A short historical sketch of Zaidan city--How it was pillaged and
destroyed--Fortresses and citadels--Taimur Lang--Shah
Rukh--Revolutions--The Safavi dynasty--Peshawaran, Pulki,
Deshtak--Sir F. Goldsmid's and Bellew's impressions--The extent
of the Peshawaran ruins--Arabic inscriptions--A curious
ornamentation--Mosques and _mihrab_--Tomb of Saiyid Ikbal--The
Farah Rud and Harut Rud--The "Band" of the Halmund--Canals and
channels old and new of the Halmund delta--The Rud-i-Nasru and
the Rud-i-Perian--Strange temporary graves--Ancient prosperity of
Eastern Persia.
It is not for me to go fully into the history of this great city of
Zaidan, for so much of it rests on speculation and confused traditions
that I would rather leave this work to some scientist of a more gambling
disposition than my own; but now that I have described what I myself saw
I will add a few historical details which seem correct, and the opinions
of one or two other travellers in that region which add interest to the
place as well as strengthen my statements. With the many photographs
which I took and which are reproduced in this book, I hope that a fair
idea of the place will be conveyed to the reader.
The following short historical notes were furnished to me by the
Katkhuda (or head village man) of the present village near the Zaidan
ruins. I reproduce them verbatim, without assuming any responsibility for
the accuracy of the historical dates, but the information about the great
city itself I found to be correct.
[Illustration: Arabic Inscription on Marble dug by Author at the City of
Zaidan.]
When Shah Rukh Shah was ruler of Turkistan, and one Malek Kutuh-ud-din
was ruler of Sistan and Kain, Shah Rukh Shah was engaged in settling
disturbances in the northern part of his dominions, and Malek
Kutuh-ud-din, taking advantage of it, attacked Herat and plundered it.
Shah Rukh Shah, hearing of this, collected an army and marched on Sistan.
During this march he devastated the country, which was then very fertile
and wealthy, and captured and dispersed the inhabitants of the endless
city of Zaidan--which extended from Kala-i-Fath, to the south (now in
Afghan territory on the present bank of the Halmund), to Lash Yuwain on
the north (also in Afghan territory on the bank of the Farah Rud), a
distance, according to the Trigonometrical Survey Maps, of 86 miles as
the crow flies. This would agree with the account given me by the Amir of
the extent of the city.
The city of Zaidan was protected by a large fortress at every six
farsakhs (24 miles). Each fortress was said to be strongly garrisoned
with troops, and had a high watch tower in the centre similar to that
which I saw at a distance on the north-east of Iskil, and which has been
described in previous pages.
Another historical version attributes the destruction of Zaidan and
adjoining cities to Taimur Lang (Tamerlane) or Taimur the lame (a.h.
736-785), father of Shah Rukh whose barbarous soldiery, as some
traditions will have it, were alone responsible for the pillage of Zaidan
city and the devastation of all Sistan. The name of Taimur Lang is to
this day held in terror by the natives of Sistan.
But whether Zaidan was devastated twice, or whether the two accounts
apply to the same disaster, it is not easy to ascertain at so distant a
date. There are obvious signs all over Eastern Sistan that the country
must have undergone great trouble and changes--probably under the rule of
Shah Rukh and his successors (a.h. 853-873), after which revolutions seem
to have been rampant for some sixty years, until Shah Ismail Safavi
conquered Khorassan and the neighbouring countries, founding a powerful
dynasty which reigned up to the year a.h. 1135.
Under the Safavi dynasty Sistan seems to have been vested in the Kayani
Maliks, who are believed to be descendants of the royal house of Kai. (I
came across a village chief claiming to be the descendant of these Kayani
rulers.)
To return to the Zaidan ruins, as seen to-day from the highest point of
the citadel wall, the ruined city stretches in a curve from north to
south-east. It is to the south-east that the ruins are less covered with
sand and in better preservation, the citadel standing about half way
between its former north and southern termini. There is every evidence
to show that the present extensive ruins of Peshawaran to the north,
Pulki, Deshtak (Doshak described by Bellew) and Nad-i-Ali were at one
epoch merely a continuation of Zaidan the great city, just as
Westminster, South Kensington, Hammersmith, &c., are the continuation of
London, and make it to-day the largest conglomeration of houses in the
world. It was evidently necessary to subdivide such an enormous place
into districts.
[Illustration: Transfer of Inscription dated 1282, found in the "Tomb of
Forty Saints," Zaidan.]
