From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

Some water-worn banks a little to the right of our route were selected. From them we looked down on a beautifully clear blue sheet of water in a deserted channel of the Helmand delta. It was evidently very shallow, for cranes found a footing far from the shore, and pelicans along its edge moodily watched the approach of unwary fish. This channel is upwards of a mile wide, and its banks, which consist of firm clay some sixty feet high, are marked by successive rows of water-lines, at no great height above the present pool, thus indicating that the channel carries a flood at certain seasons. The banks on both sides are bare of vegetation, and are much furrowed and worn by surface drainage.

We had come twelve miles before we halted, and proceeded four more before we descended by a gently sloping gully into a wide circular basin, which formerly had formed a back-water in connection with the deserted channel above mentioned, but which now presented a dry, fissured, and caked surface of bare clay, set around by water-marks rising in lines one above the other to a height of some twenty feet.

We went across this basin towards a clay bluff projecting on to it. As we approached near it a large party of horsemen, much to our surprise, suddenly shot out from behind its cover towards us, and reined up to await our arrival. They formed the isticbál party sent out by Sharíf Khán, Nahroe Baloch, to meet and conduct us to his fort of Burj ’Alam.

The party was headed by his son ’Ali Muhammad, a handsome youth dressed and shaved in the Persian fashion, and consisted of about sixty horsemen, all armed with rifles slung at their backs. It was the first we had seen of the Persians, for most of the party belonged to that nation, and they certainly looked a fine body of men, and were well mounted. The ceremony was very well arranged, and the sudden dash forward from their concealment was managed with good effect, as it was meant to do.

As we came up, ’Ali Muhammad moved his horse forward, and, with a slight inclination of the body said, “Ahwál shuma?” (“How do you do?”). The greeting was responded to in the same manner and language, and then both parties, mingling into one, proceeded without further ceremony or delay.

Passing over a ridge of bare pebbly ground, from which Kimak Fort was seen four miles to the north-east, we descended into a great hollow, level with that just left behind. It extends for many miles to the south-west as a low-lying plain, or lacustrine hollow, bordered to the south by a coast-line of high clay banks. This is the Hámún of Sistan: the name in Persian signifies a level desert plain. We crossed it in a northerly direction, and passing an extensive graveyard, a little farther on came to our camp, pitched close under the walls of Burj ’Alam.

The graveyard occupies the base and slopes of a clay ridge on the left of our path, and dates only from the commencement of the present century. A couple of domed mausolea on the crest of the ridge mark the tombs of ’Alam Khán, the founder of the Nahroe colony in Sistan, and of his son, Dost Muhammad, the brother of the present chief, Sharíf Khán. The other graves are different from any we have hitherto seen. Over each grave is built an oblong platform or block, lying north and south. The material is raw brick neatly plastered with clay, and on the upper surface is the figure of a coffin. The dimensions of these structures are apparently uniformly six feet by three high, and two and a half wide. They appeared carefully kept, and gave the cemetery a neat look.

This is the first village we have come to in Sistan proper, which it seems is limited to a very small area. We were much surprised, on leaving camp this morning, to hear our companions say that we should enter Sistan by-and-by, being under the impression that we had already done so on passing beyond Rúdbár. In reality however—so we are told—we only entered Sistan to-day where the isticbál of Sharíf Khán met us; the country beyond to the south being called, on the east Trákú, and on the west Zirrah, which sinks rapidly to the south. In this restricted sense Sistan is a very small country, and only comprises the low-lying lacustrine basin, or Hámún, that lies between the Naizár on the north and the cliffs of the Zirrah desert on the south, the delta of the Helmand on the east, and the Sarshela ravine on the west.

During the afternoon, Sharíf Khán, the chief of the Nahroe Baloch settled in Sistan, paid us a visit. He is a tall, well-built, handsome man, and was richly dressed in the Afghan fashion. His manners are polished for Baloch, the result evidently of his residence at Tehran, where he has spent several years as a political prisoner or détenu. He is now, under the rule of the Persians, the most important, though by no means the most influential, chief in the country. In deference to his Persian masters he has adopted the Shia doctrine, and most of the tribe have in this particular followed the lead of their chief. He has also married his daughter to Ali Akbar, the eldest son of Hashmat-ul-Mulk Mír ’Alam Khán, the Persian governor of Sistan. The Nahroe Baloch, of whom Sharíf Khán is the present representative, are comparatively modern settlers in Sistan. About the beginning of the present century, the Kayáni chief Bahrám Khán, being pressed by the Sanjarání Baloch on the one side, and the Sárbandi and Shahrki on the other, called in the aid of the Nahroe Baloch under their chief ’Alam Khán, and settled them on the south borders of Sistan as a check upon the encroachments of the others.