‘GAZETTEER OF PERSIA VOL. I Comprising the Provinces of ASTARÁBÁD, SHÁHRUD-BÚSTAN, KHÚRÁSÁN, AND SÍSTÁN’ [‎346r] (698/722)

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town the whole country is taken up with mulberry plantations for feeding
silkworms or else covered by fru.t orchards; peaches, apricots, cherries pears?
apples, nuts, almonds, and walnuts, being produced in great quantities’. No^
are the eueurbitiousmuts wanting; melons, water-melons, and cucumbers
are plentiful, cheap, and S ooi.—(GoUsmid, Bdlew , Stewart.)
TUftBAT-L-ISA KHAN—Lat. , Lone. ; Eutv.
stage in Khurasan,_about 40 miles from Sultanabad (Turshiz), on the road
to Mashhad .—[Husain Hi.)
TUKBAT-I-SHAIKH JAMI (Town)— Lat. 35° 14' 53 v , Long. 60° 36' 15"-
Elev. , ' [ Lentz ). ’
Atown in Khdrasan in the district of Jam, 91 miles on the road from
Mashhad to Herat, from which latter town it is 110 miles distant. It is
named after bhaikh Jam, a saint of repute, whose remains lie buried in a
beautiful garden. It was formerly of much importance; but in 1825 it
was plundered by Allah Kuli Khan of Khiva. ' It contains 1,000 houses,
and is the chief place of a district situated in the extreme frontier towards
Herat, and is surrounded by gardens and cultivation. About 2,300 families
of nomads are encamped near the mountains, 7 miles south of Turbat,
and pa) their taxes on horses. Ihe tomb of Shaikh Jam is held in great
repute by the surrounding population, as a healer of all ills of this world.
There is a caravansarai outside the town. Khanikoff gives the following
biography of this saint:—
His biographers make him of Arab origin. According to them, he was
the seventh descendant of Jurir Abdullah Budjili, a thirty-first descendant of
Abraham. He was born in the year 410 of the Hijra at Namak, a village
in the Turshiz district, and was named Ahmad, tip to his twenty-second
year he led a very dissipated life, and then reformed.
Having abjured his past, he retired into a cave in the Kuh-i-Namak,
where he spent twelve years mortifying the flesh by fastings, scourgings, and
other religious penances. His fame soon spread in the land; and his retreat
became the usual resort of the believers, who desired the saint to
intercede for them with government. Finding he was thus disturbed
in his meditations, he left his hermitage and took refuge in the mountain
of Kuh-i-Jaroli Jam, where he remained six years. At the end of that time
he received a command from heaven to return and live amongst men,
and to save them from wandering from the path described by God through
the Kuran. They declared that in the days of Malik Shah Seldjukidi, the
shaikh, having learnt indirectly that Barkhia Rukh was secretly inclined
to favour the assassins,—foreseeing that this would injure him in the
opinions of the people, predicted that Sandjar would occupy the throne.
In the East such prophecies have always helped usurpers. Sandjar did
not forget this service ; but honoured the shaikh with his confidences, and
sometimes went to him for advice. Between the years 510 and 533 the
shaikh, who never studied, wrote, being inspired, fourteen volumes on the
Shariat, the Tarikat, and the Hakfkats.
After having performed a pilgrimage to Mecca, the shaikh died at
Turbat-i-Shaikh Jami on the tenth of the month of Muharram of the year
536 of the Hijra. Out of forty-two children, of which there were thirty-nine
sons and three daughters, fourteen male children survived him. His
biographer of the ninth century of the Hijra states that at the time he
wrote they counted 1,000 individuals amongst the descendants of the shaikh.
The sacred buildings in memory of this saint are in ruins. A hand
some gate surmounted by a square tower, with two mosques on either