'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎263] (302/714)

FROM MESHED TO TEHERAN 263
their cruelty is said by a credible historian not to have been filled
until they had slain 1,740,000 persons, and razed the city so com
pletely to the ground that a horse could ride over the site without
stumbling. Fifty years later, Nishapur was rebuilt, but it would
be tedious to relate the vicissitudes of misery through which it
has since passed. Mongols, Tartars, Turkomans, and Afghans in
turn made it their prey, and gradually reduced it to what in the
eighteenth century was reported to be one vast ruin. Upon the
death of Nadir Shah in 1747 it held out against Ahmed Abdali
the Afghan; but after a six months' siege was taken by him under
circumstances which recalled, if they did not equal, the atrocities of
Jenghiz Khan. The conqueror, however, was as prudent as he
was successful. He restored as ruler to the city the Turkish
chieftain. Abbas Kuli Khan, who had resisted him, but whom he
learnt to respect, and whose sister he married. The vassal repaid
the compliment by life-long loyalty, and by an energetic restora
tion and adornment of the town. In the time of his successor, in
1796, Nishapur passed tranquilly into the hands of the Kajar
usurper, Agha Mohammed Khan, and has ever since remained an
appanage of the Persian crown. Fraser in 1821 computed its
population as under 5,000, Conolly in 1830 said 8,000, Sir F.
Goldsmid in 1872 gave the same figure; the latest ' estimate is
10,000, which, with the growth that might be expected in a long
period of peace, ought not to be excessive.
. r lo a great many English readers Nishapur will perhaps be
known only as the last resting-place of the Persian astronomer-poet
Tomb of Omai el Khayam (i.e. the tent-maker), whose name and
Khayam WOrks liave been ren dered familiar to the present genera
tion by the masterly paraphrase of Fitzgerald, and by the
translations or adaptations of many inferior bards. I remember
reading in the pieface of one of these latter the plaintive request
that someone would take the volume and cast it as an offering at
Nishapur before the poet's tomb. Had I possessed it, I should
certainly have gratified the writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. 's petition, at the same time that
I disencumbered myself of useless baggage by making the offering,
although I feai that the condition of Omar's grave would have
greatly shocked his Fnglish admirers. It stands in a neglected
garden, which once contained flower-beds and rivulets of water, but
is now a waste of weeds. There is no inscription to mark the poet's
name or fame; and it is to be feared that the modern Persians are