m for the throne, reached by four
stone steps.

There is a frieze here of graceful although conventional floral
decoration with gold leaves. In the wall are two windows giving light to
two now empty rooms. The end central receptacle or niche is gaudily
ornamented with Venetian looking-glasses cut in small triangles, and it
has a pretty ceiling with artichoke-leaf pattern capitals in an upward
crescendo of triangles.

The ceiling above the upper platform is made entirely of mirrors with
adornments in blue and gold and glass, representing the sky, the sun, and
golden lions. Smaller suns also appear in the ornamentation of the
frieze. The ceiling above the colonnade and the beams between the columns
are richly ornamented in blue, grey, red, and gold. This ceiling is
divided into fifteen rectangles, the central panel having a geometrical
pattern of considerable beauty, in which, as indeed throughout, the
figure of the sun is prominent.

The inner hall must have been a magnificent room in its more flourishing
days. It is now used as a storeroom for banners, furniture, swords, and
spears, piled everywhere on the floor and against the walls. One cannot
see very well what the lower portion of the walls is like, owing to the
quantity of things amassed all round, and so covered with dust as not to
invite removal or even touch; but there seems to be a frieze nine feet
high with elaborate blue vases on which the artist called into life gold
flowers and graceful leaves.

The large paintings are of considerable interest apart from their
historical value. In the centre, facing the entrance door, we detect
Nadir Shah, the Napoleon of Persia, the leader of 80,000 men through
Khorassan, Sistan, Kandahar and Cabul. He is said to have crossed from
Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass to Peshawar, and from there to
Delhi, where his presence led to a scene of loot and carnage. But to him
was certainly due the extension of the Persian boundary to the Indus
towards the East and to the Oxus on the North. In the picture he is
represented on horseback with a great following of elephants and turbaned
figures.

To the right we have a fight, in which Shah Ismail, who became Shah of
Persia in 1499, is the hero, and a crowd of Bokhara warriors and Afghans
the secondary figures. Evidently the painting is to commemorate the great
successes obtained by Ismail in Khorassan, Samarkand and Tashkend.

The third is a more peaceful scene--a Bokhara danci