Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/314

 172 DAMOHAN AND ITS ENVIRONS

Chosroes), for the distribution of water, which springs from a cavern in the mountains and is divided through one hundred and twenty canals to the hundred and twenty districts, so that none receives a larger share than the other, and it is impossible to appropriate it for anything else than this pur- pose. It is truly remarkable, and I have not seen its like or anything more beautiful in other countries. In the vicinity is a village called the Village of Porters, where there is a fountain from which springs blood. There is no doubt about this, for it possesses all the properties of blood. When mercury is thrown into it, it turns to a hard, dry stone. This village is known also by the name of Ghanjan. In Daraghan there is an excellent variety of red apples, called Kumisl, from Kumis, which are exported to Irak ; in the vicinity there are mines of alum and salt, but no sulfur, though there are veins of pure gold.' ^

The remarkable source of water here alluded to is none other than the famous Chashmah-i All, or fountain which was said to have sprung from a hoof -print of Ali's horse, in the mountains nearby. The stream that flows hence to Damghan, and the constructed watercourses in the vicinity, are sufficient to bear out the truth of the Arab writer's statement, so far as the water is concerned. 2 Yet Yakut, who passed through Damghan in the year 1216, says that he failed to notice the various details mentioned by his brother writer, whom he quotes, although he rightly emphasizes the fact that he himself made no stay in the city. He adds, however, another interesting fact, that in the mountains could be seen 'the fortress of Gird-Kuh, which be- longed to the Ismaelites,' or the accursed band of the Assassins. This fortress is evidently the stronghold in the vicinity of Damghan which is referred to by Marco Polo (1272) in his chapters on * the Old Man of the Mountain ' and the ' castle ' of his hashish-frenzied followers.^

1 Abu Mis'ar ibn al-Muhalhil (about Pahlavi Bundahishn, 20. 18 : ' The 941 A.D.), quoted by Yakut (2. 539); river Akhoshir is in Kumish' (i.e. the see Barbier de Meynard, Diet. geog. region about Damghan ; see West, p. 223, and Marquart, Untersuchungen, 8BE. 5. 79, and Justi, Beitrdge zur 2. 45. alten Geographic Persiens, 2. 6).

2 The stream flowing to Damghan, 3 See Marco Polo, ed. Yule, 1. 143- now called the Chashmah-i All River, 155. The fortress is called Diz Gum- appears to be that mentioned in the badan, ' The Domed Fort,' by Mus-

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