260 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF NISHAPUR
A thousand years have gone by since Ibn Fakih of Hamadan (903 A.D.) spoke of the Nishapurians as ' men of policy and good judgment,' while Mukaddasi (985) was greatly impressed by their learning and their luxury, and by their skill as artisans, though he found them somewhat conceited and cold.^ To these comments may be added the tribute paid, a half century ago, by Nasir ad-Din Shah, on his pilgrimage to Mashad in 1865, who frankly noted in his diary that he found * the people of Nisha- pur more civilized than the people of any other city passed on the journey ; a circumstance that proves this is the manner in which their women dress ; the women in all the other cities wore a poor kind of chudder garment and had no face-veils, while in Nishapur they have fine blue chudder coverings and wear veils.' ^
On one point there has been no divergence of opinion on the part of critics — the fact that during its long lifetime, especially in its zenith days, Nishapur has ever been a literary center and the home of men of culture and learning. For that reason Yakut, who lived there in 1216, said that, with Merv and Samarkand, it enjoyed the honorary title of madlnat^ or a city that is the home of savants, and he cites a list of distinguished names to prove the point. ^ A glance over the records given by other Oriental writers who mention Nishapur, or at the pages of any standard modern work on Persian literature, will cor- roborate this statement still more convincingly ; * but however famous such names may be to the literatures of the East, there is none so associated with the city's renown in the minds of the West as that of the astronomer-poet who has made Nishapur to us forever the Home of Omar Khayyam.
(1897), p. 413, rated the number « Nasir ad-Din Shall, Diary ^ p. 155.
at 12,000 ; while Houtum-Schindler « Yakut, tr. Barbier de Meynard,
(1910), Encyclop. Brit, eleventh edi- Diet. geog. pp. 521, 582.
tion (1911), 19. 711, gives 'barely * See, for example, the references
15,000.' to Nishapur in the index of Browne,
1 So Ibn Fakih, 5. 318, and Mukad- Lit. Hist. Persia, 1. 513 ; 2. 561. dasi, 3. 33, 34, 299-300, 314.
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