Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/304

 164 DAMGHAN AND ITS ENVIRONS

his entire stay ! ' ^ It is to be hoped that the favored inhabit- ants enjoyed a similar immunity a century later, when Antio- chus the Great followed in Alexander's footsteps on an expedi- tion through Parthia in 209 B.C. ^ The alarums of war were not to be stilled; for a thousand years afterwards, in 885 A.D., the ruler of Tabaristan, on the north, marched an army ' from Gur- gan (Hyrcania) to Damghan ' and thence to Rai, but met with a dire overthrow on the latter field.^ This disaster was per- haps portended by a fearful earthquake which visited Damghan some years before,* only to be followed by a train of fire and blood left by the savage Mongol hordes under Chingiz Khan between 1219 and 1227.^ Nor was Tamerlane, that mighty trace of his ferocity when he burst across the Oxus into Iran in 1381, although this time his wrath was vented upon a band of White Tartars whom he had transplanted from Turkey and Syria to Damghan, where they revolted against him. He left outside of the city four towers of their heads, plastered in mud, to serve as a monument of his vengeance, and two of these ghastly turrets, *so high that a man could scarcely throw a stone over them,' were seen still standing, with remains of the other two, when Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo passed through Dam- ghan on Thursday, July 17, 1404, on an embassy from the Spanish court to Tamerlane's capital at Samarkand.^
 * Scourge of God,' to be outdone in leaving at Damghan some

It is not strange that atrocities like these left wounds hard

1 It is not improbable that Alexan- ' See Browne, History of Tabaristan der actually left some soldiers quar- by Isfandiydr (1216 a.d.), p. 189, tered in the vicinity of Hecatompylos, London, 1908, and compare pp. 219, as Curtius (6. 2, 15) says ' he had a 243 of the same work.

stationary camp there' (ibi stativa rex ^ In 856 a.d. (242 a.h.) according

habuit), even though he allowed the to Eraser, Narrative, p. 314, n. 1. main body of his troops to stay only ^ See Browne, Literary History of

' for some days ' (iirl rcvas vfi^pas), ac- Persia, 2. 445-460. cording to Diodorus( 17. 75). See also ^ See Markham, Narrative of the

Zolling, Alexanders Feldzug, pp. 110- Embassy of Clavijo, pp. 102-103, Lon-

111. don, 1859 (Hakluyt Society).

2 Polybius, History, 10. 29. 1.

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