Two days before my departure, I suffered an Afghan to persuade me to make an excursion to a village in the vicinity named Gazerghiah, to pay a visit there to the tombs of Khodja Abdullah Ansari, and of Dost Mohammed Khan, in order, as it is said, to kill two flies with one blow. On the way I paid my parting visit to the fine ruins of Mosalla. The remains of the mosque and of the sepulchre, which the great Sultan Husein Mirza, caused to be built for {284} himself ten years before his death (901), are, as I before mentioned, an imitation of the monuments of Samarcand. [Footnote 87] Time would have long spared these works of art, but they suffered shamefully during the last two sieges, when the place became the quarters of Shiite fanaticism. It is to be regretted that European officers, like General Borowsky and General Bühler--the former a Pole, the latter an Alsatian, and both present in those campaigns, could not interfere to prevent such acts of Vandalism. Gazerghiah itself, at a league's distance from Herat, and visible, by its position on a hill from that city, has many monuments of interest in sculpture and architecture. They date from the epoch of Shahrookh Mirza, a son of Timour, and have been described at large by Ferrier, but with some slight mistakes, which one readily excuses in an officer who travels. The name of the saint at Gazerghiah, for instance, is Khodja Abdullah Ansari--the latter word signifying that he was an Arab, and of the tribe that shared the Hidjra (flight) with the Prophet. More than six hundred years ago, he passed from Bagdad to Merv, thence to Herat, where he died, and was declared a saint. He now stands in high repute as patron of both city and province. Dost Mohammed Khan directed himself to be buried at the feet of Khodja Abdullah Ansari, at once flattering the prejudices of his countrymen {285} and offending those of his enemies. The grave, which lies between the walls of the adjoining edifice and the sepulchre of the Khodja, had when I saw it no decoration, and not even a stone; for his son and successor preferred first to lay the foundation of his inheritance before completing the tomb of him who had bequeathed it to him. This does not, however, prevent the Afghans from performing their reverential pilgrimages. The saint will, before long, be thrown into the shade by his mighty rival; and yet he has but his deserts, for he is probably one of the numerous Arabian vagabonds, but Dost Mahommed Khan was the founder of the Afghan nation. [Footnote 87: The sepulchre particularly has much resemblance to that of Timour. The decorations and inscriptions upon the tomb are of the most masterly sculpture it is possible to conceive. Many stones have three inscriptions carved out, one above the other, in the finest Sulus writing, the upper line, the middle one, and lower one, forming different verses.] {286} CHAPTER XV. FROM HERAT TO LONDON.