Identifier: cu31924028627036 Title: Persia past and present; a book of travel and research, with more than two hundred illustrations and a map Year: 1906 (1900s) Authors: Jackson, A. V. Williams (Abraham Valentine Williams), 1862-1937 Subjects: Zoroastrianism Publisher: New York, The Macmillan Company London, Macmillan & Co., ltd. Contributing Library: Cornell University Library Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image: distribution of the stream, which is allowed to runfor several hours, depending upon the contract, and then thewaterman again shuts off the supply and opens it in turn forthe next house. In the management of the water system,however, little attention is paid to matters of hygiene, and thewater becomes much polluted by surface drainage, so that it iseasy to see how an epidemic like cholera can spread.^ The two architectural monuments in Tabriz which have aspecial claim to interest are partly in ruins. The most conspic-uous of these is the Ark, or citadel, which may be seen fromalmost every part of the town. This massive structure prob-ably occupies the same position as the old building whichYakut described seven hundred years ago as the Palace of theAmir, built of red brick artistically set, and very solidly con-structed. 2 The people call the citadel the Arch of Ali Shah{Tdk-i All Shah), after the name of Taj ad-Din Ali Shah, who1 See also Wilson, Persian Life, p. 70. ^ Yakut, p. 133.

Text Appearing After Image: THE CITADEL AND THE BLUE MOSQUE 43 was the grand vizir of the Mongol ruler Ghazan Khan, at thebeginning of the fourteenth century, and built the mosquewhich once formed a part of the structure.^ The battlementsof the Ark rise more than a hundred feet in height, and thewalls are fully twenty feet in thickness. The forbiddingappearance of the solemn pile agrees well with the story thatcriminals were formerly executed by being thrown from itssummit. Local accounts add a narrative of a curious escape ofa woman who was condemned to this horrible death ; her skirtsand balloon-like pantalets acted as a parachute to break thefall, so that she received no injury. As I surveyed the towering wall and observed its ancientstyle of architecture, I could not help thinking that it prob-ably did not differ much from that on the top of which a tragicscene was enacted in the days of the tyrant Cambyses, son ofCyrus, as told by Herodotus. According to the famous his-torian, the kings grand vizir Prexaspe

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