Sand accumulations--A round tower--Mahommed Raza Chah--A burial
ground--Rustam's city--An ancient canal--Rustam's house--The
Persian hero's favourite room--A store room--Reception hall--The
city wall--Where Rustam's son was impaled--The stable of Rustam's
gigantic horse--More dry canals--An immense graveyard--Sand and
its ways--A probable buried city--A land-mark--Sadek's ways--A
glorious sunset--Girdi--Beluch greeting.
Warmal (altitude 2,100 feet) was left at 8 a.m. on the 12th. We skirted
extensive sand accumulations, high to the north, lower towards the south.
The under portion of these deposits had become semi-petrified up to a
height varying from 20 feet to 50 feet in proportion to the loftiness of
the hills themselves. We were travelling in a south-east direction along
these sand banks cut abruptly vertically, and when we left them and
turned due south across a flat bay in the desert there were sand-hills to
the east and west about one mile apart.
At the most northern end of the western range a round tower could be seen
on the summit of a hillock. Having crossed over the low hill range before
us we descended into a long, flat, sandy stretch with tamarisk shrubs in
abundance. In an arc of a circle from north to south there extended sand
accumulations in various guises, the highest being some lofty conical
hills due east of our course. To the west in the distance we were
encircled by the Patang Kuh and the Mukh Surk ranges, which also extended
from north to south.
[Illustration: The Gate of Rustam's City, as seen from Rustam's House.]
Two farsakhs (eight miles) brought us to the British Consular Postal
Station of Mahommed Raza Chah, a mud structure of two rooms and an
ante-room between. One room was full of provisions, the other
accommodated the three postal _sawars_ (riders). Twelve holes had been
dug in search of water, but only two had been successful. One of the
sawars, a Beluch, on a _jumbaz_ camel, was just coming in with the post,
and he was a very picturesque figure in his white flowing robes and
turban over the curly long hair hanging upon his shoulders. One mile off,
six or seven more deep holes had been bored for water, but with no
success. Tamarisk was plentiful.
We were now getting near the ruins of Sher-i-Rustam or Sher-i-Sukhta, the
city of Rustam, the Persian hero. North-east of it one came first to a
ruined tower, then to a burial ground with single graves and graves in
sets of two and three, very similar in shape to those we had seen on the
Kuh-i-Kwajah. These, too, were above ground, but were made of mud instead
of stone. Most of the graves had been broken through. The graveyard was
situated on a sand hillock.
In the distance, to the east and south-east of Rustam's city, there
spread from the north a long stretch of ruins, which probably were part
of the continuation of the great Zaidan. A number of towers--as many as
six being counted in a line--and a high wall could be perceived still
standing. This must evidently have been a fort, and had what appeared to
be the wall of a tower at its north-west end. Other extensive ruins could
just be observed further south-east, and also to the south-west, where a
high tower stood prominent against the sky.
When close to Rustam's city we went through a walled oblique-angled
parallelogram enclosing a tower. A great portion of the wall had
collapsed, but it appeared to have been an outpost north of the city.
The next thing was an ancient dry canal which came from the east by
south-east, and we then found ourselves before Rustam's abode. The
photograph given in the illustration was taken as we approached the city
and gives a good idea of the place as it appeared beyond the foreground
of sand and salt. The place was in most wonderful preservation
considering its age. There were four high towers to the north, the two
central towers which protected the city gate being close together and
more massive than the corner ones, which were circular and tapering
towards the summit. The wall of the city was castellated and stood some
30 feet high. The city gate, protected by an outer screen, was to the
east, and was two-storeyed. It led directly into the main street of the
city.
I cannot do better than enumerate the characteristics of the city in the
order in which I noticed them on my visit to it. A path, like a narrow
platform, was visible all round half-way up inside the wall, as well as
another on the top which gave access from one tower to another. There
were no steps to reach the summit of the towers, but merely inclined
planes.
On entering the city gate--the only one--one came at once upon Rustam's
palace--a three-tiered domed structure with a great many lower annexes on
its western and southern sides. A wall adjoining the city gate enclosed
Rustam's quarters, and had a large entrance cut into it leading to the
dwelling. The various floors were reached by a series of tunnelled
passages on inclined planes. Rustam's favourite room was said to have
been the top one, represented in the photograph facing page 266, where
the outside of the two top storeys of the building can be seen.
The domed room was well preserved, and had a sort of raised portion to
sit upon. The ceiling was nicely ornamented with a frieze and a design of
inverted angles. The room had four windows, and a number of slits in the
north wall for ventilating purposes. It was a regular look-out house,
commanding a fine view all round above the city wall of the great expanse
of desert with its ancient cities to the east, and distant blue mountains
to the west. There were a number of receptacles, some of which had been
used for burning lights, and five doors leading into other rooms. These
rooms, however, were not so well preserved--in fact, they had mostly
collapsed, their side walls alone remaining. No wood had been used in the
construction of the building and all the ceilings were vaulted.
