After Tashkend the following are the most remarkable places: Khodjend, that has about 3,000 houses, many manufactories for Aladja (a sort of cotton stuff), eighteen Medresse, and twice that number of mosques; Mergolan, a large city, the principal city of Khokandi learning and the present residence of the Khodja Buzurk, chief of the order of the Makhdum Aazam. This dignitary refused his blessing to the present Emir of Bokhara on his triumphant entry into the city, and the latter did not venture, nor was he in fact able in any way to punish him. Endidjan, where the best Atresz (heavy substantial silks) in the Khanat are manufactured; Namengan, about which the Kiptchaks are located. The following also deserve mentioning:--Hazreti Turkestana with the grave there, in high repute, of Khodj Ahmed Jaszavi, the author of a book (Meshreb) [Footnote 135] upon morals and religion, which is even at the present day a favourite work both amongst the nomads and the settlers in Khokand; {386} Shehri Menzil and Djust, where the famous knives are manufactured which, after those of Hissar, fetch the highest price in Turkestan; Shehrikhan, a place where the best silk is produced; and Oosh, on the eastern frontier of the Khanat, called Takhti Suleiman, Suleiman's throne, which is visited yearly by a great number of pilgrims; the place of pilgrimage itself consists of a hill in the city of Oosh where, amidst the ruins of an old edifice built of large square stones and ornamented by columns, the visitor is first shown, not only a throne hewn out of marble, but the place where Adam, the first prophet (according to the teachings of Islam), tilled the ground. The latter fable was introduced very _apropos_, as the inventor wished to accustom the nomads to agriculture through the medium of their religion. [Footnote 135: I was able to bring back with me to Europe a copy of this very original book written in Turkish, which I hope to publish with a translation.] Anyhow, Oosh is not without interest to our antiquarians. The ruins themselves, and particularly the columns, as they were described to me, lead to the suspicion of a Grecian origin; and if we were searching for the most eastern colony founded by Alexander, we might readily suppose Oosh to be the very spot where the daring Macedonian marked by some monument the most easterly frontier of his gigantic empire. [Footnote 136]