Notes Prepared for Reference during Curzon’s Tour of the Persian Gulf, and Other Papers on Persia and the Persian Gulf [‎171r] (341/678)

Geo.—Sykes—Second Revise. ’ 13
To return to our journey, Webb Ware had sent me three letters
to various points of the frontier, and from them I learned that
he could not reach Robat Kala until the middle of January, and
that a small escort was on its way to join me, I consequently
halted until the escort came in, when we continued the journey in
cold weather, registering a reading of 24° at 8 a.m. on New Year’s
Ray, 1899. The road wound up and down an interminable maze of
defiles, but these have since been avoided, a better route having
been selected, and on January 2 we reached Robat Kala, which looks
like a border tower, framed in a background of frowning mountains.
Unfortunately the camel-grazing is indifferent, although the water is
good enough ; moreover, the surrounding country is a mass of black hills
and watercourses, so that I am afraid that time will elapse before
population springs up .round this our most westerly outpost. A few
miles to the north we passed the somewhat insignificant black hill
of Kuh-i-Malik-Bia, where the Indian and Persian Empires actually
touch Afghanistan, and at Hurmak my companion rejoined me, after
having travelled north via Duzdap.
When we resumed our march we entered the flat stoneless plain
of Sistan, which seemed quite as strange to us as dry land feels after
a long voyage. Some 30 miles from the British frontier we crossed
the Shela, a deep watercourse 350 yards wide, with high cliffs. In
modern times it merely carries off any superfluous water from the great
lake, or hamun, which overflows once in seven years on an average.
As, moreover, the Zirra,* the hamun to the east, is quite 100 miles
long, it is evident that at some probably remote period all the waters
of the, llelmand drained into it. Unless this were the case, the
great width of the river-bed, its 40-foot cliffs, and the huge area covered
by the Zirra, could hardly be accounted for. At the time of our cross
ing there were a few large pools of green water in the Shela, which has
erroneously been termed Shelacj, the word being Arabic for a body of
water.f The fourth stage from Robat Kala lay through a part of Sistan
that had formerly been fed by a canal from the Helmand, taken
at a point now in Afghan territory. It teems with memories of
Rustam, the great hero, two mounds, at least a mile apart, being
pointed out as the manger and heel-ropes of Raksh, his “ lightning ”
charger, while Hauzdar was the scene of the execution of Earamurz.
It now consists of a walled town in a good state of preservation, deserted
about a hundred years ago, when the Sarbandi tribe seized it by
treachery and ousted the Rais tribe, which is said to represent all that
is left of the famous Ghaz who defeated and captured Sultan Sanjar.
I have been much struck by the resemblance between Sarhad and
Palestine on the one hand, and Sistan and Egypt on the other. When
we traversed Sarhad, the districts that I had seen in 1893, dotted with
nomad tents, were now deserted, and a Sarhaddi, who much resembles
the Kafirs described by Sir George Robertson, was rarely to be met.
Upon making inquiries, the invariable reply was that they had gone
to Sistan in consequence of the drought, as there alone could their
families and flocks be kept alive. Upon entering Sistan, which is, it must
be remembered, fed by a river that tails as rarely as the Nile, and is in
consequence the granary of the surrounding tribes, I was struck by the
vivid parallel between these Sarhaddi chiefs who left their highland
home and crossed the desert to Sistan, and Sheikh Ibrahim and Sheikh
Yakub who, thousands of years ago, quitted theirs in Palestine to find
sustenance in Egypt.
As I have said above, Sistan depends on the Helmand, but hardly
with the relation that exists between Egypt and the Nile, as not
only does the Helmand, or Hirmand, as the Persians term it, pass
through Sistan, but that district receives the entire discharge of its
waters. Accordingly, I propose to give a summary of the various
routes taken by the Helmand in historical times, as without some con
sideration of this question much in Sistan remains obscure. To begin
our survey with the fourteenth century, there was a great dam known
* A couiraction from the ancient Zarangia, or Persian Sistan, while Sakaslani was
the district to the east. A friend suggests that in the word “ Sakse,” we have perhaps
a clue to the origin of “ Saxon,” a word which is so puzzling,
t Of. The Mashela that separates Bushire from the mainland.