Rustam's "compound," to use the handy word of the east, occupied about
one-quarter of the area of the town and filled the entire south-east
corner. Besides the higher building it contained a great many side
structures, with domes, unfortunately, only half-standing, and showing
the same peculiarity as all the other domes in the city, _i.e._, they had
all collapsed on the north side while the southern part was preserved. In
the photograph facing page 268 this is shown very clearly. This was, of
course, due to the potent northerly winds. Rustam's tall house and high
walled enclosures can be seen in this photograph, some semi-collapsed
domes of great proportions showing just above the high enclosing wall.
A spacious court commanded by a raised passage from north to
south--evidently for soldiers to patrol upon--was within the enclosure,
and, in fact, Rustam's premises formed a regular strong citadel within
the city.
On the ground floor, now considerably below the level of the street
outside, was a long room, like a store-room. In the north wall it had a
most wonderful arrangement of ventilating chambers, which made the room
deliciously cool. These contrivances were like slits in the wall, with
boxed-in channels, where a great draught was set up by the natural inflow
and outflow of cooler and hotter air from above and under ground, and
from in and out of the sun. A great many receptacles could be noticed in
the lower portion of the wall, and also some low mangers, as if sheep had
been kept here to supply meat for the inmates of the citadel in time of
siege.
Next to this, with an entrance on the main street, was Rustam's reception
hall--a great big room with domes no less than 18 feet high inside, but
now fallen through in two places. There were doors on the south and
north, and eleven receptacles specially constructed for lamps. These
receptacles were rather quaint in their simple design.
[Illustration: receptacle for light.]
All round Rustam's palace the city wall was double, and strengthened with
outside battlements. The same thing was noticeable in two portions of the
city wall to the west and south sides. The city wall was irregular in
shape, and impressed one as having been built at various epochs, and the
city had the appearance of having been enlarged in comparatively recent
times. There was a moat outside the wall, but in many places it had got
filled up with sand. A glance at the plan which I drew of the city will
give an idea of its shape.
[Illustration: The Remains of the Two Upper Storeys of Rustam's House.]
On the north side of the main street, opposite Rustam's house, was a
large stable, unroofed, and showing in the wall a number of mangers,
which appeared as if a large number of horses had been kept.
Besides these there were in the western portion of the city quantities of
domed roofs, very small, a few still perfect, but mostly fallen in on the
northern side. The houses directly under the shelter of the northern wall
were in the best preservation, and many of them were still almost
entirely above ground. They were quadrangular or rectangular in shape,
made of mud, and with a low door on the south side. The larger ones had
ventilating channels with perforated slits in the north wall, like those
in Rustam's store-room, but all the houses were extremely small--an
average of 12 feet by 12 feet.
In the southern portion of the city, where exposed to the wind, the
dwellings were deep-buried in sand, and hardly more than the domes
remained above ground. There were, however, one or two higher buildings,
presumably some of the better dwellings inhabited by Rustam's officers. A
portion of the south walls, which, curiously enough, had quadrangular
towers instead of tapering circular ones, had collapsed, and so had the
corresponding portion of the north wall.
The city wall was of great interest, and even on the west side, where it
was of less strength, was constructed in successive tiers, each of less
than a man's height, and each with a path extending all along so that it
could be remanned continuously in time of attack. When one man of the
higher platform fell another could replace him immediately from the
platform directly below. The towers were much higher than the wall.
The city gate was of great strength, the two front towers being
strengthened inwardly by a third quadrangular tower. A raised block under
the gateway was said to be the execution place.
This city, historians declare, was destroyed by Bahram, who caused it to
be burnt, but there is no evidence whatever in the buildings to show that
a conflagration ever occurred in this place at all. In fact, it is rather
difficult to understand how buildings entirely of mud could be burned.
The city, it is said, was abandoned only about a century ago, when the
Sarbandi entered it by treachery and drove out the Rais tribe.
[Illustration: Rustam's City, showing Rustam's House in Citadel, also
domed roofs blown in from the North.]
A few hundred feet to the south outside the city wall are the remains of
the stable of Rustam's legendary gigantic horse. Part of the high wall
still stands up on the top of the section of a vault, but the greater
portion of the building, which was evidently of great proportions, is now
buried in sand. The exact spot is pointed out where the manger stood, and
so is the point where the heel ropes of this famous horse were tied. This
circumstance misled one traveller into stating in 1872 that "two hills,
one mile apart to the south-west, denoted the places where the manger and
the spot where the head of this famous horse were tied." This error has
been copied faithfully by subsequent travellers, including very recent
ones (see _Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_, February, 1902,
page 142).
