Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [‎238r] (478/1814)

FROM MESHED TO TEHERAN
283
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Having arrived at Shahrud early in the afternoon, I spent
;some time in inspecting the town. It contains a large covered
bazaar, not thatched, but properly roofed, and with
Bazaars gpacious and we ii_ a pp 0 inted shops. My observations
and inquiries tallied exactly with what I had heard at Meshed.
All the sugar was Russian, all the tea was Indian, brought from
Bunder Abbas via Yezd. The greater part of the coloured
cottons and chintzes were Russian, but the white sheeting bore
the name of a Bombay firm, and I saw, not merely a large pile of
Manchester glazed calicoes with a Bombay label, but also a
number of unbleached cottons direct from Manchestei itself. This
was a gratifying fact, considering that Shahrud lies within four
marches of what is practically a Russian port on the Caspian.
I bought some delicious white grapes for a few pence. A wine is
made from them in Shahrud.
Though Shahrud is the capital of the district of Bostam-
Shahrud, it is not the residence of the Governor or the seat of
government. The latter is at the town of Bostam, three
Bostam ' and a half miles in a north-easterly direction from
Shahrud (from which it is concealed by a rocky hill), and higher
up the course of the same river. Bostam, a Mazanderani proper
name, is a place of superior fertility and luxury to Shahrud.
It is, further, a site of great sanctity among Mohammedan pilgrims,
for here was buried the famous Sheikh, or Sultan, Bayazid, the
leader of a dervish sect, who died, and was interred in the court
of a beautiful mosque, now much ruined, in the year a.d. 874.
Attached to the same mosque, whose cupola was erected by a
Mongol prince in a.d. 1313, is a shaking minaret, similar to those
which I shall afterwards describe at Isfahan, and which can be made
to vibrate by rocking it at the summit. Colonel Lovett has attributed
this phenomenon to the elasticity of the bricks and cem ent employed,
the latter becoming more elastic with age, and has compared it
with the kindred phenomenon of slabs of elastic sandstone. 1
There is, further, at Bostam a curious brick tower, whose outer
circumference is, so to speak, dog-toothed by a number of salient
angles, similar to the tower of which I shall speak later at Rhey. 2
1 Proceedings of the R.G.S. (new series), vol. v. p. 79 (1883). The best account
of the buildings at Bostam is that of Khanikoff, Memoire, &c. p. 79.
2 Fraser (Journey into Kkorasan, pp. 612-614) describes a very similar tower,
with polygonal surface, near Jorjan, on the banks of the Glurgan Kiver. This
tower was 150 feet high, 10 yards interior diameter, 52 yards exterior circum-
°f the
,000 feet
g Moun,
LS trabad,
I knew,
the
1 width,
fhe two >
nestling
in trees
en-walls
a wares.
'ategical
A nieet-
^bas and
ran, and
r I could
t whose
istioned.
outside
is little
e. The
ble, and
all mud
hrud is
licit are
; for the
r an here
iroducts
strabad,
;raders! a
eep an
iere is a
whence
h Kizil
Russian
ichan, to
, perhaps, i
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