'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎93] (126/714)

FROM ASHKABAD TO KUCIIAN
93
village of Imam Kuli, built, as are all these Persian mountain
villages, in tiers upon the hill side—a series of squalid mud terraces
pierced by low holes for doorways. The headman of the village
offered me his house, but I preferred the prospect of cold in a tent
to the certainty of fleas indoors. Here I was met by a messenger
from the Ilkhani The paramount chief of certain tribes in south west Iran. or Chief of Kuchan, whose capital I was to visit
on the morrow, and who had been apprised of my arrival. The
emissary, an old gentleman with white beard most imperfectly dyed
with henna, inquired at what hour I proposed to arrive at Kuchan,
as his master wished to give me a befitting reception outside the
town. I gave him the rendezvous at noon. He suggested that I
should spend an entire day at Imam Kuli—a solicitude on my
behalf which I found to be due to his own reluctance to make the
return journey to Kuchan with sufficient speed to anticipate my
arrival. I replied that the irresistible attractions of Kuchan drew
me on.
As I started at seven o'clock the next morning, a party of
pilgrims for Meshed, who had come from Resht, via Uzun Ada and
Zobaran to Ashkabad, 1 passed out of the village on donkey back in
Kuchan front of me, singing loudly in praise of Ali and Husein,
and other saints of the Shiah calendar. I followed the main road
out of the valley, and then struck off to the south-west, taking a short
cut over a rolling range of hills which constitute the watershed The boundary between adjacent drainage basins.
between the streams that drain north to the Atek and those that
drain south to Kuchan. In a ravine on the left could be discerned
the small villages of Kelat-i-Shah Mohammed, watered by a Jcanat
or underground aqueduct, and further on Kelat-i-Mullammamud
(Mullah Mahmud ?). There was no contrast of colour on the
barren hills, even though they now became lower and more
undulating, while their flanks had in parts been ploughed for
grain. The landscape might have been draped in lihaki, that
excellent but unlovely material with which we clothe our soldiers in
torrid climes. Zobaran (15 miles), though the name signifies plenty,
did not by its appearance betray that it enjoyed plenty of anything
but stones and dust. However, a tiny rill of clear water fed a
1 The Transcaspian Kail way is very largely used by Mussulman pilgrims of
both persuasions, making their way to or from the sacred shrines, lor the
Sunnis of Central Asia it supplies an agreeable abridgment of the long journey
to Mecca, and is equally serviceable for that to Kerbela and Nejef. By the
Persian Shiahs and the Mahometans of the West, it is enormously used on the
pilgrimage to the shrine of Imam Reza at Meshed.