The point of the story lies in its revelation as regards connection between Central Asia and India in the early centuriesA.D.Clearly there was no pass unknown or unvisited by the Chinese. Not merely the direct routes, but all the connecting ways which linked up one Buddhist centre with another were equally well known. What has required from us a weary process of investigation to overcome the difficulties of map-making, was to them, if not exactly an open book, certainly a geographical record which could be turned to practical use, and it is instructive to note the use that was made of it. As a pious duty, bristling with difficulty and danger, travel over the wanderingtracks which pass through the northern gates of the Himalayas was regarded with fervour; but it may be taken for granted that less pious-minded adventurers than the Chinese pilgrims would most certainly have made good use of that geographical knowledge to exploit the riches of India had such a proceeding been possible. We know that attempts have been made. From the earliest times the Mongol hordes of China and Central Asia have been directed on India, and no gateway which could offer any possible hope of admittance has been neglected. Baktria (Badakshan), lying beyond the mountain barrier, had been at their mercy. The successors to Alexander's legions in that country were swamped and dispersed within a century or two of the foundation of the Greek kingdom; and the Kabul River way to India has let in army after army. But these northern passes have not only barred migratory Asiatic hordes through all ages, but have proved too much even for small organized Mongol military expeditions.
The Chinese hosts, who apparently thought little of crossing the Tibetan frontier over a succession of Alpine passes such as no Western general in the world's history has ever encountered, failed to penetrate farther than Kunjut. The Mongol invasion of Tibet early in the sixteenth century (which is so graphically described in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi by Mirza Haidar) was tentatively pushed into KashmirviaLadakh, and was defeated bythe natural difficulties of the country—not by the resistance of the weak-kneed Kashmiri—much, indeed, as a similar expedition to Lhasa was defeated by cold and starvation. No modern ingenuity has as yet contrived a method of dealing with the passive resistance of serrated bands of mountains of such altitude as the Himalayas. No railway could be carried over such a series of snow-capped ramparts; no force that was not composed of Asiatic mountaineers could attempt to pass them with any chance of success; and these northern lines, these eternal defences of Nature's making may well be left, a vast silent wilderness of peaks, undisturbed by man's puny efforts to improve their strength. Certainly the making of highways in the midst of them is not the surest means of adding to their natural powers of passive obstruction, although such public works may possibly be deemed necessary in the interests of peace and order preservation amongst the "snowy mountain men."
Chinese pilgrims no longer tread those rocky mountain-paths (except in the pages of Rudyard Kipling's entrancing work), and the tides of devotion have set in other directions—to Mecca or to Lhasa; but the fact that thousands of Buddhist worshippers yearly undertake a journey which, for the hardships entailed by cold and starvation between the western borders of China and Lhasa, should surely secure for them a reserve of merit equal to that gathered by their forefathers from the"Tsungling" mountains, might possibly lead to the question whether the plateau of Eastern Tibet does not afford the open way which is not to be found farther west. If a Chinese force of 70,000 men could advance into the heart of Tibet, and finally administer a severe defeat on the Gurkhas (which surely occurred in 1792) in Nepal, it is clear that such a force could equally well reach Lhasa. It is also certain that the stupendous mountain-chains and the elevated passes, which are the ruling features of the eastern entrance into Tibet from China, far exceed in natural strength and difficulty those which intervene between the plains of India and Lhasa. We are therefore bound to admit that it might be possible for an unopposed Chinese force to invade India by Eastern Tibet; possibly even by the valley of Assam. There is, however, no record that such an attempt has ever been made. The savage and untamable disposition of the eastern Himalayan tribes, and their intense hostility to strangers may have been, through all time, a strong deterrent to any active exploitation of their country; and the density of the forests which close down on the narrow ways which intersect their hills, give them an advantage in savage tactics such as was not possessed by the fighting Gurkha tribe in Nepal. But whatever the reason may be, there is apparently no record of any Chinese force descending through the Himalayas into the eastern plains of India by any of the manyways afforded by the affluents of the Brahmaputra. We may, I think, rest very well assured that no such attempt could possibly be made by any force other than Chinese, and that it is not likely that it ever will be made by them. We do not (at present) look to the north-east (to China) for the shadows of coming events in India. We look to the north, and looking in that direction we are quite content to write down the approach to India by any serious military force across Tibet or through the northern gateways of Kashmir to be an impossibility.
The footsteps of the Buddhist pilgrim point no road for the tread of armies. In the interests of geographical research it is well to follow their tracks, and to learn how much wiser geographically they were in their day than we are now. It is well to remember that as modern explorers we are as hopelessly behind them in the spirit of enterprise, which reaches after an ethical ideal, as we are ahead of them in the process of attaining exact knowledge of the world's physiography, and recording it.
MEDIÆVAL GEOGRAPHY—SEISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN
It was about eight centuries before Buddhism, debased and corrupted, tainted with Siva worship and loaded with all the ghastly paraphernalia of a savage demonology, had been driven from India across the Himalayas, that the Star of Bethlehem had guided men from the East to the cradle of the Christian faith—a faith so like Buddhism in its ethical teaching and so unlike in its spiritual conceptions,—and during those eight centuries Christianity had already been spread by Apostles and missionaries through the broad extent of High Asia. Thereupon arose a new propaganda which, spreading outwards from a centre in south-west Arabia, finally set all humanity into movement, impelling men to call the wide world to a recognition of Allah and his one Prophet by methods which eventually included the use of fire and sword. The rise of the faith of Islam was nearly coincident (so far as India was concerned) with the fall of Buddhism. Thenceforward the gentle life-savingprecepts of Gautama were to be taught in the south, and east, and north; in Ceylon, Burma, China, and Mongolia after being first firmly rooted in Tibet and Turkistan, but never again in the sacred groves of the land of their birth. And this raging religious hurricane of Islam swept all before it for century after century until, checked at last in Western Europe, it left the world ennobled by many a magnificent monument, and, by adding to the enlightenment of the dark places of the earth, fulfilled a mission in the development of mankind. With it there arose a new race of explorers who travelled into India from the west and north-west, searching out new ways for their commerce, and it is with them now and their marvellous records of restless commercial activity that we have to deal. Masters of the sea, even as of the land, no military and naval supremacy which has ever directed the destinies of nations was so widespread in its geographical field of enterprise as that of the Arabs. The whole world was theirs to explore. Their ships furrowed new paths across the seas, even as their khafilas trod out new highways over the land; and at the root of all their movement was the commercial instinct of the Semite. After all it was the eternal question of what would pay. Their progenitors had been builders of cities, of roads, of huge dams for water storage and irrigation, and directors for public works in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The might of the sword of Islam butcarved the way for the slave-owner and the merchant to follow. Thus it is that mediæval records of exploration in Afghanistan and Baluchistan are mostly Arab records; and it is from them that we learn the "open sesame" of India's landward gates, long ere the seaports of her coasts were visited by European ships.
Nothing in the history of the world is more surprising than the rapid spread of Arab conquests in Asia, Africa, and Western Europe at the close of the seventh century of our era, excepting, perhaps, the thoroughness of the subsequent disappearance of Arab influence, and the absolute effacement of the Arabic language in those countries which Arabs ruled and robbed. In Persia, Makran, Central Asia, or the Indus valley, hardly a word of Arabic is now to be recognized. Geographical terms may here and there be found near the coast, surviving only because Arab ships still skirt those shores and the sailor calls the landmarks by old-world names. Even in the English language the sea terms of the Arab sailor still live. What is our "Admiral" but the "Al mir ul bahr" of the Arabian Sea, or our "Barge" but his "Barija," or warship! But in Sind, where Arab supremacy lasted for at least three centuries, there is nothing left to indicate that the Arab ever was there.
