Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/146

 68 OFF TO DERBENT

early writers.^ A 'Grand Hotel,' not far from the railway- station, offers to travelers, who may wish to partake of its hospitality, the usual zahusha luncheon, with spirit or malt beverages, vodka and pivo. A half dozen * phaeton ' drivers are waiting near by, ready to strike a bargain with the visitor and to take him through the town, up Bariatinsky Street, as the prin- cipal thoroughfare is named, and onward towards the citadel.

A small park, which we pass on the way, looks pretty and green with its chestnut trees and abundant water, and shows that Derbent can still boast of a plentiful supply of that precious fluid flowing from its mountains. The road is muddy, but becomes less so when it reaches an unassuming plaza, where the Russian church stands among other buildings, and here is found a rough pavement in the street leading up to the bazar and to the higher portion of the city, where Tatars, Persians, Armenians, Georgians, and Circassians thread their way through narrower lanes and tell us we have arrived at the Oriental sec- tion of Derbent.

Here I could imagine how Harun ar-Rashid, the romantic caliph of ' Arabian Nights ' fame, might have roamed in his favorite manner of incognito, for we know that he spent seven years at Derbent (779-786 A.D.), and a son of his is said to have been buried near the Gate of Kirkhlar, or ' Portal of the Forty,' named after the cemetery not far from the northern wall of the city. 2 In this graveyard rest ' forty ' martyrs, with hundreds more, who fell fighting for the faith of Islam against the foemen from the north in the early days before Muhammad- anism triumphed. Their graves, which generally bear some inscription, have been described by others who have visited the

1 See, for example, Abu '1-Kasim a See Kazem-Beg, pp. 128, 129, 143,

(948 A.D.), tr. D'Ohsson, Des peuples rem. 8 ; and cf. Klaproth, in Journal

du Caucase, p. 6, Paris, 1828; Idrisi asiatique, 29 (nouv. s^r. 3, 1829), p.

(1154A.D.),tr. Jaubert, G'eosf.d'i^drm, 467. On the list of martyrs, see

2. 229-230, Paris, 1840; Josafa Barbaro Kazem-Beg, pp. 161-153, 231-232. (1474), p. 90 (HakluytSoc.); Contarini (1476), p. 146 (Hakluyt Soc).

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