When it lost the name of Ecbatana in that of Hameden, it seems to have lost its honours too; for while it preserved the old appellation of the capital, whence the great kings of the Kaianian race had dictated their decrees; and where "Cyrus, the king, had placed, in the house of the rolls of its palace, the record wherein was written his order for the rebuilding of Jerusalem," it seems, with the retention of its name, to have preserved some memory of its consequence, even so far into modern times as three centuries of "the Christian era." "It was then," continues our accomplished traveller, "that Tiridates attempted to transfer its glories to his own capital; and, according to Ebn Haukel, the gradual progress of six hundred years mouldered away the architectural superiority of the ancient city. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, Tamerlane sacked, pillaged, and destroyed its proudest buildings, ruined the inhabitants, and reduced the whole, from being one of the most extensive cities of the East, to hardly a parsang in length and breadth[221]. In that dismantled and dismembered state, though dwindled to a mere day-built suburb of what it was, it possessed iron gates, till within these fifty years; when Aga Mahomed Khan, not satisfied with the depth of so great a capital's degradation, ordered every remain of past consequence to be destroyed." The result? "His commands were obeyed to a tittle. The mud alleys, which now occupy the site of ancient streets or squares, are narrow, interrupted by large holes or hollows, in the way, and heaps of the fallen crumbled walls of deserted dwellings. A miserable bazaar or two are passed through in traversing the town; and large lonely spots are met with, marked by broken low mounds over older ruins; with here and there a few poplars or willow trees, shadowing the border of a dirty stream, abandoned to the meanest uses; which, probably, flowed pellucid and admired, when these places were gardens, and the grass-grown heap some stately dwelling of Ecbatana."