'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.' [‎13] (44/582)

TO KESRABAD, OR DASTAGHERD.
13
As this district had been celebrated in antiquity for its pastures
and its horses, I was inquisitive from those who had been all
over it as to what state the country was now in, and whether its
horses were still thought superior to all others* It appears that
the whole of the plain, from Boksye to the mountains, is possessed
by a tribe of Arabs, called the Beni Lam, who are thought to
have twenty thousand heads of families, and are all Sheeahs, like
the Persians. The extensive tract over which they roam is now
mostly desert, no doubt from the neglect of the canals by which
it was formerly watered : their horses, however, are still esteemed
as excellent, and inferior to none but those of the Nedjed Arabs
and the Turcomans.f
The whole of the tract from Bagdad to Shahraban is now
called Arudth-el-Cusa, from a tradition that it was once all
occupied either by that city or by numerous settlements dependent
on it.
At sunset, we all moved up to the terrace of the khan, to
pray, to sup, and to spread our beds in a cooler and purer air
than we could breathe below. The view from hence, where the
for they say that there had been here an hundred and sixty thousand horses that ran
at pasture up and down the country; but at the coming of Alexander there were only
sixty thousand. He encamped here for the space of thirty days. Diodorus Siculus, b. 17, c. 11.
* From the plains in which these horses were bred, it was a march of seven days to
Ecbatana. (Septimus deinde castris Ecbatana attigit Mediae caput.)— Freinshemius Supple
ment to Quintus Curtius, vol. ii. p. 547.
f In describing this district, Major Rennel says ; " Between Ghilanee and Kermanshah
are the celebrated pastures of the Nissean horses. This country of Media was the cradle
of the Persian power, for the Medes held the sovereignty of Asia previous to the Persians :
it produced a hardy race of men as well as horses. Nisseus was a district in Media,
remarkable for these last, as Ghilan is the name of the district still. The chariot of
Xerxes was drawn by these animals, and the sacred horses in the procession were
Nisaean (Polymnia 40). Alexander gave a Nisaean horse to Calanus, to carry him to the
funeral pile. The King of Partha sacrificed one to the Sun, when Apollonia of Tyana visited
his court, and Masistius rode a Nisaean horse at the decisive battle of Plataea. The Nisasan
pastures are spoken of in Diodorus, lib. 7, c. 2, and in Arrian, lib. 7.— See Rennel s IL'us-
tr at ions of the Geography of Herodotus, 4to. p. 268.