'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎121] (156/714)

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FEOM KUCHAN TO KELAT-I-NADIRI
Halting outside the village, I sent Eamzan Ali to hire a guide
to lead us to Kelat, having heard from an Afghan trader at
March to Ivuchan that there was a track from here across the
Pushtah mountains. A man was found who, for three hrans,
offered to conduct us to Pushtah, six farsakhs. Further he had
never been, but another guide would be procurable there. As we
were waiting outside the walls in some fields that formed part of
the vakf or endowment of the shrine of Imam lieza at Meshed,
the leading personage of Eadkan—a green-turbaned seyid who
administered the domain—came out with a posse of townsfolk
behind him to inspect some tobacco with which the ground had
been planted. He loudly expressed his dissatisfaction with the
crop, and his intention to sow wheat another year. We started
again at ten. It was a long wearisome ride to Pushtah, for the
sun was piercingly hot, and a brisk wind sprang up and blew the
desert into suffocating whirlwinds of dust. At about ten miles
from Eadkan the track passed into the first fold of the foot hills
on the north side of the plain, and then struck boldly up a dried
torrent bed to a higher plateau, the first of a series of similar
terraces between the main range and the Meshed valley. There
were no villages, water, or vegetation in this arid desert. At
twenty miles from Eadkan we came to a kind of circular crater
with ragged walls, at the extreme end of which, under a rock
once crowned by a fort, nestled the village of Shiri' 1 by the side of a
genuine stream. Skirting this and continuing to the north, we now
passed on to a second and higher terrace that stretched for several
miles to the base of the Ha/ar Musjid, 2 or main range. Dotted at
intervals along its length could be seen the villages of Girri,
Pushan, and Ardokh. We camped at the village of Pushtah, on
the southern side of this plateau, six good farsakhs from Eadkan.
On the plain outside was a very large encampment of Kurd
nomads, with black many-peaked tents, and innumerable flocks.
October 1C.—Started at 6.45 a.m . We marched straight across
the plain to the village of Ardokh (or Ardrakh), two miles, at
1 I find few of these names marked in any map that I have seen, and can only,
therefore, give them as they were given to me.
' Hazar Musjid ' signifies ' A Thousand Mosques,' the needle-like pinnacles
and crags of the mountain range being compared by the facile imagination of the
Mussulman pilgrim to the minarets of many mosques— hazar being frequently
used in Persian as around number. Others say that the Mohammedans believe in
the existence of 1,000 prophets, with a mosque for each.