142 THROUGH PLACES PASSED ON ALEXANDER'S ROUTE
was equally scarce, they must have wished that the shady oaks of Zeus at Dodona had blessed the spot. Our own horses had to be given time to rest again, for we were obliged to proceed without a fresh relay. ^
An hour more and we had crossed the bridge whose site was mentioned by Ibn Rustah, over a thousand years ago. His entry regarding the road reads as follows : —
'The road traverses salt marshland, but there is a highway across it, until you come to a bridge ; crossing this and traveling on, you come to a place called the village of Mardkustan (lit. Hhey killed a man'), where stands a watch-tower like a minaret, with a guard who keeps the road.'^
Here, true enough, even today a sentinel tower stands near the bridge, but there seems no longer to be so great danger of a man's being killed, as implied in the old name, for our chief guard, feeling that we were safe after passing this point, re- mounted his horse, giving me my seat again in the wagon, and rode back to Dah Namak, while we proceeded to Lasgird.
Lasgird is an ancient fortress town, and its location as a settlement doubtless long antedates the fourth century of our era, when it appears first to be mentioned ;3 though its name in
1 The mud fortress that served as a vouchsafed the information that ' at caravansarai across the way from the this old Kalah, two thousand years halting-place was a comparatively ago, there used to be three hundred modern structure, although the bricks horsemen as guards ! '
in the portal were old, as my note- ^ j owe to Dr. Gray a reference to
book records. I have since found a the fact that Hoffmann, Ausziige aus
picture of the doorway in Lacoste, syrischen Akten persischer Mdrtyrer,
Around Afghanistan^ p. 6. From the p. 260, n. 2051, Leipzig, 1880, suggests
roof of this gateway I saw in the dis- that Lasgird is identical with the name
tance, three or four miles back of given in Syriac as M{e ?)h-Lddhgerd
Abdulabad, an old fortress {KaVah of the diocese of Rai, referring to As-
Zadim), the bricks of which were said semani, Bibliotheca Orientalis, 1. 186 b,
to be very ancient. Rome, 1719. The allusion to the name
2 Ibn Rustah (903 a.d.), ed. De as the chief place of the district is made Goeje, Bibl. Geog. Arab. 7. 170. Gen- in connection with the persecution of eral Houtum-Schindler spoke to me the Christians in 339-340, under Sa- about this name (Mardkustan) when por II. If this identification be cor- I saw him at Teheran, June 11, 1910, rect, the present form of the name it- after my third journey. On reaching self would be proved to be more ancient the watch-tower one of our guides than the absence of it in that form in
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