'The lands of the Eastern Caliphate Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem conquest to the time of Timur' [‎299] (338/586)

CHAPTER XXI.
KIRMAN.
The five districts of Kirman. The two capitals. Sirjan, the first capital, its
position and history. Bardasir, the second capital, now Kirman city.
Mahan and its saint. Khabis. Zarand and Kuhbinan, Cobinan of
Marco Polo.
The province of Kirman, as Istakhri writes, is for the most part
of the hot region, only a quarter of the country being mountainous
and producing the crops of a cold climate, for the larger part of
the province belongs to the Desert, the towns lying singly, and
separated one from another by broad stretches of uncultivated
land, and not standing clustered in groups as was the case in Fars.
Yakut states that under the Saljtiks Kirman had been most
populous and flourishing, but already in the yth (13th) century,
when he wrote, ruin had set in, lands going out of cultivation.
Finally this evil state was rendered permanent by the devastation
which resulted from the invasion of Timiir at the close of the
8th (14th) century.
Mukaddasi in the 4th (10th) century divides the province of
Kirman into five Ktirahs or districts, called after their chief towns ;
namely (i) Bardasir, with the sub-district of Khabis to the north;
next (ii) Sirjan, on the Fars frontier; then (hi) Bam and (iv) Nar-
masir on the desert border to the east; and lastly (v) Jiruft to the
south, running down to the sea-coast of Hurmuz. On the north and
east the frontier was the Great Desert, on the south-west the sea-
coast, while on the west the Kirman frontier, round about Sirjan,
ran out 'like a sleeve' into the lands of the Fars province, as