CHAPTER VIII.
8th March.—Nasírabad to Banjár, six miles, and halt two days. After passing along the north face of the fort, our route went north-east across a jangal of tamarisk, more or less flooded by overflowings from a great canal, which we crossed twice by rustic bridges thrown across projecting piers formed of alternate layers of clay and fagots. The pools between which we picked our path were swarming with wild-fowl of all sorts. The ground of the road was so soft and deep in mud that it was impossible to get within range of them, and we thus lost several specimens that were quite unknown to us.
Beyond this strip of flooded jangal we turned eastward across an open plain towards Sir F. Goldsmid’s camp, pitched close to the south of the village of Banjár, and at half a mile or so from the tents were met by anisticbálsent outmore Persicofrom the camp. It was headed by Major E. B. Smith (who came on yesterday from Nasírabad), preceded by two led horses, oryadak, and comprised the several members of Sir F. Goldsmid’s party, namely, Major Lovett, R.E., and Messrs Thomas, Bowyer, and Rozario, supported by a party of thirty or forty of the Mission servants mounted for the occasion. With them we proceeded to the camp, and, pending the arrival of our tents, alighted under the Union Jack flying from a movable flagstaff, guarded by a few Persian sentries, in front of the principal tent, where we were received by Sir F. Goldsmid.
Bordering the west of our camp is a great sheet of water, crowded with vast numbers of water-fowl of all sorts. It is formed by the overflow of a great canal that branches off from the Kohak Rúd, or Mádariáb (which we crossed at Kimak), and passing Banjár, goes on to Jalálabad, and irrigates the country north of the Atashgáh ridge near Kimak.
Due west of our camp, standing out very distinctly on the plain, at twenty miles off, is the Koh Khojah. It is an isolated black block with a flattened summit. Major Lovett, who has visited it, tells me it is about four hundred feet above the level of the plain, and of a hard crystalline black rock resembling basalt. The rock is divided into two main portions by a central gorge, and there are many ruins of mud and stone on its summit, and also a large reservoir excavated in the rock. The lower slopes are covered with banks of hard compact clay. Until four years ago this hill was surrounded by a reed-grown swamp of muddy and saline water, two or three feet deep, and was approached from the shore by passages cut through the reeds, either on foot or on the nativetútínpropelled by a pole. It now stands in the midst of a desiccated marsh many miles from the nearest water. This is owing to the droughts that have prevailed in this country during the past three or four years, and the consequent drying up of the marshes formed by the overflowings of the two lagoons formed by the commingling of the waters of the several rivers that converge to this point, as will be more fully described further on.
Koh Khojah is also called Kohi Zál or Zor and Kohi Rustam, and from ancient times has afforded an asylum for retreat to the princes of the country when pressed by an enemy. Malik Fata, Kayáni, when pressed by Nadír, is said to have abandoned his capital, Calá Fata, and tohave taken refuge in this stronghold, where he held out seven years against his troops, who were ultimately obliged to retire through pressure of famine.
Banjár is a flourishing village of about four hundred houses. It originally belonged to the Kayáni tribe, but during the past half century has been in the possession of the Sárbandi, and now only contains four or five families of the original tribe. In the possession of one of these families, we were informed, there is a very ancient scroll ortumár, in a language not now known in the country. It is supposed to be a record of the ancient history of the people at the time when they were fire-worshippers. It is said to be held in great estimation, and is not to be purchased for gold; its existence indeed is denied by the reputed owners for fear of their being deprived of it, as they were of some valuable records in this unknown language by Prince Kamrán of Herat, when he invaded the country in the early part of the present century. He is said also to have carried off some illuminated tablets, and an ancient copy of the Curán and other Arabic manuscripts.
During our stay here the weather was more or less cloudy, and a strong north-west wind blew with unabated force. It is the most prevalent wind in this region, and during the hot season blows without intermission for four months, and is, from this circumstance, calledbádi sado biat, or “wind of a hundred and twenty (days).” It usually commences about thenan roz, or vernal equinox, and continues to the end of the harvest, or about the 20th July. To the prevalence of this wind is attributed the absence of trees from the plain country, and this is easily understood, unless, as in the gardens about some of the villages, the trees be protected by walls or other means of shelter, for the violence of the wind is of itselfsufficient to wither the blossoms and destroy fructification.
In our experience of it the wind was a cold cutting blast, with the force of a moderate gale. It commenced on the day of our arrival at Nasírabad, on the 7th instant, and continued daily till we crossed the Sistan border into Lásh territory, six days later. It generally commenced soon after sunrise, subsided somewhat at midday, and gradually recovered its force after sunset. It owes its cause, apparently, to the rarefaction of the atmosphere by the rays of a hot sun playing upon the vast sandy region to the south, and its coldness at this season is derived from the snowy mountains of Ghor, whence it proceeds. In the hot season it raises clouds of sand, that obscure the sky and prove extremely injurious to the eyes.
From Banjár we got a very good view of the Nihbandán range of hills bounding Sistan on the west. It is marked about midway by a deep valley or glen, which conveys its drainage after rains into the lake north-west of Koh Khojah. Towards the north the range appears continuous with the Farráh mountains, and towards the south with those of Sarhadd. The elevation of Banjár is about 1580 feet above the sea.
11th March.—Banjár to Bolay, seven miles, and halt a day. These villages are hardly five miles apart by the direct route, but our path turned from north to east and then due north again, in order to avoid the deep mud of the flooded fields, which are here irrigated by a number of considerable canals. Within the first three miles from Banjár we forded two, with the water up to the saddle-flaps, and crossed three others by rustic bridges. Beyond these we crossed, in an easterly direction, a strip of wind-scooped sand, similar to that already described onthe march to Nasírabad, and a little farther on passed the village of Dih Afghan to our right. It is a strong little fort, surrounded by hut settlements of the Tokhi Ghilzais and other Afghans. The fort itself is now garrisoned by Persiansarbáz. Across the plain, at about three miles to its west, is the fortified village of Shytávak. It formerly belonged to the Kayánis, but has for the past half century been in the possession of the Sárbandis. In the opposite direction, away to the east and south-east, is seen a vast mass of ruins, that cover several square miles of country. We could learn nothing more regarding them than that they are in the vicinity of Casimabad and Iskil.
From Dih Afghan our route turned north, and at a couple of miles brought us to Bolay, which consists of two open villages close to each other. We passed these, and camped on a bit of hard, flat, wind-swept, and bare ground, a few hundred yards farther on. At a few miles across the plain to the eastward are the extensive ruins of Záhidán. They extend as far as the eye can reach towards the north-east, and are said to be continuous with those of Doshák, about nine miles from the Helmand.
