'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎378] (431/714)

PERSIA
the present Shah in its place, is within measurable distance of a
similar dissolution. The town of Ashraf was peopled by Shah
Abbas with a colony of 7,000 Armenians, some of whose descen
dants still inhabit the place along with a mixture of Persian and
Turkish descent. During the last twenty years it has experienced
quite a revival, owing to the trade with Russia that has sprung up
from the port, or rather roadstead, of Meshed-i-Ser.
Twenty-six miles from Ashraf on the north-west, at a distance
of about three miles from the Caspian and on the banks of the
Ferahab ui Te J en river ' are s i tuatec l the ruins of another city and
palace of Abbas, known as Ferahabad, Pietro della
Valle declared that the circuit of the walls was equal to, if not
greater than, that of Rome or Constantinople, and that the city
contained streets of more than a league in length. In this palace
died Shah Abbas in January 1G28, in the forty-third year of his
reign and the seventy-first of his age. Forty years later the palace,
which, according to Chardin, was ' a wonder of art that deserved a
kind of perpetuity,' and ' wherein was kept a vast treasure of
dishes and basins of porcellane or china, cornaline, agate, coral,
amber, cups of crystal of the rock, and other varieties without
number,' was plundered by the Cossacks and destroyed; and the
worthy knight sorrowfully adds, ' Everytime I think of the magni
ficence and delightfulness of that place, I cannot but lament its
hard fate. 1 Fraser, in 1822, examined and carefully described the
ruins of Ferahabad, which he declared to be vastly inferior to those
of Ashraf, in extent as well as in magnificence, and to indicate
only a temporary rather than a permanent abode. It is curious that
the king should have ventured upon two such similar designs in
such close proximity to each other; but it is also characteristic of
the whims of a monarch, who shared to the full the capricious irre
sponsibility that has always been a feature of despotism in the
East. Ferahabad is now a miserable village, which no one turns
aside to visit.
From, the palaces I turn to the cities of Mazanderan, few in
number but distinct in individuality, which I shall treat in the
Cities of or( 3 er i n which they are encountered if journeying upon
Mazan- Shah Abbas' causeway from Astrabad, namely: Sari, Bar-
furush, Amol. Of all of them it may be said that in their
situation, amid forest or jungle and on moist and luxuriant plains,
1 Coronation of King Solyman III., pp. 152-154.