From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

One of the Persians of our escort assured us that this wind often prevailed with such furious force that it knocked people off their legs. “Why, only last year,” said he, with most animated gestures, “it tore up the sand in that hollow away to the left with such force, and swept it away in such quantities, that it exposed the remains of an ancient town nobody ever dreamt of the existence of before. The houses were discovered in rare order. The chambers were clear of débris and clean swept of dust, and, marvellous to relate, the furniture was found just as it stood when the city was swallowed up in the earth.” “You astonish me,” I said; “this is something very wonderful.” “Yes,” he continued, “you speak the truth—it is wonderful. God is great and His power is infinite. But I will tell you the most wonderful thing of all. Everything looked perfect and most substantial, but the moment a hand was stretched out to touch an object, it at once crumbled to powder. The place is only a few miles off our road, would you like to gallop over and see it?”

I thought of the Kol Márút inscription, and the Turkman heads, and the earthquake at Khabúshán or Kochán, and politely declined the invitation. “Your description,” I said, “is so complete, I see the place before my mind’s eye. Why incommode ourselves in this rain for what is so apparent?” I saw he felt the sarcasm, though, with genuine Persian nonchalance, he covered his retreat with an—“As you will! There the place is, and if you like to see it, I am ready to accompany you.” Of course he would have made some trivial excuse at not finding the city of his imagination, or have kept me wandering over the plain till in sheer disgust I gave up the search. I should, however, like to have taken him on his proffered errand, had I full power to punish him on proving his delinquency; for, on subsequent inquiry, I ascertained the whole story to be a pure invention.

I referred just now to an earthquake at Kochán, which I have not mentioned in the narrative. We were told at Turbat Hydari, and by the governor of the place too, as the most recent news from Mashhad, that a fearful earthquake had almost completely destroyed Kochán. The convulsion was described as so violent, that the houses were completely inverted, and hundreds of the people crushed to death in the ruins. One of our first inquiries on arrival at Mashhad was regarding the calamity at Kochán, but nobody had heard anything about it.

Our road companions were so thoroughly untrustworthy in all they said, that we found it difficult to get any reliable information out of them regarding the countries we were passing through, and our Persian servants evinced such a dislike to our inquisitiveness, that it was hopeless to look for any assistance from them. We all took notes, and each catered for himself, and many a time were we hard pushed for material to fill our diaries. A traveller on the road, a peasant at the plough, or a shepherd tending his flocks, was hailed as a godsend, and at once charged down upon by three or four Britons, note-book in hand, foraging for information. “Do you belong to this place?” “What’s the name of that village?” “And that on the hillside?” “What’s the name of that hill?” “And of this bulúk?” “Where do you live?” “How many houses does this village contain?” “How many people died in the famine?” and so forth.

Our blunt authoritative volley of questions generally elicited unhesitating and truthful replies; but sometimes our examinee became impatient under our “wait a bits,” whilst we wrote, and began to hesitate and reflect on his replies. We knew he was concocting a lie, and without waiting to hear it, galloped off to join our comrades, leaving him to stare after us in bewilderment.

The last few miles of our march was over a very slippery clay soil, white with salines, and drained by a sluggish muddy river, which we crossed by a masonry bridge. Our camp is pitched on rising ground beyond the fort-village of Záminabad, and affords a good view of the Binaloh range, running north-west, and separating Burdjnurd from Kochán. To the north-west the Nishabor plain narrows, and communicates through a long valley with Burdjnurd, just as the plain of Mashhad does on the other side of Binaloh with Chinaran and Kochán. To the southward the prospect is bounded by the Koh Surkh range, running east and west, and separating Nishabor from Turshíz. The weather here proved very raw and black, and a cold south-west wind swept over the country in stormy gusts.

Our next march was nine miles to Shoráb, on the bank of a ravine that drains the chain of hills separating the plain of Nishabor from that of Sabzwár. Shoráb is a neat little fortified village of some sixty houses. There is a post-house here, and a large ábambár, and a new and commodious sarae is in course of erection.

From this we marched nearly due west eighteen miles to Záfaráni, and halted a day. For the first five miles our road led over a very broken mameloned surface, up to a watershed running north-west and south-east, and marking the boundary between Nishabor and Sabzwár. Its elevation is about 4290 feet above the sea, and from it we got a good view of the great plain of Sabzwár, which is singularly void of trees and villages, and looks like a desert compared with Nishabor. Indeed, its southern coasts are a veritable salt desert, glistening white as snow in the sunlight. The plain is bounded to the westward and southward by the lofty Gomesh mountain, and beyond the desert tract to the south by the Koh Surkh and Turshíz ranges.

At four miles on, passing amongst rough rocky hills of slate and trap, we came to the Sarae Caladár, and thence west down a long slope to the plain of Sabzwár. Its surface is a firm coarse gravel, covered with pasture plants, such as the camel-thorn, asafœtida, liquorice, wild rue, astragalus, &c., and the wild almond, the fruit of which was nearly ripe; but not a single tree was visible on all the plain, and but only two or three villages, widely apart. The land slopes to the salt desert on the south, where flows the Káli Shor, or “salt river.” It drains Nishabor and Sabzwár south-west to the desert of Káshán, and its water is so saline as to be unfit even for purposes of irrigation.

Záfaráni is a walled village of about two hundred houses, belonging to the Zafaranlu tribe of Kurds. There are a good post-house and a large sarae here. The Kurds originally came into Persia with the invasion of Changhiz Khán, and possessed themselves of the mountainous region bordering its western provinces. A colony of them, amounting to forty thousand families, was afterwards transported into the neighbouring provinces of Persia by Sháh Tamasp, and Sháh Abbas the Great subsequently settled them in the northern districts of Khorassan, viz., Daragaz, Radgán, Chinaran, Khabúshán, Burdjnurd, Nishabor, and Sabzwár. On the downfall of the Saffavi dynasty they became independent, till reduced by Nadír. After the death of this conqueror they passed under the nominal rule off the Durrani Sháh Ahmad, but they soon threw off the ill-secured Afghan yoke, and again became independent under local chiefs, who for several years successfully resisted the authority of the Cajar kings, until finally reduced to subjection in the reign of the present Sháh, about the middle of this century.