The effacement of the Arab in India is chiefly due to the Afghan, the Turk, and the Mongol. Mahmud of Ghazni put the finishing blow to Arabsupremacy in the Indus valley, when he sacked Multan about the beginning of the eleventh century; and subsequently the destroying hordes of Chenghiz Khan and Tamerlane completed the final downfall of the Empire of the Khalifs.
Between the beginning of the eighth century and that of the eleventh the whole world of the Indian north-west frontier and its broad hinterland, extending to the Tigris and the Oxus, was much traversed and thoroughly well known to the Arab trader. In Makran we have seen how they shaped out for themselves overland routes to India, establishing big trade centres in flourishing towns, burying their dead in layers on the hill-sides, cultivating their national fruit, the date, in Makran valleys, and surrounding themselves with the wealth and beauty of irrigated agriculture. The chief impulse to Arab exploration emanated from the seat of the Khalifs in Mesopotamia, and the schools of Western Persia and Bagdad appear to have educated the best of those practical geographers who have left us their records of travel in the East; but there are indications of an occasional influx of Arabs from the coasts of Southern Arabia about whom we learn nothing whatever from mediæval histories. It will be at any rate interesting to discuss the general trend of exploration and travel, associated either with pilgrimage or commerce, which distinguished the days of Arab supremacy, and which throws considerable light on the geography of the Indianborderland before its political features were rearranged by the hand of Chenghiz Khan and his successors. This has never yet been attempted by the light of recent investigations, and even now it can only be done partially and indifferently from the want of completed maps. The borderland which touches the Arabian Sea—Southern Baluchistan—has been completely explored and mapped, and the more obvious inferences to be derived from that mapping have already been made. But Seistan, Karmania, the highways and cities of Turkistan (Tocharistan) and Badakshan have not, so far as I know, been outlined in any modern work based on Arab writings and collated with the geographical surveys of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission and their reports. It was after all but a cursory examination of a huge area of most interesting country that was possible within the limited time devoted to boundary demarcation labours in 1883-85; but the physical features of this part of Asia being now fairly well defined, there is a good deal to be inferred with reasonable probability from the circumstance that highways and cities must ever be dependent for their location on the distributions of topography.
The first impression produced by the general overlook of all the historic area which lies between Eastern Persia and the sources on the Oxus, is one of surprise. There is so little left of this great busy world of Arab commerce. It seems to havedropped out of the world's economy, and certain regions to have reverted to a phase of pristine freedom from sordid competition, which argues much for a decreased population and a desiccated area of once flourishing lands.
There are no forests and jungles in Western Afghanistan, or at least only in restricted spaces on the mountain-slopes, so that there is no wild undergrowth uprooting and covering the evidences of man's busy habitation such as we find in Ceylon and the Nepal Tarai; where may be seen strange staring stone witnesses of the faith of former centuries, half hidden amidst the wild beauty and luxuriance of tropical forest growth. There is nothing indeed quite so interesting. Nature has spread out smooth grass slopes carpeted with sweet flowers in summer, but frozen and windswept in winter; and beneath the surface we know for a surety that the buried remains of centuries of busy traffic and marketing lie hidden, but there is frequently no sign whatever above ground. It is difficult to account for the utter want of visible evidence. In the processes of clearing a field for military action, when it becomes essential to remove some obstructive mud-built village and trace a clear and free zone for artillery fire, it is often found that the work of destruction is exceedingly difficult. Only with the most careful management can the debris be so dispersed that it affords no better cover to the enemy than the village which itonce represented. As for effacing it altogether, only time, with the assistance of wind and weather, can accomplish that. But it is remarkable with what completeness time succeeds. I have stood on the site of a buried city in Sind—a city, too, of the mediæval era of Arab ascendency—and have recognized no trace of it but what appeared to be the turbaned effigies of a multitude of faithful mourners in various expressive attitudes of grief and despair, who represented the ancient cemetery of the city. The city had been wiped off the land as clean as if it had been swept into the sea, but the burying places remained, and the stone mourners continue mourning through the centuries.
The architectural order of these Khalmat tombs is quite Saracenic, and the vestiges of geometrical design which relieve the plain surface of the stone work and accentuate the lines of arch and moulding, are all clean cut and clear. At the end of each tomb, set up on a pedestal, the folded turban testifies in hard stone to the faith of the occupant beneath. The sharp edges of the slabs and the clearness of the ornamental carving are sufficient to prove that the age of these tombs and monuments cannot be so very remote, although remote enough to have led to the effacement of the township to which they belong. Sometimes a mound, where no mound would naturally occur, indicates the base of one of the larger buildings. Sometimes in the slanting rays of the evening sun certain shadows, unobservedbefore, take shape and pattern themselves into the form of a basement; and almost always after heavy rain strange little ornaments, beads, and coins, glass bangles, rings, etc., are washed out on the surface which tell their own tale as surely as does the widespread and infinitely varied remnants of household crockery. This last feature is sometimes quite amazing in its variety and extent, and the quality of the local finds is not a bad indication of the quality of the local household which made use of it. "Celadon" ware is abundant from Karachi to Babylon, and some of it is of extraordinary fineness and beauty of glaze. Pale sage green is invariably the colour of it, and the tradition of luck which attaches to it is common from China to Arabia.
In places where vanished towns were in existence as late as the eighteenth century (for instance, in the Helmund valley below Rudbar), debris of pottery may be found literally in tons. In other places, still living, where generations of cities have gradually waxed and waned in successive stages, each in turn forming the foundation of a new growth, it is very difficult to derive any true historical indication from the debris which is to be found near the surface. Nothing but systematic and extensive excavation will suffice to prove that the existing conglomeration of rubbishy bazaars and ruined mosques is only the last and most unworthy phase of the existence of a city the glory ofwhose history is to be found in the world-wide tradition of past centuries. And so it happens that, moving in the footsteps of these old mediæval commercial travellers, with the story of their travels in one's hand, and the indications of hill and plain and river to testify to the way they went, and a fair possibility of estimating distances according to their slipshod reckoning of a "day's journey," one may possess the moral certainty that one has reached a position where once there stood a flourishing market-town without the faintest outward indication of it. Without facilities for digging and delving, and the time for careful examination, there must necessarily be a certain amount of conjecture about the exact locality of some even of the most famous towns which were centres of Arab trade through High Asia. Some indeed are to be found still under their ancient names, but others (and amongst them many of great importance) are no longer recognizable in the place where once they palpitated with vigorous Eastern life.
The area of Asia which for three or four centuries witnessed the monopoly of Arab trade included very nearly the whole continent. Asia Minor may be omitted from that area, and the remoter parts of China; but all the Indian borderland was literally at their feet; and we can now proceed to trace out some of their principal lines of route and their chief halting-places in thosedistricts of which the mediæval geography has lately become known.
It is not at all necessary, even if it were possible, to follow the records of all the eminent Arab travellers who at intervals trod these weary roads. In the first place they often copied their records from one another, so that there is much vain repetition in them. In the second place they are not all equally trustworthy, and their writing and spelling, especially in place-names, wants that attention to diacritical marks which in Eastern orthography is essential to correct transliteration. It is perhaps unfortunate that the most eminent geographer amongst them should not have been a traveller, but simply a compiler.
