could be seen along this wall, and the apertures in the wall were at regular intervals of four feet. The doorway in these walls appeared to have been next to the quadrangular tower, which was very likely constructed in order to guard the gate.

There were small circular unroofed structures between the fort itself and this double wall, but they appeared more like the upper sections of towers than actual habitations. Though much smaller and lower they bore all the architectural characteristics of the towers of the greater fort, and possessed windows, one above the other, similar to those we had found in the larger towers of the main fort. In the ill.u.s.tration the reader can see for himself. That a considerable portion of this structure is buried is shown by the fact that the upper portion of a window is just visible above the sand in the circular building to the left of the observer.

These structures had in the interior some elaborately moulded recesses, and ornamented windows in pointed arches. The circular building had three rooms on the floor still above ground and six small recesses. One window was in most excellent preservation.

Further on, beyond the double wall to the south-east, was a most extensive graveyard, a portion of which had been freed from sand by the natives of the modern village of Zaidan. There were hundreds and hundreds of tombs, some in quite good preservation, as can be seen by the two photographs facing pages 212 and 214.

The photograph facing page 212 shows the eastern portion of the graveyard where some of the tombs were altogether free from sand, and in a splendid state of preservation. They were made of kiln-burnt bricks plastered over with mud, the body, it may be remarked, being enclosed in these rectangular brick cases and entirely above ground. They were mostly single tombs, not compound graves, like some which we shall inspect later on (Mount) Kuh-i-Kwajah. Their measurements were about 7 feet by 4 feet by 3 feet, and they were extremely simple, except that the upper face was ornamented by a series of superposed rectangles diminishing in size upwards and each of the thickness of one brick, and the last surmounted generally by a prism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Interior of Zaidan Fortress.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Graveyard of Zaidan City.]

The photograph facing page 214 shows the north-western portion of the graveyard, with the entire eastern aspect of the Zaidan fortress. I took this photograph for the special purpose of proving how high the sand has acc.u.mulated over many portions of the graveyard, as well as over a great portion of the city. The particular spot where I took the photograph was somewhat protected from the north, hence the low depression, slightly more free from sand than further back where the sand, as can be seen, was able to settle down to a great height. The upper portions of several graves can be noticed mostly buried in sand, and by the ripples on the sand and the casting of the shadows (the photograph was taken in the afternoon when the sun was west) it can be seen plainly that the sand has acc.u.mulated from the north.

Under the immediate lee of the fortress and of the outer walls, similar depressions in the sand were found, and it is owing to these that some portion of the city was still uncovered by sand.

In the photograph facing page 214 it may be noticed that where the lee of the high fortress no longer protects the buildings from the drifting sand, the city gradually disappears, as it were, under fairly high acc.u.mulations.