These ruins, with those of Pulkí, Nádálí, and Pesháwarán, are the most extensive in Sistan, and mark the sites of populous cities, the like of which are not to be found at this present day in all this region between the Indus and the Tigris. Their melancholy solitudes now merely exist as the silent memorials of the destruction wrought by that “Scourge of God” Tamerlane. This Tátár invader, whose real name was Tymúr, is said to have been wounded in the ankle by an arrow at the siege of Doshák, from the effects of which he became permanently lame. Hence the epithetlangadded to hisname—Tymúr lang, or “Tymúr the lame,” our Tamerlane.
According to local tradition, the Tátár was so enraged at the opposition he experienced here, that he destroyed every city in the province, massacred its people wholesale, and reduced the whole country to a desolate waste; and it has never since regained its former prosperity.
Kinneir, in his “Memoir of the Persian Empire,” supposes the ancient Zarany of Ptolemy to be the same as Doshák, or more properly Dahshák, as I was informed by a native, from the ten branches of the canal which were at this spot taken from off the Helmand.
Zarany, or Doshák, was the residence of Yácúb bin Leth, the founder of the Sufári dynasty of Sistan, who made it the capital of his kingdom about 868A.D.It was ultimately sacked and destroyed by Tamerlane in 1384A.D., and has ever since remained a desolate waste of ruins, amongst which stands the modern town of Jalálabad, which at the commencement of the present century was the seat of the Kayáni chief Bahrám Khán. It is now in the possession of the Sárbandi, Bahrám’s son and successor, Jaláluddín, having been finally driven out of Sistan in 1839 by Muhammad Kezá Khán, their chief, whose seat was Sihkoha.
We halted a day at Bolay, owing to some difficulty and delay on the part of the Persian governor of Sistan in providing camels for our party. During our stay here the north wind blew with unabated force, and swept the ground around our camp as clean as a board. I observed that the hard clay soil was striated in long lines from north to south by the persistent action of this wind, and we found some plants curiously affected in their growth by the same cause.
Some wormwood, saltworts, and a species of zizyphus,here calledkuvár, were all growing prostrate on the ground, with their stems and twigs projecting only in the direction of the wind. The thorny branches of the zizyphus formed long slender trails recumbent on the ground, and here and there formed fresh attachments by little shoots striking root into the soil. These plants are very sparsely scattered, and only rise six inches or so above the surface, whilst not a single bush or tree is to be seen on the plain.
Koh Khojah and the Nihbandán range are seen very distinctly to the west of our position. The first stands out boldly on the open plain, and the other bounds the prospect beyond it. The horizon towards the north is marked for many miles east and west by a continuous line of black columns of smoke curling up into the air, and forming a vast stratum of dense obscurity. The explanation of this great conflagration is that the natives at this season annually set fire to the reeds and rushes belting the borders of the pools or lagoons, in order to make way for the fresh shoots on which their cattle pasture.
From Bolay we marched twenty-eight miles in a northerly direction, and camped amidst the ruins of Silyán, which form but a small portion of the vast extent of ruins collectively styled Pesháwarán.
Our route, at first across a bare, hard, wind-swept flat, afterwards led across a rough, wind-scourged, sandy tract, evidently a deposit from floods, on which was a thin jangal of tamarisk and saltworts. Farther on, passing the ruins of a village called Kohak, we came to a thick belt of tall tamarisk jangal, and following it for half-an-hour, at about the tenth mile turned to the left into it to a large canal, now dry, where we halted for breakfast The bushes in this jangal are marked at abouteighteen inches from the ground by a line of drift and shreds of dry scum of confervæ and similar water-weeds caught in the branches, and all directed from north to south, and indicating a rush of waters draining in that course.
The canal, which we were told had been dry for four years past, is called Rúdi Jahánábád, or “the river of Jahánábád.” It runs from Jahánábád on the Helmand midway between Kohak and Jalálabad, to the Koh Khojah. We found some pits of yellow putrid water in its bed. They were apparently used for watering cattle, as there were drinking troughs formed of loosely laid bricks attached to each. In the dry mud of the canal we found some large mussel shells, and its banks were overgrown with tall reeds.
Proceeding from this, and leaving behind us the village of Rindan to the right and that of Calá Nan to the left, the last habitations on this border of Sistan, we at four miles came to the Naizár, which forms the boundary between Sistan and Hokát.
The Naizár, as the name implies, is a belt of reeds and rushes. It extends for many miles east and west, and connects the pool or lagoon of the Helmand with that of the Farráh Rúd by a strip of swamp. During the past four years this swamp has been dry. Where we crossed it the belt is about six miles wide; its reeds had been cut and burnt to the stumps, and its soil was desiccated, and marked by beaten tracks over the stubble.
Previous to its desiccation this swampy tract used to be crossed by the natives on foot or on horseback, or on thetútínrafts already described, by passages cut through the dense growth of reeds. Usually the swamp was covered to the depth of a foot or so with a thick muddy water, undrinkably saline; but in flood seasons its heightrose to three or four feet and inundated the country to the south. In some parts where we crossed the Naizár the reeds had not been cut or burnt, and they rose to a height of ten or twelve feet in impenetrable patches. Away to the right of our path tall pillars of smoke rising from the burning reeds filled the sky with dense clouds of obscurity. Vast herds of horned cattle, described as of a superior breed, are fed on the young shoots that sprout from the burnt-down reeds.
Beyond the Naizár we entered on a wide waste of solitude, a very embodiment of desolation and despair. The surface was everywhere thrown into small tumuli of soft spongy soil, here and there white as snow with saline efflorescence, and strewed all over with red bricks belonging to old graves, many of which were sufficiently preserved to be readily traceable. Going across this weird tract in a north-westerly direction, we presently came to the wilderness of ruins known as Pesháwarán, and marching amongst them for five or six miles, camped near a cluster called Silyán, with the fort of Pesháwarán bearing due west at about three miles. Beyond the fort is seen a solitary, low, round-backed hill called Kohi Ghúch, in which sulphur is said to be found. To the south of this hill is the lake or lagoon of the Farráh Rúd, which empties into it on the east side of the hill, whilst the Harút Rúd empties into it on the west side of it. The Naizár, which we crossed midway on this day’s march, extends up to this lake along the southern border of the Pesháwarán ruins. In the opposite direction, towards the east, it extends up to the lake or lagoon of the Helmand, which is described as much larger than that of the Farráh Rúd, being about twenty miles long by twelve broad. It is formed by the convergence at one spot of the rivers Helmand, Khosh, and Khuspás. In floodseasons this lake overflows and joins that of the Farráh Rúd, over the Naizár belt we crossed, and fills the whole of the reed-grown swamp down to Koh Khojah. If in excessive flood, the waters then flow into the Sarshela, which is a channel along the western border of the ancient lacustrine basin, and thus find a passage to the Zirrah marsh, a deep hollow away to the south of Sistan. Such floods rarely occur now-a-days, and all this southern tract has been dry as long as the memory of man goes back.
