Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/436

 258 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF NISHAPUR

Kuli Khan, a chieftain of Turkish blood, who encouraged its rebuilding, and who called himself ruler of the district until, in 1796, Nishapur passed into the hands of Agha Muhammad Shah, the eunuch king and head of the reigning Kajar dynasty. Ever since it has retained a position of rank — if not of first rank — in the kingdom of Persia.^

This sketch of the vicissitudes through which Nishapur has passed is sufficient to show how often the city has shifted its site, though rebuilt again on ground close by, for the area has varied only a few miles, at least during the past thousand years. The earliest site, however, is believed by Major Sykes, who made researches in the vicinity in 1909, to lie some twenty- four miles southeast of the present Nishapur, though the dis- tance seems somewhat great. He was led to this belief by the fact that he had been 'informed on good Persian authority that the ruins of a city of Nishapur, older than those situated three or four miles from the modern site, lay somewhere to the southeast of the present city.'^ At a distance of twenty-four miles he found ruins, which he concluded, after examination, were the remains of two adjacent cities, the one somewhat earlier than the other in date, but both presumably Sasanian in age ; and, despite their distance from the present location, he felt justified in regarding these ruins as probably occupying the most ancient site of Nishapur, though it must be confessed that the location seems very remote from the present site.

In any event, it is certain that the city of medieval times occupied the two ruined sites still to be recognized about four miles from the present one, in an easterly and southeasterly direction respectively. The city of Omar Khayyam is appar- ently the more easterly of the two, or the historic site marked by the ruins in the vicinity of the Mound of Alp Arslan. The suburb of Shadiakh, which succeeded it for a time, lay a short distance to the west, and near this latter site is found Omar's

1 Compare Eraser, pp. 404-405 ; ^ Sykes, Sixth Journey in Persia^

Ferrier, p. 105 ; Curzon, 1. 262-263. in Geog. Journ. 37. 152.

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