Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/317

 This special fountain of Chashmah-i Ali lies about sixteen miles northwest of Damghan, and has been described by several travelers.^ The account by East wick, who visited it in 1862, is worth quoting.

by their arid look, enhance the beauty of the grove and rich verdure in which the fountain is embosomed. The water gushes copiously from a rock, and is as clear, to use my servant's poetical expression, as the water of the eye. It flows into an oblong tank, about six hundred feet long by eighty feet broad, shaded on all sides by fine chendrs, poplars, and other trees, planted probably in Agha Muhammad Shah's time [before 1797]. Bridging the middle of the tank is a pavilion, built by the present Shah [Nasir ad-Din Shah], while one erected by his grandfather stands at the eastern extremity of the water. Close by the spring is the Ziyarat Gah, or place of pilgrim- age, with a stone marked by the fossil of some animal, which, the Muham- madans say, is an indentation made by the hoof of All's horse.' *
 * The spring is in the center of a valley surrounded by mountains, which,

This site is the more interesting historically because Alex- ander is presumed to have passed it on his march from Heca- tompylos to Hyrcania, for his historians, Curtius and Diodorus, locate his encampment at a place of similar description, *one hundred and fifty stadia' (about seventeen miles) from the great city.^

taufi, according to Le Strange, Eastern Meeres, p. 127 ; Napier, Tour in

Caliphate, p. 365, and Persia under Khorassan, in JBQS. 46. 69-70 ;

the Mongols, in JBAS. 1902, p. 745 ; Nasir ad-Din Shah, Diary, p. 71. it is mentioned likewise by Firdausi, ^ Eastwick, Journal, 2. 159.

tr. Mohl (folio ed.), 7.463, 11. 415-416. » Quintus Curtius, Hist. Alex. 6.

Isfandiar of Tabaristan, History, tr. 4. 3-7, writes as follows: 'Having

Browne, p. 240, also refers to the fact marched a hundred and fifty stadia

that Damghan was one of the cities in [about 16| miles], he encamped in a

which the propaganda of the Assas- valley leading into Hyrcania. There

sins was welcomed. For the history is a leafy grove of very high, shady

and tenets of the sect reference may be trees, and the soil of the valley is rich

made to Margoliouth's article on them because of the streams of water that

in Hastings, Encyclopcedia of Beligion flow from the overhanging rocks.

and Ethics, 2. 138-141, Edinburgh, From the very roots of the mountains

1909. gushes the river Ziobetis [miswritten

1 See, for example, Morier, A Sec- for Ziboetis], which flows as a single

and Journey, 2. 369-370 ; Melgunoff, stream for about three stadia [^ of a

Das sudliche Ufer des kaspischen mile], when, beaten back by a rock

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