Kand-i-badām (Village of the Almond) is a dependency of Khujand; though it is not a township (_qaṣba_) it is rather a good approach to one (_qaṣbacha_). Its almonds are excellent, hence its name; they all go to Hormuz or to Hindūstān. It is five or [Sidenote: Fol. 4b.] six _yīghāch_[84] east of Khujand. Between Kand-i-badām and Khujand lies the waste known as Hā Darwesh. In this there is always (_hamesha_) wind; from it wind goes always (_hameshā_) to Marghīnān on its east; from it wind comes continually (_dā'im_) to Khujand on its west.[85] It has violent, whirling winds. People say that some darweshes, encountering a whirlwind in this desert,[86] lost one another and kept crying, "Hāy Darwesh! Hāy Darwesh!" till all had perished, and that the waste has been called Hā Darwesh ever since. Of the townships on the north of the Saiḥūn River one is Akhsī. In books they write it Akhsīkīt[87] and for this reason the poet As̤iru-d-dīn is known as _Akhsīkītī_. After Andijān no township in Farghāna is larger than Akhsī. It is nine _yīghāch_[88] by road to the west of Andijān. `Umar Shaikh Mīrzā made it his capital.[89] The Saiḥūn River flows below its walled town (_qūrghān_). This stands above a great ravine (_buland jar_) and it has deep ravines (_`uṃiq jarlār_) in place of a moat. When `Umar Shaikh Mīrzā made it his capital, he once or twice cut other ravines from the outer ones. In all Farghāna no fort is so strong as Akhsī. *Its suburbs extend some two miles further [Sidenote: Fol. 5.] than the walled town.* People seem to have made of Akhsī the saying (_mis̤al_), "Where is the village? Where are the trees?" (_Dih kujā? Dirakhtān kujā?_) Its melons are excellent; they call one kind Mīr Tīmūrī; whether in the world there is another to equal it is not known. The melons of Bukhārā are famous; when I took Samarkand, I had some brought from there and some from Akhsī; they were cut up at an entertainment and nothing from Bukhārā compared with those from Akhsī. The fowling and hunting of Akhsī are very good indeed; _āq kīyīk_ abound in the waste on the Akhsī side of the Saihūn; in the jungle on the Andijān side _būghū-marāl_,[90] pheasant and hare are had, all in very good condition. Again there is Kāsān, rather a small township to the north of Akhsī. From Kāsān the Akhsī water comes in the same way as the Andijān water comes from Aūsh. Kāsān has excellent air and beautiful little gardens (_bāghcha_). As these gardens all lie along the bed of the torrent (_sā'ī_) people call them the "fine front of the coat."[91] Between Kāsānīs and Aūshīs there is rivalry about the beauty and climate of their townships.