85 
1887.] C. E. Yate —Notes on the City of Hirat. 
The most prominent feature of the city is the £ Arg-i-Kuhnah ’ (?) 
or old citadel, which stands on the northern face towering over the rest 
of the city. That this citadel was formerly a place of great strength, 
is proved by Ibn-i-Hauqal, who writes—“ Hirat has a castle with ditches. 
This castle is situated in the centre of the town and is fortified with 
very strong walls.” This building, which is altogether some 250 yards 
in length, now stands not in the centre of the town, but slightly back 
from the main northern wall. The ditches mentioned are now mostly 
choked up and full of reeds, though efforts are being made to clear 
them out. 
The only building noticeable by its size and height above the uni¬ 
form level of mud houses is the Jam’ih Masjid, a large and lofty struc¬ 
ture in the north-east portion of the city. Ibn-i-Hauqal says—“ In all 
Khurasan and Mawarau-n-Nahr there is not any place which has a finer 
or more capacious mosque than Hiri or Hirat. Next to it we may rank 
the mosque of Balkh and after that the mosque of Sistan.” But there 
is nothing in the Jam’ih Masjid to record its age that I know of, older 
than an inscription in the Khat-i-Suls character on a slab above the 
‘ Mihrab ’, put up apparently by Sultan Abu Sa’id in A. H. 866, 
to record the abolition of some oppressive tax. This date corresponds 
with about A. H. 1461, seven years before Abu Sa’id’s death, and at a 
time when, so history says, he was engaged in waging war with Turkish 
tribes in Khurasan. 
The objects of interest outside the city are almost entirely confined 
to religious structures such as the Musalla and to Ziyarats or shrines. 
Of the latter the most famous is the shrine of Gazurgah, a large build¬ 
ing up at the foot of the hills some two miles to the north-east of the 
city, and the residence of the Mir of Gazurgah, one of the most richly 
endowed and influential divines in the Hirat district. The office of 
Mutawalli or superintendent of the religious endowment of this shrine 
has descended for generations in the family of the present Mir Murtaza. 
The Mir’s eldest son Muhammad ’Umar Jan, a man of some 35 years of 
age, is married to a daughter of the late Amir Sher ’Ali, a sister of 
Sardar Ayyub Khan. 
The shrine is distinguishable from afar by its huge, lofty, square- 
topped building surmounting a high arch, the usual feature of all sacred 
buildings in this country, and is well worth a visit if only to see the 
beautiful carved marble headstone surmounting the tomb of the saint 
and the simple yet handsome tomb of the Amir Dost Muhammad. 
Passing first through a large walled garden of pine and mulberry 
trees, the visitor comes to an octagonal domed building full of little 
rooms and three-conuered recesses, two stories in height and all opening 
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