Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/426

 262 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF NISHAPUR

The main features of the city's topography, the character of its situation, and the nature of its people may be gathered from these allusions. The town is praised for its advantageous loca- tion in a fertile plain, bordered by mountains, except towards the south, and richly supplied by water from the hillsides, con- ducted by underground aqueducts or by surface channels, or drawn directly from the Wadi-Saghavar, the river of Nishapur, whose stream turned the wheels of many busy mills. The ex- port trade in cotton, raw silk, and stuff goods was consider- able; fruits, especially the rhubarb plant, were grown in abundance.

The city itself was then half a league or a league across ; its walls were entered by several gates (all of them named) ; and there were fifty main streets in the forty-two quarters of the town. The bazars were extensive and well stocked, two of the market-places being especially noteworthy ; and there was a fine citadel, a parade-ground, and a thickly populated suburb in which the Friday Mosque stood. The great court of this sanctuary, whose roof was supported on columns of brick, was surrounded by richly decorated arcades, and the whole struc- ture was embellished with marble and gold. Its pulpit dated back to the time of the Abbasid general Abu Muslim, in the middle of the eighth century, although the construction of the edifice as a whole was due to Amr ibn Laith, or Lais, the Saf- farid ruler in the latter part of the ninth century.^ Nishapur was, in fact, so prosperous under the successive dynasties of the Saffarids and Samanids (874-999) that it served as a stand- ard of comparison by which to judge other cities.^ A good idea of its condition at this period may be gained from the

1 Notes regarding this mosque were Nishapur. For the date of Abu Mus-

given by Hafiz Abru of Herat (1420), lira (d. 902) see Justi, Grundr. iran.

quoted by Schefer, Sefer Nameh, rela- Philol. 2. 397 ; Horn, ibid. 2. 568. tion du voyage de Nassiri Khosrau, ^ it is so used, for example, by

pp. xlviii, 279-280, Paris, 1881 ; a Istakhri (951), 1. 202, 207, and by

chapter of this book by Schefer (pp. Mukaddasi (985), 3. 270, 301, 314, 329. 277-284) is devoted to the history of

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