'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎268] (307/714)

skeletons for eighteen miles. A stretch of several miles across the
level brought us to the station of Zafarani. There was once a
magnificent caravanserai A roadside inn providing accommodation for caravans (groups of travellers). here, reported to be the largest in Persia.
The Persians, eager for a fantastic interpretation wherever it can
be suggested, explain the title (yellow or saffron) by a legend of a
certain rich merchant who, when building the structure, mixed
with the bricks some saffron which lie had bought out of charity
from a poor man, and which was forthwith converted by a miracle
into gold dust, that is supposed to have glittered in the bricks ever
afterwards. 1 The building, which is said once to have contained
1,700 rooms, besides baths, shops, and gardens (all of which have
disappeared), has been attributed by some travellers to Shah Abbas.
But Khanikoff very appositely pointed out that the style and the
inscriptions in the Kufic character alike referred it to the Arab
pt i iod, and he conjecturally placed its foundation in the reign of
the Seljuk Malek fehah. Upon its ruins a fine modern caravanserai A roadside inn providing accommodation for caravans (groups of travellers).
was built by the public-spirited Sadr Azem before mentioned. From
Zafarani the road leads across the Sebzewar plain at no great dis
tance from the mountains on the north, until the city of that name
is reached. The entire town, whose central street is a very long
coveied bazaar (newly constructed when Conolly passed through in
1 830 )' must 1)6 traversed before we arrive at the chapar-Jchaneh,
close to the western gate.
Sebzewar (i.e. green-having) is the capital of a district of some
fertility, which suffered terribly in the famine of 1871, and is only
Sebzewar 110w beginning to raise its head again. Before that year
the population of the city was estimated at 30,000. It
sank at once to less than 10,000, but is now said to have mounted
to 18,000. Ihe town is surrounded by the usual wall of mud
biicks, and on the north is commanded by a ruined ark or citadel on
a mound. The legendary foundation of Sebzewar, it is needless to
sa 3' 5 goes far back into the past, but its historical birth is more justly
attributed to the Seljuk dynasty, the style of whose architecture
can be detected in certain of its remains. Like most of its neigh
bours, it has been several times destroyed ; Timur completing in
1380 a.d . the operation which Mohammed Shah of Kharezm had
left imperfectly done. Whatever of prosperity it subsequently
regained was obliterated in true Afghan fashion by the Afghan
1 Different versions of this legend are related by Fraser, pp. 385-386; Ferrier,
pp. 102-103 ; and Eastwick, vol. ii. p. 180.
PERSIA