[Illustration: Transfer of Ornament above four lines of Koran on Grave
Stone.]
[Illustration: Transfer of Ornamentations on Marble Grave.]
[Illustration: Presumed Summits of Towers buried in Sand, Zaidan.
Notice top of Castellated Wall behind.]
Bellew, who visited the ruins in 1872, speaks of Zaidan as "extending as
far as the eye can reach to the north-east, and said to be continuous
with the ruins of Doshak (Deshtak), about nine miles from the Helmund.
These ruins, with those of Pulki, Nadali and Peshawaran, are the most
extensive in Sistan, and mark the sites of populous cities, the like of
which are not to be found at this present day in all this region between
the Indus and the Tigris."
Doshak or Deshtak is situated about fourteen miles south by south-east of
Sher-i-Nasrya, on the right bank of the main canal which extended from
the Halmund towards the west. It was a large walled town, with towers and
a square fort in the centre. Deshtak is said to have been the residence
and capital of the first member of the Safavi dynasty in Sistan, which,
like all other cities of Sistan, was pillaged and razed to the ground by
the terrible Taimur Lang. On its ruins rose the smaller city of some 500
houses which we have mentioned--also called Jalalabad--and which
eventually became the seat of Bahram Khan, the last of the Kayani
chiefs. The city was built by him for his son Jalaludin, after whom it
was named. Jalaludin, however, was expelled from the throne, and from
that date the Kayani family ceased to reign in Sistan.
Pulki was also located on this main canal, east of Deshtak, and
Peshawaran was situated due north of Zaidan. They consist of an immense
extent of ruins. Both Sir F. Goldsmid and Bellew, who travelled in that
part testify to the whole country between Jalalabad, Buri-i-Afghan and
Peshawaran being covered with ruins.
The ruins at Peshawaran I was not able to visit, they being in Afghan
territory--now forbidden to Englishmen--and, being the guest of the
British Consul, I did not wish to cause trouble. Sir F. Goldsmid, who
visited them during the Perso-Afghan Frontier Mission, describes them as
covering a great area and being strongly built of alternate layers of
sun-burnt and baked brick. The ruins of a madrassah, with a mosque and a
_mihrab_, were most extensive, and had traces of ornamentations, and an
inscription, said to be Kufic. The walls of the citadel were (in 1872) in
fairly good repair. "The citadel," Sir F. Goldsmid relates, "was of a
circular form, somewhat irregular in shape, with a diameter of from two
to three hundred yards. The walls are about fifty feet high, built
strongly of baked brick, with a species of arched covered gallery, five
feet high and five feet wide, running round the summit of the ramparts."
A very similar arrangement was to be seen on the Zaidan fort, as can be
noticed in the photograph which I took and which is reproduced in the
full page illustration (facing page 206).
"Two massive round towers guard the gateway approached by a narrow steep
ascent. In the centre of the fort on a mound stood a superior house,
probably the residence of the Governor. To the south,[6] dense drifts of
sand run to the summits of the ramparts."
If these drifts can rise so high on the high wall of the citadel, it is
certain that a great many of the smaller buildings must be rather deep
under the sand level by now, but that they are there, there can be little
doubt, for fragments of tiles, bricks, vases, &c., strew the ground. No
doubt the usual critic will wonder how it is that, if the houses are
buried, these fragments are not buried also. The wind principally is
responsible for their keeping on the surface of the sand. They are
constantly shifted and are blown from place to place, until arrested by
some obstacle such as a wall, where a great number of these fragments can
generally be found collected by the wind.
"The great characteristic of these ruins"--continues Sir F. Goldsmid--"is
the number of accurately constructed arches which still remain, and which
are seen in almost every house, and the remains of strongly built
windmills, with a vertical axis, as is usually the case in Sistan."
This again, as we have seen, is also one of the characteristics of the
Zaidan buildings.
The ruins of Peshawaran are subdivided into several groups, such as the
Kol Marut, Saliyan, three miles east of the fort, Khushabad,
Kalah-i-Mallahun, Nikara-Khanah, &c.
Bellew, who camped at Saliyan, describes this section of the ruins "which
cover many square miles of country, with readily distinguishable mosques
and colleges (madrassahs), and the Arabic inscriptions traceable on the
façades of some of the principal buildings clearly refer their date to
the period of the Arab conquest, and further, as is evidenced by the
domes and arches forming the roofs of the houses, that then, as now, the
country was devoid of timber fit for building purposes. The most
remarkable characteristic of these ruins is their vast extent and
excellent preservation."
