As we galloped forth from Shahrud, the moon looked sullen indeed, and the mighty clouds around it, torn into fantastic shapes like Chinese dragons that might be emblematic of the Mongol ravagers in the past, were soon flooding the plain with showers of rain as we passed a station still called by its old name in the early Arab itineraries, Badasht Q By the Plain '),^ and found a new relay of horses waiting at Khairabad. The remains of the ruined village, across the roadway from the present chdpdr-Jchdnah, have stood for over a century as a me- morial of the Turkoman raids and well sustained the name of Khair-abad, 'No-abode,' though its appellation (with a different understanding of the first member of the compound) appears once to have signified 'Good-abode.'.^ The desolate condition of the place may account for the fact that Shah Nasir ad-Din ♦ ordered it to be rebuilt,' when he stopped here on his pilgrim- age to the shrine at Mashad in 1865, as noted in his Diary^ p. 96 ; and perhaps we ourselves owed to that very mandate the simple post-house at which we rested.
Just as we were leaving this halting-place, the queen of the sky came out in all her beauty, and the trail over the plain lay clear before us. There was no longer occasion, as there used to be, to fear marauders from Turan, and forward we dashed, assured that the road was safe.
The bright moonlight at Farashabad, during a change of relays three hours later, gave an excellent chance to inspect two picturesque old citadels that must have done service in bygone days, although now in ruins.^ At the moment I did
��pp. 78-82; Eastwick (1863), 2. 169- 31. 41), and in 1862, when seen by
174; Bassett (1878), pp. 199-203; Eastwick (2. 168). O'Donovan (1880), 1. 392, 407, 415 ; 3 Both of these fortresses faced
and compare Curzon, 1. 281. nearly north (in the direction of
1 See above, p. 178, note. Turan), and one stood almost in front
2 So Bassett, p. 199. Khairabad of the other, separated from it only by had long been in ruins when Eraser a short space. The southern one was (p. 359) passed it in 1822 ; so also in the better preserved of the two, and 1881, when passed by Clerk {JBGS. also the larger; and was noticeable
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