The Rashīdī History 7.5.2

7.5.2

The kings of neighbouring countries, and persons in power from distant spots, have, many times, wished to excavate the mound and take away the precious things buried there; but as soon as they have arrived at the borders of the place, a furious wind has sprung up, dark clouds have gathered together from the four quarters of heaven, and they have become lost." Similar stories are in the mouth of nearly every native of the country down to the present time, and several have been recorded by Dr. Bellew and Sir Douglas Forsyth. These travellers themselves visited some of the sand-buried ruins in the neighbourhood of Yangi Hisar. One of them was the fort of a Uighur chief called Tokhta Rashid, which had been destroyed about the eleventh century by Arsalan Khan, and afterwards overwhelmed by the sand. Another was the Mazar, or shrine, of one Hazrat Begum, which had been first swallowed up, and again, at a later date, left free by the receding dunes. The neighbourhood of the latter ruin is described as "a perfect sea of loose sand, advancing in regular wave lines from north-west to south-east. The sand dunes are mostly from ten to twenty feet high, but some are seen, like little hills, full a hundred feet high, and in some spots higher.