"دليل بلاد فارس، المجلد I ويشمل محافظات أستراباد، شاهرود-بوستان، خراسان، وسيستان" [ظ‎‎١‎٦‎٥] (٧٢٢/٣٣٥)

MlDAN,0R BAR-I-MADAN*— Lat. 36° 28' 11" N., Long. 58° 20' 0" E. ;
Elev. 5,100'.
A sub-district o£ the Nishapur district of Khurasan, about 40 miles north
east of Sabzawar and 32 miles north-west of Nishapur, celebrated for its
turquoise mines.
The principal place of the district is the village Madan, which consists
of two villages, the Kala-i-Bala and the Kala-i-Pafn, with a population of
about 1,200 souls. A few smaller villages, here called “ Kalakhs/ J belong
to the Madan village, and contain about 300 inhabitants. The total
population of the Madan villages was, on the 1st July 1.882, 1,501.
Twelve other large and several smaller villages also belong- to this district.
The Madan village and the territory belonging to it cover about 40 square
miles of ground. Most of this is situated in a wide open valley, which
has no particular name; but Schindler names it the Madan valley. This
valley, running east and west, is bounded on the north by the Tur
quoise mountains, and on the south by the Batan mountains; on the
east by some low hills separating it from the Nishapur plain, and
on the west the ground falls gently to the Jagatai-Juvain plain. The
drainage of the Madan valley is formed by the Kal-i-M an surah (Kal-i-
Shor ? or Abresham ?), which rarely has any water, and flows nearly due
west to the Jagatai-Juvain plain.
Some of the inhabitants of the Madan village say that their ancestors were
Jews ; others say that they came originally from Badakhshan, where they
were only ruby-cutters. Many of the inhabitants are Saiyids of the family
of the fifth Imam; and one of the sons of that Imam lies buried at the
village of Garmab, a few miles north-west of the mines. In a genea
logical tree of one of these Saiyids, wwitten in the fourteenth century,
Schindler noticed that the name of the village was formerly Pashan, chang
ed later into Fishan. The turquoise mines are surely mentioned in Persian
history.
The mountains of the district consist of nummulitic limestones and sand
stones lying on clay slates and enclosing immense beds of gypsum and rock-
salt. Tire slates rise in the Batan mountains, whose peaks they form, to
the absolute height of 6,400 feet—1,860 feet above the lowest part of the
Madan valley. The limestones rise in the Sf-Sar peak, 3 miles east of
the Kala-i-Bala, to an absolute height of 5,900 feet. The stratified rocks
are on the north side of the valley broken through by porphyries and green
stones, and in consequence greatly metamorphosed, and the turquoise
bearing ridges consist entirely of porphyries, greenstones, and metamor
phosed limestone and sandstones. This ridge rises to an absolute height
of 6,655 feet. The turquoises come from veins in the metamorphosed strata,
which have partly lost their original stratification, and contain minute
pieces of fur silica. The general direction of the turquoise veins is north
* Properly “ Maadan,” meaning “ mines.”