This itinerary included a visit to the mountain cavern, called Pardah-i Bustam, or ' the Curtain of Rustam's Harem/ located near Mount Firuzi, and we started at daybreak. ^ The lofty retreat which formed our goal is a cavernous opening in the ledge of a high scarped rock, and it may well have been very like the mountain fastness in which Isfandiar was imprisoned by his father, Vishtasp, for that dungeon was in this vicinity, as told above (p. 209). Indeed, it is not impossible that this cavern was actually the hero's dungeon. We climbed the cliff, and Sykes rounded the crag to examine the interior of the cave, but nothing was found to help towards a real identification of the site. After examining a chasm in another of these scarped heights,^ we returned to our tented quarters for an early luncheon, and then broke camp in order to examine some ruins near Kislah Kalat, ' the Daughter's Fort,' as well as to study the old site occupied by the modern town of Manijan, said to be called after a daughter of Afrasiab, the legendary ruler of Turan.2 The chief reward of our search was the finding of a great slab of quarried limestone (fifteen feet long by seven and a half wide, and one foot in thickness), marked with inscribed letters, partly effaced, but containing the name of Muhammad Khvarazm Shah, one of the famous kings of Khiva, who invaded Khurasan in the beginning of the thirteenth century.*
1 On the character of these scarped Ndmah (tr. Mohl, 3. 231-327 ; cf. also hills, which form a part of the Nisha- Noldeke, Grundr. iran. Philol. 2. 165, pur Range, see Yate, Khurasan^ p. 173, 177).
355, where the ridge is spoken of as * See p. 220 above. Since this
Chil-i Shah. paragraph was written, I have found
2 This contained some curious clay, that Yate, Khurasan, pp. 359-360, also which the natives eat, and which they refers to this inscribed stone. His re- claimed to be an excellent remedy in marks on the subject are well worth the case of throat troubles ; on this repeating. He describes it as ' a large subject see Sykes, Qeog. Journ. 37. 4. flat piece of limestone, or some light-
8 See also Yate, Khurasan, p. 359. coloured rock, lying prone on the
The story of the loves of Manizhah, ground, about fourteen or fifteen feet
Afrasiab's daughter, and the Iranian in length, six to eight in breadth, and
hero Bizhan forms one of the most from one to two feet in thickness. On
charming episodes of Firdausi's Shah the southern edge of this stone was an
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