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

comprises no remains of inlaid glass bangles such as were recovered at pre-
historic sites.⁵

The ruined site which I have just briefly described, and which may con-
veniently be called after the village of Behkird, is undoubtedly that of the city
which the early Arab geographers mention under the name of Jīruft, as the chief
place of the whole district still called after it. Among the notices extracted and
translated in Dr. Schwarz's very helpful work Iran im Mittelalter⁶ the following
may briefly be reproduced here. Iṣṭakhrī notes of the city of Jīruft that 'it is two
miles long, a chief mart for the trade of Khorāsān and Sijistān. The amenities of
the cold and the warm land are here combined: there are to be had here snow⁷ and
fresh dates, walnuts and lemons. Water is taken by the people from the Dīwrūd.⁸
Jīruft is very fertile, its fields are artificially irrigated.' Muqaddasī calls Jīruft
'the pleasantest of the provincial capitals, a treasury of fruits and cereals'. He
expatiates on the amenities of the town and its environs, on its good bāzārs and
baths, but also refers to its excessive heat, local diseases, mosquitoes and snakes.
'The town is fortified and has four gates. . . . The chief mosque is situated on
the outskirts of the town, near the gate towards Bam, far away from the bāzārs;
it is built with bricks and plaster. Drinking water is obtained from a river which
sends its water through the streets and bāzārs, has a rapid flow and could work
twenty mills. The city is larger than Iṣṭakhr. For the building of houses mud
is used, for foundation walls stone.⁹ Snow [for the cooling of drinks] is brought
from a distance. . . . The country outside the town is exceptionally pleasant.' As
Yāqūt repeating the descriptive details of older geographers refers to Jīruft as
a 'great and important' place, it may be concluded that the town was still flour-
ishing at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

Conditions had sadly changed after the Mongol conquest of Persia; for there
can be no doubt that it is the site of the Arab geographers' Jīruft to which Marco
Polo refers when he describes his passage through 'the city called Camadi' on his
journey from Kermān to Hormuz about A.D. 1272. After describing the route
which must have taken him from Kermān past Rāyīn and across the high range
of Sardūyeh down the valley of the Rūd-i-shōr, the great Venetian relates: 'After
you have ridden down hill those two days you find yourself in a vast plain, and at
the beginning thereof there is a city called Camadi which formerly was a great
and noble place, but now is of little consequence, for the Tartars in their incur-
sions have several times ravaged it. The plain whereof I speak is a very hot