Qarai Turk nomads in Bivazhan District (Gazetteer of Persia, 1910)

Qarai Turk nomads in Bivazhan District

BIVᾹZHᾹN or PIVᾹZHᾹN (No. 2.) (District)―

A high, barren plateau in Khorasan, south of Meshed. It is dotted with 16 or 18 fort villages, which are remarkable from the absence of gardens or trees about them. The plain presents a gently undulating pasture-covered surface, extending for many miles east and west, and forms a long, narrow strip between the deserts on either side. To the eastward it drops suddenly by a very broken surface to the Sar-i-Jam district, which presents a wide waste of red clay hummocks. To the westward Bivazhan drops on to the plain of Nishapur on the one hand and the kavir of Yūnsī on the other. Bivazhan is a bulūk of the Meshed district. Its territory extends from Turuq on the east to the Suravan river on the west.

The people are principally of Persian descent, with many Qarai Turk nomads. Its estimated population is 1,500.

It contains the following principal villages:―

Bivazhan.	Kuruj.
Qasimabad.	Ustaj.
Sultanabad. Has salt mines and is endowed to the shrine of Imam Riza at Meshed.	Fakhr-i-Daud.
Deh-i-Surkh.	Dilbaran.
Bazmishk.	Deh Ulia.
Sharifabad.	Baghcheh.
Gumbad-i-Daraz.	Saiyidabad.
Mulkabad.

And a few others.

The revenue of the Bivazhan sub-division is tumans 1,305 in cash, 180 kharwars of grain ( wheat and  barley), and 128 kharwars of chopped straw.―(Bellew; Napier; Schindler; Maula Bakhsh.)

Gazetteer of Persia. Volume I. ― Simla: Government of India Monotype Press, 1910, pp. 84―85.