Identifier: cu31924028627036 Title: Persia past and present; a book of travel and research, with more than two hundred illustrations and a map Year: 1906 (1900s) Authors: Jackson, A. V. Williams (Abraham Valentine Williams), 1862-1937 Subjects: Zoroastrianism Publisher: New York, The Macmillan Company London, Macmillan & Co., ltd. Contributing Library: Cornell University Library Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image: ad upset the night before, and whose water we had drunk forbreakfast with the assurance that it was most excellent(dh-i khaili khuh). I now saw a dead cat floating on its sur-face and the villagers washing their dirty clothes in the stream.A short drive through slush and mud, after crossing the ford,brought us to the foothills, and all that day the route layup steep mountains and down into deep valleys, although thealtitude of the latter was rarely less than four thousand feetabove sea-level, as the tableland is high at this point. Themountain scenery looked like a sea of gigantic billows raisedby some Titan storm that had torn up its surface. And snowwas everywhere. The depth of the snow made progress veryslow, and once our vehicle became hopelessly stuck in a hugedrift, and I had to pay handsomely for extra horses to pullit out. The country was sparsely settled, and many of the 1 On the name Marand see the ar- ischeii Ortsnamen, in IF. 16. 347,tide by Hiibschmann, Die altarmen- 451.

Text Appearing After Image: MARAND AND SOFIAN, HISTORIC PLACES 37 hamlets were buried in the snow, one or two on the mountain-side (like the one in my picture) looking as if their occupantshad hibernated all winter, so completely was their communica-tion cut off. Most desolate among all the sights, however,was a ruined caravansarai, which, like a hundred others inPersia, was attributed to Shah Abbas the Great as builder.The magnificence of its founder and the former splendor ofits many kingly occupants, in contrast with its present ruinouscondition, struck me as an illustration of Omar Khayyamsfamiliar quatrain: — Think, in this batterd CaravanseraiWhose Portals are alternate Night and Day, How Siiltin after Sultan with his PompAbode his destined Hour, and went his way. It was late in the afternoon when we finally drew near thevillage of Sofian, or Zofian, which had been the scene of a bloodybattle between the Turks and the Persians in the latter part ofthe sixteenth century.^ As there is a post-house at Sofia

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