'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.' [‎213] (244/582)

VISIT TO THE GOVERNOR OF THE CITY.
213
and privacy to examine the inscriptions, their precise date was
unknown to me. All, however, concurred in the tradition, that
this quarter was by far the most ancient of any now included
within the limits of Ispahan; and every appearance indeed sup
ported this belief. #
We reached the palace of the Governor at the hour of the
morning divan, and the outermost courts were crowded with the
horses and servants of those who attended it. After passing
through some agreeable gardens, fountained squares, and dark
passages, we at length reached the room of state. There were
assembled here a considerable number of persons of distinction, all
of whom rose at our entering; and the Governor himself, who
placed me immediately beside him on his left hand, pointed to a
stick with which he was obliged to support himself while walking,
as an apology for his not showing me that mark of respect which
he acknowledged as my due. There was in all this, an excess of
honourable distinction which I could not understand, and which I
still believed must have been destined for another, though all my
enquiries led to no satisfactory explanation on that point.
The room in which we sat, opened on a square court, in which
were garden-beds, flowers, rows of trees, and overflowing foun
tains filled with trout. From this apartment led a suite of others
behind it, all decorated in the richest way, with mirrors, paintings,
and gold and enamelled works, in the Persian style, and of the
age of the splendid Shah Abbas. The furniture of these rooms,
* Ispahan is mentioned as early as the age of Kai Kaoos; but of this there is no date,
though it must have been much before the period assigned to it by Abulfeda, who speaks of
it as being increased by the settlement of Mohammedans among the Jews of Yahoudia, near
Gajjong, as noted in Rennell's Illustrations of the Geography of Herodotus.t— of Persia,
vol. i. p. 35.
t The term " Turk" is applied, by the author of a Persian work, to a Tartar Pnnce, though it is in
describing an event which must have taken place long before the tribe called Turks came into that pait of iar
tary; so that the name of Ispahan may be so used also.—Vol. i. p. 61.
The description of the taking of Ispahan by Timour the Tartar, and the dreadful massacre there, is very
strikingly given in the same work.—Vol. i. p. 460.