'Lord Curzon's Notes on Persia: About 1889-1890' [‎671r] (1362/1486)

GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH-WEST PERSIA.
17
to bo pitied—and which shall traverse Persian soil and Persian waters
alone.
After leaving Dizful, the next section of the road, 156 miles in
length, to Khoremabad, is both the roughest and hitherto the least safe.
It crosses a steep and mountainous region, rising from 580 feet above the
sea at Dizful to 5500 feet on the highest pass. Colonel Bell classified
50 miles of it as bad; and here some blasting will be required, and a
good deal of boulder-lifting from the road. I have often wondered,
when riding in Persia, at the apathy with which tracks that are used
daily by hundreds of camels, horses, and mules, are left as thickly
covered with huge jagged rocks, that could be removed by the expendi
ture of a few shillings, as a porcupine is with quills. No one ever takes
them away j and a workman with pick or shovel is a phenomenon that
you will not stumble upon in the whole of Persia.
The insecurity of the Dizful-Khoremabad road is due to the lawless
vagaries of the Ilyat or nomad tribes in this quarter. They recognise
no authority, are always fighting among themselves, and subsist when
they can upon pillage. In January of the present year the Derikwand
tribe were out plundering, and cutting the telegraph wires, and I heard
of a caravan for Dizful that had been stopped for two months at
Khoremabad before it dared to start. Guard-houses will require to be
built, and guards to be stationed upon this section of the road, which
should then be traversable by mules without difficulty in six or seven
days. Khoremabad, though the seat of government of the province of
Luristan, and surrounded by a fertile valley, is at present a small and
decaying place, its decline being due to bad government and to the local
conditions which I have just described. It is, however, the first of the
cluster of inland cities and centres of manufacture or cultivation,
hitherto isolated from the sea, which the new route aspires to open up
and develop.
Of these the next in order is Burujird, 63 miles from Khoremabad—
a large and thriving town of 17,000 inhabitants, situated at a height of
5400 feet above the sea, in an extensive and well-watered plain, in which
are grown vines and cereals of every description, and whoso pro
ductiveness might be indefinitely multiplied. I have already mentioned
Burujird as the starting-point of the projected branch road to Ispahan,
and its position marks it out as the natural centre whence other roads
will radiate forth to the not less important cities of Kermanshah and
Hamadan, at present served only by the caravan-line that runs from
Baghdad to Teheran. Kermanshah, said to have 60,000 inhabitants, is
distant 130 miles from Burujird; Hamadan, with 15,000, only 90 miles;
and both are places of great trade and greater possibilities.
From Burujird, the main road which I have been following, will, I
presume, be continued eastwards, 60 miles to Sultanabad, a ■% cry
prosperous place in a district rich in pastures and grain, and celebrated
c