'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎535] (598/714)

^ at a11 ' Id mi
1 nf L„ j .. 1: -^
oment tlip ru
^tie oppositely'
* •» 3 COEttSEt,,
^ialprolotttf
'' ^ at is ffajtdii,
' in Persia,
at about six miesfe
^ of Mamliajij,
onsiannv OttDoluiB i|
Jdiisolntk Kii
or broken, but rati
average tluchesi i
il ffabscotin":. It is
pint, or greeiisli
lopper-coloural
lave seen boll
id East. Ikw®.
■ imir, or Toil) i
innijforierw^
osed'oftiisffl*
THE NORTH-WEST AND WESTERN PROVINCES 636
should have carried home with him at the close of his Persian
campaign. 1 The process of petrifaction bears a marked resemblance
to that which was in existence till the great eruption of a few years
ago at the Pink and White Terraces in New Zealand; and to that
which may still be seen at the Mammoth Hot Springs in the
Yellowstone Park, in North America, where the induration may
be observed through all its stages from a film like frosted sugar to
gleaming blocks of snow-white marble.
The neighbouring town of Maragha, which is now a nourishing
place with about 15,000 inhabitants, has, like many of its compeers
in Persia, played an eminent though almost forgotten
Maragha history. Here the enlightened Mongol prince,
Hulaku Khan, the grandson of Jenghiz Khan and brother of
Kublai Khan, returning from his conquest of Baghdad and over
throw of the Abbaside Khalifs, fixed his residence; here he drew
around him a distinguished body of philosophers, poets, and men
of science; and here in 1265 a.d . he died and was interred, on a
hill of the Shahi peninsula. 2 The fame of the city was, however,
chiefly due to the labours of his friend and counsellor, Nasr-ed-Din,
the greatest astronomer of the age, who erected on a hill to the west
of the city, where its foundations may still be traced, the observatory
which has preserved his name, and in which he composed his ' iables
of the Ilkhani The paramount chief of certain tribes in south west Iran. .'" Hulaku is now almost forgotten, and Maragha knows
another Nasr-ed-Din; but it is permissible to the student, as he passes
by, to add a stone to the fallen cairn of such illustrious names.
On the other or western side of the lake, and at a distance of
twelve miles from its shores, stands the city of h rumiah (shortened
by the Christians into Urmia or Urmi), in a plain that
Urumiah ^ deservedly f amous f or it s abounding fertility. 3 Framed
in the Kurdistan mountains, from which descend a multiplicity ot
perpetual streams, and planted, irrigated, or peopled to the lull
extent, it has been variously reported to contain 400, 300, and 200
villages (round numbers, which I take to be merely indicative of an
1 Since writing the above, I have come across the statement, as a matter of
fact, that Timur took back with him to Samarkand a large supply of the marble
of Azerbaijan.
2 His so-called grave at Maragha is probably the tomb of one of his wi\cs.
His mother was also buried there.
3 Vide a paper on the topography of the Urmi district by H. Kiepert, Zeit-
schrift d. Gesellsch.f. Erdli. z. Berlin, 1878, pp. 166-70 ; and Mrs. Bishop's descrip-