sh is used to manure the fields. Wheat,
cotton, and silk are produced there, but the wheat is not abundant
enough to suffice for food, and some wheat is therefore imported from
Kirman and Schiraz, so that its price is somewhat high. Among the
fruits of Yezd are praised figs, called misqali, and pomegranates. The
inhabitants, formerly Schafeites, belong now to the Schiite sect;
they are almost all weavers, and are known for their honesty and by
their gentleness, which degenerates even into weakness. Hamd Allah
Mustofi, while doing justice to the loyalty of the merchants, accuses
the brokers of that town of intolerable arrogance and pride." (Zinet
el-Medjalis). (Cf. Nouzhet, fol. 602.) See B. de Meynard, Dict. geog.,
hist., &c., p. 611, note 1.

During nearly two centuries the governors (atabegs) of Yezd, like those
of Lauristan, maintained their independence; but in the thirteenth
century Ghazan Khan supplanted them. As for the modern travellers who
have visited those regions, this is what is known of them: Marco Polo
traversed Yezd in 1272, the monk Odoric in 1325, and Josafa Barbaro
in 1474. It was then a city surrounded with walls nearly five miles
in circumference, and well known by its silk trade. Tavernier, in the
seventeenth century, stayed there for three days, enough to make him
extol the fruits and the beauty of the women of that place; similarly
in the nineteenth century the European savants made acquaintance with
that region. Christie, having left Pottinger in Baloochistan, traversed
it while returning from Herat (1810). (See A. Dupre (1808), Voyage in
Persia, vol. ii. ch. xlii.; Dr. A. Petermann (1854), Reisen im Orient,
vol. ii. ch. xii. pp. 203 et seq.; N. de Khamkoff (1859), Memoir,
pp. 200-204; A. H. Schindler (1879), Zeit. f. Gesell d. Erd. zu Berlin;
Curzon (1889), Persia, vol. ii. ch. xxiii. pp. 238-243, London, 1892.)

[43] Kerman--The word is written sometimes Kirman; but the first
pronunciation seems more correct. It is a vast and populated
country, situate in the third climate; longitude 90 deg., latitude
30 deg. It contains a great number of districts, towns, and
boroughs. Its boundaries are: To the east, Mokran and the desert
which extends between Mokran and the sea, near the country of the
Belouth (Beloochees); to the west, Fars; to the north, the deserts
of Khorassan and Sedjestan; to the south, the sea of Fars. On the
frontier of Sirdjan, Kirman makes an angle and advances into the
boundari