270 MASHAD, THE HOLY CITY OF PERSIA
have done much to advance the prosperity of Mashad and the beauty of the shrine, perhaps having some national and busi- ness pride in making it a Persian rival to the Arabian Mecca, or to the shrine of Husain at Karbala (near Baghdad) and to the burial-place of Ali at Najaf, all of which lay beyond the boundaries of their kingdom and carried the pilgrim -pence out of the realm. 1 But the century was a troubled one, marked by the savage inroads of the Transoxianian Uzbegs, until peace finally came under Shah Abbas, who, in 1601, showed his venera- tion for the sanctuary by making the pilgrimage on foot to Mashad all the way from Isfahan.
During the following two centuries the fortunes of the city varied, often suffering from raid, rebellion, or siege (especially when the invading Sunnite foes wreaked the vengeance of two- fold hatred upon this stronghold of the Shiite sect), until the Kajar dynasty, beginning over a hundred years ago, brought the whole country under the rule which at present prevails.^
In area the city covers an expanse of nearly two miles in length and half that distance in breadth, comprising a circuit of possibly six miles, divided into a half dozen sections with minor wards.^ It is transected from northwest to southeast by the one large avenue of the town — and the main artery of business — the Khiaban, which runs its entire length, broken only by the great quadrilateral enclosing the sacred buildings. Some twenty-five yards wide, the street is bordered at intervals by trees, and down its middle runs a broad watercourse (crossed by rickety wooden bridges), which serves as an aqueduct for the city's supply, and equally, it would seem, as a cloaca maxima
1 The Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp (gifts and additions) ; Nasir ad-Din
I, for example, showed a special inter- Shah, Diary ^ p. 190 (burial-place),
est in the shrine, making a pilgrimage ^ Mashad has, it may be noted, been
to it in 1533, enriching it with gifts, either the birthplace or the residence
and beautifying the outer court; see of a number of the minor lights of
Horn, Denkwurdigkeiten Schdh Tah- Persia (see Eth6, in Grnndriss der
mdsp^s des Ersten, pp. 38, 48, 64, iranischen Philologie, 2. 216, 254, 298,
Strassburg, 1891 (interest in the 308-309, 312, 336).
shrine) ; Fraser, Narrative, p. 453 » Cf. Yate, pp. 327-328.
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