From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

In our experience of it the wind was a cold cutting blast, with the force of a moderate gale. It commenced on the day of our arrival at Nasírabad, on the 7th instant, and continued daily till we crossed the Sistan border into Lásh territory, six days later. It generally commenced soon after sunrise, subsided somewhat at midday, and gradually recovered its force after sunset. It owes its cause, apparently, to the rarefaction of the atmosphere by the rays of a hot sun playing upon the vast sandy region to the south, and its coldness at this season is derived from the snowy mountains of Ghor, whence it proceeds. In the hot season it raises clouds of sand, that obscure the sky and prove extremely injurious to the eyes.

From Banjár we got a very good view of the Nihbandán range of hills bounding Sistan on the west. It is marked about midway by a deep valley or glen, which conveys its drainage after rains into the lake north-west of Koh Khojah. Towards the north the range appears continuous with the Farráh mountains, and towards the south with those of Sarhadd. The elevation of Banjár is about 1580 feet above the sea.

11th March.—Banjár to Bolay, seven miles, and halt a day. These villages are hardly five miles apart by the direct route, but our path turned from north to east and then due north again, in order to avoid the deep mud of the flooded fields, which are here irrigated by a number of considerable canals. Within the first three miles from Banjár we forded two, with the water up to the saddle-flaps, and crossed three others by rustic bridges. Beyond these we crossed, in an easterly direction, a strip of wind-scooped sand, similar to that already described on the march to Nasírabad, and a little farther on passed the village of Dih Afghan to our right. It is a strong little fort, surrounded by hut settlements of the Tokhi Ghilzais and other Afghans. The fort itself is now garrisoned by Persian sarbáz. Across the plain, at about three miles to its west, is the fortified village of Shytávak. It formerly belonged to the Kayánis, but has for the past half century been in the possession of the Sárbandis. In the opposite direction, away to the east and south-east, is seen a vast mass of ruins, that cover several square miles of country. We could learn nothing more regarding them than that they are in the vicinity of Casimabad and Iskil.

From Dih Afghan our route turned north, and at a couple of miles brought us to Bolay, which consists of two open villages close to each other. We passed these, and camped on a bit of hard, flat, wind-swept, and bare ground, a few hundred yards farther on. At a few miles across the plain to the eastward are the extensive ruins of Záhidán. They extend as far as the eye can reach towards the north-east, and are said to be continuous with those of Doshák, about nine miles from the Helmand.

These ruins, with those of Pulkí, Nádálí, and Pesháwarán, 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. Their melancholy solitudes now merely exist as the silent memorials of the destruction wrought by that “Scourge of God” Tamerlane. This Tátár invader, whose real name was Tymúr, is said to have been wounded in the ankle by an arrow at the siege of Doshák, from the effects of which he became permanently lame. Hence the epithet lang added to his name—Tymúr lang, or “Tymúr the lame,” our Tamerlane.

According to local tradition, the Tátár was so enraged at the opposition he experienced here, that he destroyed every city in the province, massacred its people wholesale, and reduced the whole country to a desolate waste; and it has never since regained its former prosperity.

Kinneir, in his “Memoir of the Persian Empire,” supposes the ancient Zarany of Ptolemy to be the same as Doshák, or more properly Dahshák, as I was informed by a native, from the ten branches of the canal which were at this spot taken from off the Helmand.

Zarany, or Doshák, was the residence of Yácúb bin Leth, the founder of the Sufári dynasty of Sistan, who made it the capital of his kingdom about 868 A.D. It was ultimately sacked and destroyed by Tamerlane in 1384 A.D., and has ever since remained a desolate waste of ruins, amongst which stands the modern town of Jalálabad, which at the commencement of the present century was the seat of the Kayáni chief Bahrám Khán. It is now in the possession of the Sárbandi, Bahrám’s son and successor, Jaláluddín, having been finally driven out of Sistan in 1839 by Muhammad Kezá Khán, their chief, whose seat was Sihkoha.

We halted a day at Bolay, owing to some difficulty and delay on the part of the Persian governor of Sistan in providing camels for our party. During our stay here the north wind blew with unabated force, and swept the ground around our camp as clean as a board. I observed that the hard clay soil was striated in long lines from north to south by the persistent action of this wind, and we found some plants curiously affected in their growth by the same cause.

Some wormwood, saltworts, and a species of zizyphus, here called kuvár, were all growing prostrate on the ground, with their stems and twigs projecting only in the direction of the wind. The thorny branches of the zizyphus formed long slender trails recumbent on the ground, and here and there formed fresh attachments by little shoots striking root into the soil. These plants are very sparsely scattered, and only rise six inches or so above the surface, whilst not a single bush or tree is to be seen on the plain.