Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/474

 286 RUINED TUS, THE HOME OF THE POET FIRDAUSI

The crumbling walls of the dead city were once broad and lofty ramparts of clay and rubble, much like those already men- tioned at Bustam and Rai, but they had become much flattened with the lapse of ages, although traces of their towers were still to be seen, while their outline showed the contour of the town, which must have formed a very irregular quadrilateral, following roughly the points of the compass. The Rudbar, or ' River,' Gate, which still carries the alternate epithet derived from the indigo, is in the southern wall, close by the bridge over the Kashaf River, as has been already described. The Rizan (or Razan) Gate, associated with the story of Firdausi's burial, enters the circumvallation on the northeastern side.^ The Ark, or Citadel, whose ruins catch the eye as it sweeps over the great enclosure, lies on the northern side of the ruined city ; while traces of old-time watercourses intersect the immense expanse at several points.^

The scene, as we saw it, presented a strange paradox of the destructive effects of the hand of man and the eternal power of nature to rise and bloom again. The devastating inroads of the Ghuzz hordes and the Mongol armies, aided by earthquakes, had indeed laid mighty Tus in ruins; but its dust still contains the resurrection seed of flowers and grain, bringing life anew in the midst of death. Acres of barley and fields of thick clover spread their rich green on all sides, in contrast with stretches of arid waste that told only too well the story of ruin

death ; for different accounts of the * My description of the ruins of Tus

building purposes for which the money was written in 1909, before the appear-

was ultimately expended, see the Ori- ance of the interesting article by our

ental statements quoted by Browne, host, Major Sykes, Historical Notes on

Lit. Hist. Persia, 2. 139 ; Noldeke, Khurasan, in JBAS. 1910, pp. 1113-

Grundr. iran. Philol. 2. 157-168. 1120. Through his kindness I am able

1 The vocalization Bizdn (with i) to reproduce the sketch-map of the

appears to be the more correct form ; site, and to supplement, at several

see Sykes, JBAS. 1910, p. 1118 ; the points, the notes which I took on

name is more often spelt Bazdn (with our visit together to this ancient

a) by Occidental writers, perhaps with city, the idea it is the ' Gate of the Vines ' (razdn').

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