Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/69

 the city of Tus shared with Nishapur the distinction of being the seat of a Nestorian Christian bishop. When the Arab conquest of Persia came Tus fell before the invaders and it became a great Moslem centre, famous especially as the home of the poet Firdausi, who was born there about 935 A. D. and died 1025 A. D.

Professor Jackson thus describes the present ruined condition of the city: " The crumbling walls of the dead city were once broad and lofty ramparts of clay and rubble, much like those already mentioned at Bustam and Rei, but they had be come much flattened with the lapse of ages, although traces of their towers were still to be seen, while their outline showed the contour of the town, which must have formed a very irregular quadrilateral, following roughly the points of the compass. . . . The scene, as we saw it, presented a strange paradox of the destructive effects of the hand of man, and the eternal power of nature to rise and bloom again. The devastating inroads of the Ghuzz hordes and the Mongol armies, aided by earthquakes, had indeed laid mighty Tus in ruins: but its dust still contains the resurrection seed of flowers and grain, bringing life anew in the midst of death. Acres of barley and fields of thick clover spread their rich green on all sides, in contrast with stretches of arid waste that told only too well the story of ruin wrought in the past." Professor Jackson goes on to say: " It is clear that