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66
A Journey in
upon which stands the fort, and which serves as a drill-ground for the troops.
'Rich and smiling as is the surrounding country, and full of villages, orchards, and gardens, the old Sart town itself is mean, squalid, and ill-built. The Bazaar is small and poor, and the seamy side of European influence is clearly visible in low drink-shops, kept by Jews and Armenians, and in an entire quarter of native houses of a still worse description. In the midst, however, of these shabby streets and lanes tower three splendid mosques, forming three sides of the Reghistan, a small square, which is the chief market and meeting-place of the town. Attached to each is a medresseh, or college, for the students of Mussulman theology and law, who are lodged for a small pittance in rooms, or cells, opening out into the courtyards of the mosques. Though devout worshippers still crowd them every Friday, there was a decayed, deserted look about these buildings, as compared with those of Bokhara, which seemed to speak of a decline of religious zeal, and in general of all energy and life, in what, in old days, was the chief home of Mahommedan culture in Central Asia. A knot of youths, chatting or reading in a corner, and gladly leaving their books to earn a copper by showing the Christian stranger over their mosque, and a few aged Mollahs, half-dozing over their Korans, or laboriously painting,