Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/492

 ��AV RE VOIR TO PERSIA

��But the hour had arrived when our host, Major Sykes, had to return to Mashad, and we were due to pursue our journey to Kuchan and the frontier, more than a day's distance beyond. The post-phaeton was already waiting for us ; and my comrade and I accordingly dismounted from our horses, and took places in the rumbling vehicle. Regretfully we said good-by, or an au revoir, till we should meet three years later in London, and waving anew a khudd hdfiz, we whirled away amid clouds of dust.

Our route again led us, part of the way, along the track of Alexander, who is believed to have come down the valley of the Kashaf Rud on his march to Tus.^ The post-road along this course runs northwest from where we were to Kuchan, some seventy-five miles distant, and then strikes due north over the great mountain barrier that separates Persia from Turkistan. For over eight dusty hours we traveled, and evening was beginning to fall as we entered Kuchan.^

��inscription in a single line in large, roughly cut Arabic letters. The stone did not give one the idea of ever hav- ing been a slab cut for inscription. On the contrary, it appeared to be a natural piece of rock left lying in the middle of the plain by some freiak of nature. It rang when struck like so much metal. The only words that could be deciphered were the three in the centre of the line, viz. Muhammad Khwarazm Shah. There was evidently a date in Arabic words following these, but it was illegible. On looking up the history of this Muhammad Khwarazm Shah, I found that he fled to Khurasan in the year 617 a.h. (1220 a.d.), and that Changiz Khan sent two generals with 30,000 cavalry in pursuit of him, one of whom came to Tus and Rad- kan. It is possible, therefore, that this Sultan Muhammad Shah saw this stone in his flight and had his name engraved upon it. The same Sultan Muhammad is also mentioned by Elias

��in his Tarikh-i Bashldi, pp. 287-289. There is another Khwarazm Shah mentioned as well, but his name was Sultan Atsaz Khwarazm Shah, not Muhammad. He is said to have died at Khurramdara, of Kuchan, in the year 551 A.H. (= 1156 A.D.). Whether there is any connection between Khur- ramdara and Khurramabad it is im- possible to say. Atsaz was the son of Muhammad, the son of Anushtagin, who was born in 490 a.h. (1096 a.d.), and possibly the inscription may have been Atsaz bin Muhammad Khwarazm Shah, and this stone was in reality his tombstone, though now so rough and chipped. If any one hereafter is able to decipher the date, the question will be settled.'

1 So Droysen, Geschichte Alexan- ders, p. 281, n. 4 ; Marquart, Unter- suchungen, 2. 65 ; Sykes, JBAS. 1910, p. 1114.

2 Kuchan, or its predecessor, the Khabushan of the Arab geographers

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