We halted a day at this place, and took the opportunity to visit the fort of Pesháwarán and the other principal ruins around. It is quite beyond my power to describe these ruins, which cover many square miles of country, and are known by different names for the different groups, such as Silyán, Dih Malán, Kol Márút, &c. Suffice it to say, that the readily distinguishable mosques and colleges, and the Arabic inscriptions traceable on the façades of some of the principal buildings, clearly refer their date to the period of the Arab conquest, and further, as is evidenced by the domes and arches forming the roofs of the houses, that then as now the country was devoid of timber fit for building purposes. The most remarkable characteristic of these ruins is their vast extent and excellent preservation. The material and style of architecture are both equally good, and in some parts are so little damaged that they could be easily restored with an ordinary outlay of capital and labour. Passing amongst the ruins are the traces of several canals, and one of these, which has recently been restored by the chief of Hokát, now brings a stream of good water up to the Silyán ruins for the irrigation of some land in the vicinity, which it is proposed to cultivate so soon as the country recovers from its present state of anarchy and discord.
The great extent of these ruins, which cover an area of about six miles by eight, leads to the suspicion that they are not the remains of one and the same city existing in its entirety throughout their extent, but rather the out-growths of successive cities rising on the ruins of their predecessors upon the same spot. We were unable, however, to trace any differences in the appearances of the several groups to bear out such a suspicion. On the contrary, they so exactly resemble each other that any one group may be taken as representative of the others. In this view these ruins do certainly represent a most flourishing period in the history of this country.
The ruins of Pesháwarán resemble in point of architecture those of Záhidán and Calá Fata, but differ from those of Kaikobád, which are evidently of much older date, though amongst them are found some structures dating from the Arab period.
On crossing the Naizár we passed out of Sistan, or the district known by that name, in the restricted application of the term current at the present day. Its limits have been already mentioned, and I may here state that it is about sixty miles broad from north to south, and about one hundred long from east to west. Within this area the general aspect of the country is a wide undulating plain of a light sandy soil, singularly bare of trees, except on the borders of the two lagoons, which are fringed with forests of the tamarisk, whilst the swamp connecting them is crowded with a dense growth of tall reeds.
Surrounded as it is by desert wastes, this district of Sistan presents a very populous and highly cultivated area. Its territory is divided between four distinct tribes, who are now under the rule of the Persian possessors of the country since their occupation of it seven years ago.Previous to 1865, when this district formed an integral portion of the Afghan kingdom, these several tribes were constantly warring against each other, and encroaching upon the lands of the weaker party.
The tribes above alluded to are the Sistani, Sárbandi, Shahrki, and Baloch. They are distributed very unequally over about sixty villages, averaging 250 houses each, and their dates of settlement in the country also differ very considerably.
The most ancient inhabitants, and apparently the original possessors of the country, are included in the Sistani tribe, which at the present day consists of aboriginals and representatives of various tribes, who have been thrown together and incorporated here by successive waves of conquest and revolution during many centuries. Much obscurity hangs over the original Sistani; but their ruling family have long been known, under the appellation of Kayáni, as the hereditary princes of the country, and are supposed to trace their descent to the ancient kings of the period when the seat of government of the Persian empire was in Sistan. Tradition is at variance on this point, as I was informed by an intelligent native of the country. According to the commonly accepted account, the Kayáni family are the lineal descendants of Kaikobád, the founder of the Kayáni dynasty in the romantic age of Zál and his son Rustam, of whose birth and principal exploits Sistan was the theatre. Other accounts assign their descent to Yácúb bin Leth, the potter of Sistan, who, turning the times to his own advantage, usurped the government of Sistan, and in 868A.D.founded the Sufári dynasty, which was finally extinguished in the person of Kulif, when Mahmúd of Ghazni conquered the country towards the close of the tenth century. Be this as it may, the Kayánis were thedominant family in Sistan up to the commencement of the present century, and their chiefs figure prominently in the history of Khorassan during the first half of the preceding century, memorable for the decline and fall of the Persian empire of the Suffairs, the invasion and devastation of their country by the Afghans under Mír Mahmúd, the son of Mír Wais, Ghilzai, and the rise of the conqueror, Nadír Sháh, whose death in 1747 was followed by a redistribution of the map of Central Asia between the Cajars in Persia, the Uzbaks in Bukhára, and the Afghans in Khorassan.
It was during the revolution attending the revolt of the Ghilzais and Abdalis, and the establishment of Kandahar as an independent principality, under their leader Mír Wais, Ghilzai, in 1810, that the Kayáni chiefs of Sistan, who had heretofore held their lands and titles under firmans from the Persian kings, first threw off their allegiance to the throne of Persia. During the successive invasions of Persia through Sistan in 1720-21, under Mír Mahmúd, the son and successor of Mír Wais, the Kayáni chief Malik Asadullah was the independent ruler of Sistan, and he accorded the invading Afghans an unopposed passage through his territory.
About this period a cousin of the Sistan chief above named, one Malik Mahmúd, profiting by the confusion of the times, issued from his desert-girt home, and quickly seized the adjoining district of Khorassan. Having secured Gháyn and Tabbas and Herat, the successful adventurer next captured Mashhad and subdued Nishabor and Sabzwár, at the very time that his Afghan namesake and rival was prosecuting his successes against the Persian capital.
The unprecedented success of the Afghans now roused the jealousy of the Kayáni, who, fearful of their ascendancy,hurried to Ispahán to support his lawful sovereign against the invader. His loyalty, however, was not proof against the ready concessions of the Afghan; and Malik Mahmúd being acknowledged by Mír Mahmúd in the independent possession of his conquests, hastened back to Mashhad and assumed the crown and title of the Kayáni. His enjoyment of the purple was neither long continued nor peaceful; for he was presently opposed by the rising soldier Nadír Culi, and, after successive contests, was finally captured by him and executed, together with a younger brother named Muhammad Ali, at Nishabor in 1727. On this, Nadír reinstated the former chief, Malik Asadullah, in the government of Sistan, and with him sent back Mahmúd’s family and belongings to their homes.
