The British School of Archaeology in Iraq take this opportunity of thanking the Royal Geographical Society for their great generosity in allowing the publication herein of the map and thirteen of the half-tone blocks which were first published in Sir Aurel Stein's article in the Geographical Journal, December 1935.

CHAPTER I Section i

1. See Archaeological Reconnaissances in the Panjāb and South-eastern Iran (Macmillan, 1937)Google Scholar.

2. See also the lecture delivered by me at the Annual Meeting of the British School in Iraq, December 12th, 1934, as reproduced in Geographical Journal, December 1935.

3. Personal circumstances may, I hope, be held to excuse also a shortcoming in another direction. From my Kashmir mountain camp, where this account must be written, I have not been able to gain access to the voluminous publications of Flandin and Coste in which plans and illustrations of the ruins of the Sasanian places at Fīrūzābād and Sarvistān, and also of the remains at Dārāb, were first published. Nor have I been able to refer in each case to the original accounts of earlier travellers along some of the routes which I have followed. Useful abstracts from them are to be found in Ritter, , Erdkunde, VI (Persien), i. 735 sqq., 755 sqq.Google Scholar; exhaustive bibliographical references in Curzon, , Persia, II.111, 228 Google Scholar.

Section ii

1. For the early importance of this emporium and its ruins see Archaeological Reconnaissances, 202 sq.

2 . Cf. Archaeol. Reconnaissances, 211.

3. For a published account of the Qāshqais see Curzon, , Persia, II. 112 sqq.Google Scholar, with references to earlier sources of information.

4. Cf. Strange, Le, Province of Fārs, 35 Google Scholar, quoting Ibn-al-Balkhï: ‘This district takes its name of Ardashīr Khūrah—“the Glory of King Ardashīr”—from Ardashīr the son of Bābak; and he began his reign by building the city of Fīrūzābād.’

5. Cf. Le Strange, loc. cit. 45.

6. Cf. Schwarz, loc. cit. 56 sq. For Dārābgird see above, pp. 191 sqq.

7. Dieulafoy's estimate is 28 metres or c. 91 ft.; cf. L'Art antique de la Perse, IV. 80 Google Scholar; that of Keith Abbot ( J.R.G.S. XXVII. 175 Google Scholar) 60–70 ft., which is certainly too low.

8. See Schwarz, loc. cit. 57.

9. For a careful description and drawing of it see Flandin, et Coste, , Voyage en Perse, 36 ff.Google Scholar, pls. 34 ff.

10. Cf. Dieulafoy, , L'Art antique de la Perse, IV. 80 sqqGoogle Scholar.

11. [Since recording this view I find it confirmed by the brief reference which Professor Herzfeld makes to this structure, Archaeol. History of Iran, 90. He takes it to be a fire-temple and ingeniously derives the name Ṭirbāl from Greek tetrapylon.]

12. See Le Strange, loc. cit. 43 sq., where Fīrūzābād is spoken of as a mighty city ‘in the times of the Kāyānī kings of old’ and a legend told of how Alexander captured it after a long siege by conducting the waters of a stream against its walls. For the story of the marsh which formed there subsequently and which Ardashīr drained before founding his city, see also above, p. 130.

Is it possible that we have some confused reference to the Takht-i-nishīn ruin in what Ibn-al-Balkhī has to tell in his account of Fīrūzābād of ‘a platform to which the name of Aiwān Girdah (“the circular hall”) was given and the Arabs call Ṭirbāl (“the tower”). On the summit of the platform pavilions (sāyahā) were built, and in their midst a mighty dome which was called Gumbad [Kīrman or Gīrmān]. The four walls below this dome, up to the spring of the cupola measured in height 75 ells, and these walls were built of blocks of stone. The cupola rising above this was built of kiln-burnt bricks.’ It looks as if descriptions of the two closely adjacent ruins of the Munār and Takht-i-nishīn had got here mixed up by the chronicler.

13. See Le Strange, loc. cit. 45.

14. See Dieulafoy, loc. cit. IV. 31–76, pls. IX–XVII.

Section iii

1. See Herzfeld, , La sculpture rupestre de la Perse (Revue des Arts Asiatiques, V, 1928, pl. XXXVIGoogle Scholar; also Archaeological History of Iran, 78).

2. See, for reference to the Nakhsh-i-Rustam relievo, Curzon, , Persia, II. 124 Google Scholar.

3. [Since this report was prepared for the press, a succinct but clear account of the essential architectural features has been given by Professor Herzfeld in his Archaeological History of Iran, 95 sq.]

4. See Archaeol. Reconnaissances, pls. XXIV, XXVIII, XIX; Herzfeld, , Iranische Denkmäler, IA Google Scholar, pls. I–III, &c.

