'Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia, including a journey from Bagdad by Mount Zagros, to Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana, researches in Ispahan and the ruins of Persepolis, and journey from thence by Shiraz and Shapoor to the sea-shore. Description of Bussorah, Bushire, Bahrein, Ormuz, and Muscat, narrative of an expedition against the pirates of the Persian Gulf, with illustrations of the voyage of Nearchus, and passage by the Arabian Sea to Bombay.' [‎5] (36/582)

to kesrabad, or dastagherd. 5
assembled without the gate, and preparing to load. As their
departure would be delayed, however, until muggrib, the hour
of prayer at sunset, we spread our carpets amidst the crowd, and
sat patiently down to await their movements.
I was accompanied thus far by Mr. Rich's Armenian dragoman,
and the Persian secretary of the Residency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, established in the provinces and regions considered part of, or under the influence of, British India. , who were charged to
see me safely off. The chiefs of the caravan were then introduced
to me; and as I was by far the best-dressed and best-mounted
individual of the whole company, excepting only those who were
of my own party, the Persians thought themselves sufficiently
honoured by sitting beside the Hadjee Aga, the " Sir Pilgrim," as
I was called, receiving with great respect my pipe and coffee
when offered to them, and enquiring earnestly about Egypt and
the City of the Prophet.
In all my journeys, I never remember to have seen such shabby,
old, infirm, ill-dressed, ill-equipped, and helpless persons as these
fifty or sixty pilgrims with whom I was going to set out on a road
acknowledged to be a dangerous one. They had all been absent
from Persia several months, on a pilgrimage to the tombs of Imam
Ali and Hossein; visiting also that of Imam Moosa, near Bagdad,
and of another Imam at Samarra, the city so celebrated in the
history of the Caliphs, and whose remains are still considerable
on the banks of the Tigris, two days' journey from hence.
None of them, however, had reached as far as Mecca. In the
journeys which they had already performed, they had most of
them been routed and plundered two or three times by the Arabs
of the Desert; and many of them had lost their companions by
fatigue and sickness. The numbers carried off in this way are
indeed considerable; for, of the retinue of an Indian widow and
her son, who came through Persia to Bussorah, twenty or thirty
had died on their way to Bagdad, by the river; and advices had
been received from Mecca, of the rest having been taken off on
the road across the Desert, and in the country of the Hedjaz itself.
It must require a degree of superstitious attachment to a