However that may be, in the Sasanian times of Persia, when Qasr-i-Shirin was built, and Farhad hewed at the mountain of Bisitun, there was a great town named Hulwan. This was about the year A.D. 400. Hulwan and its territories extended up to what is now known as Shahr-i-Zur, and behind the site of the modern Halabja, in the hills which form an amphitheatre behind it, there was a large town called Sasan. Here were great stone buildings, and their ruins still stand, ordinary walls and pillars of the great Sasanian age of Persia. There is every indication, besides legend, to show that a great city existed here, and in the Shahr-i-Zur plain below were a number of villages whose inhabitants cultivated its rich and well-watered soil. To-day there are but a number of large, high mounds, a sure indication of ancient inhabitation. Shahr-i-Zur was so well protected by its hills, that it is no wonder that the ancient kings looked upon it as a specially favoured spot, and favourable to development and commerce. Around all sides is a high ring of mountains, except upon the north-west, and besides its ring of hills a swift, strong river shuts them in upon the southern side. [Sidenote: HULWAN] Across this, from Sasan, a great bridge was built into the territory of Hulwan, a part of which still stands. Shahr-i-Zur means the “Strong City,” and Shahr-i-Bazar, “The Market Town”--both equally appropriate names, but there is no proof as to which was originally employed to designate the plain. Among the hill villages, high up in the ravines of the frowning walls of Aoraman, religious shaikhs lived and died, and there are to-day several holy individuals living in little villages perched thousands of feet up under the mighty and frowning wall of the great mountain. In the plain, Kurd and Christian lived in peace, till the ascent to power of a certain Abdul Qadir, a fanatic, and slaughterer of all who displeased him. Shahr-i-Zur possessed in his time (about two hundred years ago) a mixed population, and its Kurdish people still spoke the ancient dialect known as Shahr-i-Zuri, a tongue of old Persia, rejoicing in grace of form and sound, now only to be heard in Aoraman, much corrupted. This fanatic was the cause of a massacre of Christians, and the Chaldeans inhabiting the plain fled to the mountains, to Kirkuk, and to Bagdad. The Shahr-i-Zuri, who were upon bad terms with some of the local ruffians employed in the massacre, dispersed and disappeared, and left Shahr-i-Zur a waste. Gulanbar, a small town, was deserted and laid bare, with its villages along the mountain foot. These have become partially reoccupied, and are now shadows of what they formerly were. In 1821 or thereabouts a Persian prince, Muhammad Ali Mirza, invaded and took it, but in a subsequent battle fought near Halabja he was mortally wounded, and retiring across the river, left it in the hands of a Turkish pasha of Bagdad.