Abu Abdulla Mohamed was born at Ceuta in Morocco towards the end of the eleventh century. Being descended from a family named Idris, he came to be known as Al Idrisi. The branch of the family from which Idrisi sprang ruled over the city of Magala. He travelled in Europe and eventually settled at the Court of Roger II. in Sicily. Here he wrote his book on geography. He quotes the various authors whom he consulted in its compilation, and derived further information from travellers whose accounts he compared and tested. The title of his work isThe Delight of those who seek to wander through the Regions of the World, and it is from the French translation of this work by Jaubert that the following notes on the countrieslying beyond the western borders of India are taken. This account may be accepted as representing the condition of political and commercial geography throughout those regions at the end of the eleventh century, some eighty years or so after the borders of India had been periodically harried by Mahmud of Ghazni, and not very long before the Mongol host appeared on the horizon and made a clean sweep of Asiatic civilization.
To the west of the Indian frontier in those early days lay the Persian provinces of Makran and Sejistan (Seistan), which two provinces between them appear to represent a great part of modern Baluchistan. The "Belous" were not yet in Baluchistan; they lived north of the mountains occupied by the "Kufs," with whom they are invariably associated in Arab geography. "The Kufs," says Idrisi, "are the only people who do not speak Persian in the province of Kerman. Their mountains reach to the Persian Gulf, being bordered on the north by the country of Najirman (?Nakirman), on the south and east by the sea and the Makran deserts, on the west by the sea and the 'Belous' country and the districts of Matiban and Hormuz." These are doubtless the "Bashkird" mountains, and the "species of Kurd, brave and savage" which inhabited them under the name of Kufs probably represent the progenitors of the present inhabitants.
The "Bolous" or "Belous" lived in the plainsto the north "right up to the foot of the mountains," and these are the people (according to Mr. Longworth Dames) who, hailing originally from the Caspian provinces, are the typical Baluch tribespeople of to-day.
These mountains, which Idrisi calls the "cold mountains," extend to the north-west of Jirift and are "fertile, productive, and wooded." "It is a country where snow falls every year," and of which "the inhabitants are virtuous and innocent." There have been changes since Idrisi's time, both moral and physical, but here is a strong item of evidence in favour of the theory of the gradual desiccation which has enveloped Southern Baluchistan and dried up the water-springs of Makran. What Idrisi called the "Great Desert" is comprehensive. All the great central wastes of Persia, including the Kerman desert as well as the basin of the Helmund south of the hills, the frontier hills of the Sind border up to Multan, were a part of it, and they were inhabited by nomadic tribes of "thieves and brigands."
Modern Seistan is a flat, unwholesome country, distributed geographically on either side of the Helmund between Persia and Afghanistan. It owes its place in history and its reputation for enormous productiveness to the fact that it is the great central basin of Afghanistan, where the Helmund and other Afghan rivers run to a finish in vast swamps, or lagoons. Surrounded bydeserts, Seistan is never waterless, and there was, in days which can hardly be called ancient, a really fine system of irrigation, which fertilized a fairly large tract of now unproductive land on the Persian side of the river. The amount of land thus brought under cultivation was considerable, but not considerable enough to justify the historic reputation which Seistan has always enjoyed as the "Granary of Asia." This traditional wealth was no doubt exaggerated from the fact that the fertility of Seistan (like that of the Herat valley, which is after all but an insignificant item in Afghan territory) was in direct contrast to the vast expanse of profitless desert with which it was surrounded—a green oasis in the midst of an Asiatic wilderness.
The Helmund has taken to itself many channels in the course of measurable time. Its ancient beds have been traced and mapped, and with them have been found evidences of closely-packed townships and villages, where the shifting waters and consequent encroachment of sand-waves leave no sign of life at present.
Century after century the same eternal process of obliteration and renovation has proceeded. Millions of tons of silt have been deposited in this great alluvial basin. Levels have changed and the waters have wandered irresponsibly into a network of channels westward. Then the howling, desiccating winds of the north-west have carried back sand-waves and silt, burying villages and filling theatmosphere for hundreds of miles southward with impalpable dust, crossing the Helmund deserts even to the frontier of India. There is no measurable scale for the force of the Seistan winds. They scoop up the sand and sweep clean the surface of the earth, polishing the rounded edges of the ragged walls of the Helmund valley ruins. It is a notable fact that no part of these ruins face the wind. All that is left of palaces and citadels stands "end on" to the north-west. For a few short months in the year the wind is modified, and then there instantly arises the plague of insects which render life a burden to every living thing. And yet Seistan has played a most important part in the history of Asia, and may play an important rôle again.
Arab records are very full of Seistan. The earliest of them that give any serious geographical information are the records of Ibn Haukel, but there are certainly indications in his account which engender a suspicion that he never really visited the country. He mentions the capital Zarinje (of which the ruins cover an enormous area to the east of Nasratabad, the present capital) and writes of it as a very large town with five gates, one of which "leads to Bist." There were extensive fortifications, and a bazaar of which he reckons the annual revenue to be 1000 direms.
There were canals innumerable, and always the wind and the windmills. It is curious that he traces the Helmund as running to Seistan first andthen to the Darya-i-Zarah. This is in fact correct, only the Darya-i-Zarah (or Gaod-i-Zireh, as we know it) receives no water from the Helmund until the great Hamún (lagoons) to the north of Nasratabad are filled to overflow. He also mentions two rivers as flowing into the Zarah—one from Farah (an important place in his time), which is impossible, as it would have to cross the Helmund; and one from Ghur. This indicates almost certainly that the name Zarah was not confined, as it is now, to the great salt swamp south of Rudbar on the Helmund, but it included the Hamúns north of Nasratabad, into which the Farah River and the Ghur River do actually empty themselves. At present these two great lake systems are separated by about 120 miles of Helmund River basin, and are only connected occasionally in flood time by means of the overflow (called Shelag) already referred to. The mention of Bist, and of the bridge of boats across the river at that point, is important, for it is clear that about the yearA.D.950 one high-road for trade eastward was across the desert,i.e.viathe Khash Rud valley from Zarinje to about the meridian of 63 E.L. and then straight over the desert to Bist (Kala Bist of modern mapping). The further mention of robats (or resting-places)en route, indicates that it was well kept up and a much traversed high-road. Subsequently Girishk appears to have become the popular crossing-place of the river, but it is well to remember that theearlier route still exists, and could readily be made available for a flank march on Kandahar.
From Idrisi's writings we learn that a century later,i.e.about the end of the eleventh century, the Seistan province extended far beyond its present limits. Bamian and Ghur (i.e.the central hills of Afghanistan) werevis-Ã -visto that province; Farah was included; and probably the whole line of the frontier hills from the Sulimanis, opposite Multan, to Sibi and Kalat. It was an enormous province, and a new light breaks on its traditional wealth in grain and agricultural produce when we understand its vast extent.