5. Cf. Mallowan and Rose's very instructive illustrations of Al-‘Ubaid pottery from Tall Arpachiyah, Iraq, II, figs. 35–8, pl. IV.

6. Cf. Archaeol. Reconnaissances, pl. XXX; Iraq, II, pl. VII.

7. See N. Baluchistan Tour (‘Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India’, No. 37), 59, fig. 17.

Section iv

1. See Strange, Le, Province of Fārs, 44 sqGoogle Scholar. The name of the king's great engineer at this operation is given as Burāzah.

2. For an exactly corresponding observation of prehistoric potsherds having been carried up from an excavation at the foot of the ‘Mīrī’ of Turbat and now found at a great height embedded in sun-dried brick masonry of the modern castle, cf. my Gedrosia Tour, 55 (‘Archaeol. Survey Memoirs’, No. 43).

3. See Schwarz, , Iran im Mittelalter, 103 Google Scholar; Le Strange, loc. cit. 34.

4. Cf. Archaeol. Reconnaissances, 136.

5. The Qal‘a-i-Khurshah which Ibn-al-Balkhī (see Le Strange, loc. cit. 34, 73) describes as a very strong place built in Omayyad times and situated 5 leagues distant from Jahrūm, may be the large hill stronghold mentioned to me on the Kōh-i-Alburd on the way to Jūwūn. As the latter place was considered to be within the area closed to me, the site could not be visited.

6. Cf. Chardin, , Voyage en Perse (1711), IX. 203 Google Scholar, quoted by Schwarz, loc. cit. 703.

CHAPTER II

Section i

1. Cf. Schwarz, , Iran im Mittelalter, 97 sqq.Google Scholar, for the notices of Iṣṭakhrī, Ibn Haukal, Muqaddasī.

2. Cf. Ouseley, , Travels in Various Countries of the East, 11. 88 sqqGoogle Scholar.

3. See Strange, Le, The Province of Fārs, 34 Google Scholar.

4. Cf. Innermost Asia, II. 926 sqGoogle Scholar.

5. The fact of three worked flints having been picked up on the surface close to the top of the mound cannot furnish chronological evidence; for as in the corresponding case of the Qal‘a-i-Pariān, they may have been carried up with the clay dug up in some hollow below to build the walls of the fort; see above, p. 131.

6. See Le Strange, loc. cit. 32: ‘Their water is entirely obtained from underground channels, for there are neither springs nor brooks.’

7. See Archaeol. Reconnaissances, 223 sq.; Innermost Asia, II. 866 sqGoogle Scholar.

8. Cf. Le Strange, loc. cit.

Section ii

1. See above, p. 181, also 188.

2. Cf. above, p. 158 sq.

3. See Gedrosia Report, 80, 87; pl. VIII, Ji. IV. ii, nr. ii; pl. xi, Zang. I. xiii.

Section iii

1. For the desert ground crossed by the continuation of this route, cf. Ouseley, , Travels in the East, II. 111 sqqGoogle Scholar.

2. Cf. Balūchistān Report, 47, 54; Gedrosia Report, 87 (where the whitish surface ought to have been noticed in the case of most funerary vessels), 169; Archaeol. Reconnaissances, 116.

3. Cf. Schwarz, , Iran im Mittelalter, 101 Google Scholar, quoting P. Della Valle, III. 1444, in German edition of 1674.

4. See SCHWARZ, loc. cit. 100.

5. See above, 134.

6. See Archaeol. Reconnaissances, 85, 90, 197.

7. Schwarz, loc. cit. 100, quotes a reference to this stronghold from a paper of Stolze in Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1877, 214 Google Scholar.

Section iv

1. See Schwarz, , Iran im Mittelalter, 104 Google Scholar, Iṣṭakhrī gives there the name correctly as Ij, and this is the form still used. The form Irej, by which the place is briefly named and described by Hamd-allah Kazvīnī in the fourteenth century, may be due to a ‘learned popular etymology’ connecting the place with Irej, the son of Ferīdūn in epic legend; cf. Schwarz, loc. cit. 104, note 9. Through Ouseley, , Travels, 11. 161 Google Scholar, where the passage of Kazvīnī is quoted, the form Irej has found its way into modern maps.

The castle of Irej mentioned by Iṣṭakhrī (Schwarz, loc. cit. 26) as an irreducible fastness in the district of Māīn, is obviously a different place.

2. See Strange, Le, Province of Fārs, 34 Google Scholar.

3. Cf. ibid., 11 sq.

4. See Ouseley, loc. cit. 11. 161; for the passage of Ḥamd-Allah Kazvīnī there quoted relating to the fastness, see above, p. 173.

