CHAPTER XVII.
[(1.)] “Soltania.”—Or Soultanyà—Royal city—so named by Oljaïtou, son of Arghoun Khan, the founder (1305), once the metropolis and largest city in the kingdom. Chardin (Langlès edition, ii, 377) tells us that there were not many cities in the world where vaster ruins were to be seen; and in Kinnear’s time (Geog. Mem. of the Persian Emp., 123) the place was reduced to a few wretched hovels. Colonel Yule (Marco Polo, ii, 478) reproduces from Fergusson an illustration of the tomb built for himself by Oljaïtu, or as his Moslem name ran, Mahomed Khodabandah, at Soultaniah, “the finest work of architecture that the ‘Tartars of the Levant’ have left behind them.” Kinnear describes it as being a large and beautiful structure ninety feet in height, built of brick, and covered with a cupola—an edifice that would do honour to the most scientific architect in Europe.
This tomb of Oljaïtou was still magnificent, and especially noted for its colossal gates of damasked steel, even so late as the seventeenth century. “The city was reoccupied by some of the Persian kings in the sixteenth century, till Shah Abbas transferred the seat of government to Ispahan. John XXII set up an archbishopric at Sultaniah in 1318, in favour of Francis of Perugia, a Dominican, and the series of archbishops is traced down to 1425.” (Cathay, and the Way Thither, Hakluyt Soc. Publ., 49, note 3.)—Ed.