The regions of Ghur and Dawar bordered it to the north, and there is a word or two to be said about both hereafter. Ghur in the eleventh century included the valley of Herat and all the wedge of mountainous country south of it to Dawar, but how far Seistan extended into the heart of the mountain system which culminates to the south-west of Kabul it is difficult to say. It is difficult to understand the statement that Bamian, for instance, bordered Seistan, with Ghur in between, unless, indeed, in these early days of Ghur's history (for Ghur was only conquered by the Arabs inA.D.1020, and was still far from intertwining its history with that of Ghazni when Idrisi wrote) the greatness of Bamian overshadowed the light of the lesser valleys of Ghur, and Bamian was the ruling province of Central Afghanistan. This, indeed, seems possible.The district of Dawar to the south of Ghur has always been something of a mystery to geographers. Described by Idrisi as "vast, rich, and fertile," and "the line of defence on the side of Ghur, Baghnein, and Khilkh," it would be impossible to place it without a knowledge of the towns mentioned, were it not that we are told that Derthel, one of the chief towns of Dawar, is on the Helmund, and that one crosses the river there "in order to reach Sarwan." This at once indicates the traditional ford at Girishk as the crossing-place, and Zamindawar as the Dawar of Idrisi. Khilkh then becomes intelligible also as a town of the Khilkhi (the people who then occupied Dawar, described as Turkish by Idrisi, and probably identified with the modern Ghilzai), and finds its modern representative in the Kalat-i-Ghilzai which crowns the well-known rock on the road from Kandahar to Kabul. "The country is inhabited by a people called Khilkh," says Idrisi. "The Khilkhs are of a Turkish race, who from a remote period have inhabited this country, and whose habitations are spread to the north of India on the flank of Ghur and in western Seistan." Thus the position of the Ghilzai in the ethnography of Central Afghanistan appears to have been established long before the days of Mongol irruption. Then as now they formed a very important tribal community.
It is, however, sometimes difficult to reconcile Idrisi's account of the routes followed by hiscountrymen in this part of Asia with existing geographical features. Deserts and mountains must have been much the same as they are now, and the best, if not the only, way to unravel the geographical tangle is to take his itinerary and see where it leads us. Of Baghnein on the southern borders of Seistan, he says it is an "agreeable country, fertile and abundant in fruits." From there (i.e. the country, not the town) to Derthel one reckons one day's journey through the nomad tribes of Bechinks, Derthel being "situated on the banks of the Helmund and one of the chief towns of Dawar."
So we have to cross an open uncultivated region for 40 miles or so from Baghnein to reach Derthel, on the Helmund. Again, "one crosses the Helmund at Derthel to reach Sarwan—a town situated about one day's journey off," on which depends a territory which produces everything in abundance. "Sarwan is bigger than Fars, and more rich in fruit and all sorts of productions. Grapes are transported to Bost (or Bist), a town two days distant passing by Firozand, which possesses a big market, and is on the traveller's right as he travels to Benjawai, which isvis-à -visto Derthel." "Rudhan (?Rudbar) is a small town south of the Helmund."
The Helmund valley has been surveyed from Zamindawar to its final exit into the Seistan lagoons, and we know that at Girishk there is avery ancient ford, which now marks, and has always marked, the great highway from Kandahar to Herat. South of Girishk, at the junction of the Arghandab with the Helmund, we find extensive and ancient ruins at Kala Bist; and south of that again there are many ruins at intervals in the Helmund valley; but these latter are comparatively recent, dating from the time of the Kaiani Maliks of the eighteenth century.
Assuming that the Helmund fords have remained constant, and placing Derthel on one side of the river at Girishk and Benjawai on the other, we find on our modern maps that from the ford it is a possible day's journey to Kala Sarwan, higher up the Helmund, where "fruit and grapes are to be had in abundance," and from whence they might certainly have been sent to Bist, where grapes do not grow. Baghnein, separated from Derthel by a strip of nomad country, one day's journey wide, might thus be on either side the Helmund; but its contiguity to Ghur seems to favour a position to the west, rather than to the east, of the river, somewhere east of the plains of Bukwa about Washir.
Now it is certain that no Arab traveller, crossing the Helmund desert from the west by the direct route recently exploited in British Indian interests below Kala Bist and south of the river, could by any possibility have reached a grape-growing and highly-cultivated country in one day's journey. The inference, then, is tolerably clear. Arab tradersand travellers never made use of this southern route. Nor should we ourselves make use of such a route as thatviaNushki and the Koh-i-Malik Siah, were we not forced into it by Afghan policy. The natural high-road from the east of Persia and Herat to India isviathe plains of Kandahar and the ford of Girishk, and the Arabs, with all Khorasan at their feet, were not likely to travel any other way.
Undoubtedly the system of approach to the Indus valley, open to Arab traffic from Syria and Bagdad, most generally used and most widely recognized was that through the Makran valleys to Karachi and Sind, whilst the inland route,viaPersia and Seistan, made the well-known ford of the Helmund at Girishk, or the boat bridge at Kala Bist, its objective, and passed over the river to the plains about Kandahar. But it is a very remarkable, and possibly a significant, fact that the continuation of the route to Sind and the Indus valley from the plains about Kandahar is not mentioned by any Arab writer. Did the Arabs descend through any of the well-known passes of the frontier—the Mulla, Bolan, Saki-Sarwar, or Gomul—into the plains of India? Possibly they did so; but in that case it is difficult to account for so important a geographical feature as the frontier passes of Sind being ignored by the greatest geographer of his day.
Following Idrisi's description of the Helmund province we have a brief itinerary from the Helmundford (Derthel or Benjawai) to Ghazni, said to be nine days' journey inland. None of the places mentioned are to be identified in modern maps except Cariat, which is more than probably Kariut, a rich and fertile district in the Arghandab valley in the direct line to Kalat-i-Ghilzai. This route passes well to the north-east of Kandahar, which was apparently of little account in Idrisi's days. Although there are extensive ruins at Kushk-i-Nakhud, indicated by a huge artificial mound half-way between Girishk and Kandahar, there is nothing in Idrisi's writings by which they can be identified.
Ghazni was then a large town "surrounded by mud walls and a ditch. There are many houses and permanent markets in Ghazni; much business is done there. It is one of the 'entrepots' of India. Kabul is nine days' journey from it." This is not much to say of the city which had been enriched by the spoils carried away from Muttra and Somnath, and by the treasures amassed during seventeen fierce raids of that Mahmud who, by repeated conquests, made all Northern and Western India contribute to his treasury.
Later, in 1332, the Arab traveller, Ibn Batuta, writes of Ghazni as a small town set in a waste of ruins—a description which fits it not inaptly at the present day; but in Idrisi's time, before the wars with Ghur led to its destruction, whilst still the wealth of a great part of India supported itsmagnificence, and whilst it was still the theme of glowing panegyric by contemporary historians, one would expect a rather more enthusiastic notice. But even Kabul (nine days' journey distant from Ghazni) is only recognized as "L'une des grandes villes de l'Inde, entourée de murs," with a "bonne citadelle et au dehors divers faubourgs."[5]
There is little to interest us, however, in tracing out the routes that linked up Ghazni and Kabul with the Helmund. They have been the same through all time, with just the difference of place-names. Towns and villages, caravanserais and posts, have come and gone, but that historic road has been marked out by Nature as one of the grandest high-roads in Asia, from the days of Alexander to those of Roberts. Two minars tapering to the sky on the plain before Ghazni are all that are left of its ancient glories, and one cannot but contrast the scattered debris of that once so famous city with the solid endurance of the far greater and older architectural efforts in Egypt and Assyria. Southern Afghanistan is indeed singularly poor and empty of historic monuments. Even now were Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat, its three great cities, to be flattened out by a widespread earthquake there would be little that was not of Buddhist origin left for the future archæologist to make a stir about.
