Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/293

 AHUAN AND ITS FORTIFIED STATION

��ruler, with whom we have already become acquainted in an earlier chapter, is better known to the West as Chosroes, or Khusrau I (531-579 a.d.), who governed his realm with a firm and just hand; and it is not unlikely that the stronghold actually owed its origin to him, to protect the caravans against the Turanians. The natives always speak of it as a rihdt, ' a keep, or fortified sta-

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��tion,' and not as a simple caravan- sarai.

The structure consists of an enclosure, more than ninety yards square, with a single entrance through its north- ern front.^ In shape it resembles the large caravan- sarais that are fa- miliar in Persia, but it is built of stone, not of mud and clay. The

stones used in its construction are the cobbles which are found in the hills nearby; and the walls, raised to a height of twenty or thirty feet, are enormously thick. Signs of a coping of cement and mortar are still to be traced at points along the top, and here and there as a finish on the sides. The corners are strengthened by heavy bastions re-enforced by kindred roun- dels, three on each side (except on the north, where there are but two), forming a total of fifteen such defences. The main

1 1 paced off the front and sides roughly as follows : N. (front), 97 paces ; E., 90; S., 90; W., 92 paces.

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��RiBAT OF AnUSHIRVAN AT AhUAN

(1. Portal, with large rooms above. — 2. Large archways in the sides. — 3. Smaller arches, with rooms.)

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