5. See Ouseley, ibid. The translation there given runs: ‘The Dizh-i-Irej is on a mountain above Irej, one half of which is fortified, the other half not; although towers of defence might be here erected.’ &c. This rendering is not in keeping with the proper meaning of the word istaḥkām and is precluded by the fact that the fortified town site had existed for more than two centuries before Ḥamd-Allah Kazvīnī wrote.

CHAPTER III

Section i

1. See Ouseley, , Travels in the East, II. 164 sqqGoogle Scholar.

2. See Ouseley, loc. cit. II. 80 sqq., pl. XXXII.

3. See Schwarz, , Iran im Mittelalter, 75 sq.Google Scholar; Ouseley, loc. cit. II. 74 sqq., found Sarvistān still a large and populous village and refers to the fine cypresses (sarv) from which it takes its name. The place is already mentioned by this name by Muqaddasī; cf. Schwarz, loc. cit.

4. See Dieulafoy, , L'Art antique de la Perse, IV. 1–29, 69–75, pls. I-VIIIGoogle Scholar.

5. See loc. cit. IV. 13, fig. 9.

6. Here I may mention also that in a letter received at Sarvistān Dr. Washington Grey kindly informed me of his having noticed chalcolithic painted pottery at a spot near the Mahārlu lake.

Section ii

1. See above, p. 166.

2. See Schwarz, , Iran im Mittelalter, p. 105 Google Scholar.

3. Cf. above, p. 158.

4. See Tour in Gedrosia, p. 157, pl. XXXII.

5. See above, p. 184 sq.

Section iii

1. For the accounts of Iṣṭakhrī and Muqaddasī see Schwarz, , Iran im Mittelalter, p. 93 sqq.Google Scholar, with references also to other Oriental and Western notices of the place.

2. Cf. Z.D.M.G. XXXIII. 146 Google Scholar, quoted by Schwarz, loc. cit. 93, note 7.

3. Abstracts of these are given by Ouseley, , Travels in the East, II. 131 sqqGoogle Scholar.

4. See Strange, Le, Province of Fārs, 31 Google Scholar.

5. Cf. Ouseley, loc. cit. 11. 177. For references, with abstracts, to the accounts of Keith Abbot (1850), Flandin and Coste (1841), Preece (1884), see Curzon, , Persia, II. 89 Google Scholar.

6. See Travels in the East, II. 146 sqq.Google Scholar; pl. XXXV.

7. See above, p. 172.

8. The point deserves to be emphasized, as Sir W. Ouseley was inclined conjecturally to assume a much earlier origin for this ‘Mansion of the Princess’, to seek in it ‘a place consecrated to Mithraic rites’, &c;; see Travels, II. 143 Google Scholar. The rapidity with which his visit had to be paid may explain the wholly misleading sketch of the plan in pl. LV, no. 15.

CHAPTER IV

Section i

1. Cf. Schwarz, , Iran im Mittelalter, 105 sqGoogle Scholar.

2. See Schwarz, loc. cit. 104 sq.; Strange, Le, Province of Fürs, p. 29 Google Scholar.

3. Cf. Schwarz, loc. cit. 108.

4. Cf. Le Strange, loc. cit. 24, where the place is duly identified.

5. See Tomaschek, , Zur historischen Topographie von Persien, p. 178 Google Scholar; also Schwarz, loc. cit. 24.

Section ii

1. See Tomaschek, loc. cit. 178; Schwarz, loc. cit. 23. There seems to me no valid reason to doubt the identity also of Barānjān, mentioned by Ibn Khordādbih on the same route (see Schwarz, ibid.) with Bôrazjūn: Būdanjān.

2. Cf. Schwarz, loc. cit. 22.

3. See Strange, Le, Province of Fārs, p. 25 Google Scholar, where Muzayjān is given as the spelling of the name now heard as Mazijān.

4. See Tour in Gedrosia, 103, pls. XIII, XIX.

Section iii

1. Deh-bīd is duly mentioned by Ibn-al-Balkhī as a regular stage on the road from Shīrāz; cf. Strange, Le, Province of Fārs, 70, 78, 82 Google Scholar.

2. Cf. Curzon, , Persia, 11. 70 Google Scholar, where Sir Charles Macgregor's opinion as to the antiquity of the mound discussed above is quoted.

3. See above, 158.

4. Cf. Archaeol. Reconnaissances, 72.

5. For a convenient synopsis of the earlier accounts and of the arguments there advanced for the location of Pasargadae at Murghāb, see Curzon, loc. cit. II. 71 sqq.

6. See Herzfeld, Pasargadae; Untersuchungen zur persischen Archaeologie (Klio, VIII. 1–68).