There seemed little doubt that the huge building, of which the wall
reproduced in the illustration made part, was a stable, and that it must
have been of special importance could be seen by the elaborate cross
pattern decorations on its outer face. The fragment of the wall stands
over 50 feet high, and to all appearance some twenty more feet of it are
underground, buried by the sand. It had strong supports at its base.
[Illustration]
The stable was most peculiarly shaped, ending in a sharp point at one
end.
Another dry canal was noticeable to the west of the ruins which went from
south to north, with a branch canal going due west. North-west and west
were to be seen other ruined cities, one of which, with two high
quadrangular towers, was approximately three miles distant. To the west
on two hills were fortresses, but between these and Rustam's city lay an
immense graveyard (about one mile from Sher-i-Rustam), with graves above
ground--mainly single ones, but also a few family ones in adjoining
compartments.
As we went along due west another ruined city was pointed out, Zorap, a
very ancient place, where Bahram is said to have impaled the body of
Firamurz, Rustam's son.
We crossed two more dry canals of some magnitude, running parallel, which
showed that in former days this now barren part of Sistan must have been
under flourishing cultivation. In fact, further on we came upon traces of
houses and of extensive irrigation, the soil having quite a different
appearance to the usual _lut_ where left untouched by human tools.
[Illustration: Plan of Sher-i-Rustam.]
We then came across what at first seemed a confused commotion of sand and
mud, but its formation was very curious, and looked as if it covered an
underlying city of great size. The surface sand seemed to reproduce to a
certain extent the form of the structures that were down below, such as
quadrangular buildings, walls, domes, etc. It was not the natural
formation of sand on a natural ground. In one particular place a whole
city wall with towers could be traced, just showing above ground, so
perfectly rectangular that although covered by sand it would seem certain
that a fortress must be buried under this spot.
All around these particular suspected buried cities the sand is
absolutely flat, and there would be no other plausible reason for this
most extraordinary irregular accumulation of sand reproducing forms of
walls, domes and towers against all the general rules of local sand
accumulations, unless such obstacles existed below to compel the sand to
accumulate in resemblance to them. This theory is strengthened too by
the fact that, here and there, some of the higher buildings actually may
be seen to project above ground. The sand mixed with salt had, on getting
wet, become solid mud, baked hard by the sun.
Anybody interested in sand and its movements, its ways and process of
accumulation, could not do better than take a trip to this part of
Sistan. Little as one may care about sand, one is bound to get interested
in its ways, and one point in its favour is that with a certain amount of
logic and observation one can always understand why it has assumed a
certain formation rather than another--a pleasing feature not always
existing in all geological formations of the scenery one goes through.
The great expanse of irregular surface soil, with its innumerable
obstacles and undulations, was, of course, bound to give curious results
in the sand accumulations south of it, where the sand could deposit
itself in a more undisturbed fashion and was affected by purely natural
causes. Of course, sand hills do not accumulate in the flat desert unless
some obstacle--a mere pebble, a tamarisk shrub, a ridge, or a stone, is
the primary cause of the accumulation. In the present case, I think the
greater number of sand hills had been caused by tamarisk shrubs arresting
the sand along its flight southwards.
To enumerate and analyse each sand hill--there were thousands and
thousands--would take volumes. I will limit myself to the various most
characteristic types of which I give diagrams. The absolutely conical
type was here less noticeable, being too much exposed to the wind, which
gradually corroded one side of each hill more than the other.
Whatever their shape, the highest point of the sand hills was in any case
always to the north-east, the lower to the south-west. As can be seen by
the diagram there were single hills and composite ones; there were
well-rounded hills, semi-spherical hills, and then came the sand dunes,
such as those on the right of our track, like long parallel walls of sand
extending for great distances from east to west.
[Illustration: View of Sher-i-Rustam from Rustam's House. (West portion
of City under the lee of wall.)]
One sand hill, 80 feet high, quite semi-spherical, and with a solitary
tamarisk tree on its top, rising some 40 feet above all the others, was
quite a landmark along this route. It marked a point from which to the
east of our track we found more uniformity in the shape of the sand
mounds, which were lower and all semi-spherical. To the west of the
track, curiously enough, there were hardly any sand hills at all,--but
this was due, I think, to the fact that tamarisk shrubs did not seem to
flourish on the latter side, and therefore did not cause the sand to
accumulate.
