Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/360

 206 OVER THE ANCIENT BATTLE-GROUND

despite the hills that border it south and north. ^ Its very situation accounts for the name Midn-dasht^ * Middle-of-the- plain,' which recalled to my memory stories connected in Zoroas- ter's time with the great plain ahead of us ; so all that day, like the next, I lived amid scenes vivid to me with associations of the historic past. But there was no time to tarry at Miandasht longer than for a change of horses ; nor again to make anything of a halt at the walled village of Al-Hak, with its square watchtower of brick guarding the road, and its old caravansarai and reservoir near by ,2 although we did find time to take lunch- eon, despite flies and heat, at the post-station of Abbasabad,^ where is found a spring of good water and an interesting little community that owes its existence to Shah Abbas, who, about 1600 A.D., transplanted to this place in his kingdom on the edge of a salt desert a band of Christian Georgians, his design being to have them form a part of the frontier guard against the Turkomans.* They have long since abandoned Christianity for Muhammadanism, but traces of their Georgian origin are said still to be noticeable in their speech ; ^ and there is a preva- lent idea that their women share in the handsome features for which the Circassian women are renowned, although the pass- ing traveler has little chance to verify the truth of this reputa- tion.^ The fortunes of the community as a whole have not

1 For an excellent description of dadhbah, 6. 23 ; Kudamah, 6. 201 ; Miandasht and its caravansarai in Ibn Rustah, 7. 170; Istakhri, 1. 215. 1880 (equally true today) see O'Dono- * On this Georgian settlement see van, 1, 419-420, and compare Ferrier Truilhier, p. 253 ; Eraser, pp. 369-371 ; (1845), p. 79; Clerk (1861), JBGS. Ritter, Erdkunde, 8. 333-335; and 31. 41. Bassett, pp. 208-210.

2 Nasir ad-Din Shah (1866), Diary, « See Khanikoff, p. 83; Eastwick, p. 109, says of this caravansarai : ' The 2. 279 ; Bassett, p. 203 ; and cf. Cur- date is not known, but it must be very zon, 1, 280. Shah Nasir ad-Din, in old.' He likewise refers to the irriga- his Diary, p. 110, remarks that 'their tion canal and reservoir near it. physiognomy is like that of the Guris,

^ The older name for Abbasabad and they speak both Turkish and

appears to have been Asadabad, if we Persian.'

may judge from the itineraries of the « See Euan Smith, in Goldsmid,

Arab-Persian geographers, Ibn Khur- Eastern Persia, 1. 376.

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