Asadullah shortly after died, and was succeeded by his son Malik Husen. He soon followed the example of his neighbours, and revolted. Nadír then appointed his own nephew, Ali Culi, governor of Sistan, and he proceeded with a strong force to subdue the refractory chief. On his approach, Malik Husen and his brothers, Fath Ali and Lutf Ali, took refuge in the island-fort of Koh Khojah, and there held out against Nadír’s troops for several years. They were finally conciliated, and took service under Nadír, but not until their country had been devastated, and their own power thoroughly broken by the importation from Persia of the Sárbandi and Shahrki tribes as feudal colonists.
On the death of Husen, his son, Malik Sulemán, succeeded to the chiefship of the Kayáni family, but his authority was of a doubtful nature, and limited to the north-eastern portion only of the district. On the partition of the empire following on Nadír’s death in 1747, Sistan was incorporated in the Durrani monarchy foundedby Sháh Ahmad, and Malik Sulemán was recognised as its hereditary chief, and his position strengthened by a matrimonial alliance with the new king, the Afghan sovereign taking his daughter to wife.
The alliance does not appear to have brought any material advantage to the position or authority of the Kayáni family, and in the intestine struggles constantly waged between them and the new settlers they gradually succumbed to their superior force. Sulemán was succeeded by his son, Malik Bahrám, at Jalálabad. He was so pressed by the Sárbandi and Shahrki, that he called in the aid of ’Alam Khán, Nahroe Baloch, whom with his following he settled at Kimak, Burj ’Alam, &c., as a check upon the encroachments of his enemies. This measure appears to have given offence to Sháh Tymúr, the son and successor of Sháh Ahmad; for on his accession to the throne of Afghanistan in 1773, he deposed the Kayáni, Malik Bahrám, and in his place appointed the Shahrki chief, Mír Bey, governor of Sistan. This chief was killed four years later in one of the many faction fights that seemingly form a part of ordinary life in Sistan, and Bahrám was then restored to the chiefship and government of Sistan, in subordination to the Afghan governor of the adjoining district of Lásh or Hokát.
This arrangement did not work well, and the Shahrki soon rose in revolt against Bahrám’s authority, and Tymúr in consequence sent a force of Afghans under Barkhurdár Khán, Achakzai, to reduce them, a task he performed very effectually, as has been before mentioned, by the victories of Kandúrak and Mykhána. After this, weakened as they already were by the encroachments of their enemies, the Kayáni influence rapidly declined, and was at length reduced to a nullity by the family dissensions that led to the estrangement of Bahrám from his sonand successor, Jaláluddín. Malik Jaláluddín was the last of the Kayáni family who exercised any authority in Sistan. He appears to have been a very dissolute character, and was in 1838 expelled the country by the Sárbandi chief Muhammad Razá. Kamrán, the Herat prince, reinstated him in the following year, but he was again driven out, and for a while found an asylum with the chief of Ghazn. Hence he returned some years later to Sistan in beggared circumstances, and died in obscurity, leaving a son named Nasír Khán, and his son Azím Khán is now in the service of the Persian governor of the country. Malik Jaláluddín had a brother named Hamza Khán. He left three sons—namely, Abbas now residing in Jalálabad, Gulzár in Bahrámabad, and Malik Khán in some other village. These are the representatives of the ancient Kayáni family, and, viewing their present condition, one may truly exclaim, “How the great have fallen!” Their immediate relations hardly number twenty families, and the whole tribe does not exceed a hundred families, who are scattered about the district, mostly in very poor circumstances.
The rest of the Sistan tribe were formerly the serfs or subjects of the Kayáni, and they now hold the same position under the other dominant tribes of the country. They are styled generallydihcán, or peasant, and comprise representatives of various tribes, such as Tátárs, Mughals, Turks, Uzbaks, Kurds, Tajiks, converted Gabars, and Persians. They are principally employed in agriculture, cattle-herding, fishing and fowling, and the various handicrafts, and are a very poor and simple people. They are said to be deficient in courage and energy, and in respect to their military qualities, are held in little estimation by the other tribes amongst whom they are distributed as vassals. Those of themwe saw in our progress through the country appeared an inferior race physically, and had sallow unhealthy complexions.
The Sárbandi and Shahrki are described as divisions of the Nahnai tribe, and their settlement in Sistan dates only from the time of Nadír Sháh, by whose orders they were transported hither from Burujurd near Hamadán. The Sárbandi are reckoned at ten thousand families in Sistan, and the Shahrki at an equal number, scattered over Sistan, Ghazn, Kirmán, and Lár.
The Sárbandi were at first settled at Sihkoha, Warmál, Chiling, and other villages on the south of thehámún, under their chief Mír Cambar. He was succeeded by his son Mír Kóchak, and he by his son Muhammad Razá, in whose time the tribe doubled their possessions by encroachments upon the lands of the Kayáni. Mír Khán succeeded his father, Muhammad Razá, and was in turn succeeded by his eldest son, of the same name, about the year 1836. This Muhammad Razá drove Malik Jaláluddín, Kayáni, out of Sistan, and becoming independent at Sihkoha, was recognised as the most influential of the local chiefs in the country.
These were Ali Khán of Chakansúr, son of Khán Jahán Khán, Sanjarání Baloch, a dependant of Kandahar, Háshim Khán, Shahrki, at Dashtak, and Dost Muhammad Khán, Nahroe Baloch, at Burj ’Alam, both dependants of Herat.
In the beginning of 1844, after the evacuation of Afghanistan by the British, Kuhndil Khán, the chief of Kandahar, returned to his principality from his retreat at Tehran, and on his way through Sistan received the submission of the Sárbandi, Shahrki, and Nahroe chiefs above mentioned. In the following year he annexed the Garmsel as far as Rúdbár to Kandahar,and was in treaty with Muhammad Razá for a more perfect establishment of relations. The negotiations were prolonged for a couple of years, and then fell through owing to the death of that chief in 1848.
Kuhndil was at this time diverted from his projects against Sistan by the menacing attitude of Yár Muhammad at Herat, and in the meantime Muhammad Razá was succeeded at Sihkoha by his son Lutf Ali as a dependent of Yár Muhammad, who supported him with a contingent of Herat troops and Afghan officers posted at Sihkoha, Dashtak, Burj ’Alam, Kimak, and other places.
