1 SEISTAN. 179
2 Seistan is in many places very great, the country is for.the most
3 part a desert, except a few spots under cultivation, producing
4 wheat, rice, millet, cotton, tobacco, grapes, and melons; there are
5 scarcely any trees, the largest being stunted pomegranate trees and
6 tamarisks. The scantiness of produce appears to result from the
7 want of industry and skill in the inhabitants to make use of their
8 natural advantages.
9 - The majority of the people are Tajiks, considered to be of
10 Persian descent; with these are intermixed Belooches and
11 Afghans. The morasses are inhabited by a very barbarous
12 race, distinguished from the rest of the population by their tall
13 athletic frames, dark complexions, ugly features, long faces,
14 and large black eyes.> Besides their occupation as herdsmen, $ kiph. 40s.
15 they fish and fowl on rafts, amidst the reeds and rushes of the
16 Swamps. The Tajiks are Shia Mahometans; the Belooches and
17 Afghans, Sunnis. ‘There are also a few Hindoos. The total ¢ Lech, Descrip.
18 population, probably, does not exceed fifty or sixty thousand per- cara ee
19 sons. The language is broken Persian according to Leech, who,
20 in a hundred and fifty words, found about thirty of that language.
21 Pushtoo is also spoken by many. The country is divided amongst
22 a number of petty chiefs, who, according to the latest accounts,
23 acknowledge the supremacy of the ruler of Herat.’ The only 7 Jour. As. Soc.
24 places worth notice are Uumdar, Dooshak, or Jelalabad, Laush, Linn aay sy
25 Kash, and Furrah, and even the three last of these are not strictly tree Co:
26 within the limits-assigned by Conolly to Seistan. Yet this
27 wretched country, as observed by Elphinstone, Christie, and Co-
28 Nolly, contains numerous ruins of vast magnitude, indicating the
29 high prosperity which it formerly enjoyed. Thus at Dooshak, or
30 Jelalabad, the ruins of the ancient city cover as much ground as
31 Isfahan. At Poolkee they extend over “sixteen square miles.
32 At Peshawuroon they are described by Christie® as of immense * tn App. to Pott.
33 extent, insomuch that he rode five miles across them. a
34 Seistan is classic land to the Persians. In the words of Elphin-
35 stone,® * There is no country:to which an admirer of Persian ® 402.
36 poetry and romance will turn with more interest than to
37 Seistan, and there is none where his expectations will meet with
38 so melancholy a disappointment.” _It is especially celebrated as
39 the ordinary residence of Rustum,' of romantic celebrity among ‘ D'tierbeiot, ti.
40 the Persians, and, at a later period, of the valiant Jacob Ben
41 Laith. The prosperity of Seistan was terminated in the latter
42 n2