Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/431

 had already existed for three centuries, having been first a royal garden, the seat of government, and the headquarters of the troops, and which had gradually grown in importance until it became the heart of the newer city, with a circuit of walls no less than 6700 paces in extent.^ Shadiakh was the capital when Mu'ayyad Ainia seized Nishapur, about 1160, and made it his headquarters. The prosperity of the place must then have been considerable, for it was about this time that the Jewish traveler, Benjamin of Tudela, who was at Isfahan in 1168-1169, refers to the fact that a number of Jews were residing at Nish- apur or in its vicinity, having doubtless been drawn there by opportunities for trade. ^ Mu'ayyad's supremacy was not des- tined to last many years ; for he was overcome and slain in 1174 by the invader Takish, Shah of Khvarazm, who duly es- tablished himself as lord of the city in 1180, after ravaging Khurasan. 2 A generation later we have the interesting account of Nishapur, several times referred to above, from the pen of Yakut, who spent a considerable time, in the year 1216, at Shadiakh, which was then the center of the city.*

Shortly after this time, in the year 1221, came the terrible sack of the city by the Mongols under the son of Chingiz Khan, of which catastrophe Yakut gives a graphic account through report, as he himself had previously sought refuge at Mosul. rushed through the various quarters of the city, killing every
 * Thirsting for blood and plunder,' he writes, * the invaders

1 The foundation of the palace at traveler's account in Pinkerton's Voy- Shadiakh is ascribed to the Taharid ages, 7. 10, London, 1811. Abdullah (828-844 a.d.), mentioned » Skrine and ^os.s, Heart of Asia, above, by Yakubi (891), 7. 278. For pp. 145-146. Cf. Mustaufi, Tdrikh-i further details about Shadiakh as a Guzulah, tr. Gantin, 1. 219. suburb, see Yakut, tr. Barbier de * Shadiakh itself had been nearly compare the references to Mustaufi in a.d., see Le Strange, p. 386. The Le Strange, pp. 385-386. date of Yakut's visit is given by him-

2 See Benjamin of Tudela, Beise- self: 'In 613 a.h. (= 1216 a.d.), I heschreibungen, tr. Griinhut and arrived at Nishapur and took up my Adler, pp. 72, 73, 75, Jerusalem, 1903 ; residence at Shadiakh ' — see Barbier and the English version of the same de Meynard, Diet. geog. p. 341.

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