The Nāṣirī Generations 152.3.6

152.3.6

Trustworthy persons have thus related, that Sultan Ghiyas-ud-Din, in his early youth, was greatly addicted to conviviality, and fond of the sports of the field; and from the capital city, Firuz-koh, which was the seat of government, as far as the Zamin [district] and town of Dawar, which was the winter capital, not a human being dared to pursue the chase. Between these two cities [towns] is a distance of forty leagues, and he [the Sultan] had commanded that a pillar should be erected at each league of distance; and in Zamin-i-Dawar he had laid out a garden, and he had given it the name of Garden of Iram; and certainly, for pleasantness and freshness, no such garden had ever been seen in the whole world, nor did any monarch possess the like of it. The length of this garden was more than sufficient for two courses of a horse, and the whole of its glades were adorned with pine and juniper-trees, and various sorts of shrubs and odoriferous herbs; and the Sultan had commanded, so that, adjoining the wall of that garden, a plain had been cleared corresponding in length and breadth with the garden itself.