'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎295] (336/714)

FROM MESHED TO TEHERAN 39,5
deserted budding with towers at the corner, and at the western exit-
are the remains of two old castles or towers. The place has evidenth-
been strongly fortified and guarded, according to the standards of an
age that knew no guns ; and this very fact tends to sustain the likeli-
0 of lts having been the recognised mountain passage in a
i\goikm a}. 1' urthermore, the distance from Rhey—which is about
forty miles—corresponds sufficiently with the reckoning of the class-
ical writers,
^ On the other hand, there remain the considerations, which I feel
it impossible to ignore, that the pass itself does not. in its material
Hostile feat in es, in the least justify the description of pylce, or
considera. gates, or the statement of Pliny that it was artificially
fashioned, and so narrow in parts as only to admit a cart •
that, leading, as it does, through a quite subordinate spur of the
mam range, it would be surprising that it should have attained a
celebrity so tai in excess ot other, and much more remarkable,
defiles; and, above all, that, as it does not conduct directly to the
Caspian, but leaves the main range of the Elburz still to be pierced,
thei e appears to be no sufficient reason for its being known as the
Caspian Gates. 1 The first, however, of these difficulties is to some
extent met and obviated by the suggestion of Sir H. Rawlinson—
whose acquaintance with the orography of Persia is unrivalled—that
the real Caspije Fylse are not the Sirdara Pass, but a defile in the
, same range a few miles to the north, known as the Teng-i-Suluk,
which he saw and examined in 1835, and whose physical charac
teristics, although little known, correspond with the accounts of the
classical authorities, besides containing a shorter route between
Rhages and the Plain of Khar.
I cannot help thinking, indeed, that some such solution must
be accepted, or at least anticipated, by those who attach a becoming
The real value to the statements of the Greek and Roman writers,
gateb Nor can the very important fact be left out of sight, that
European travellers, passing northwards from Isfahan to Mazan-
deran, to the Court of Abbas the Great at Ferahabad or Ashraf, on
the Caspian, less than 300 years ago, have left descriptions of the
defile or defiles by which they penetrated the Elburz in this very
This difficulty may, perhaps, be met by supposing that the pass, like the
Caspian Sea itself, took its name from the tribe of the Caspii, of whom Strabo
constantly speaks, and who resided in the neighbourhood. Their name is con
ceivably preserved in the district of Jasp, west of Kashan.