National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Section iv—THE SITE OF CHĀH ḤUSAINĪ

On March 15th our march down the Bampūr river was resumed with a view
to examining such old sites as had been reported on the left bank below Bampūr.
While passing through the narrow belt of jungle between the river-bed and the
sandy waste to the south I noticed that many of the large kabūr and tamarisk
trees stood on sand cones, 5–6 feet high, looking like the 'tamarisk cones' so
familiar to me from the scrubby desert along the edge of the Taklamakān. The
growth of these cones clearly showed that cultivation along this part of the
riverine belt must have ceased for a very considerable period. Dād Muḥammad
Khān, a fine old Balūch headman, and other local informants, told me of a tradi-
tion according to which much of the ground here along this southern bank of the
river had once been irrigated by qanāts taking off from the river. These sub-
terraneous canals were believed to have dried up owing to the river having cut
its bed deeper. Local opinion attributed to the same cause the necessity for
constructing the high band or barrage below Īrān-shahr, which holds up the
flow of water in the bed and has deprived much of the lands below Bampūr of
their former irrigation supply.

Opposite to Bampūr we passed again the long stretch of bare clayey ground,
known as Seb-kandakī, previously visited from Bampūr, where plenty of late
pottery attested occupation in Muhammadan times. No traces of qanāts were
met with until after about 10 miles' march we reached the head of the canal
which carried water to the pleasant little oasis of Saiyyidābād founded by Sirdār
Saiyyid Khān, the present Geh Sirdār's father. Here a small, neatly worked
bowl in a kind of black soapstone, Saiyyidābād 01 (Pl. XXV), was brought to me.
No definite information as to its provenance could be obtained. But its antiquity
is not open to doubt.

Thence an almost continuous stretch of cultivation was followed for another
6 miles down to the cluster of mat-huts of Qāsimābād. The 'Tump-i-
Qāsimābād' beyond it, where we camped, proved a low mound measuring about
140 yards from north to south and about half that across. Most of it is covered
with graves. A trial trench cut next day across a slight depression at its
northern end brought to light only coarse red pottery besides a few painted
fragments, showing bold design with triangles and hachuring (Qas. 23, 67;
Pl. IX). These, with two fragments of flint 'blades' picked up on the surface,
sufficed to prove prehistoric occupation. But some pieces of ribbed ware, Qas.
24–6, found on the surface showed that the site was probably tenanted also later.
While encamped near the mound there was brought to me by the local headman