The London of the East--A city eighty-six miles long--The village
of Bunjar--An ancient tower--Iskil--The _Kalantar_ of
Sistan--Collection of ancient jewellery from the buried
city--Interesting objects--A romantic life and tragic death--A
treacherous Afghan--Strained relations between the Sistan and
Afghan Governors--Sand-barchans--Flat roofs and gable roofs--The
pillar of Mil-i-Zaidan--A conical ice-house--The imposing fort of
Zaidan--A neighbouring modern village.
The Consul, Mrs. Benn and I, started off early one morning on horseback
to inspect the ruins of the ancient London of the East, the great city of
Zaidan, which in the days of its glory measured no less than eighty-six
miles--from Lash Yuwain on the north to Kala-i-Fath on the South--ruins
of the city being traceable the whole distance to this day, except in the
portion which has been covered by the waters of the Hamun Halmund.
On the way there was little to be seen for the first four miles until we
reached the village of Bunjar, the biggest trading village in Sistan and
the residence of the Iman Jumeh, the next holiest man to the head priest
of Sher-i-Nasrya. This village and neighbourhood supply Sher-i-Nasrya
entirely with wood and very largely with food. There are many stunted
trees about, all curved southwards by the wind, and much cultivated
land, the ground being intersected by numerous natural and artificial
water channels.
A very curious ancient tower, split in two, and the portion of another
very much corroded at its base, and looking like a big mushroom, are to
be seen on the south near this village. We cut across, almost due east,
to Iskil, wading through several canals and channels into which our
horses dived up to their saddles.
On approaching Iskil from the west one was impressed by the unusual
height of some of its buildings, most of which were two-storied and had
domed roofs, the domes being of much larger proportions than usual. A
quadrangular tower of considerable loftiness stood prominent above the
height of all the other buildings. For a Persian village Iskil had quite
a clean, fresh appearance, even from a short distance. On getting near we
entered the main road--one might more accurately call it a canal--walled
in on both sides and filled with water some eight or ten inches deep. Our
horses waded through, and having rounded another large pond of dirty
green water--such as is always found in the more prosperous villages of
Persia--we came to a high wall enclosing a garden and an Andarun near the
residence of the Kalantar of Sistan (Kalantar means the "bigger one"),
the title taken by the head of the tribe who in by-gone days were the
masters of the whole of Sistan.
The Kalantar is a large landowner, and has the contract for all the
grazing tax of East Sistan. Among the villages owned by him are Iskil,
Bunjar, and Kas-im-abad, the three richest in Sistan. The name of
Kalantar is taken by each of the family as he succeeds to the possession
of these villages, lands, and rights.
The Kalantar, previous to the one now in possession, was a man of most
commanding presence, very tall and very stout--the biggest man in
Sistan--and much respected by everybody. He was extremely friendly
towards the English. He had planted an entire garden of English flowers
and fruit at Iskil, and took the keenest interest in horticulture and
agriculture. Above all, however, he was renowned for a magnificent
collection of ancient seals, coins, jewellery, implements, beads, and
other curiosities, of which he had amassed chests and chests full that
had been dug up from the great city of Zaidan and neighbourhood. Some of
the cameos were very delicately cut in hard stone, and reminded one of
ancient Greek work. Symbolic representations in a circle, probably to
suggest eternity, were favourite subjects of these ornamentations, such
designs as a serpent biting its own tail, or three fishes biting one
another's tails and forming a circle, being of frequent occurrence. So
also were series of triangles and simple circles. The gold rings were
most beautifully delicate and simple in design, and so were all the other
ornaments, showing that the people of Zaidan had a most refined
civilisation which is not to be found in Persian art of to-day.
Personally, I have certainly never seen modern Persian work which in any
way approached in beauty of line and execution to the articles excavated
from the great city of Zaidan.
A great profusion of beads of amber, jasper, crystal, turquoise,
malachite, agate, had been found in Zaidan and some that we saw were
handsomely polished and cut, some were ornamented, others were made of
some composition like very hard enamel. All--even the hardest crystal
ones--had clean holes drilled through them.
