Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/338

 190 AMONG HISTORIC SITES

jan ; ^ while some distance beyond it rose Bak, with an artificial mound crowned by a deserted and crumbling small fortress called Kalah-i Bak, or 'Citadel of Bak.'

Green villages ensued, and on the outskirts of one of them I remember noticing, as I had noticed elsewhere in Persia, a temporary receiving vault for a body till it could be carried to Mashad or to Karbala. These receptacles, built of clay covered with gypsum or white plaster, are constructed like a small house, about ten feet long by five broad, and as many high, or just large enough to allow the corpse to be placed in it and removed without difficulty. I wondered whether these whit- ened sepulchres were anything like the Avestan kata^ or tem- porary house, which Zoroaster enjoined to be built for use in winter or in stormy weather, when it might not be feasible to remove the body to the Tower of Silence.^

The abundant kandts for irrigation and the carefully tilled fields showed why the numerous sentinel towers of mud had been a necessity in the past, when the Turkomans used to dash across the mountains and rob the rich plain of its booty. No wonder that the townlet of Mahman-dust, with its hospitable name of ' Guest-friend,' served often as a welcome place of re- treat from those cruel marauders.^ Before a dozen more miles had been left behind we were passing through a large old village, Dah Mullah, or 'Priest Village,' whose high-sounding ecclesi- astical title seemed little in keeping with its decrepit fortress and ill-repaired walls.* Like others along the route, the place

1 For a mention of Bostajan see and Dah Mullah, as mentioned by Shah Curzon, 1. 380, and Euan Smith, in Nasir ad-Din, Diary, p. 81. Brief Goldsmid, Eastern Persia, 1. 380. mentions of Mahman-dust are found in

2 See Vend. 5. 10-13. Truilhier (1807), Memoire, pp. 155- 8 The name of the place, Mahman- 166, and Curzon, 1. 285.

dust, appears in Mustaufi (1340 a.d.), * This is the same as Dah Dayah,

see Le Strange, Eastern Caliphate, ' Village of the Preacher,' in the Arab-

p. 368. The corresponding station Persian geographers (see above, p. 178,

more commonlymentionedin the Arab- note); it was visited by Van Mierop

Persian itineraries (see p. 178, above) (about 1740), see Han way's Caspian

is Al-Haddadah, which is still the name Sea, 1. 358 = 3 ed. 1. 247; and by For-

of one of eleven villages between here ster, Voyage, 2. 262.

�� �