102 
HAMADAN, OR 
Kaianian race had dictated their decrees ; and where “ Cyrus 
the king, had placed in the house of the rolls of its palace the 
record wherein was written his order for the rebuilding of Jeru- 
salem,” it seems, with the retention of its name, to have pre¬ 
served some memory of its consequence, even so far into modern 
times as three centuries after the commencement of the Christian 
era. It was then that Tiridates attempted do transfer its glories 
to his own capital; and, according to Ebn Haukel, the gradual 
progress of six added hundred years, mouldered away the archi¬ 
tectural superiority of the ancient city. Towards the end of the 
fourteenth century it received its final blow under the arms of 
Timour the Tartar, who sacked, pillaged and destroyed its proud¬ 
est buildings, ruined the inhabitants, and reduced the whole, 
from being one of the most extensive cities of the East, to hardly 
a farsang in length and breadth. In that dismantled, and dis¬ 
membered state, though dwindled down to a mere clay-built 
suburb of what it was, it possessed iron gates, till within these 
fifty years ; when Aga Mahomed Khan, not satisfied with the 
depth of so great a capital’s degradation, ordered every remain 
of past consequence to be totally destroyed. His commands were 
obeyed to a tittle. The mud alleys, which now occupy the site 
of ancient streets or squares, are narrow, interrupted by large 
holes, or hollows, in the way* and heaps of the fallen crumbled 
walls of deserted dwellings. A miserable bazar or two are 
passed through in traversing the town ; and large lonely spots 
are met with, marked by broken low mounds over older ruins ; 
with here and there a few poplars, or willow trees, shadowing 
the border of a dirty stream, abandoned to the meanest uses ; 
which, probably, flowed pellucid and admired, when these places 
were gardens, and the grass-grown heap, some stately dwelling 
