'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.' [‎225] (256/582)

VISIT TO THE MOSQUES AND COLLEGES. £25
there are any students, except those of the regular priesthood.
It was an exceedingly neat establishment, consisting of ranges of
chambers around the interior of an open square court, like the
arrangement of a caravansera, but of a better kind. The court
itself was laid out in fountains and canals, bordered by avenues of
trees, and divided by beds of flowers. In this court, stood the
tomb of Tekeea Mir Abul-Cassim Fendereski, an Arab of great
learning and celebrity, and the translator of Plato, Aristotle, and
other Greek philosophers, into his own tongue. The tomb itself
was of plain marble, simply inscribed in Arabic characters on a
small tablet at the head; a spreading tree overshadowed it by its
branches ; and leaning against its trunk, which overhung the
tomb, was a small framed and glazed tablet, on which was beau
tifully written, on paper, an Arabic ode, in praise of the deceased,
in a style of great eloquence; but the author of which had also
followed the fate of the learned subject of his eulogy.
We reposed beside this tomb for half an hour, and listened to
the moralizing strains of the Dervish Ismael, who urged every
thing he either heard, or felt, or saw, or even imagined, in
support of his favourite maxim, that Pleasure was the only Good;
and that we should therefore eat and drink, since to-morrow we
die; and if he was eloquent on ordinary occasions, he was addi
tionally so on the one that now presented him with so fine an illus
tration of that which he called the folly of human wisdom. A
young student of about eighteen, who saluted us as he passed,
and who, from our manner of returning it, joined us where we sat?
aided the sententious declamations of the Dervish by some fine
quotations from the very writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. whose ashes we had come to
venerate; and we found, from a prolonged conversation with this
lad, that, young as he was, he was deeply versed in the doctrines
of Soofeeism, and was fast verging into that scepticism, which
is almost the constant result, in these countries, of premature
and self-directed studies of a metaphysical cast.
From hence we went to the more splendid Medresse of Ahmed
2 G