Idrisi writes of the Kingdom of Ghur as apart from Herat, although a great part of the long Heratvalley was certainly included. He calls it a country "mountainous and well inhabited, where one finds springs, rivers, and gardens—easy to defend and very fertile. There are many cultivated fields and flocks. The inhabitants speak a language which is not that of the people of Khorasan, and they are not Mohammedans." Who were they? The Khilkhis or Ghilzais we know at that time overspread the southern hills of Dawar; but who were the people speaking a strange language in the land of the Chahar Aimak where now dwell the Taimanis, unless they were the Taimanis themselves whose traditions date from the time of Moses?
More recently the Ghilzais have left Zamindawar, and the Taimanis have been pressed backward and upward into the central hills by the Afghan Durani clans, who circle round westward, forming a fringe on the foothills between Herat and Kandahar, and who have now completely monopolized Zamindawar. Here, indeed, the truculent Nurzai and Achakzai, and other elements of the Durani section of Afghan ethnography, flourish exceedingly, and it is in this corner of Afghanistan, bordering on the Herat highway to India, that nearly all the fanatics and ghazis of the country are bred. They presented so turbulent and uncompromising a front to strangers in 1882 that there was great difficulty in getting a fair survey of the land of the Chahar Aimak or of Zamindawar.
The mediæval provinces of Ghur and Bamain figure so largely in the records of Arab geography, and appear to have been so fully open to commerce during the centuries succeeding the Arab conquests, that one naturally wonders whether there can have been any remarkable change in the physical configuration of those regions which, in these later days, has rendered them more inaccessible and unapproachable. The Arab accounts of trade routes flit easily from point to point, taking little reckoning of long distances and gigantic ice-bound passes, or the perils of a treacherous climate. An itinerary which deals with stupendous mountains and extreme altitudes has little more of descriptive illustration in these Arab records than such as would apply to camel tracks across the sandy desert or over the flat plain. Nor is the distance which figures as a "day's journey" sensibly changed to suit the route. Forty miles or so across the backbone of the Hindu Kush is written of in much the same terms as if it were forty miles over the plains. Giving the Arab travellers all credit for far greater powers of endurance and determination than we moderns possess, we must still believe that there is a great deal of exaggeration (or forgetfulness) in these heroic records of the past. It is unlikely that the physical conditions of the country have materially changed.
So little has been written of this central region of modern Afghanistan (within which lie the ruinsof more than one kingdom), so little has it been traversed by modern explorers, that it may be useful to give some slight general description of the country with which these records deal, including Bamain and Kabul and the mountain system occupied by the Taimani and Hazara tribes as well as the prolific region of Zamindawar with the routes which traverse it.
No part of Afghanistan has been subject to more speculative theories, or requires more practical elucidation, than this mountain region in which so large a share of the drama of Afghan history has been played. Before the days of the Anglo-Russian agreement on the subject of the northern boundaries of Afghanistan nothing was known of its geography, beyond what might be gathered from the doubtful records of Ferrier's journey—and that was very little. The geography of a country shapes its history just as surely in the East as in the West, and we have consequently much new light thrown on the interesting story of the rise and fall of the Ghur dynasties by the fairly comprehensive surveys of the region of their turbulent activities which were carried out in 1882-83.
From these sources we obtain a very fair idea of the general conformation of Central Afghanistan,i.e.that part of Afghanistan which is occupied by the tribes known as the Chahar Aimak,i.e.the Jamshidis, the Hazaras, Firozkohis, and Taimanis. It consists in the first place of a huge irregular tableland—oruplift—which has been deeply scored and eroded by centuries of river action, the rivers radiating from the central mass of the Koh-i-Babar to the west of Kabul and flowing in deep valleys either directly northward towards the Oxus, due west towards Herat (eventually to turn northward), or south-west in irregular but more or less parallel lines to the Helmund lagoons in Seistan.
The Kabul River basin also finds its head near the same group of river sources. The central mountain mass, the Koh-i-Babar, is high, rocky, generally snow-capped and impassable. To the north it sends down long, barren, and comparatively gentle spurs to the main plateau level, which is deeply cut into by the northern system of rivers, including the Murghab and the Balkh Ab. But the strangest feature in this network of hydrography is the long, deep, narrow valley (almost ditch-like in its regularity) which has been eroded by the Hari Rud River as it makes its way due west, cutting off the sources of the northern group from those of the Helmund or south-western group. It is a most remarkable valley, depressed to a depth of 1000 to 2000 feet below the general plateau level, bounded on the north by a comparatively level line of red-faced cliffs, and on the south by another straight flat-backed range called the Band-i-Baian (or farther west, the Sufed Koh), which has been carved into the semblance of a range by the parallel valleys of the Hari Rud on the north and the TagaoIshlan on the south, which hug the range between them.
No affluents of any consequence join either stream. Either separate or together they make their way with straight determination westward towards Herat. South of this curious ditch rise the many streamlets which work their way, sometimes through comparatively open valleys where the floor level has been raised by the centuries of detritus, sometimes through steep and narrow gorges where the harder rock of the plateau formation presents more difficulties to erosion, into the great Helmund basin. These are affluents of the Adraskand, the Farah Rud, and the Helmund, all of which have the same bourne in the Seistan depression. High up between the Farah Rud and the Helmund affluents isolated rugged peaks and short ranges crease and crumple the surface of the inhospitable land of the Hazaras, who occupy all the highest of the uplands and all the sources of the streams, a hardy, handy race of Mongols, living in wild seclusion, but proving themselves to be one of the most useful communities amongst the many in Afghanistan. We have some of them as sepoys in the Indian Army. Lower down in the same river basins, where the gentle grass-covered valleys sweep up to the crests of the hills, cultivation becomes possible. Here flocks of sheep dot the hill-sides, and the land is open and free; but there are still isolated and detached ribs of rocky eminencerising to 11,000 and 12,000 feet, maintaining the mountainous character of the scenery, and rivers are still locked in the embrace of occasional gorges which admit of no passing by. This is the land of that very ancient people, the Taimanis.
The fierce and lawless Firozkohis live in the Murghab basin on the plateau north of the Hari Rud, the Jamshidis to the west of them in the milder climate of the lower hills, into which the plateau subsides.
Whilst we are chiefly concerned in tracing out the mediæval commercial routes of Afghanistan, we may briefly summarize the events which prove that those traversed between Herat and the central kingdoms were important routes, worn smooth by the feet of armies as well as by the tread of pack-laden khafilas. They are still very rough and they present solid difficulties here and there, but in the main they are passable commercial roads, although little commerce wends its way about them now.
In the Middle Ages the Kingdom of Ghur included the Herat valley as far as Khwaja Chist above Obeh in the valley of the Hari Rud, as well as all the hill country to the south-east. About the earliest mention of Ghur by any traveller is that of Ibn Haukel, who speaks of Jebel al Ghur, and talks of plains, ring-fenced with mountains, fruitful in cattle and crops, and inhabited by infidels (i.e.non-Mussulmans). The later history of Ghur is inextricably intertwined with that of Ghazni.
Mahmud of Ghazni frequently invaded the hills of Ghur which lay to the west of him, but never made any practical impression on the Ghuri tribespeople. In 1020, however, Mahomedans conquered Ghur effectually from Herat. About a century later (this is after the time of Idrisi, whose records we are following) a member of the ruling Ghuri family (Shansabi) was recognized as lord of Ghur, and it was one of his sons (Alauddin) who inflicted such terrible reprisals on Ghazni when he sacked and destroyed that city and its people. It was about this time (according to some authorities) that the kingdom of Bamian was founded by another member of the same family; but we find Bamian distinctly recognized as a separate kingdom by Idrisi a century or so earlier. From 1174 to 1214 Bamian was the seat of government of a branch of this family ruling all Tokharistan (Turkistan), during which period Seistan and Herat were certainly tributary to Ghur. Ghur then became so powerful, that it was said that prayers in the name of the Ghuri were read from uttermost India to Persia, and from the Oxus to Hormuz.
