Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/364

 208 OVER THE ANCIENT BATTLE-GROUND

Mazinan, the next relay-station, was reached in the face of a hot sirocco wind. This antique town, with a couple of thou- sand inhabitants, is the center of a group of villages that belong under its jurisdiction ; but it can lay no claim to prosperity, and has apparently never recovered from the castigation ad- ministered to it in 1831, when, under a rebel chief, it revolted from the Shah's authority.^ In keeping with its woe-begone appearance are two dilapidated caravansarais ; one of which, on the outskirts, boasts Shah Abbas as its builder, while the other, an ancient sarai, is said to owe its foundation to the son of Harun ar-Rashid, of Arabian Nights fame.^ The environs of Mazinan abound in ruins of great antiquity, spectral monu- ments of a forgotten past ; and over one of these long-desolate sites the shade of Bahman, already mentioned, still hovers to call memories of Zoroastrianism back from total oblivion. ^

This haunting touch of bygone ages was just enough to plunge one into a revery; but there was no time for longer musing, and so again, amid vapors of sand, we galloped out into the mighty plain — a plain filled for me with ancient Persian associations, even to the name of Mithra, angel of truth and light, and guardian genius of the sun, which is still preserved in the name of the village Mihr, our goal as the resting-place for the night.

According to a tradition preserved in the Pahlavi Bunda- hishn, an old book dealing with the creation and history of the world, the plain along which we were speeding was the scene of the second of the great holy wars between Iran and Turan — the War of the Religion it is called in Zoroastrian

1 Curzon, 1. 272 ; Khanikoff, p. 86 ; to below, p. 265 ; cf. also Curzon, 1. cf. Clerk, JEGS. 31. 42; O'Donovan, 272.

1. 428. For further notes on Mazinan » For a description of these ruins

consult Eitter, Erdkunde, 8. 332-333, and their Gabr associations, see Fra-

Berlin, 1838; and Conolly, Journey, ser, pp. 374-375; and, incidentally,

1.236-237. compare Ferrier, p. 99; Khanikoff,

2 Ferrier, p. 100, states that this pp. 85-86. son was the Caliph Mahmun referred

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