of the Old World. 25 



forming beautiful arabesques ; but time, aided by 

 the depredations of the ignorant, has succeeded in 

 obliterating a great part, and it is only in the more 

 sheltered and out-of-the-way places that this beau- 

 tiful enamel can be seen in the same freshness of 

 colour as it exhibited when first laid on. The 

 wilful damage these relics of the past have sus- 

 tained is the more to be regretted, as the very art 

 of making this beautiful enamel has been for- 

 gotten. The gray granite walls in the interior are 

 beautifully carved, and in some places the door- 

 ways and ornamented niches are of highly-polished 

 black granite. 



The largest of the tombs will contain about 

 8,000 people, it being built in the shape of a 

 square, having a verandah with forty-eight arches 

 all round. Some of the pillars are carved out of 

 single blocks of granite; and I noticed slabs with 

 which the interior is paved upwards of sixty feet 

 in length. Under the centre of the dome is the 

 tomb itself, hewn out of a solid piece of black 

 granite, highly polished as the finest marble, and 

 covered with beautifully carved arabesques, Per- 

 sian inscriptions, and verses from the Koran. 



At each corner of the building is a small arch- 

 way, and a circular staircase in the thickness of 

 the wall, leading to the tops of the minarets, from 

 the upper galleries of which the Moussins used to 