In 1214 Ghur was reduced first by Mahomedans from Khwarezm (Khiva), and shortly afterwards by Chenghis Khan and his Mongol hosts. About the middle of the thirteenth century, however, a recrudescence of power appeared under the Kurt (or Tajik) dynasty subject to the supreme government of the Mongols. Seistan, Kabul, and Tirah werethen ruled from Herat as the capital of Ghur. Timur finally broke up Herat and Ghur in 1383, since which time its history has been as obscure as the geography of the region which surrounded it. Such in brief is the stormy tale of Ghur, and it leads to one or two interesting deductions. There was evidently constant and ready communication with Herat, Bamian, and Ghazni. The capital of Ghur must have been an important town, situated in a fertile and fairly populous district, which, although it was mountainous, yet enjoyed an excellent climate. It must have been a military centre too, with fortresses and places of defence. During its later history it is clear that Ghur was often governed from Herat, but in earlier mediæval days Ghur possessed a distinct capital and a separate entity amongst Afghan kingdoms, and was able to hold its own against even so powerful an adversary as Mahmud of Ghazni, whilst its communications were with Bamian on the north-east rather than with Kabul, which was then regarded as an "Indian" city. We can at any rate trace no record of a direct route between Ghur and Kabul.
In the twelfth century we read that the capital of Ghur was known as Firozkohi, which name (says Yule) was probably appropriated by the nomad Aimak tribe now called Firozkohi; but within the limits of what is now recognized as the habitat of the Firozkohi (i.e.the plateau which forms the basin of the Upper Murghab), it is impossible to find anyplace which would answer to what we know of the general condition of the surroundings and climate of the capital of Ghur, and which would justify a claim to be considered a position of commanding eminence. The altitude of the Upper Murghab branches is not more than 6000 to 7000 feet above sea-level, at which height the climate certainly admits of agriculture, but no place that has been visited, nor indeed any position in the valleys of the Upper Murghab affluents, corresponds in any way to what we are told of this capital.
If we look for the best modern lines of communication through Central Afghanistan we shall certainly find that they correspond with mediæval routes, fitting themselves to the conformation of the country. Central Afghanistan is open to invasion from the north, west, and south, but not directly from the east. The invasion of Ghur from Ghazni, for instance, must have been directed by Kalat-i-Gilzai, Kariut, and Musa Kila (in Zamindawar), to Yaman, which lies a little to the east of Ghur (or Taiwara). So far as we know there are no passes leading due west from Ghazni to the heart of the Taimani country.
From the south the Helmund and its affluents offer several openings into the heart of the Hazara highlands to the east of Taimani land, amidst the great rocky peaks of which the positions were fixed from stations on the Band-i-Baian. But there is no certain information about the inhabited centresof Hazara population; and from what we know of that desolate region of winter snow and wind, there never could have been anything to tempt an invader, nor would any sound commercial traveller have dreamt of passing that way from Seistan to Bamian and Kabul. The idea that Alexander ever took an army up the Helmund valley, and over the Bamian passes, must be regarded as most improbable in spite of the description of Quintus Curtius, who undoubtedly describes a route which presented more difficulties than are quite appropriate to the regular Kandahar to Kabul road. On the other hand, from Seistan by the Farah Rud there is a route which is open to wheeled traffic all the way to Daolatyar on the upper Hari Rud. Daolatyar may be regarded as the focus of several routes trending north-eastward from Seistan, with the ultimate objective of Bamian and the populous valleys of Ghur.
One of the chief affluents of the Farah Rud is now known as the Ghur, and we need look no farther than this valley for the central interest of the Ghur kingdom, although the exact position of the capital may still be open to discussion. Between the Tagao Ghur and the Farah Rud are the Park Mountains, which are almost Himalayan in general characteristics and beauty, with delightful valleys and open spaces, terraced fields, well-built two-storied wooden houses, pretty villages, orchards with an abundance of walnuts and vines trailing over the trees; the Ghur valley itself being broad and open with a clear riverof sweet water in its midst. This is near its junction with the Farah Rud. Above this, for a space, the valley narrows to a gorge and there is no passing along it, whilst above the gorge again it becomes wide, cultivated, and well populated, and this is where the Taimani headquarters of Taiwara are found. Taiwara is locally known as Ghur, and may be absolutely on the site of the ancient capital, for there are ruins enough to support the theory. Beyond an intervening band of hills to the south are two valleys full of cultivation and trees, wherein are two important places, Nili and Zarni, which likewise boast of extensive ruins, whilst at Jam Kala, hard by, there is perched on a high spur above the road with only one approach, a remarkable stone-built fort. Yaman, to the east of Taiwara, in the Helmund drainage, is a permanent Taimani village. Here also are very ancient ruins, and the people say that they date from the time of Moses. At that time they say that cups were buried with the dead, one at the head and one at the foot of the corpse. Our native surveyor Imám Sharif saw one of these cups with an inscription on it, but was unable to secure the relic.
Nili and Zarni are in direct connection with Farah, with no inconvenient break in the comparatively easy line of communication; and they all (including Taiwara) are in direct communication with Herat, by a good khafila route (i.e.good for camels). But the routes differ widely, that fromHerat to Taiwara by Farsi being more direct, whilst the route from Herat to Zarni by Parjuman (which is well kept up between these two places) passes well to the south. All these places, again, are connected with the Hari Rud valley at Khwaja Chist (the Ghur frontier) by a good passable high-road, which first crosses the hills between Zarni and Taiwara, then passes under the shadow of a remarkable mountain called Chalapdalan, or Chahil Abdal (12,700 feet high—about which many mysterious traditions still hover), over the Burma Pass into the Farah Rud drainage, thence over another pass into the valleys of the Tagao Ishlan, and finally over the Band-i-Baian into the Hari Rud valley at Khwaja Chist.
This is the route described by Idrisi as connecting Ghur with Herat, as we shall see. The Ghur district is linked up with Daolatyar and Bamian by the Farah Rud line of approach, or by a route, described as good, which runs east into the Hazara highlands, and then follows the Helmund. The latter is very high. There is therefore absolutely no difficulty in traversing these Taimani mountain regions in almost any direction, and the facility for movement, combined with the beauty and fertility of the country, all point unmistakably to Taiwara and its neighbourhood as the seat of the Ghuri dynasty of the Afghan kings.
The picturesque characteristics of Ghur extend southward to Zamindawar on its southern frontier,the valleys of the Helmund, the Arghandab, the Tarnak, and Arghastan—this is a land of open, rolling watersheds, treeless, but covered with grass and flowers in spring, and crowned with rocky peaks and ridges of rugged grandeur alternating with the rich beauty of pastoral fields. The summer of their existence is in curious contrast to the stern winter of the storm-swept highlands above them, or the dreary expanse of drab sand-dusted desert below. The route upstream to the backbone of the mountains, and so over the divide to the kingdom of Bamian, was once a well-trodden route.
