Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/307

 to heal, despite the gentler treatment by later monarchs, such as Shah Abbas the Great, who rehabilitated the city and its for- tress, about 1600 A.D., so that Damghan flourished again. ^ Yet the very strength of the town and its central position seem to have made it ever a scene of conflict between hostile forces, as when, on October 2, 1729, the Persians under Nadir Shah gained a signal victory over the invading Afghans and forced them in the following year finally to withdraw from the country .^

The story of deeds of horror enacted at Damghan would be incomplete without the gruesome tale of the garden of prisoners of war planted head downwards by Zaki Khan, a cousin and half-brother of the head of the Zand dynasty, after he had quelled here, in 1763, a revolt by the Kajar tribe, who were destined later to furnish Persia with her ruling line. Tying each captive to the lopped-off bough of a tree, and sinking these in the ground at regular intervals, he allowed his victims slowly to suffocate in the earth while the leaves waved exultantly above their heels ! ^ No less inhuman was the torture inflicted by the Kajar founder, Agha Muhammad, upon Shah Rukh, the blind grandson of Nadir Shah, at Mashad in 1796. With royal barbarity he placed upon the hapless monarch's head a crown of paste, filled with boiling oil, so that the wretched ruler died from his sufferings some days later at Damghan, while his throne was seized by the perpetrator. Yet one thing more — and this a brighter one — the renowned Fath Ali Shah, who succeeded his bloody eunuch-uncle, was born at Damghan in 1769, and became the real founder of the Kajar dynasty that still reigns over Persia.*

I fear that this historic sketch may give an unduly dark and somber picture of Damghan — a side which others like- wise have emphasized too much ; for, after all, Damghan has

1 See Ferrier, p. 71 ; Curzon, 1. 288, * See Malcolm, History of Persia,

2 See Eastwick, 2. 154 ; Curzon, 1. 2. 76-77, and compare Eastwick, 2. 288; and Qorn, Geschichte Trans in 154; Curzon, 1. 288. islamitischer Zeit, in Qrundr. iran. * The date 1183 a. h. =1769 a.d. is Philol. 2. 689. given in Nasir ad-Din's Diary, p. 79.

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