‘The Oriental geography of Ebn Haukal, an Arabian traveller of the tenth century’ [‎237] (290/388)

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( 237 )
iields in every quarter, so there are villas interspersed among the
green fields. And in all Khorasan and Maweralnahr there are
not any people more long-lived than those of Bokhara^
" It is said that in all the world there is not any place more
" delightful (or salubrious) than those three: one, the Soghd of
" Samarcand; another, the Rud Aileh; and the third, the Ghu-
" tah of Damascus Bat the Ghutah of Damascus is within
one farsang of barren and dry hills, without trees ; and it contains
many places which are desolate, and produce no verdure. " A
" fine prospect ought to be such as completely fills the eye, and
" nothing should be visible but sky and green f." The river
Aileh affords, for one farsang only, this kind of prospect; and
there is not, in the vicinity of it, any^ eminence from which one
can see beyond a farsang; and the verdant spot is either sur
rounded by or opposite to a dreary deserts But the walls, and
buildings, and cultivated plains of Bokhara, extend above thirteen
farsang by twelve farsang; and the c X j L w Soghd, for eight days
journey, is all delightful country, affording fine prospects, and
full of gardens,, and orchards, and villages, corn fields, and villas,
and running streams, reservoirs, and fountains, both on the right
hand and on the left.. You pass from corn fields into rich mea-
* To this passage the Tarikh Tah art alludes, in a chapter relating the Virgin Mary's,
flight from Jerusalem with Christ.—The original Persian is given in the Preface.
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