Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/387

 The only buildings of which Sabzavar can make any real boast are a couple of large madrasahs, or Moslem academies — one of them certainly old — and two good-sized mosques. The chief mosque is said to go back to the time of the Sarbadari dynasty of Sabzavar, in the fourteenth century, although its date is not absolutely fixed. It contains, however, two in- scribed tablets of a later date, one from the year 1571 A.D., with an order of Shah Tahmasp I, granting the people immunity from certain taxes ; and the other, dated 1723, recording a firman of Shah Tahmasp II, relieving the city from the obliga- tion of bestowing gifts upon visiting governors, for the reason that it had been greatly depleted by Turkoman raids and by the Afghan inroads two years before.

While we were wandering about the city, I had in mind an old tradition, recorded by Ahmad Razi in the sixteenth century A.D., and locating at Sabzavar the scene of the combat, three thousand years ago, between Rustam and the Div-i Safid, or 'White Demon,' which resulted in a victory for the Persian hero, who slew the monster and thus accomplished the last of his seven labors. According to Ahmad, the scene of the en- gagement was wont to be pointed out in the middle of the city, and was called the Maidān-i Dīv-i Safīd 'Campus of the White Demon.' There are several small maidans, or squares, within