Note 8 — Chapter II · The Zoroastrians in Persia

Yezd.—“Yezd enjoys a temperate climate. It is surrounded by canals and aqueducts which carry the water into the interior of the town. There are constructed there reservoirs and cisterns, structures as remarkable as those which are seen at Kaschân. Most of the houses and edifices, although built of raw bricks, are of great solidity; besides, the rainfall is very scarce in that country. The town is well built and very clean, because care is taken to have the rubbish removed every day from it, which rubbish is used to manure the fields. Wheat, cotton, and silk are produced there, but the wheat is not abundant enough to suffice for food, and some wheat is therefore imported from Kirman and Schiraz, so that its price is somewhat high. Among the fruits of Yezd are praised figs, called misqali, and pomegranates. The inhabitants, formerly Schaféïtes, belong now to the Schiite sect; they are almost all weavers, and are known for their honesty and by their gentleness, which degenerates even into weakness. Hamd Allah Mustôfi, while doing justice to the loyalty of the merchants, accuses the brokers of that town of intolerable arrogance and pride.” (Zinet el-Medjalis). (Cf. Nouzhet, fol. 602.) See B. de Meynard, Dict. geog., hist., &c., p. 611, note 1.

During nearly two centuries the governors (atabegs) of Yezd, like those of Lauristan, maintained their independence; but in the thirteenth century Ghazan Khan supplanted them. As for the modern travellers who have visited those regions, this is what is known of them: Marco Polo traversed Yezd in 1272, the monk Odoric in 1325, and Josafa Barbaro in 1474. It was then a city surrounded with walls nearly five miles in circumference, and well known by its silk trade. Tavernier, in the seventeenth century, stayed there for three days, enough to make him extol the fruits and the beauty of the women of that place; similarly in the nineteenth century the European savants made acquaintance with that region. Christie, having left Pottinger in Baloochistan, traversed it while returning from Herat (1810). (See A. Dupré (1808), Voyage in Persia, vol. ii. ch. xlii.; Dr. A. Petermann (1854), Reisen im Orient, vol. ii. ch. xii. pp. 203 et seq.; N. de Khamkoff (1859), Memoir, pp. 200–204; A. H. Schindler (1879), Zeit. f. Gesell d. Erd. zu Berlin; Curzon (1889), Persia, vol. ii. ch. xxiii. pp. 238–243, London, 1892.)