_ 229 _ Bedouin came again with three others on horseback, and captured a Turk who was travelling in the caravan. They put him in a small burial house there, built in brick, like the one mentioned before for this is the manner in which who can afford to do it, but those who cannot make graves in the ground, like ours, with many stones around. There were many of both kinds along the way, as it is hard, slow, and unhealthy especially in the summer, which is the main time for the caravans. The one which left the Bander seven or eight days in front of us, because all the merchants and camel drivers fell ill so that no one could carry his loads, left the Kashan road and went to Yazd, a very populous city of much commerce, from where all the purified water and preserved foods go to Ormuz. It is fifteen days’ journey from Kashan, in the domain of Shah Tahmasp, peopled by Persian Moors, very fair-skinned and handsome men, and by the most beautiful women of all Persia. They put this Turk in the burial house, and some of the Bedouins said that he was from Babylon which the Moors call Baghdad, where the Turk, a relative of his, had killed a relative of theirs and taken a horse from him, and that, as they had found him here, he would have to pay for it. At this, the people of the caravan gathered together, asking
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