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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
88
MARCO POLO BOOK I.
CHAPTER XVI.
4
CONCERNING THE GREAT CITY OF YASDI.
YASDI also is properly in Persia ; it is a good and noble
city, and has a great amount of trade. They weave
there quantities of a certain silk tissue known as Yasdi,
which merchants carry into many quarters to dispose of.
The people are worshippers of Mahommet.1
When you leave this city to travel further, you ride
for seven days over great plains, finding harbour to
receive you at three places only. There are many fine
woods [producing dates] upon the way, such as one
can easily ride through ; and in them there is great
sport to be had in hunting and hawking, there being
partridges and quails and abundance of other game,
so that the merchants who pass that way have plenty
of diversion. There are also wild asses, handsome
creatures. At the end of those seven marches over
the plain you come to a fine kingdom which is called
Kerman.'
NOTE I.—YEZD, an ancient city, supposed by D'Anvil]e to be the Isatichae of Ptolemy, is not called by Marco a kingdom, though having a better title to the distinction than some which he classes as such. 'file atabegs of Yezd dated from the middle of the nth century, and their Dynasty was permitted by the Mongols to continue till the end of the 13th, when it was extinguished by Ghazan, and the administration made over to the Mongol Diwan.
Yezd, in pre-Mahomedan times, was a great sanctuary of the Gueber worship, though now it is a seat of fanatical Mahomedanism. It is, however, one of the few places where the old religion lingers. In 1859 there were reckoned 850 families of Guebers in Yezd and fifteen adjoining villages, but they diminish rapidly.
[Heyd (Com. du Levant, II. p. 109) says the inhabitants of Yezd wove the finest silk of Taberistan.—H. C.] The silk manufactures still continue, and, with other weaving, employ a large part of the population. The Yazdi, which Polo mentions, finds a place in the Persian dictionaries, and is spoken of by D'Ilerbelot as Kum shi- Yezdi, "Yezd stuff." [" He [Nadir Shah] bestowed upon the ambassador [Hakeem Ataleek, the prime minister of Abulfiez Khan, King of Bokhara] a donation of a thousand mohurs of Hindostan, twenty-five pieces of Yezdy brocade, a rich dress, and a horse with silver harness. . . . " (Memoirs of h hojah /hdiuU'urreeln, a Cash-
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