The deceased chief’s brother Ali Khán, who was in the service of Kuhndil at Kandahar, in the following year set out for Sistan to oust his nephew, and furnished by Kuhndil with an army of six thousand men under the command of his brother Muhrdil for the purpose. The army was joined by the Nahroe and Sanjarání Baloch chiefs with their respective contingents at the Rúdbár frontier; Sihkoha was captured, Lutf Ali seized and deprived of sight, and his uncle, Ali Khán, established in the government of Sistan on the part of Kuhndil Khán, who then deputed his son Sultán Ali to the Persian court to secure the Sháh’s approval and support.
Yár Muhammad, finding the country thus taken from him, set out from Herat to attack Ali Khán; but on arrival at Lásh was suddenly taken seriously ill, and died on the way back to his capital in 1851.
In the confusion following on this event, Ali Khán threw off his dependence on Kandahar, and sent an envoy to the court of Persia with a tender of allegiance. His messenger was well received, and returned with presents and the Persian flags as an emblem of his allegiance. Ali Khán hoisted the flag on his fort at Sihkoha, andthen sent his sons as hostages to Mashhad in 1853. A few years later, after the siege of Herat by the Persians, Ali Khán proceeded to Tehran, where he met with a distinguished reception, and his loyalty was further secured by a matrimonial alliance with the royal family, a daughter of the Prince Bahrám, the Sháh’s cousin, being given to him in marriage.
In the spring of 1858, he returned to Sistan with his Persian bride and a military escort; but the new regime introduced by him, and the interference of his Persian companions in the internal affairs of the country, soon led to a general revulsion of feeling against him and his foreign supporters; and a plot, headed by Táj Muhammad, the brother of the deposed Lutf Ali, was formed to get rid of him and his myrmidons. The Sistani were raised in revolt, and, in a night attack upon Sihkoha, Ali Khán was surprised and slain by his nephew Táj Muhammad. His Persian supporters were then driven out of the country, and Táj Muhammad assumed the government as an independent chief in 1858. The Persian Government was restrained by treaty engagements from carrying out their purposed measures of retribution; and Táj Muhammad on his part expressing regret for the mishap that befell the Persian princess (she was slightly wounded in the head in her attempts to protect her husband), and pleading excuses in justification of his conduct against his uncle, was pardoned. Subsequently, through the medium of Mír Alam Khán, the Persian governor of Ghazn, he was conciliated and won over to the Persian interest; and in 1862, when the late Amir Dost Muhammad Khán advanced against Herat, he, fearful of losing his independence, and preferring allegiance to a distant master than to one close at hand, appealed to the Persian Government for protection, as aPersian subject, against the Afghan, and deputed his brother Kuhndil to the Persian court in earnest of his professions.
In the following year, Dost Muhammad, having restored Herat to his kingdom, died there on the 9th of June in a ripe old age, and was succeeded by the appointed heir, the present Amir Sher Ali Khán. He hastened to Kabul to take up the reins of government; but ere he reached the capital commenced those plots and divisions that presently involved the country in a long-foreseen anarchy and bloodshed.
At this juncture Táj Muhammad’s envoy to Tehran returned to Sistan, accompanied by some of the principal Persian officers who, on a former occasion, had come to the country with the late Ali Khán. The chief of these, Sartip Sálih Muhammad, not finding the Sistani quite so amenable as he had wished for, suddenly broke off his relations with them, and hastily retired from the country to Ghazn, vowing condign vengeance on the part of the Persian Government.
The Sárbandi chiefs, now fearful of the consequences, deputed one Sohráb Bey, a trusty agent, to the Kandahar governor, deprecating his neglect of Sistan affairs, and, as a part of Afghanistan, seeking protection against the encroachments of Persia. This was in 1864, at a time when the new Amir had his hands full of more important and more pressing troubles that threatened the very existence of his throne, and the affairs of Sistan were consequently left to adjust themselves as best they could; but an envoy, Ahmad Khán, Kákarr, was sent with the returning agent to reassure the people and learn the true state of affairs.
Táj Muhammad, now finding that there was no hope of support from Kandahar, again deputed his brotherKuhudil to Tehran. He was here detained as a hostage; and a Persian army invaded Sistan, and took possession of the country in the name of the Sháh in 1865. In the spring of 1867 Táj Muhammad was deposed and sent prisoner to Tehran, and Mír ’Alam Khán of Gháyn was appointed Persian governor of the district, with the title of Hashmat-ul-Mulk.
With the deportation of Táj Muhammad ended the influence of the Sárbandi in Sistan. Under the Persian rule the power of the local chiefs has become centred in Sharíf Khán, the Nahroe Baloch, who has risen from an insignificant position entirely by his Persian connection.
The Shahrki tribe, who were brought into Sistan at the same time as the Sárbandi, were first settled under their chief, Mír Chákar, at Dashtak, Pulkí, Wásilán, and other villages on the Hámún. Mír Chákar was succeeded by his son Mír Beg, and he by his son Mír Háshim, in whose time their possessions were considerably increased by encroachments on the lands of the rapidly declining Kayáni. Mír Háshim was succeeded by his son Mír Mahdi, and he by his brother Mír Muhammad ’Ali, who is now a hostage at Tehran. The tribe occupy twelve or fourteen villages, and number about three thousand families in Sistan.
By some accounts, the Shahrki are said to be a section of the Muhammad Hassani or Mammassání division of the Brahoe tribe; and according to local tradition, they were driven out of Sistan by the invasion of Tymúr, and sought refuge in the adjoining province of Kirmán. Tymúr’s son and successor, Sháh Rúkh, collected their scattered families, and located them at Búrújard, near Rúm, in Persia, where they were known by the name of Sháh Rukhi or Shahrki. From this they were resettledin Sistan and the adjoining districts of Kirmán and Lár by Nadír Sháh, at the same time that he transported the Sárbandi from the same locality near Hamadán to Sistan. The Sárbandi are supposed to be the descendants of the ancient Persians or Gabars (or Guebres), and in Persia occupied the lands adjoining those given to the Shahrki. Their name is said to be derived from that of the locality occupied by them.
