OF YASDI.

Yasdi also is properly in Persia; it is a good and noble city, and has a
great amount of trade. They weave there quantities of a certain silk
tissue known as _Yasdi_, which merchants carry into many quarters to
dispose of. The people are worshippers of Mahommet.[NOTE 1]

When you leave this city to travel further, you ride for seven days over
great plains, finding harbour to receive you at three places only. There
are many fine woods [producing dates] upon the way, such as one can easily
ride through; and in them there is great sport to be had in hunting and
hawking, there being partridges and quails and abundance of other game, so
that the merchants who pass that way have plenty of diversion. There are
also wild asses, handsome creatures. At the end of those seven marches
over the plain you come to a fine kingdom which is called Kerman.[NOTE 2]

NOTE 1.--YEZD, an ancient city, supposed by D'Anville to be the
_Isatichae_ of Ptolemy, is not called by Marco a kingdom, though having a
better title to the distinction than some which he classes as such. The
atabegs of Yezd dated from the middle of the 11th century, and their
Dynasty was permitted by the Mongols to continue till the end of the 13th,
when it was extinguished by Ghazan, and the administration made over to
the Mongol Diwan.

Yezd, in pre-Mahomedan times, was a great sanctuary of the Gueber worship,
though now it is a seat of fanatical Mahomedanism. It is, however, one of
the few places where the old religion lingers. In 1859 there were reckoned
850 families of Guebers in Yezd and fifteen adjoining villages, but they
diminish rapidly.

[Heyd (_Com. du Levant_, II. p. 109) says the inhabitants of Yezd wove the
finest silk of Taberistan.--H. C.] The silk manufactures still continue,
and, with other weaving, employ a large part of the population. The
_Yazdi_, which Polo mentions, finds a place in the Persian dictionaries,
and is spoken of by D'Herbelot as _Kumash-i-Yezdi_, "Yezd stuff." ["He
[Nadir Shah] bestowed upon the ambassador [Hakeem Ataleek, the prime
minister of Abulfiez Khan, King of Bokhara] a donation of a thousand
mohurs of Hindostan, twenty-five pieces of _Yezdy_ brocade, a rich dress,
and a horse with silver harness...." (_Memoirs of Khojah Abdulkurreem, a
Cashmerian of distinction ... transl. from the original Persian_, by
Francis Gladwin ... Calcutta, 1788, 8vo, p. 36.)--H. C.]

Yezd is still a place of important trade, and carri