(1.) “Then he left her.”—Virgin’s towers are by no means uncommon
in the East. Rich (_Residence in Kourdistan_, i, 172) mentions a
Kiz-Kalesi—girl’s castle—as being on a hill above the Kizzeljee in
Kourdistan. Hear a place called Ak-boulak, about twenty-five miles
to north-east of Shousha in Transcaucasia, are the ruins of Kiz
Kaleh—Virgin’s castle—situated on a hill in a perfectly impregnable
position. Another Virgin’s castle in that part of Asia, is at Bakou; an
inscription on its walls, in Cufic characters, deciphered by Khanikoff
(_Ysvest. Geog. Obshtchest._, ix), records its construction by Masoudi,
the son of Daud, one of the “Samiardi fratres” mentioned in the history
of Otto, bishop of Freising. Again, there is a tower, erected on the
highest pinnacle of the rocky mount upon which stand the fortifications
of Soldaya, now Soudagh, in the Crimea, called Kiz-Koula by the Tatars
(_The Crimea and Transc._, ii, 158). The ruins of another fortress,
Kaleh Dokhter, are described by Abbott (_Southern Cities of Persia_,
MS.) as crowning the height above the city of Kirman; and visitors
to Constantinople are familiar with the construction on the rock off
Scutari, unaccountably called by Europeans the Tower of Leander, but
known, more legitimately, as the Maiden’s Tower, ever since it became
the burial-place of Damalis, wife of the Athenian general Chares, who
was sent to the assistance of the Byzantines against Philip of Macedon.
The author says, that on quitting the neighbourhood of the mysterious
castle, he proceeded to Kerasoun; it is, therefore, just possible that
the legend of the sparrow-hawk was attached to an ancient Kiz-Kalesi
seen by Ainsworth (_Travels in Asia Minor_, etc., i, 87) near Tash
Kupri, close to the road that leads from Kastamuni to Boiabad, both to
the south-west of Sinope. I am unable to discover why the name was so
frequently given in the East, to such peculiarly situated strongholds,
and would suggest that it was owing to their unassailable position.—ED.