Such, in brief, is a history of the several tribes now occupying Sistan. Their rival interests, and their constant struggles for ascendancy one over the other, sufficiently account for the anarchy and confusion that have characterised the normal condition of this country during the past century, or, in other words, since the death of Sháh Ahmad, Durrani. The decline of the government, commencing in the reign of his successor, Sháh Tymúr, and ending in its overthrow in the succeeding reign of Sháh Zamán, and the subsequent transference of the rule from the Saddozais to the Bárakzais in the time of Sháh Mahmúd, was not without its influence on the political condition of Sistan; and we find that the province, which was incorporated as an integral part of the empire established by the founder of the Durrani monarchy, gradually, on the decline of the paramount power, lapsed from its allegiance, and, perforce of the local circumstances at the time determining, became divided into more or less independent chiefships, which, for the furtherance of their individual interests, attached themselves as dependencies of the nearest provincial governments, of Kandahar on the one side and Herat on the other. And such continued to be the political relations of the country until the Persian occupation of Herat in 1856. After the ensuing Persian war, and the evacuation of Herat territory by the Persians, the Sistan chiefscontinued more or less under the influence of Persian intrigue, a course in which they were encouraged by M. Khanikoff’s mission in the spring of 1859; and the result of their dealings with the Persian court, as already detailed, ended in their invasion and annexation of the country in 1865.
Of the ancient history of Sistan we have no connected record. Such notices of the country as are met with in the pages of various authors are very few, scant in detail, and separated by wide intervals of time. Malcolm’s “History of Persia” contains a full account of the early Persian dynasties, and the country of Sistan, or Zabulistan, as it was also called, is frequently mentioned as the theatre of their military exploits.
For the Persians the country has a peculiar interest, as being the birthplace and home of their legendary hero, the renowned Rustam, son of Zál, the fifth in descent from the Persian Jamshed by a princess of Sistan. Zál, says the authority above quoted, married Rúdábah, daughter of Mehráb, king of Kabul, and of the race of Zohák. Their offspring, Rustam, was cut out of her side when stupefied by drugs, according to the secret imparted to Zál by the Griffin of Elburz. The romance of this hero’s life is as varied as it is improbable, and affords an untiring theme of delight to the Persian story-teller and his auditors. His fame is the subject of song in every village, and there is hardly a hill in the country that does not possess a spot sanctified by tradition as the scene of some of his many exploits and feats against dragons, demons, or genii, and other such figures of fancy.
Later mention of this country is found in the pages of the historians of Alexander’s Asiatic conquests, under the name of Drangia, so designated from its principalriver, the Drangius, now called Helmand or Hermand, whose course Alexander followed in his progress eastward, probably through the Garmsel. On the return march of the Macedonian army from India in 325 B.C., this country was traversed by the force under the command of Craterus.
The Rev. J. Williams, in his “Life of Alexander the Great,” following the account by Arrian, states that whilst Alexander himself took the route parallel to the littoral, and the fleet voyaging under command of Nearchus, which led across the desert of Gedrosia, the modern Makrán, to Carmania or Kirmán, Craterus had already proceeded “with the elephants, the heavy baggage, the feeble, the old, and the wounded, and with three brigades of the phalanx,” towards the same destination, through the fertile countries of the Arachosi and Drangæ.
In this march it is probable that Craterus followed the ancient caravan route between India and Persia, which led from Dehra Gházi Khán on the Indus, to Kirmán and the Persian Gulf by the Tal Chhotiyálí road to Peshín and Kandahar, and thence by the valley of the Helmand to Sistan, and onwards by the Nihbandán road to Kirmán. At this period the country must have been in a much more flourishing and populous condition than it is now.
The rule of the Greek satraps was followed, 226A.D., by the dynasty of the house of Sassan, which commenced with the reign of Ardshir Bábakán. Under the Shapori sovereigns of this family, Sistan appears to have been a flourishing seat of the Zoroastrians, since most of the coins now found in the country belong to this period.
The Sassan dynasty fell before the rising power of the Arabs, and ended with the death of Yezdijird, the lastsovereign of that house, who, fleeing to Sistan before the conquering Arabs, ultimately escaped to Marv, where he was murdered, 651A.D., by a miller with whom he had taken refuge. During the two centuries of Arab rule, Sistan appears to have attained to the highest state of prosperity, and to have enjoyed a stable and just government, as is evidenced by the character and vast extent of the ruins pertaining to that period.
About the middle of the ninth century the Arab rule in Sistan was replaced by that of the Sufári dynasty, of native origin. According to Malcolm, to whose excellent History I am indebted for most of my information on this interesting country, the founder of this dynasty, Yácúb bin Leth or Lais, belonged to a family of potters of Sistan. In youth he abandoned the peaceful calling of his ancestors for the more exciting life of a robber, and in 851A.D.took service with one Sálih bin Nasr, who had usurped the government of Sistan. Proving a man of parts, he was appointed by Sálih’s successor, Dirham bin Nasr, to the command of his army, and soon made use of his position to usurp the government for himself, establishing his capital at Doshák. In 868 he added Herat, Kirmán, and Shiraz to his possessions, and a couple of years later extended them to Kabul in one direction, and Nishabor in the other. He was succeeded by his brother, Amir bin Leth, who was made prisoner by the Tátár Ismáil Sámání, and sent to Baghdad, where he was executed in 901. With him fell the Sufári dynasty, but his descendants continued to hold Sistan till it was taken from Kulif, the last prince of the Leth family, by Mahmúd of Ghazni, towards the close of the century.
In Mahmúd’s time, Sistan, as described by Ibn Haukal, was a most flourishing country, and the lower courseof the Helmand as far as Búst presented an uninterrupted succession of populous cities, whilst the country as far as Zirrah was intersected by numerous great canals that rendered the land proverbially fertile. At this period, too, Sistan was noted for the existence of a gold-mine, which, after yielding a rich store of the precious metal for many years, was suddenly swallowed up and its site obliterated by an earthquake. Tradition points to no particular spot as the locality of this mine, and at this distance of time, with our scant knowledge of the country, it is useless to speculate on the subject, particularly if we bear in mind the fact that the limits of Sistan in the time of Mahmúd, were far more extensive than they are at the present day.
At that period, now eight centuries ago, Sistan comprised all that extensive region drained by the several rivers that converged and emptied their waters into thehámúnor “lake basin” of Sistan and its accessory the marsh of Zirrah. According to Ibn Haukal, who wrote in the reign of Mahmúd, this extensive region was known under the names of Zabulistan and Sijistan or Sistan, and comprised the whole of the southern portion of the present kingdom of Afghanistan, or all that portion not included within the limits of Kabulistan. It included the districts of Ghazni, Síbí, Shál, Mastung, and Peshín to the east and south, and those of Zamíndáwar, Ghor, Gháyn, and Nih on the north and west.
