'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎229] (264/714)

THE SEISTAN QUESTION
229
as a country of populous cities, abundant canals, and great
wealth; 1 among its natural resources being included a rich goli
mine that subsequently disappeared in an earthquake. In the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Seistan, like most of its
neighbours, experienced the two successive visitations of those
scourges of mankind, Jenghiz Khan and Timur Beg, being turned
from a smiling oasis into a ruinous waste, and suffering a murderous
blow from which it has never recovered. The Sefavi dynasty
repeopled it under the local rule of the ancient reigning family
of Kaiani, who claimed descent from Kai Kobad, the first
Achtemenian king. But the march of time brought round the
fated cycle of injury and desolation; and at the hands both of the
Afghan invaders of 1722, and of Nadir Shah who expelled them,
it completed its chronic tale of suffering. Remaining a portion
of the mighty empire of the Afshar usurper till his death in
1747, it then passed to the sceptre of Ahmed Shah Abdali, the
adventurous captain who, imitating his master's exploits, rode off
and founded the Durani empire in Afghanistan. From this epoch
dates its appearance on the stage of modern politics, and during
the last thirty years upon the chess-board of Anglo-Indian
diplomacy. 2
After the death of Ahmed Shah, Seistan continued to pay
tribute to his successor, Timur Shah, till his death in 1793. In
Later break-up of the Durani dominion that followed, it
became alternately attached to the fortunes of Herat
and Kandahar, the Persian Government having its hands too full
elsewhere to be able to attempt its recovery. From about the
year 1851, however, after the death of Yar Mohammed of Herat,
Persia, taking advantage of the disorder and disunion that pre
vailed in Afghanistan, began to revive and to press her claims.
She now remembered that Nadir Shah, though a Turkoman
usurper, had been king of Persia, and that Seistan had paid to
him the tribute which it paid to Persian kings before him. Ali
Khan, the local ruler, was persuaded to hoist the Persian flag,
and received in return a Persian princess in marriage. This was
at about the time of the Persian expedition against Herat in 1857
1 Oriental Geography, pp. 203-209.
An anonymous History of Seistan has been written in the course of the last
half century in Persian by Beza Kuli Rhan, the most accomplished and voluminous
of recent Persian authors.