'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎151] (186/714)

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MESHED
forcibly to expunge the Shiah faith, 1 yet often held his court at
Meshed, restored and beautified the sacred shrine, and built in the
city a tomb both foi himselt and for the son whom he had blinded
in a fit of jealous passion. After his death. Meshed remained in
the possession of his blind grandson, Shah Eukh, under whose
infirm rule its population, harried by almost yearly invasions of
the Uzbegs, sank from 60,000 to 20,000, until at the end of the
century he was deposed and tortured to death by the brutal eunuch
Agha Mohammed Khan Kajar, the founder of the reigning family
ot Persia. During the present century Meshed has several times
been in rebellion against the sovereign power, having inherited a
detestation of the Kajars, recurrent outbreaks of which have
necessitated more than one punitive expedition; but along with
the rest of the kingdom it has now passed in peaceful subjection
into the hands of Nasr-ed-Din.
Meshed is surrounded, as are all Oriental towns of any size, by
a mud wall with small towers at regular distances, and projecting
Size and bartizans at the angles. The wall was originally nine feet
plan of thick at the bottom and four feet thick at the top, besides
ie Llt> having a parapet one foot in thickness, but is now in a
state of utter disrepair. There was formerly a small ditch or
fausse-braye below the rampart, with a low parapet on the crest of
the counterscarp, and a broader ditch beyond. But the process
of decay has merged these structural features in a common ruin,
and in most parts they are not to be distinguished from each other.
The circumference of the walls has been variously calculated at
four, four and a half, and six miles ; but any calculation is difficult,
owing to the irregularity of the plan. 2 They are pierced by five
gates: the Bala Khiaban, or Upper Avenue, and the Pain Khiaban,
or Lower Avenue Gate, at the two ends of the main street; the
Naugan, Idgah, and Sarab. The ark or citadel, my visit to which
I shall presently relate, is situated on the south-west wall. 3
1 The attempted restoration of the Sunni creed by Nadir Shah was an act of
policy, intended to reunite the Mussulman world from Tabriz to Delhi under the
sceptre of a single monarch.
2 MacGregor's plan (vol. i. p. 284), which was made by Col. Dolmage, is the
only one that I know, but is not thoroughly accurate. Eastwick, in riding round
the walls and describing the plan of the city, seems, by some strange error, to
have reversed the points of the compass, turning north into south and east into
west.
3 For the geographical position of Meshed, vide a paper by Major T. H. Holdich
in the Proceedings of the R.G.S. (New Series), vol. vii. (1885) pp. 735-738.
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