BALKH, the ancient Bactra or Zariaspa, was formerly a great city, but is now for the most part a mass of ruins, situated on the right bank of the Adirsiah or Balkh river, in a large and fertile plain 1800 feet above the sea. The modern name is, according to Vambéry, the Turkish batik, or balikh, a city. The ruins, which occupy a space of about twenty miles in circuit, consist chiefly of fallen mosques and decayed buildings of sun-burnt brick. No monuments of pre-Mahometan date have been pointed out, if we except the bricks with cuneiform inscriptions which Ferrier asserts he observed; but nothing like a proper investigation of the site has yet been effected. The antiquity and greatness of the place are recognised by the native populations, who speak of it as the Mother of Cities. Its foundation is mythically ascribed to Kaiomurs, the Persian Romulus; and it is at least certain that, at a very early date, it was the rival of Ecbatana, Nineveh, and Babylon. For a long time the city and country was the central seat of the Zoroastrian religion, the founder of which is said to have died within the walls. From the Memoirs of Hwm Thsang, a Chinese traveller, we learn that, at the time of his visit in the 7th century, there were in the city, or its vicinity, about a hundred Buddhist convents, with 3000 devotees, and that there was a large number of stupas, and other religious monuments. The most remarkable was the Nau Behar, Nava Bihara, or New Convent, which possessed a very costly statue of Buddha. A curious notice of this building is found in the Arabian geographer Yâkût. Ibn-Haukal, an Arabian traveller of the 10th century, describes Balkh as built of clay, with ramparts and six gates, and extending half a parasang. He also mentions a castle and a mosque. El Edrisi, in ...