'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.' [‎218] (249/582)

2ig ISPAHAN.
number, the Haft Dest, or Eight Divisions. The view from hence
was on all sides charming; but on that where the building hung
over the stream of the Zeinderood, and commanded a view of
gardens, bridges, palaces, and moscjues, bounded only by the dis
tant mountains, the prospect bordered on enchantment. It would
be as vain as it would be endless, to enter into a detail of all that
we saw here : gardens, fountains, secluded walks, and ranges of
apartments, decorated in the richest, most varied, and pleasing
manner, were the prominent features of this establishment. There
were no large halls of state, as in the Royal Palaces ; but the rooms
were suited to the comfort of smaller parties than those which
swelled the pomp of the monarch in his more public banquets with
men. The style of decoration in the rooms was less gorgeous;
but the delicacy and harmony of colours in the painted devices,
and the lighter gilding of the domes, though more effeminate in
character, was scarcely less beautiful. Every one of these apart
ments had good fireplaces, on which the stain of the smoke still
remained; many of them had hollow work on their walls, executed
in the most tasteful designs, and intended, as we were told, to give
an echo to the voice of the singers, and the sounds of music, and
improve as well as prolong the tones of love and pleasure which
once reverberated here. Verses, names, and sentences, were writ
ten on these walls in the Armenian character, and were most pro
bably the work of such Georgian or Armenian females as had
been immured here among the slaves of the royal bed : these, with
many other traces of recent habitation, awakened feelings of a
mixed though painful nature. #
We were delighted with all that we had seen here, and went
from hence to another palace, similar in design and interior de-
* On the capture of Ispahan by the Affghans, Mahmood, their chief, resided in the palace
of Ferrahabad, where fifty of the best-born and most beautiful virgins of Julfa were sent to
him in their richest clothes.— Hist, of Persia, v. i. p. 630. It is not improbable that the
Armenian writing seen by me on the walls of this palace was from some of these impri
soned females.