I, too, am of Bellew's opinion about these points. The several
inscriptions I found at Zaidan, photographs of which I have given in this
book, were, as we have seen, in Arabic; the ornamentations of which I
took tracings were Arabic in character.
Bellew reckons the great extent of the Peshawaran section of the ruins as
covering an area of about six miles by eight. He states that they were
the outgrowths of successive cities rising on the ruins of their
predecessors upon the same spot, and, like the other few travellers who
have intelligently examined the ruins, came to the conclusion that in
point of architecture and age the whole length from Lash Yuwain to the
north to Kala-i-Fath to the south, and including Peshawaran, Zaidan and
Kali-i-Fath were absolutely identical.
Goldsmid supplies information similar to Bellew's regarding the
Peshawaran ruins, and he writes that on his march north to Lash Yuwain he
had to go three or four miles to the west on account of the ruins. He
speaks of seeing a place of worship with a _mihrab_, and, curiously
enough, on the wall above it he found "the masonic star of five points
surrounded by a circle and with a round cup between each of the points
and another in the centre." He also saw the tomb of Saiyid Ikbal, also
mentioned by another traveller, Christie.
Eight miles west by north-west from the ruins rises a flat-topped
plateau-like hill, called the Kuh-i-Kuchah, not dissimilar in shape to
the Kuh-i-Kwajah to the south-west of Sher-i-Nasrya. Four villages are
found near it. To the east of it is found the Farah Rud, and to its west
the Harut Rud,--two rivers losing themselves (when they have any water in
them) into the lagoon. The Harut is not always flowing. To the south is
the Naizar lagoon forming part of the Hamun-Halmund. (This lagoon was
mostly dry when I went through.) It has formed a huge lake at various
epochs, but now only the northern portion, skirting the southern edge of
the Peshawaran ruins, has any permanent water in it, and is principally
fed by the delta of canals and by the overflow of the Halmund, over the
Band, a kind of barrage.
Some explanation is necessary to make things clear.
On the present Afghan-Perso boundary, at a place called the
"Band-i-Sistan," is the great dam across the Halmund, completely turning
the waters of the stream, by means of semi-artificial canals, for the
irrigation of Sistan. Hence the fertility of that district. The dam, "the
Band," as it is called by the natives, is a barrier slightly over 700
feet long, constructed of upright wooden stakes holding in position
horizontal fascines of tamarisk interwoven, strengthened by stones and
plastered with mud to form a semi-solid wall. In olden days the Band was
so feebly constructed that it was generally carried away every year at
the spring floods, but now greater attention is given to its construction
and it is kept in fairly good repair, although portions of it usually
collapse or are carried away by the force of the current during the
floods. The height of the Band is not more than eighteen or twenty feet.
Practically the actual river course comes to an end at this Band, and
from this point its waters are spread into a delta of canals, large and
small, subdivided into hundreds other tortuous channels. The Hussein Ki
Canal is one of the most important, and feeds Zaidan, Iskil, Bunjar and
Sher-i-Nasrya, Husseinabad, and other places, and is subdivided into
minor channels during its course. It flows roughly in a north-west
direction.
In 1896, according to Major Sykes (_Royal Geographical Society's
Journal_), a new canal, known as the Rud-i-Perian, was formed, and
destroyed Jahanabad, Ibrahimabad and Jalalabad. This canal, he says, is
not far from the Rud-i-Nasru, which he seems to think was at one time the
main stream and flowed in a natural bed past Zaidan to the west of it,
but personally I have my doubts about the accuracy of this statement. I
believe that the Rud-i-Nasru was merely a shallow canal that passed to
the west of Zaidan, but that the river course of the Halmund itself was
always to the east of Zaidan as well as of the other adjoining cities
north of Zaidan. The Canal to the east of Nad-i-Ali is no doubt a
naturally cut channel, the obvious continuation under natural
circumstances of the river course. The same remark might apply to the
small channel self-cut to the west of that place. There are other
important channels, such as the Madar-Ab, which supplies water to
Chiling, Pulki and Sekhuka; the Kimak canal and the Kasimabad. Before the
present dam was constructed some eighty years ago, a previous "Band"
existed, as we shall see, further up the course of the Halmund to the
south, and secured the irrigation of the southern portion of Sistan,
which is now absolutely dry and barren. Dried up canal beds of great
length are still to be found in southern Sistan.
[Illustration: Sketch Plan of "Zaidan Citadel"
by A. Henry Savage Landor.]
