É. Apor (ed.): Stein, Aurel: Old Routes of Western Iran. (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 2.)
Chapter II. —In Kohgalu Tracts
Sec. i] B ASHT TO KHAIRÄBÄD RIVER 6 3 for local chiefs of Dö-gumbadhän. The decoration of the interior walls with plastered niches surmounted by pointed arches and of the low flat vaulting was suggestive of the Safawl period. After a fatiguing descent we were shown at the mouth of the Khundo-bunär gorge ruins of two large residences built in the same style. No water can now be found near them nor on the numerous terraces laid out for orchards or fields which we passed lower down for some 3 miles on the way back to Dö-gumbadhän. Two qanäts noticed on the way have carried no water within living memory. On the morning of December 13th, after visiting the ruined caravanserai to the south-west of the village, which now serves as a gendarmerie post, and the warm springs close by, we started for Lishtar. Before taking to the caravan road, which a succession of ruined cisterns marks as old, I examined the abandoned site of Bangä nestling in a nook of low hills about 3 miles to the north-west. Its remains comprise a number of large houses with barrelvaulted rooms showing structural features pointing to the Safawl period. Abandoned cultivation marked by terraced fields on the hillsides is accounted for by an ample spring rising in a small gully farther south. The caravan road which was joined shortly led across a wide plateau of gypsum formation to the small valley of Chahä. Here a ruined caravanserai with remains of decayed dwellings was to be seen above a spring, and the ruin of a small fort on a hillock close by, all apparently dating from late Muhammadan times. Beyond this the road passed into an area of deeply eroded gypsum hillocks furrowed by several brackish streamlets and known