Several miles further, however, at a spot protected by high sand dunes,
tamarisk trees were found growing, some being 4 to 6 feet high, and
seeming quite luxuriant after the usual desert shrubs which hardly ever
rise above two to three feet.
Sadek had purchased at Warmal two big bottles of milk for my use, but as
we had found no good water on the way and the heat of the sun was
great, he could not resist the temptation, and had drunk it all. When I
claimed it he professed that my cats had stolen it. A long jolting ride
on the jumbaz camel produced the marvellous result that, although the
cats had drunk the milk, Sadek himself was attacked by indigestion caused
by it. He seemed to suffer internal agony, and lay on his camel's hump
doubled up with pain. He felt so very ill that he requested me to take
him on my camel, and to let him exchange places with my driver. To my
sorrow I consented.
In a moment of temporary relief from the aching of his digestive organs
he entered into one of his favourite geographical discussions. Having for
the twentieth time eradicated from his brain the notion that London and
Russia were not suburbs of Bombay, he now wanted to know whether
_Yanki-dunia_ (by which glorified name the Persians call the United
States of America) were inside the "walls" of London city or outside!
He had an idea that the earth was flat, and that London, Bombay and
Russia were together on the extreme edge of it. The stars he believed to
be lighted up nightly, as one would candles or paraffin lamps.
Fortunately, while explaining to me his extraordinary theory of how it
was that the moon never appeared alike on two successive nights, he was
again seized with another fearful attack, and tumbled off the camel.
Sadek was most unfortunate with animals. He was hated by them all. When
he went near horses they would kick, buck and neigh as if a wolf had been
at hand; mules stampeded at his sight; cats bolted as if he were about to
beat them; and camels were restless and made most fearful noises of
disapproval and distress at his approach. When he tried to get on and
off, the kneeling camel would suddenly spring up again, causing him to
fall, and when he did get on the saddle the vicious brutes would assume a
most unusual and uncomfortable jerky motion, which bumped him to such an
extent that he could not stand it long, and had to get off. The animals
evidently did it purposely to get rid of him, for when I got on any of
them they went beautifully. Hence, whenever Sadek wished to ride
comfortably he always requested to change seats with my driver, who
occupied the front seat on the hump of my camel.
[Illustration: View of Sher-i-Rustam from Rustam's House. (South-east
section of City.)]
We had a glorious sunset on that evening, not unlike an aurora borealis,
in brilliant rays of light radiating from a central point. The sun had
already disappeared behind the blue mountain chain, and each bright
vermilion ray had like a fish bone or like a peacock's feather, myriads
of cross off-shoots in the shape of lighter sprays of light. There was a
brilliant yellow glow which tinted the blue sky and made it appear of
various gradations, from bright yellow at the lower portion to various
delicate shades of green in the centre, blending again into a pure deep
cobalt blue high up in the sky, and on this glorious background the
feathery vermilion sprays shot up to half way across the celestial vault.
Other smaller sprays of vivid yellow light flared up in a crescent nearer
the mountain edge.
It was quite a glorious sight, unimpeded by the grand spread of sand in
the foreground and a patch or two of humble tamarisks.
The rapidity with which night descends upon the desert, is, as we noticed
several times, quite amazing. There was hardly any twilight at all. In a
few seconds this beautiful spectacle vanished as by enchantment, and was
converted into a most mournful sight. The vermilion feathery sprays, now
deprived of the sun's light upon them, were converted into so many
gigantic black feathers--of rather funereal appearance--and the emerald
green sky became of a dead leaden white. The deep blue, fringed with red
and yellow, of the radiant mountains had now turned into a sombre,
blackish-grey.
About four miles before reaching Girdi a track branches off, which avoids
that place altogether, and rejoins the track again one mile south of
Girdi, thus saving a considerable detour.
Our march that day had been from Warmal to Mahommed Raza-Chah (altitude
2,100 feet), eight miles, and from that place to Girdi-chah, twenty-eight
miles. The track between the two latter stations was perfectly level, and
on _jumbaz_ camels going at a good pace the journey had occupied eight
hours and a half.
On arriving at Girdi (altitude 2,200 feet), the Beluch _sawar_ whom I had
taken as guide from Mahommed Raza Chah, and my Beluch driver had a most
touching scene on meeting some Beluch of a caravan travelling in the
opposite direction to mine and camping at Girdi for the night.
The men hastily dismounted from their camels, put their heads together
and pressed each the other's right hand, holding it on the heart.
"It is my brother!" cried my camel man, and then followed another
outburst of effusion on the brother's part, who seized my hand in both
his and shook it heartily for a considerable time. The others followed
suit.
There is nothing that an Afghan or a Beluch likes better than a good
hearty hand-shake.