It would be a great undertaking to describe accurately all these canals
and the various positions they have occupied at different epochs, and
the task would at best be most thankless and useless, for, with the
exception of the larger ones, the minor ones keep constantly changing
their course by cutting themselves new beds in the soft soil. Anybody who
has visited eastern Sistan, even in a very dry season, as I did, knows
too well how the ground is intersected in all directions by myriads of
natural water channels, all fed by the Halmund, so that, unless one had
months of time at one's disposal, it would hardly be possible to map them
all out exactly.
During flood time the water flows over the Band and into its natural
channel due north up into the Hamun, where it loses itself.
There is a good deal of verdure, trees, and high reeds near the banks of
the river at the Band, with many snakes, while fish is plentiful in the
water and myriads of wild fowl are to be seen.
Curious conical temporary graves of mud can occasionally be seen, some
six feet high, the body being, it is said, buried standing within these
cones previous to proper interment with due ceremony. On the outside,
clear imprints made while the mud was still soft of several sized
hands--presumably of the deceased's relations or friends--were left on
the surface of the cone, the imprints being one above the other in a
line.
Among the ruins of Peshawaran, Bellew found traces of several canals, now
dry, one of which, however, had been restored by the chief of Hokat and
brought a stream of good water up to the Silyan ruins for irrigation
purposes.
As for the southern end of the great city at Kala-i-Fath, we have very
good accounts from Ferrier, Goldsmid, and Bellew, all testifying to its
great extent. Here, too, there is a strong citadel standing on an
artificial mound, and seeming to have been repaired some twenty-five or
thirty years ago. Bellew says that the ruins extend over several miles of
country, and Goldsmid speaks of a circumference of ruins of some two and
a half miles at Kala-i-Fath, with a large citadel and fine arched
buildings within. He mentions spacious courtyards and the remains of
reservoirs, caravanserais, and large buildings in abundance, but no
vestige of anything approaching magnificence.
This, however, is the case with everything Persian, whether ancient or
modern, especially in regard to architecture, and a great deal of the
humbleness of the buildings is, I think, due to the facts that the
inhabitants of Persia are nomads by nature; that the shifting sands drive
people from their homes; that rivers constantly alter their courses, and
that the water supply is a constant source of difficulty in most parts of
Iran; moreover the terrible wars and invasions made the natives
disinclined to construct themselves very elaborate houses which they
might at any moment have to abandon.
These reasons account for the extraordinary number of abandoned villages,
towns, fortresses, and whole ruined suburbs of towns all over Persia, a
sight which I think cannot be seen on such a large scale in any other
country in the world.
At Kala-i-Fath the question of the water may not have been the principal
one, but the fear of constant attacks must have deterred the natives from
erecting magnificent buildings. Or else how could we account for these
enormous fortresses which are found all along to protect the great city?
Goldsmid describes a fine caravanserai at Kala-i-Fath, built of large
baked bricks, each brick eleven inches square, and displaying a nicety of
design foreign to Sistan. The caravanserai seems to have been domed over
a large central courtyard, with wings for rooms and stabling; and an
adjoining ice-house of mud bricks. In the graveyard fragments of
alabaster and tiles were found.
The wall round the city which Goldsmid describes--six feet at the base
tapering to one foot at the summit--is somewhat different in character
from that of Zaidan, and is, to my mind, of much later construction, as
are many of the buildings.
"Some of the streets," he says, "which all run from east to west, are in
excellent preservation and as if they were of recent construction."
It is quite possible, in fact, very probable, that this portion of the
great city--which, by the bye, is said to have been the last capital of
the Kayani Kings, and was deserted by them when attacked by Nadir
Shah--has, owing to its favourable geographical position on the east
bank of the Halmund, been inhabited to a certain extent until a much
later date. The local accounts, at least, would point to that conclusion.
A dry canal exists, which we shall cross on our way to the Beluchistan
frontier; it is fed by the Halmund, north of Kala-i-Fath, and strikes
across the plain in a westerly direction.
If all the accounts given by people who have been there are taken into
consideration, together with the photographs here given, which seem to me
to show that the place was one of unusual grandeur; if the fact is
grasped that, whether considered as a single city or a conglomeration of
adjoining successive cities, Zaidan was undoubtedly a continuous and
uninterrupted row of houses of no less than eighty-six miles; I think
that whatever theories may be expounded by the usual scientific
speculator at home, the fact must remain that this ancient London of Asia
marks a period of astounding prosperity in the history of Eastern
Persia.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] I think this must be a mistake; it should be to the north.--A.H.S.L.