The Christian sects in Persia are of the Armen ian and of the Nestorian Churches. The Nestorians claim to be Kaldani ; they inhabit the district of Urumia iu Azarbijan, and the mountains to the south. They live amongst Kurd; • and their patri arch has dwelt at Kojamis near Julamerk, in the heart of the Kurd mountains. Their number in Persia, Turkey, and Kurdistan is about 200,000,— wild, brave, and grasping. About the year 1870 they were attacked by the Kurds, and numbers massacred. There are throughout Persia, as in Afghanistan, Turkish Arabia, Turkey, and the west coast of India, small bodies of Jews, who. are occupied in petty traffic and as distillers.
Fire-worshippers, followers of the doctrines of Zertusht (Zoroaster), are still to be found in different parts of Persia. Yezd is a town of 30,000 souls, of whom 1000 are Jews and 4000 fire-worshippers, there designated Gabr (Gaour), but styled Parsee in British India, after their original home. The merchants of Yezd visit Bombay, the Mauritius, Java, and China.
Hindus are met with in many parts of Persia, engaged in financial and mercantile transactions. The town of Turshez, 36 miles N.E. of Turbat Haidari, is occupied by Hindus from Milian and Jeysulmir.
Karbala, in Turkish Arabia, and in Persia, Mashad, and Kum, are sacred towns. Kum is in Irak-i-Ajam, 80 miles from Teheran. The sister of Imam Mart is buried there, and tho town is tho most celebrated of the sanctuaries (Bast) of 1 Persia. In Mashad, tho capital of Khorasan, ' the Imam Raza was intoned ; his shrine is a 1 sanctuary even for murderers, and the people from very groat distances send the bodies of their had relatives to bo interred near the saint's tomb. Formerly the whole rnahalah, or quarter of Bida ba-1, was reckoned sacred, like the Kedesh of Galilee, and the Shechem of Samaria and Hebron in Judea. The town of Ardebil (lat. 38° 14' N., and long. 48° 21' E.) has the tombs of Shaikh ,i Safi-lid-Din, and of his descendant Shah Ismail, ' the founder of the Saffavi dynasty, and on their $1.0 count it is a place of pilgrimage.—Porter's "rarelS,1. p. Kinneir's Geographical llfenwir ; aolm's History of Persia ; Pottinger's Travels, ' duchistan and Sinde; Rich, Residence in Kurdistan; lesney's Euphrates and Tigris; Fontanier ; Taylor; Ryard ; Burnes ; Conon!' ; Ferrier; Baron de f le, Travels; Colonel MacGregor, Central Asia, ., quoting Abbot, Chardin, Clerk, Eastwicke, 'racer, Grant, Holmes, Monteith, Monier, Ogilvy, nseley, Pelly, Risley, Rawlinson, Stewart, Stanton, Mel. Tod, Wagner, Wilson. CENTRAL ASIA, as here to be noticed, is known the natives of Persia as Turan. Its western oundary may be taken as the Caspian Sea and le Ural ; on the east is the lofty table-land of the color mountains, which form the western boun ary of Chinese Turkestan and Zungaria ; on the . and S.E. are Persia, Kashmir, Kafiristan, and Afghanistan ; and its northern boundary is western Siberia. The northern half of Central Asia con sists of the Kirghiz desert, which is mountainous and rugged on the east, and full of saline steppes on the west. In the midst of the southern half
lies the Sea of Ural, on the western side of which up to the Caspian Sea there stretches a broad tract of desert. But on the eastern side of Cen tral Asia is the fertile tract watered by the Syr Darya and Amu Darya,—the Jaxartes and the Oxus,--and which was conquered by Russia in 1 1864 and 1868.
The countries north of the Hindu Kush, which lie in the valley of the Oxus and its tributary rivers, from Balkh upwards, have several designa tions. Eastwards of that city lies Kunduz, and Badakhshan is farther eastward. To the north of this territory are the bill states of Wakkan, Shuglinan, Darwaz, Kulab, and Ilissar, whose rulers claim a descent from Alexander the Great. To the eastwards of Badakhshan lies the plain of Pamir, inhabited by the Kirghiz, and beyond the llelur Tagh mountains are Chitral, Gilgit, and Iskardo, which extend towards Kashmir. South of Badakhshan is the country of the Siah Posh Kafir, who occupy part of the range of Hindu Kush and a portion of Belut Tagh.
Central Asia has a hardy peasantry, dwelling in the mountain region with its vast upland downs, well suited for summer pasture, partly descendants of the original inhabitants, and in part nomade races. At the foot of the mountains, in the tracts of surpassing fertility, Turk, Bok harlot, Kalmuk, Kirghiz, Uigur, Manchu, Chinese, and Iranian dwell in the well-watered plains.
The regions from the Polar Sea to the Hindu Kush, and from the interior of China to the shores of the Danube, have been occupied by nomade races from pre-historic times, along with descendants' of Semitic and Iranian con4uerors from the south. The more ancient occupants of Central Asia belong to the Iranian family. The later immigrants are from Mongoloid races. From amongst these camo the warrior nations known in the west as the Hun, the Avar, the Cigar, the Kutrigur, and Khazar. And the manner of living, the customs, and physical condi tions of the tribes, whose arms reached from the Jaxartes to the heart of Rome and Gaul, had much resemblance to those of the present inhabit ants of Central Asia, nomades, who are in their habits the.same as they were 2000 years ago. In the tent of many a notnade chief a similar life is observable as that described by Priscua as pre vailing at the court of the king of the Huns. Attila, Chengiz Khan, and Timor, in historical characters resemble each other; and Vambery was of opinion that energy and good fortune could now almost produce on the banks of the Oxus and Jaxartes one of those warriors, whose soldiers, like an avalanche carrying everything before it, would increase to hundreds of thousands, and would appear as a new example of God's scourge, if the powerful barriers of European civilisation, which has a great influence in the east, did not stop the way.