'GAZETTEER OF PERSIA. VOLUME I' [‎254v] (525/820)

MAD—MAD
/ 488
M
MA’DAN or BAR-I-MA’DAN— Lat. 36° 28'll' N ; Long. 58° 20' 0"E.]
Elev. 5,100'.
A sub-district of tbe Nishapur district of Khorasan, about 40 miles
north-east of Sabzawar and 32 miles north-west of Nishapur, celebrated for
its turquoise mines.
The principal place of the district is the village, Ma'dan, which consists
of two villages, the Kaleh-i-Bala and the Kaleh-i-Pain, with a population of
about 1,200 souls. A few smaller villages, here called Jcaldtehs, belong
to the Ma’dan village, and contain about 300 inhabitants. The total
population of the Ma'dan villages was, on the 1st July 1882, 1,501
(400 houses in November 1897, according to Colonel Yate). Twelve other
large and several smaller villages also belong to this district. The Ma’dan
village and the territory belonging to it cover about 40 square miles of
ground. Most of this is situated in a wide, open valley, which has no
particular name ; but Schindler names it the Maidan valley. This valley,
running east and west, is bounded on the north by the turquoise moun
tains,* and on the south by the Batau mountains ; on the east by some
low hills separating it from the Nishapur plain, and on the west the
ground falls gently to the Jaghatai-Juvain valley. The drainage of the
Ma’dan valley is formed by the Kal-i-Mansura, which rarely has any water
and flows nearly due west to the Jaghatai-Juvain valley.
Some of the inhabitants of the Ma’dan village say that their ancestors were
Jews ; others say that they came originally from Badakhshan, where they
were ruby-cutters. Many of the inhabitants are Saiyids of the family
of the fifth Imam ; and one of the sons of that Imam lies buried at the
village of Garmab, a few miles north-west of the mines. In a genea
logical tree of one of these Saiyids, written in the fourteenth century,
Schindler noticed that the name of the village was formerly Pashan, chang
ed later into Fishan. The turquoise mines are ra»ely mentioned in Persian
history.
^ This hill is apparently composed of the same dark-coloured rock that is so
common in the hills of this country; there is nothing to mark any difference between
it and any other of the numerous hills about, and riding past no one would suppose
that it contained mines of any sort.
The turquoise mines are situated in small ravines on the face of this hill, which is
about a mile to the north of the village.—(C. E. Yate.)
The mines are not, as one might imagine, dotted about in large valleys some dis
tance apart. These are mere ravines on the steep hillside, most of them not 100
yards across. What one sees is, first of all, two villages side by side on undulating
ground at an elevation of 5,100 feet above the sea. The miners live in these. After
a gradual ascent by an excellent road, for one mile, the foot of a modest hill about
1,000 feet in height is reached. The so-called valleys (ravines) are on the face of this
hill, and from the first to the last, the distance, as the crow flies, is not more than
half a mile. These do not include the khaki mines. One could visit every mine
comfortably, ascending and descending the various ravines, in three hours —
(Ringler Thomson, 1895.)