Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/346

 196 AMONG HISTORIC SITES

residence of the governor of the local district of Bustam-Shah- rud, even if Shahrud be now the capital.^

The monuments of Bustam are noteworthy, one of the most remarkable being a peculiar round, fluted tower, with conical roof, adjoining the Jami' Masjid, or chief mosque, in which are buried some saintly remains. In appearance this polygonal structure resembles certain related towers found at Rai, Vara- min, Damavand, and Radkan ; ^ and it has been fittingly com- pared to an upright roller of some huge crimping-machine with rectangular flutings. The bricks used in its construction are plain and not large, the only decoration being a double band of ornamental inscriptions on the body of the tower, just below the cupola top, and there are traces of blue glazed tiles that once covered the roof. The inscriptional bands on the tower give no date, but a tablet in the mosque, as Fraser states, records that the building was erected in 1300 by order of Ghazan Khan, the brother of the same Mongol ruler who raised the mosque of Shaikh Bayazid.^

The most important architectural ruins of the city, however, are grouped around the historic shrine of the patron saint Baya- zid. The age of these structures differs considerably, ranging roughly from the ninth to the fifteenth century ; yet there is a certain symmetry which harmonizes the whole and renders

1 Cf. Ibn Batutah (1340), 3. 82. Iran and Turan. This Ghazan (1295-

2 See Fraser, p. 340, and especially 1304) was the brother and predecessor Sarre, Denkmdler, Textband, p. 118, of Sultan Khudabandah (1304-1316); and compare Jackson, Persia, pp. 436- see also Howorth, History of the 437. A distantly analogous structure Mongols, 3. 393, 530-532. Horn, is the tower of Gunbad-i Kabus on the Grundr. Iran. Philol. 2. 575, took river Gurgan, pictured by Sykes, Sixth Khoda-bandah to be Ghazan's son in Journey in Persia, in The Geographi- stead of his brother. Sykes, Sixth cal Journal, 37. 2, 9, 14. Journey, pp. 150-151, notes that the

8 The date 700 a.h, = 1300 a.d. is town is called ' Kashana,' which signi-

given by Fraser, p. 340, and the name fies 'hall,' and is a title difficult to

of the builder as Muhammad ibn Hu- explain, though he offers a doubtful

sain, son of Abu Talib al-Muhandiz, etymological suggestion that Kashana

by order of Sultan Ghazan Khan might contain some association with

Muhammad Sikandar Sani, King of the name of Ghazan as Khasan.

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