gems, turquoise, Iran, Persia, Nishapur

This short account, based on a report by the British Vice-Consul at Meshed, describes the celebrated turquoise mines near Nishapur, then believed to be the only mines producing turquoise of the finest shape and color. The workings lie in rugged hills reached through two mining villages at about 5,000 feet elevation, with the mines scattered along several ridges and ravines. Three principal mines were operated by lessees, employing only about 100 miners working continuously in two shifts. The most productive, the Reish mine, is described as a large hollowed cave near the summit of a ridge about 6,000 feet above sea level, entered through a vertical shaft roughly five yards in diameter. Miners descended by a narrow diagonal tunnel and worked seated on a ledge, breaking the rock with small hammers while fragments were hauled to the surface in a sheepskin bag. Turquoise was encountered in the rock and, although this mine was highly productive and yielded well-shaped stones, their color was said soon to deteriorate. Better turquoise was obtained from the Zaki and two other mines and from debris on the hillside and in the nearby village. These easily worked khaki deposits were searched chiefly by women, old men, and children, who paid a small fee for the privilege and recovered perhaps half a dozen turquoises per day by digging and sifting the soft soil. Good stones were rare, but inferior material was sufficiently abundant to be drilled and sold cheaply for ornamental use; even the poorest turquoise might be mounted in tin rings. The writer emphasizes that only a small portion of the turquoise-bearing ground had been opened and suggests that the hill contained substantial undeveloped reserves, noting that turquoise in various stages of formation could be seen scattered across the surface. A similar report appeared in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, Vol. 73, No. 674, pp. 763–764, (1896), and in the Engineering and Mining Journal, Vol. 62, No. 18, p. 412, (1896).