Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/432

 266 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF NISHAPUR

one they met, without regard to age or sex; and then they de- molished the city, razing it to the ground and inflicting the same fate on the neighboring districts ; they even turned up the ground to get any treasures that might be hidden, and I was assured that not a wall was left standing.' ^

In spite of this visitation, Nishapur appears rapidly to have recovered,^ and it may be that the rehabilitated town was the city referred to by Marco Polo, about 1272, as ' Sapurgan,' a place of ' great plenty,' although considerable uncertainty at- taches to the question. 3 Whatever the truth may be, another earthquake was ready to bring wrack and ruin in 1280, when still another Nishapur, the city described by Mustaufi (1340) as encompassed by walls 15,000 paces in circuit, came into being on a different site — possibly on the place formerly occupied when supplanted by the suburb Shadiakh, less than two miles distant; for the heart of Nishapur appears to have pulsed with a double life, and the vitality of the old site may simply have been suspended.*

1 See Yakut, tr. Barbier de Mey- the notes .on this passage the editor nard, pp. 580-582 ; and compare the calls attention to the absence of any description of the Mongol ravages in mention of Nishapur and Mashad on Petits de la Croix, Histoire de Gen- the road from Damghan to Balkh, al- ghizcan, p. 378 ; Eng. tr. by Aubin, though he adds that ' Sapurgan ' is History of Genghiz Can, pp. 216-217, generally explained to be 'Shibrgan,' Calcutta, 1816. nearly ninety miles west of Balkh.

2 See the statement, based on Ori- To me it seems certainly reasonable ental authority, by Schefer, Sefer to hold that ' Sapurgan ' really repre- Nameh, p. 281, who adds (pp. 281- sents Nishapur, the city of Shapur. 282) that Vajah ad-Din Zangi Fari- * The date 1280 a.d., for the earth- vandi, vizir of Khurasan, rebuilt the quake, is given by Le Strange, p. 386 ; city in 669 a.h. = 1270 a.d., and he on the other hand, Yate, p. 413, says quotes a poem in praise of its recon- that 'in 1267 Shadiakh was finally struction. Schefer's source (p. 281) destroyed by an earthquake, and a allows for an earthquake to have inter- new town was built near by. That vened between the Mongol sacking was destroyed by an earthquake in and the rebuilding just referred to ; 1405, after which the present town of perhaps this is the earthquake alluded Nishapur was erected.' On the matter to by Yate (p. 413 ; see the second of the earthquake of 1267 see the sec- note below) as occurring in 1267. ond preceding note.

» Marco Polo, ed Yule, 1. 149. In

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