É. Apor (ed.): Stein, Aurel: Old Routes of Western Iran. (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 2.)

Chapter II. —In Kohgalu Tracts

Sec. ii] BEHBEH

ÄN AND ARRAJÄN BRIDGE 81 Islamic times, and probably also before as a great trade centre at the junction of important routes, is now recognizable only by an area of shapeless low mounds. Cultivation made possible by a canal from the river higher up seems to have effaced all structural remains on the surface, and owing perhaps to its increase the lines of the decayed town walls noted by Professor Herzfeld have become difficult to trace. For the many notices of the town of Arrajän by early Arab geographers, and for the great routes mentioned by them as meeting there, reference to Professor Schwarz's work must suffice here.

2 The importance of the town is also attested by the fact of its name having been given to a whole province between Khüzistän and Färs

; while in Muqaddasl's detailed description the capital is spoken of as " the storehouse for Persia and Mesopotamia " and as "the emporium for Khüzistän and Isfahän".

3 On December 26th, while our baggage was being taken, not without serious risk, across the swollen river to the village of Kurdistän, I proceeded up the left bank for some 5 miles to the ruined bridge which remains as the only monument of Arrajän's past greatness. About a mile before reaching it there were to be seen exposed on one side of a deep ravine, cutting through the high conglomerate of the river-bank, the plastered openings of two old qandts. A little above them a small aqueduct, 2 feet wide on the top, crosses the ravine by a semicircular arch. It must have served to carry water from a third qanät across the ravine. Some 20 yards lower down there is seen on either bank a cemented circular shaft 1 See Iran im Mittelalter, pp. 1

12 sqq., 429 sqq. and passim. » Ibid. p. 114. G