'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎286] (327/714)

PERSIA
we rode through the ruins of a deserted city, Bostajan. A mom
sorrowful spectacle than an abandoned town of mud cannot be
conceived. The buildings, and roofs, and walls gradually waste
away into indistinguishable heaps of clay ; but, so compact and solid
do these become in the process, that they last for scores, and some
times for hundreds, of years. Nor is it fair to assume that, along
with each deserted city or site, its inhabitants, as an item in the
population, have been wiped off the face of the earth. Were such
the case, one might be led to infer that Persia, which is now a5
sparsely peopled as Palestine, was once as densely crowded as China.
] believe that this would be a false inference. Just as each great
Persian monarch or founder of a dynasty, from Cyrus downwards,
has shifted the capital and seat of government, so as to associate
a fresh glory with his name, so has each petty governor or chief
tain striven to emulate his sovereign by a new urban plantation;
and, in a yet lower grade, each father of a family has thought to
better himself and to transcend his forerunners by erecting a new
abode. It is to this universal instinct, permeating every rank of
life, not less than to the ravages of famine, disease, and war, that
must be attributed the countless wasting skeletons of tenements
and cities that litter the soil of Persia.
From a distance of some miles the two minarets of Damghan,the
counterparts of that of Sebzewar, rise in view. They stand some
t - . way apart, in different quarters of the town. The better
Damghan 1 _ _
preserved of the two, which is mountable and has a
small turret of later date at the top, with a door for the muezzin,
is situated jnst off the main street of the town, and is in close
proximity to a mosque—not, indeed, that to which it was originallv
attached, but a comparatively modern structure. Like the minar
at Sebzewar, it is faced with bricks, so laid as to form geometrical
patterns on the circumference, and has, further, a band of Knfic
letters in high relief. The two minarets belong to the imamzadehs,
or tombs of two saints, named respectively Jafir and Kasim; and,
for an account of their shrines, as well of a third tomb raised over
a saint named Mohammed, the son of Ibrahim, and called Pir-i-
Alamdar, I cannot do better than refer my readers to the erudite
pages of Khanikoff. 1 Damghan, though a considerable place, even
1 Memoire, fa., pp. 74-75. Bassett (Zand of the Imams, p. 197) commits the
absurd mistake of saying that the minars are called Chehil Sutune and Maschide
Jam. ihe former name—i.e. ' forty pillars'—is a common descriptive epithet in