The Kalantar had built himself a fine residence at Iskil, with huge rooms
and lofty domes, and here he kept these collections. His generous nature
had caused him to build a handsome guest house in front of his dwelling
in order to put up and entertain his friends, native or foreign.
It was on the steps of his guest house that the last act of a terrible
tragedy took place only a short time before we visited Iskil. About ten
years ago, in 1891, a man called Mahommed Hussein Khan, an Afghan
refugee, came to live in Bunjar, bringing with him a _sigah_ wife
(concubine), her mother and a child. Shortly after his arrival he left
his family in Bunjar and went on a pilgrimage to Meshed. No news was
received of him for a very long time, and the wife wrote to him--when her
money and patience were exhausted--that if he did not return on a certain
date or answer her letter she should consider herself divorced from him.
He replied that she might consider herself free from the date of receipt
of his letter, and requested her to send her mother in charge of his
child to Meshed.
During Mahommed Hussein's absence rumour says that Kalantar Mir-Abbas had
an intrigue with the lady, and on receipt of her husband's letter from
Meshed he forcibly removed her from Bunjar and compelled her to marry
him, Mir-Abbas, at Iskil.
Unluckily, the lady was a Suni and Kalantar Mir-Abbas was a Shia, which
made it difficult to overcome certain religious obstacles. Such a union
would anyhow be greatly resented by relations on both sides. In fact,
about a year ago, 1900, the lady's brother, a native of Girisk, near
Kandahar, enraged at his sister marrying a man who was not an Afghan, and
of a different persuasion, came to Iskil with characteristically
treacherous Afghan ways and sought service with the Kalantar, assuring
him of the great affection and devotion he entertained towards him. The
good-hearted Kalantar immediately gave him employment and treated him
most generously.
On the night of September 19th, 1901, the Kalantar had been entertaining
some friends in the Durbar building opposite his residence, among whom
was the Afghan, who left the room before Mir-Abbas and went to conceal
himself in the darkness at the entrance. When the Kalantar was joyfully
descending the steps after the pleasant night assembly, the treacherous
Afghan attacked him and, placing his rifle to Mir-Abbas' head, shot him
dead. The assassin then endeavoured to enter the Andarun to kill his
sister, but the lady, having her suspicions, had barricaded herself in,
and an alarm being given he had to make his escape across the Afghan
frontier only a few miles distant from Iskil.
It was rumoured that the murderer had been sheltered by the Afghan
Governor of the Chikansur district, who goes by the grand name of
_Akhunzada_, or "The great man of a high family." The Governor of Sistan,
angered at the infamous deed, demanded the extradition of the assassin,
but it was refused, with the result that the Afghan official was next
accused of screening the murderer. There was much interchange of furious
correspondence and threats between the Persian and Afghan Governors, and
their relations became so strained that a fight seemed imminent.
The shrewd Afghan then offered to allow five Persian soldiers,
accompanied by twenty Afghans, to search his district--an offer which was
very prudently declined. Persian and Afghan soldiers were posted in some
force on both sides of the river--forming the frontier--and devoted their
time to insulting one another; but when I left Sistan in January, 1902,
although the relations were still much strained, the affair of the
Kalantar, which seemed at one time likely to turn into a national
quarrel, was gradually being settled on somewhat less martial lines.
The death of such a good, honest man has been much regretted in Sistan,
and great hopes are now built on his son and successor, a young fellow
much resembling his father both in personal appearance and kindliness
towards his neighbours.
We next came to a second and smaller village four miles further on--after
having waded through numberless water-channels, ponds and pools and our
horses having performed some feats of balancing on bridges two feet wide
or even less. Some of these structures were so shaky that the horses were
not inclined to go over them except after considerable urging.
The country between was flat and uninteresting, except that here and
there some low mounds had formed where the sand blown by the N.N.W. wind
had been arrested by some obstacle, such as a shrub of camel-thorn or
tamarisk. Most of these sand-barchans had a striking peculiarity. They
were semi-spherical except to the S.S.E., where a section of the sphere
was missing, which left a vacuum in the shape of a perfect crescent.
By the numberless waves on the sand surface it seemed evident that the
sand had accumulated 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 principal 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 circumference was 55 feet at the
base and only 28 feet at the summit. The lower portion of the tower, as
seen through powerful glasses, 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.