Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/475

 wrought in the past, while smiling masses of cornflowers, con- volvuli, and vetches lent their bright color to cheer the desolate scene. Mounds of bricks, out of which the lizard darted, littered the ground here and there, and round about the patient camel — a descendant, perhaps, of Mahmud's train — was lazily grazing; while the tiny hoopoo bird, with its peaked crest, recalled not only the story of how it had won its diadem by serving success- fully on a message of love from King Solomon to Bilkis, the Queen of Sheba, but also the fact that it had been chosen to lead the conclave of birds that had gone in search of the throne of the Eternal God.

By this time we had reached the lofty mausoleum whose crumbling dome still forms the central feature of the ruins of Tus. Its architectural style brought back to my memory at once the tomb of Sultan Sanjar, and the building must date from about the same period (approximately 1150 A.D.) as that edifice.^ The structure, with its vaulted crown of brickwork, is imposing, even in the dilapidated state in which it is now found. The natives know it simply as the Mazdr^ ' Shrine,' Kasr^ ' Castle,' or Gunhad, ' Dome ' ; and it is sometimes con- sidered to be the Tomb of Firdausi. Attractive as such an assignment might be, it is certainly an error, even if we are not absolutely sure in whose memory the building was raised. ^ If a

1 On Sultan Sanjar's tomb at Merv, with adhesive white plaster. Both see Skrine and Ross, Heart of Asia, concrete and plaster are quite as hard pp. 1142-1143. as the bricks.' He also observes that

2 The mausoleum is described as the the cracks in the walls and dome show (1880), Merv Oasis, 2. 15-16, but with- from an earthquake shock. As to the out mention of the real problem of photograph which we took of the identity involved. His description of mausoleum, I may add that, by an the building is well given as follows : unfortunate oversight, a picture of 'It had apparently originally been this same structure appears as the plastered over, both on the inside and ' Tomb of Omar Khayyam ' in Wish- the outside, to the depth of two inches, ard. Twenty Years in Persia, p. 150, by a fine gray sand concrete, much of New York, 1910 ; it seems appropriate which is still adhering even to the ex- here to correct that misapprehension, terior. This had then been covered
 * Tomb of Firdausi' by O'Donovan that the building must have suffered

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