Since so many routes converge on Daolatyar at the head of the Hari Rud valley, one would naturally look for Daolatyar to figure in mediæval geography as an important centre. It is not easy, however, to identify any of the places mentioned by Idrisi as representing this particular focus of highland routes. Between Ghur and Herat, or between Ghur and Ghazni, the difficulty lies in the number and extent of populous towns, any one of which may represent an ancient site, to say nothing of ruins innumerable. Between Taiwara and Herat we get no information from Idrisi till we reach Khwaja Chist on the frontier. He merely mentions the existence of a khafila road, and then he counts seven days' journey between Khwaja Chist and Herat, reckoning the first as "short."
The names of the halting-places between Khwaja Chist and Herat are Housab, Auca, Marabad, Astarabad, Bajitan (or Najitan), and Nachan. Auca I have no hesitation in identifying with Obeh. There is a large village at Marwa which might possibly represent Marabad, and Naisan would correspond in distance with Nachan, but this is mere guesswork; to identify the others is impossible, without further examination than was undertaken when surveying the ground.
The story of the commerce of Central Asia, which centred itself in Herat in the days of Arab supremacy, has a strong claim on the student of Eastern geography, for it is only through the itineraries of these wandering Semetic merchants and travellers that we can arrive at any estimation of the peculiar phase of civilization which existed in Asia in the mediæval centuries of our era; a period at which there is good reason to suppose that civilization was as much advanced in the East as in the West. It is not the professional explorers, nor yet the missionaries (great as are their services to geography), who have opened up to us a knowledge of the world's highways and byways sufficient to lead to general map illustration of its ancient continents, so much as the everlasting pushing out of trade investigations in order to obtain the mastery of the road to wealth.
India and its glittering fame has much to answer for, but India (that is to say, the India we know,the peninsula of India) was so much more get-at-able by sea than by land even in the early days of navigation, that we do not learn so much about the passes through the mountains into India as the way of the ships at sea, and the coast ports which they visited. According to certain Arab writers large companies of Arabs settled in the borderland and coasts of India from the very earliest days. Indeed, there are evidences of their existence in Makran long before the days of Alexander; but there is very little evidence of any overland approach to India across the Indus. Hindustan, to the mediæval Arab, commenced at the Hindu Kush, and Kabul and Ghazni were "Indian" frontier towns; and the invasions and conquests of India dating back to Assyrian times include no more than the Indus basin, and were not concerned with anything farther south. The Indus, with its flanking line of waterless desert, was ever a most effectual geographical barrier.
The Arabs entered India and occupied the Indus valley through Makran, and throughout their writings we find, strangely, little reference to any of the Indian frontier passes which we now know so well. But in the north and north-west of Afghanistan, in the Seistan and the Oxus regions, they were thoroughly at home both as traders and travellers; and with the assistance of their records we can make out a very fair idea of the general network of traffic which covered High Asia. Thedestroying hordes of the subsequent Mongol invasions, and the everlasting raids of Turkmans and Persians on the border, have clean wiped out the greater number of the towns and cities mentioned by them, and the map is now full of comparatively modern Turkish and Persian names which give no indication whatever of ancient occupation. There are, nevertheless, some points of unmistakable identity, and from these we can work round to conclusions which justify us in piecing together the old route-map of Northern Afghanistan to a certain extent. This is not unimportant even to modern geographers. The roads of the old khafila travellers may again be the roads of modern progress. We know, at any rate, that the Arabs of 1000 years ago were much the same as the Arabs of to-day in their manners and methods. Their routes were camel routes, not horse routes, and their day's journey was as far as a camel could go in a day, which was far in the wider and more waterless spaces of desert or uninhabited country, and very much shorter when convenient halting-places occurred. These Arab itineraries are bare enumeration of place-names and approximate distances. As for any description of the nature of the road or the scenery, or any indication of altitude (which they possibly had no means of judging), there is not a trace of it; and the difficulties of transliteration in place-names are so great as to leave identification generally a matter of mere guesswork.
One of the most interesting geographical centres from which to take off is Herat, and it may be instructive to note what is said about Herat itself and its connections with the Oxus and Seistan. Herat, says Idrisi, is "great and flourishing, it is defended inside by a citadel, and is surrounded outside by 'faubourgs.' It has many gates of wood clamped with iron, with the exception of the Babsari gate, which is entirely of iron. The Grand Mosque of the town is in the midst of the bazaars.... Herat is the central point between Khorasan, Seistan, and Fars." Ibn Haukel (tenth century) mentions a gate called the Darwaza Kushk, which is evidence that Kushk was of importance in those days, though no separate mention is made of that place; and he adds that the iron gate was the Balkh gate, and was in the midst of the city. The strategical value of the position was clearly recognized.
That grand edifice, the Mosalla, with its mosques and minars, which stood outside the walls of Herat and was the glory of the town in 1883 (when it was destroyed in the interests of military defence), had no previous existence in any other form than that which was given it when it was built in the twelfth century.
Both Ibn Haukel and Idrisi mention a mountain about six miles from Herat, from which stone was taken for paving (or mill-stones), where there was neither grass nor wood, but where was a place (inIbn Haukel's time, but not mentioned by Idrisi) "inhabited, called Sakah, with a temple or Church of Christians." Idrisi says this mountain was "on the road to Balkh, in the direction of Asfaran." This would seem to indicate that Asfaran, "on the road to Balkh," must be Parana (or Parwana), an important position about a day's march north of Herat. Ibn Haukel says nothing about the road to Balkh, which can only be northward from Herat, but merely mentions that the mountain was on the desert or uncultivated side of Herat, where was a river which had to be crossed by a bridge. This could only besouthof Herat. Asfaran is also stated to be on the road toSeistanand to have had four places dependent on it, one of which was Adraskand; and the route to Asfaran from Herat is further described as three days' journey (Idrisi). Ibn Haukel also describes Asfaran as possessing four dependent towns, and places it between Farah and Herat, orsouthof Herat. As Adraskand[6]is a well-known place between Herat and Farah, we must assume that this is either another Asfaran, or that Idrisi has made a mistake in copying Ibn Haukel. It might possibly be represented byParah, twenty-five miles south-west of Herat, although the limited area of cultivable ground around renders this unlikely. Subzawar would indicate a far more promising position for an important trade centre such as Asfaran must have been, and would accord better with the three days' journey from Herat of Idrisi, or the itinerary from Farah given by Ibn Haukel, while the extensive ruins around testify to its antiquity. Asfaran was almost certainly Subzawar.
Considering the interest which may once again surround the question of communications from Herat to India, it may be useful to point out that the route connecting Farah with Herat 1000 years ago remains apparently unchanged. The bridge called the Pul-i-Malun, over the Hari Rud, must have been in existence then, and there was another bridge over the Farah River one day's march below Farah, on the highway between Herat and Seistan. To the west of Herat, on the ruin-strewn road to Sarakhs, we have one or two interesting geographical propositions.
