Settlements

One evidentiary marker proffered to demonstrate economic decline in Herat after the Mongols is that the number of villages in Herat province (wilāyat) had declined from c. 400 in c. 290/903, to c. 215 in Herat’s ten districts (bulūks) by c. 823/1420. There are flaws with this data. The population of Khurasan declined with the Mongol invasions, but the data points— two blurry snapshots (400 v. 215 villages) captured 517 years apart—are not prima facie evidence of socio-economic decline.

The geography encompassed in Ibn Rusta’s estimate (400 villages great and small), and bulūks in Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū (c. 215 villages), materially diverge. Ibn Rusta’s estimate is for greater Herat and its unspecified environs. Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū specifies Herat’s environs: the ten bulūks, plus the wilāyats that are contiguous with, or beyond, the bulūks. The wilāyats are Herat’s dependencies (wilāyāt kih āz tawābiʿ-yi Harāt ast): Bādghīs, Bākharz, Fūshanj, “Ghūr, Gharjistān, Sākhar, and Tulāk,” Harāt-Rūd, Isfizār, Jām, Khwāf, Kurūkh, Kūsūyi, “Shāfilān, Azāb, and Dāman Kūh,” Murghāb, and “Zāwa and Maḥwilāt.”

Estimates of active settlements must include the ten bulūks, plus any settlements in sections of wilāyats abutting Herat. If bulūks are Herat’s “suburbs,” the abutting areas are “Greater Herat.” Bādghīs and Zāwa can be excluded from the census because they were not under Kartid rule; Azāb, Tulāk, Murghāb, etc. are far from Herat. But settlements in Greater Herat, like bits of Fūshanj or Harāt-Rūd, probably should be counted. It is evident from this exercise that the locales ascribed to Herat shift with political, administrative, and fiscal vicissitudes. Can Ibn Rusta’s nebulous surroundings of Herat even be replicated?

Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū identifies only the principal villages (qarya; pl. qurá) and qaṣabas (town, township) of bulūk and wilāyat. It is from this specification in his listing of bulūks that c. 215 villages was derived. Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū, however, frequently notes the existence of mazraʿas (pl. mazāriʿ: sown field; hamlet) and orchards (sgl. bāghistān). These details cannot be ignored. To illustrate, after naming (some or all) of the villages in Injīl bulūk, Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū writes, “apart from these villages, there are many mazāriʿ.”