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most celebrated teacher of that period in this great literary centre. Nishapur was situated forty-nine miles west of Tus, and was captured by the Arabs in A. H. 31. Yakut, in his geographical dictionary, says that of all the cities he had visited this was the finest. It was in this city that Hamadhani wrote his four-hundred Maqamat and vanquished his great literary rival.

Other great names are connected with the city, among them Omar Khayyam the poet, the Koran commentator Ahmed al-Tha labi, and Maidani the author of the well-known collection of Arabic proverbs.

The older name of the town or district was Abrashahr. The importance of the place under the Sasanians was in part religious; one of the three holiest fire temples was in its neighbourhood. Nishapur under the Moslems contained a large Arab element; it became the capital of Khorasan, and greatly increased in prosperity, under the almost independent princes of the house of Tahir (A. D. 820-873). Istakhri describes it as a wellfortified town, a league square, with a great export of cotton goods and raw silk. In the decline of the empire the city had much to suffer from the Turkomans, whose raids have in modern times destroyed the prosperity of this whole region. In 1153 it was utterly ruined by the Ghuzz Turkomans, but soon rose again, because, as Yakut remarks, its position gave it command of the entire caravan