Idrisi mentions a place possessing considerable local importance "before Herat had become what it is now," about 9 miles west of Herat, called Kharachanabad. This can easily be recognized in the modern Khardozan, a walled but very ancient town, which is about 8½ miles distant. Between it and the walls of the city there is now no place of importance, nor does it appearlikely, for local reasons, that there ever could have been any. Another place, called Bousik, or Boushinj (Pousheng, according to Ibn Haukel), is said to be half the size of Sarakhs, built on the flat plain 6 miles distant from the mountains, surrounded with walls and a ditch, with brick houses, and inhabitants who were commercial, rich, and prosperous, and "who drink the water of the river that runs to Sarakhs." This indicates a site on the banks of the Hari Rud. The only modern place of importance which answers this description is the ancient town of Zindajan, which is about 6 miles from the mountains, and which (according to Ferrier) still bears the name of Foosheng. This name, however, was not recognized by the Afghan Boundary Commission. "To the west of Bousik are Kharkerde and Jerkere. One reckons two days' journey to this last town, which is well populated, smaller than Kuseri, but where there is plenty of water and cultivation. From Jerkere to Kharkerde is two days' journey." These two places are obviously on the road to Nishapur. There is an ancient "haoz," or tank, below the isolated hill of Sangiduktar, near the Persian frontier, which might well represent what is left of Jerkere, and Kharkerde lies beyond it, on the road to Rue Khaf (itself a very ancient site, probably representing Rudan), near Karat. Another place which has a very ancient and troubled history is Ghurian, about thirteen miles west of Zindajan.This is readily identified as the Koure of Idrisi, which is described as twelve miles from Bousik, on the left of the high-road westward, and about three miles from it.
This corresponds exactly with Ghurian, and proves that the high-road has retained its position through ages. Koure is described as an important town, but there is no mention of walls or defences. Another place, second only in importance to Bousik, is Kouseri. It is in fact said to be equal to Bousik, and to possess "running water and gardens." There can be little doubt that this is Kuhsan (or Kusan), one of the most important towns of the Herat valley.
This great high-road, intersecting the plain from the north-west gate of the city, is a pleasant enough road in the spring and summer months. For a space it runs singularly free from crowded villages and close cultivation, and the tread of a horse's hoof is amongst low-growing flowers of the plain, a dwarf yellow rose with maroon centre being the most prominent. Then, as one skirts the Kaibar River as it runs to a junction with the Hari Rud from the northern hills, cultivation thickens and villages increase.
The road next hugs the Hari Rud, and, passing the high-walled town of Zindajan to the south, runs, white and even and hard, with the scarlet and purple of poppies and thistles fringing it, between long gravel slopes of open dasht andthe twin-peaked ridge of Doshak, to Rozanak and Kuhsan. Kuhsan is a little to the south of the Kaman-i-Bihist. It was here that the British Commission of the Russo-Afghan Boundary gathered in the late autumn of 1884, one half from England and the other half from India. The drab squares of the cultivated plain were bare then, in November, and the poplars on the banks of the river were scattering yellow leaves to the blasts of the bitter north-west winds of autumn which sweep through Khorasan and Seistan, making of life a daily burden. But there came a marvellous change in the spring-time, when the world was scarlet and green below and blue above; when the sand-grouse began to chatter through the clear sky; then Kaman-i-Bihist (the bow of Paradise) justified its name. The old Arab of the trading days who wandered northward to Sarakhs must have loved this place.
Stretching Sarakhs-ward are the hills, rocky and broken along the river edge, but gradually giving place eastward to easy rounded slopes, softened by rain and snow, and washed into smooth spurs with treacherous waterways between which become quagmires under the influence of a north-western "shamshir." The extraordinary effect of denudation which yearly results from the heavy rain-storms which are so frequent in spring and early summer in these hills must have absolutely changed their outlines during the centuries which have elapsed since theSemitic trader trod them. A summer storm-cloud charged with electricity may burst on their summits, and the whole surface of the slopes at once becomes soft and pulpy. Mud avalanches start on the steeper grades and carry down thousands of tons of slimy detritus in a crawling mass, and spread it out in fans at their feet. It is not safe to say that the modern passes of the Paropamisus north of Herat—the Ardewan and the Babar—were the passes of mediæval commerce, although the Ardewan is marked by certain wells and ruined caravanserais which show that it has long been used. It seems possible that these passes may have shifted their positions more than once. There was undoubtedly a well-trodden route from Bousik, which carried the traveller more directly to Sarakhs than would the Ardewan or even the Chashma Sabz Pass. This road followed the river more closely than any railway ever will. It turned the river gorge to the east, and probably passed through the hills by the Karez Ilias route, which runs almost due north to Sarakhs. The only certain indication which we can find in Idrisi is the statement that the "silver hill" (i.e.the hill of the silver mine) is on the road from Herat to Sarakhs. The Simkoh (silver hill) is still a well-known feature in the broken range of the Paropamisus, near that route. But it is difficult after centuries of disturbing forces, natural and artificial, to identify the sites of many of the townsand markets mentioned by Idrisi, who places Badghis to the west of Bousik, and gives the "silver hill" as one of its "dependencies." There were two considerable towns, Kua (or Kau) and Kawakir, said to have been near the silver hill, and there is mention of a place called Kilrin in this neighbourhood. Probably the ruins at Gulran represent the latter, but Kua and Kawakir are not identified. Gulran was one of the most fascinating camps of the Afghan Boundary Commission. On the open grass slopes stretching in gentle grades northward, bordered by the line of red Paropamisan cliffs to the south and west and by the open desert stretching to Merv on the north, it was, during one or two early months of the year, quite an ideal camping-ground.
It was here that the wild asses of the mountains made a raid on the humble four-footed followers of the Commission, and signified their extreme disgust at the free use which was made of their feeding-grounds; thus witnessing to the condition of primeval simplicity into which that once populous district had subsided after centuries of border raid and insecurity. The remains of an old karez, or underground irrigation channel, not far north of Gulran, testified to a former condition of cultivation and prosperity.
From Gulran (which is connected with the Herat plains directly by the pass called Chashma Sabz) roads stretch northwards and north-eastwards,without obstacle, to the open Turkistan plains, where ancient sites abound. Idrisi's indications, however, are but a very uncertain foundation for identifying most of them. The "dependencies" of Badghis are said to be Kua, Kughanabad, Bast, Jadwa, Kalawun, and Dehertan, the last place being built on a hill having neither vegetation nor gardens; but "lead is found there, and a small stream."
The great trade centres of Turkistan, north of the Paropamisus, in mediæval days were undoubtedly near Panjdeh, at the confluence of the Kushk and Murghab rivers, and at Merv-el-Rud, or Maruchak. Two or three obvious routes lead from the passes above Kaman-i-Bihist, or above Herat, to Panjdeh and Maruchak. One is indicated by the drainage of the Kushk River, and the other by that of the Kashan, which is more or less parallel to the Kushk to the east of it, with desolate Chol country in between. From Herat the most direct route to Panjdeh and Merv is by the Babar Pass, or by Korokh, the Zirmast Pass, and Naratu. Korokh (Karuj) is mentioned both by Ibn Haukel and Idrisi as being situated three marches from Herat, surrounded by entrenchments, and in the "gorge of mountains," with gardens and orchards and vines. The Korokh of to-day is between the mountains, but only some twenty-five miles from Herat. This modern Korokh has, however, many evidences of great antiquity, and it is on the high-road to animportant group of passes leading past Naratu to Bala Murghab and Maruchak. The most remarkable feature about Korokh is a grove of pine trees closely resembling the "stone" pine of Italy, which mass themselves into a dark blotch on the landscape and mark Korokh in this treeless country most conspicuously. There are no other trees of the same sort to be found now in this part of Asia, but I was told that they once were abundant in the Herat valley, which renders it possible that the "arar" trees, mentioned by Ibn Haukel as a peculiar source of revenue to Bousik, may have been of this species. Naratu, again, is very ancient, and its position among the hills (for it is a hill-fortress) seems to identify it with Dahertan. Undoubtedly this was one of the most important of the old routes northward, and it is a route of which account should be taken to-day.