(Old Iran. *Kata) we may compare the first part of the Latin name Cetrora for the corresponding place in the geographical list of the Tabula Peutingeriana, as Tomaschek (Sb. Akad. Wiss. zu Wien. 102. 165, Vienna, 1883) derives that name from the Old Iranian word kata, used in the Avesta to designate an 'excavation,' house dug to receive corpses, and the presumably Iranian element ravara, found in the Mod. Pers. Rūdh-rāvar (cf. Ptolemy's 'Poápa, Geog. 6. 5. 2). This suggestion is plausible in the main, since it is reasonable to suppose that Istakhri, who was a native of Stakhr, would have been well acquainted with the territory around Yezd. The details which he gives regarding Kathah and the river that flows from a village near a citadel where there is a lead-mine, would answer in general to the region about the modern village Kattū near the Yellow Castle' (Ķal'ah-i Zard), as described by Browne, A Year Amongst the Persians, p. 358. [I find the identity of Kathah and Yezd accepted also by Le Strange, Lands of the Early Caliphate, p. 285, Cambridge, 1905; but Khodabakhsh Bahram Raïs writes me that the name Kathah seems to be absolutely unknown in Yezd, although there is a large village called Kahtu or Kathu about 20 farsakhs south of the city.-Proof-sheet addition.]

II. NOTE ON TWO OLD ITINERARIES FROM SHIRAZ TO YEZD

I add two old itineraries, the one by an Oriental, the other by an Occidental, covering in part at least the route followed in this chapter. The first is by the Arab geographer Istakhri in the tenth century and reads as follows (ed. De Goeje, 1. 129-130): 'Route from Shiraz to Kathah, the chief town of Yezd, along the Khorasan route: From Shiraz to the village of Zarkān (Zargān) 6 farsakhs; from Zarkān to the city of Istakhr 6 ƒ; from Istakhr to the village of Bir (v.l. Bin, Pir, Giz) 4 f; from Bir to Kahmand (v.l. Kihandah, Kihandaz; Ouseley reads Kahndaz) 8 ƒ; from Kahmand to the village of Bid (Deh-Bid, 'Willow Village') 8f; from the village of Bid to the city of Abarkuh 12 f; from Abarkūh to the village of Al-Asad ('Lion Village,' v.l. Deh-Shir) 13 ƒ; from the village of Asad to the village of Al-Jüz (or Jauz, v.l. Al-Khūr, Deh-i Khvar) 6 ƒ ; and from the village of Al-Juz to the village Kalah al-Majus 6 f; and from Kalah al-Majūs to the city of Kathah, the chief place of Yezd, 5 f.' The second is the memorandum of the route of Josafa Barbaro, in the fifteenth century, from Persepolis to Yezd (ed. Hakluyt, 49. 81-82), and it reads as follows: 'From thense, iij daies io'ney, yow come to a towne called Dehebeth (Deh-Bid), wheare they vse tillaige and making of fustians. Twoo daies io'ney further ye come to a place called Vargari (or Vargan), which in tyme past hath been a great and a faire towne; but at this pñt it maketh not aboue m' houses, in the which they also vse tillaige and making of fustians, as is aforesaid. Foure daies io'ney thense ye come to a towne called Deiser (Deh-Shir), and iij daies io'ney further an other towne called Tafte (miswritten as Taste), from whense following that waie another daies io'ney ye come to Jex, of the which I haue made sufficient menčon before.'

CHAPTER XXIII

THE ZOROASTRIANS OF YEZD

'From Yezd's eternal Mansion of the Fire.'

- MOORE, Lalla Rookh.

SITUATED amid a sea of sand which threatens to ingulf it, Yezd is a symbolic home for the isolated band of Zoroastrians that still survives the surging waves of Islam that swept over Persia with the Mohammedan conquest twelve hundred years ago. Although exposed to persecution and often in danger from storms of fanaticism, this isolated religious community, encouraged by the buoyant hope characteristic of its faith, has been able to keep the sacred flame of Ormazd alive and to preserve the ancient doctrines and religious rites of its creed.

When the Arab hosts unfurled the green banner with the crescent and swept over the land of Iran with cry of Allah, shout of Mohammed, proclamation of the Koran, fire, sword, slaughter, enforced conversion, or compulsory banishment, a mighty change came over Persia. The battle-grounds of Kadisia and Nihavand decided not Iran's fate alone, but Iran's faith. Ahura Mazda, Zarathushtra, and the Avesta ceased almost to be known, the temple consecrated to fire became a sacrifice to its own flame, and the gasp of the dying Magian's voice was drowned by the call of the Muezzin to prayer on the top of the minaretted mosque.

In a way the Moslem creed was easy of acceptance for Persia, since Mohammed himself had adopted elements from Zoroastrianism to unite with Jewish and Christian tenets in making up his religion. The Persian, therefore, under show of reason

or exercise of force, could be led to exchange Ormazd for Allah, to acknowledge Mohammed, instead of Zoroaster, as the true prophet of later days, and to accept the Koran as the inspired word of God that supplanted the Avesta. The conqueror's sword, inscribed with holy texts in arabesques, contributed its share, no doubt, to making all this possible, but many a Gabar stubbornly refused to give up his belief, and consequently sealed his faith with his blood. The few that sought religious liberty by accepting exile in India became the ancestors of the modern Parsis of Bombay, so often spoken of already; but the rest of the scanty handful that escaped the perils of the Mohammedan conquest found a desert-home at Yezd and in the remote city of Kerman, not to mention the straggling few that are found elsewhere in Persia, to prove the exception to the now universal rule of Islam in Iran.

Almost immediately after my arrival at Yezd I inquired for the home of Kalantar Dinyar Bahram, the head of the Zoroastrian community, which numbers between 8000 and 8500 in the city and its environs, but it took me some time to find his house. For nearly two hours my tired mules and donkeys threaded their way through dusty, crooked lanes, across camelfilled squares, and in and out of closing bazaars, until we reached the Kalantar's door just as the sun was going down. The dwelling was unpretentious on the outside, as all Persian houses are. Several servants answered the summons of my man, who announced the arrival of a farangi, and I was then ushered into a large, oblong room carpeted with fine Persian rugs. The walls of the apartment were almost without decoration, and the furnishing was confined chiefly to divans and cushions, as in many Oriental dwellings; but on one side there were arranged in Occidental manner a table and some chairs, made and upholstered after European models. The front of

1 These are the figures given me at Teheran by Mr. Ardeshir Reporter, Agent of the Society for the Amelio

ration of the Zoroastrians in Persia. See also p. 336, n. 3, above; p. 376, n. 1, and p. 425, below.