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

above the bed of the stream. The sloping ground on the top, only some 50 yards
across where widest, bears on the side opposite to these precipices the badly
decayed remains of a defensive line stretching for about a quarter of a mile. It
is formed by a wall of unhewn stones set in earth, with debris heaps from a few
ruined towers of the same rough construction meant to strengthen the line.
Remains of small dwellings built with rubble and mortar were traced here and
there between the line of wall and the brink of the precipice. The fragments of
coarse red pottery, all plain, picked up between the ruined walls afforded no
indication as to the approximate date of the fortification.

The same evening there arrived a messenger with a letter from Sohrāb Khān
assuring us of protection as far as his seat at Warāwī, and promising to use his
influence with the tribal chiefs of the Tarakuma lower down to help in our pro-
gress towards Ishkanān. As any other route in the direction of Lār was sure to
be blocked in consequence of the Qāshqai disturbance, we started on January
29th for Warāwī. The journey of some 34 miles was done in two marches under
the protection of Sohrāb Khān's armed tufangchīs, and, apart from a clumsy
attempt at robbery by one of them, passed without incident. The route led down
the open valley past Galehḍār and Fāl to a group of small villages with date-
palm groves and other scanty cultivation, irrigated from little streams descend-
ing from the foot of the coastal range. One of them, Chāh Ḥusainī, had been
completely burned down and destroyed during some fighting carried on a few
years before with its neighbours. We halted for the night at the hamlet of
Chāh Sargaya. Next day, after marching 7 miles, we passed the village of
Mohur, which holds some hundred families of Saiyyids and is situated where a
spur descending from the south causes the valley to contract. The immunity of
the village from local disturbances, due to the holy descent of its inhabitants, was
reflected by the greater extent and better cultivation of its lands. Mohur is the
last village counted as being within the Galehḍār tract, and a conspicuous watch
tower on the end of the spur to the south marks the boundary towards Warāwī.

The valley beyond widens considerably, but most of the flat trough is left
uncultivated in spite of the increased volume of the stream that drains and at
times inundates it. As the villages to the south were at feud with Warāwī we
had to keep to a less direct track, along which the only inhabited place was the
small fortified hamlet of Ḥājīābād (Fig. 83), with a well-built cistern that
looked old. After passing over a wide area of salt-encrusted ground left wholly
to grazing, and crossing the stream near the palm grove of Narmūn, we reached
Warāwī by the evening of January 30th. This large village, counting some 300
households, has for a long time past held a bad reputation for the predatory
propensities of its inhabitants. It was hence reassuring to find in Sohrāb Khān,