The term Sijistan or Sistan applied commonly to the whole of the region thus bounded, and Zabulistan was restricted to its northern parts, whilst the southern were also known by the name of Nímroz, and included the modern Sistan, which represents but a trivial portion of the area included in the Sakistan of the Greeks and the Sagestan or Sijistan of the Arabs. Further, the wholeSijistan country is included in the more extensive region of Khorassan, which comprises all that elevated mountain tract bounded by the valley of the Indus on the east, and that of the Oxus on the north, the salt desert of Kirmán and Yazd on the west, and the sea of Omán on the south.
At the present day it is difficult to define the precise limits of Sistan. The old name of Sagestan or Sijistan it appears applied to the great basin of the hydrographic system that centred in the ancient lakes, and which is represented by the plains of Kandahar and the valleys connected with it through their drainage. It extends eastward to the vicinity of Ghazni, and southward to the plain of Shorawak; whilst to the northward it includes the valleys of the Argandáb and Upper Helmand, called Zamíndáwar, and farther westward those of the Farráh river and the Harút Rúd or Adraskand, which drains the Sabzwár, or, as it is commonly written, Ispzár district.
The modern name of Sistan is applied only to the actual bed of the former lake that at some remote prehistoric period occupied the south-west portion of Afghanistan, and is besides limitedpar excellenceonly to a small portion of its area in the immediate vicinity of the present lakes or lagoons formed by the disemboguement of the several rivers converging to this point.
Of this limited area, calledhámún, the boundaries have already been described. The more extended area of the great lacustrine basin is clearly marked by a bold coast-line of desert cliffs. Those on the north and east borders are formed by the prolongation westward of the Kandahar steppes, and on the south and south-east by the cliffs and bluffs of the great sandy desert of Balochistan, whilst to the south and west its borders are formed by the hill-skirtsof the Sarhadd and Bandán mountains respectively.
The coasts thus indicated present a very irregular outline, ranging from two hundred to four hundred feet above the level of the lacustrine basin, and towards the west and north form long estuaries represented by the valleys of the Helmand, Khásh, Farráh, and Harút rivers. The basin itself extends upwards of two hundred miles from north to south, that is, from the Farráh mountains to those of Sarhadd, and presents a remarkable variation in the level of its surface. Its northern portion, occupied by the two lagoons formed by the convergence in it of the several rivers draining thereto and the intervening and surrounding swamps, is separated from the southern and much lower portion by a tract of elevated waste land, which presents a coast-line similar to that bounding the whole basin, but of much inferior elevation.
Where we saw this coast-line, in the vicinity of Burj Alam, it evidently formed the boundary of a long-deserted delta of the Helmand, the presenthámún, and stretched across the plain from east to west, presenting an irregular front of clay banks and bluffs from sixty to eighty feet high. Towards the west the land sinks to a wide channel called Sarshela, or “head ravine.” It runs north and south from thehámúnnear Koh Khojah to theGodi Zirrah, or “Zirrah hollow,” which occupies the southern portion of the lacustrine district.
In seasons of excessive flood, when the lagoons and surrounding swamps are overfilled, the superfluous waters find a passage through the Sarshela to the Godi Zirrah, the lowest hollow of which is, except in seasons of drought, occupied by a swamp similar to that of the Koh Khojah. We did not visit the Zirrah hollow, and consequently did not see the swamp said to exist there. We were informed,however, that, like the swamps in the northern portion of the basin, it had been dried up owing to the drought of the last four years.
The desiccation of these swamps and the reduced size of the existing lagoons may point to the manner in which the original lake diminished in size and gradually dried up, the main cause in both cases being a diminished volume in the streams terminating at this point. In the general aspect of the country we observed no indications of any cataclysm by which the waters were drained off from this basin. The deposits brought down by the Helmand and other rivers entering at the north of the lake raised its bed in this direction, and displaced the waters farther south; and it is not difficult to understand how they might have been entirely dissipated by the process of evaporation, for they appear to have been spread over the surface in a shallow sea, without the aid of other causes that have obtained during the historic period.
Were the Helmand and other rivers allowed to empty into thehámúnthe full volume of their floods, they would again cover the whole basin with an uninterrupted sheet of water bordered by swamps, as is now the case in a small portion only of its northern part, but subject to variation in extent and depth by the effects of evaporation and other causes.
It is probable that the basin has never been thus submerged during the period that the region draining into it has been an inhabited country. The ruins now existing on the surface of the lacustrine bed are evidence in support, whilst the enormous quantities withdrawn for purposes of irrigation, and the vastly increased surface thus exposed to evaporation, aided by the drying effects of the north-west wind, which prevails here for nearly half the year, are of themselves sufficient causes to explainthe limited area of the present lagoons and marshes. These owe their continued existence to the hot-weather floods, otherwise the rivers are mostly exhausted by evaporation and diversions for irrigation before they reach thehámún, which, after all, can only be viewed as the receptacle for the hot-weather floods, for during several months of the year the rivers, with the exception of the Helmand, are completely exhausted by the causes indicated long before they reach thehámún. Even the Helmand, since the Persian occupation of the country, has been diverted from its course at Kohak, and carried off in the Mádariáb channel to irrigate the country south of the Koh Khojah, as has been before mentioned.
To return, however, to the history of the country. On the downfall of the dynasty of Mahmúd of Ghazni, Sistan, in common with the rest of Khorassan, fell under the sway of the Afghan princes of Ghor, and under their empire maintained its former prosperity, until the Mughal invasion under Janghiz Khán in 1222, when it was laid waste by his destructive hordes of Tátárs. The country had scarcely recovered from the shock of this invasion, when (A.D.1383) Tymúr the Tátár swept over it with his ruthless hosts, and reduced it to a state of utter ruin and desolation. His son, Sháh Rúkh, attempted to restore its prosperity, but effected no more than the settlement of a few thousand Persian colonists on its devastated lands. About eighty-five years after Tymúr’s invasion, Sistan fell under the power of his descendant, Sultán Husen, Bykara, whose capital was at Herat; but it appears to have been still a neglected country, abandoned to the robber tribes thrown together here by the convulsions of the age.
On the establishment of the Saffavi dynasty in the beginning of the sixteenth century, Sistan became settled,and to some extent recovered its prosperity and population gradually under native chiefs descended from the ancient ruling family, and holding their patents from the Persian kings of the Saffavi dynasty. But on the destruction of this dynasty at the hands of the Afghans of Kandahar, it once more became the sport of the conqueror; and in 1737 was reduced to its present state of ruin and desolation by Nadír Sháh, the Afshár robber, the usurper of the Persian throne, the invader of India, and the author of the massacre and plunder of Delhi in 1739.
