Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/281

 The Shah comments favorably on the city and its buildings, remarks that it is divided into eleven quarters, and makes a shrewd observation on the patois of its inhabitants. In this local idiom he sees a composite of the speech of Mazandaran, Khurasan, and Irak, just as the population appears to show a threefold amalgamation of type because bordering on these three districts.^

The bazars of Semnan, as we drove through them, appeared to be fairly good, though not especially remarkable, and some of them were arched over so as to give the advantages of cov- ered passages, as in most large towns. In the heart of the bazar is the old minaret of the principal, or 'Assembly,' mosque {Mindr-i Masjid-i Jdmi'-')^ which we had seen in the distance, and which is noteworthy because its cagelike top has been pre- served. ^ It is built of brick, and it towers a hundred feet above the structure to which it is attached. The mosque, now in a ruined condition, must be old, for Fraser observed that an inscription records that it was built by Tamerlane's son. Shah Rukh, in 880 a.h. (= 1475 A.D.), though possibly Shah Rukh may only have rebuilt it, as it seems to be older than some

Two of the public squares near the dervish colleges struck me as being too insignificant to deserve more than a mere men- tion. On the other hand, the city can boast of a large and dignified plaza, a great court in front of the Masjid-i Shdh^ or side by edifices as noble as the mosque itself. The huge portal that dominates the structure which faces the mosque is par- ticularly elegant, being decorated with handsome inlaid tiles
 * Mosque of the Shah,' paved with brick and flanked on each

1 See the lithograph edition of the ^ This is commonly spoken of as the

diary, p. 50, to which reference has Friday Mosque, because of the special

already been made. The Shah's ob- services held on that day. servation on the Semnan dialect was ^ gee Fraser, Narrative, p. 303.

cited by Dorn, as quoted in Geiger and Kuhn, Grundr. iran. Philol. 1. 2. 348.

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