Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/451

 account of the highly ornate shrine, with its splendid dome, beneath which the Caliph and the Imam lay buried. ^ The comment which Batutah adds on the hatred cherished by the Shiahs against Harun, as the father of Mamun, is interesting, for he says, ' Every Shiah, on entering the shrine, kicks with his foot the tomb of Harun ar-Rashid, while he invokes a bless- ing on that of Imam Riza'; and the same anathemas are re- peated today, the curse being augmented by the words, ' Let it

In the fifteenth century we know from the Spanish ambassa- dor Clavijo, envoy from the Castilian court to the capital of Tamerlane at Samarkand in 1404, that pilgrims thronged Mashad ; and, furthermore, that he himself was granted the privilege (not accorded today) of visiting the shrine, for he writes, 'Imam Riza lies buried in a great mosque in a large tomb which is covered with silver gilt,' and he adds, ' the am- bassadors went to see the mosque, and afterwards, when in other lands people heard them say they had been to his tomb, they kissed their clothes, saying that they had been near the holy Horazan [i.e, the shrine in Khurasan].' ^ In the same century. Shah Rukh, the youngest son of Tamerlane, made princely gifts to the mausoleum in 1418 ; and in that year was completed the beautiful shrine of Gauhar Shad, which adjoins it, and which received its appellation from the name of his queen who founded it.*

The Safavid dynasty, in the sixteenth century, appear to

1 Ibn Batutah, Voyage, ed. and tr. •* See Yate, p. 317, and Sykes, Defr^mery and Sanguinetti, 3. 77-79, JBAS. 1910, p. 1145-1148. The date Paris, 1874-1879 ; compare Le Strange, of the gifts presented by Shah Rukh in Eastern Caliphate, p. 390, and Curzon, 1405, as given by Sykes, op. cit. p. 1. 149, n, 2. 1132, may refer to an earlier donation

2 Cf. Sykes, JBAS. 1910, p. 1145. by the monarch. Horn, Grundr. iran.

3 See Markham, The Narrative of Philol. 2. 578, implies that Shah Rukh the Embassy of Clavijo, p. 110, Lon- built the mosque.

don, 1859 (Hakluyt Society). Clavijo (op. cit. Y>- 109) reached Mashad on Wednesday, July 30, 1404.

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