After the death of this great conqueror in 1747, the vast empire he had brought together under his sovereignty, from the Jumna to the Tigris, rapidly fell asunder, and, after many vicissitudes of fortune under the conflicting aspirations and interests of a host of claimants, was ultimately partitioned between the Cajars in Persia, the Uzbaks in Bukhára, and the Durranis in Khorassan. The division was a natural one, geographically, politically, and ethnologically; the elevated plateaux and desert wastes of Persia for the Irani, the fertile plains and wide steppes of Turkistan for the Uzbak Tátár, and the mountain fastnesses and tablelands of Khorassan for the Afghan. Each in his own limits was the rightful lord of the soil, and each was separated from the other by natural geographical boundaries, which came to be recognised also as the political limits of the three new nationalities of Central Asia.
Thus Persia, with its Shia population and organised form of government, was separated from Afghanistan and its Sunni population, with their patriarchal form of government, by the long strip of desert extending from Kirmán in the south to Mashhad in the north, and forming a belt of division between the highlands of IraniKhorassan and the more extensive region of that name known by the national appellations of Afghanistan and Balochistan, whilst each was separated respectively from the slave-hunting Turkmans of Khiva and the priest-ridden Sunni bigots of Bukhára by the saline deserts of Sarrakhs and Marv on the one side, and the Afghan states of Bulkh and the river Oxus on the other.
In this division of Nadír’s empire, Sistan, as much from natural geographical position as from political necessity, became incorporated with the new kingdom of Afghanistan, and it has since continued to form an integral part of the Durrani monarchy until its recent annexation and occupation by the Persians.
The climate of Sistan is decidedly insalubrious, and unfavourable alike to the healthy growth and comfort of both man and beast. The seasons are characterised by extremes of heat and cold in the summer and winter. Sand-storms, extremely injurious to the eyesight, are of frequent occurrence in the spring months; whilst in the autumn a hot steamy vapour, rising from the evaporation of the summer floods, pervades the atmosphere, and to the plague of gnats and musquitoes adds the pestilence of malarious fevers.
Sheep and cows thrive upon the rank pastures bordering the marshes; but horses and buffaloes cannot live in the country for several months of the year, owing to the worry of myriads of gnats and stinging flies.
The natives of the country are of inferior physical development, and the common people remarkable for their repulsive features and personal untidiness. Most of the people we saw about the villages had unhealthy sallow complexions; and I observed a marked prevalence of chlorotic anœmia from chronic disease of the spleen. The common diseases of the country are fevers, ophthalmicaffections, rheumatism, and small-pox. The principal employments of the people are agriculture and breeding cattle. Some families are occupied solely as hunters, fowlers, and fishermen, and others live exclusively by handicrafts, as weavers, cobblers, potters, &c. During the cold season immense numbers of wild-fowl, swans (here calledcúorghú), and pelicans are trapped and shot for their feathers and fat, which fetch a high price in the Kandahar market.
The language current in Sistan is a mixed dialect of Persian, in which are found many Pushto, Baloch, and Turki words; but amongst themselves the several tribes speak their own mother tongues, as the Afghans Pushto, the Baloch Balockki, the Sárbandi and Persians Persian, and so on. Our short stay in this country and the unfavourable conditions of our relations with the people, prevented our learning much concerning their manners and customs or their language and its affinities.
Some native words applied to localities from some distinguishing characteristic appear to belong to an ancient stock, and afford a field for speculation to the philologist. Such are Biring Hissár, or “the fort on a mound” (Arabic,hissár= fort, and Sistani,biring= mound); Biring Kaftár, or “the mound of hyænas” (Persian,kaftár= hyæna); Daki Tír, or “the arrow (straight) ridge” (Sistan,dak= ridge, and Persian,tír= arrow, and, metaphorically, straight); Daki Dela, or “the cyperus reed-ridge,” (Pushto,dela= cyperus grass); Chakná Súr, or “the fort of birds” (Brahoe,chak= bird;ná, sign of genitive; and Arabicsúr= a fort), so named probably from its situation at the spot where wild-fowls and swans have from time immemorial been yearly snared and hunted; Sih Koha, or “the three hills” (Persian,sih= three, andkoh= hill); Chilling or Shilling, (the place of) “bursting” or“overflowing,” probably from its situation where thehámúnor lake overflows and bursts its barriers (Brahoe,chilling= bursting, andshilling= overflowing); Gódor “the hollow” (Persian,god= lap or hollow), &c. Other suggestive words, the names of villages in Sistan, are Bolay, Warmál, Banjár, Iskil, Khadang, Kechyán, Laff, Kimak, Shitak, Pulkí, Jazínak, Tiflak, Ishkinak, Sadkí, &c. Many villages are named after their founders, and generally they are found to occupy the sites of more ancient towns. These modern names in many cases serve to fix the dates of the new settlements or the restoration of old ruins.
For example, the present Jahánábád, built on the site of Biring Hissár, is named after Khán Jahán, Sanjarání Baloch, who restored the ruins of the old fort and repeopled the town at the commencement of the present century. Similarly Burj ’Alam, the “tower” or “citadel” built by ’Alam Khán, Nahroe Baloch, also about the commencement of the present century; Jalálabad, amongst the ruins of Doshák, named after Jaláluddín, Kayáni; Bahrámabad, named after Malik Bahrám, the Kayáni chief during the last quarter of the preceding century; Sharíf Khán, the village built by Sharíf Khán, Nahroe Baloch; Nasírabad, the town of Nasír Khán, Kayáni; Burj Sarband, the citadel or castle of the Sárbandi; Burj Afghan, the castle of the Afghans. Záhidán retains the name of the ruins amongst which it is situated. The name means “monks,” and is the Persian plural of the Arabiczáhid, a monk; perhaps in the Arab period it contained a monastery or Muhammadan college, and hence the name.
The study of these local names is full of interest, and not without advantageous results. I believe if the inquiry were fully followed up, it would confirm thestatements of history, and prove that the present population are, with the exception of the Kayáni and their Sistani subjects, only immigrants since the period of Nadír’s usurpation of the throne of Persia; and further, the inquiry, by tracing the genealogy and traditionary accounts of the chiefs after whom the villages are named, would enable us to form a tolerably correct idea of the progress of the population of the country since the period of its devastation by the Tátárs under Tymúr, and serve as a guide to the illustration of its local history and politics.