PURCHASE OF CAMELS FOR MILITARY PURPOSES. 219 



The brave Tahmasb-Kouli-Khan, after great difficulties, succeeded 

 in organizing an army of 40,000 men, which he encamped in Khoras- 

 san, and awaited, without flinching, for Achrafi", who was marching 

 against him with all the Affghan forces he had been able to assemble. 

 This latter, presuming too much upon the valor of his troops, who, 

 besides, were superior in number to the Persians, marched towards 

 Damgan, a town of Khorassan, and on the 2d of October, 1729, (1141,) 

 gave battle. Achraff" resorted tv the stratagem which had formerly 

 been successful : he detached two bodies of cavalry, of 3,000 men each, 

 who^ making a wide detour for the purpose of concealing the ma- 

 noeuvre, were to turn the wings of the Persian line and take it in 

 rear, whilst he, at the same time, attacked in front. But the Persian 

 general was not a man to allow himself to be surprised. Causing 

 his wings to fall back, for a feint, he drew on the two bodies of Aj6f- 

 ghans to the foot of a mountain, which he had fortified in advance 

 with artillery, and behind which was posted King Tahmasb with the 

 reserve ; there, caught between two fires, the cavalry was completely 

 destroyed. Achralf, seeing that his stratagem had been turned 

 against himself, endeavored to force the centre with all the impetu- 

 osity of Affghan troops. He was received almost at the muzzles of 

 the pieces, with a blaze of fire from zemboureka and musketry. 

 " They were so enveloped in flame and smoke that they seemed to 

 float in a sea of fire. After this discharge, the Persians advanced 

 in good order and shot down the standard-bearer. When Achraff 

 saw the standard of his fortunes beaten down, he fled with precipita- 

 tion." The Afi'ghans suffered much ; besides a great many dead, 

 their baggage and their camp fell into the hands of the victors. 



A misunderstanding between Tahmasb and his general delayed the 

 pursuit, and permitted Achraff to rally his troops at Veramin, upon 

 the road from Teheran, whence he sent Asian-Khan to defend the pass 

 of Serdir-Khar, one of the Caspian Gates which crosses from east to 

 west the mountain chain forming the spur perpendicular to the grand 

 chain of Elbourg, and which ends in the Salt desert lying to the 

 south. I " The road through it is so difficult," says a Persian author, 

 " that ants can scarcely cross it." The Affghan general, at the head 

 of his volunteers, established there his zemboureks, protected by mus- 

 keteers, and placed his cavalry in ambuscade. ''The videttes reported 

 to the Persian general the disposition of the enemy. Immediately 

 this lion of battle dismounted from his fiery charger, scaled the moun- 

 tain on foot, at the head of five or six thousand musketeers — tigers in 

 war — and crowning the summit of the pass with the agile artillery of 

 the zemboureks, turned the position, delivered a plunging fire into the 

 Aftghan artillery, made himself master of it, and thus gained the 

 possession of the pass." {Blirza Mehdi, History of Nadir.) This ac- 



X " The gorge of Serdir is a road a farsang longer than that of Sialek, but less ftitigiiing 

 for horses. (Sialek is a defile more to the north, and agrees better than the other with 

 the description of Pliny.) Numerous towers, bastions, and caravanserais, surrounded by 

 crenelated walls, attest the importance of this defile, and at the same time the facility 

 with which the passage of an army might be disputed. The chain which this defile 

 crosses may be turned by taking the road through the desert, but to do this one must 

 travel over sand and salt marshes for more than thirty horns without a drop of drmkable 

 water on the road." — (.4. C'hodzko, New Annals of Travels.) 



