The Nurali Lurs of Dilfan
three or four hovels, representing what the Persian newspapers
describe as the " Building of settled villages in Luristan." We
soon left these feeble efforts, and rode from group to group of
black tents, busy with the winnowing of their corn. Stubble-
fields covered the easy slopes: there were neither houses nor
trees; but a delightful openness, a sense of remoteness and
peace and the gaiety of harvest: the people were friendly on
the way: the name of 'Abdul Khan worked like a passport: and
as we went along, the women who carried flour to the tents,
balancing it on their heads in small goatskins instead of sacks,
would stop to exchange the frankest badinage with our guide,
who was well known in the district.
There were a few ruins of buildings in the valley, put up
they told me by 'Abdul Khan's father in the days before the
Nuralis had been defeated by their enemy, the Emir Afshar from
the south. 'Abdul Khan himself had to fly from him, and
spent fifteen years in Nihavend, becoming civilized and
incidentally learning how to smoke opium; and he has only
been able to return to his own country last year with the
support of the government troops: hence his loyalty. His
splendour, however, is dimmed, and as we went along, our
acquaintances by the way would shake their heads and tell us
that we should have seen the Nuralis of Dilfan in the days of
their greatness.
'Abdul Khan was settled near the end of the litde valley where
a willow tree or two break the line of the hills. The sun was
sloping down into the afternoon when we arrived. We found
him sitting on a mattress over a brazier in the dimness of his
tent, a skeleton of a man with yellow parchment face wrecked
by opium, but a pleasant and cordial host. In winter he
reads Firdausi, and Persian translations of French novels, and
he was immediately interested and sympathetic to my quest for
prehistoric Lurish skulls.
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