At a low estimate, I
should place the present population of the old fortress at a thousand
people, and about the same number of goats. In the days when the bold
Turkoman raiders were wont to make their dreaded damans almost up to the
walls of Teheran, and such strongholds as this were the only safeguard of
out-lying villagers, the interior of Lasgird fortress resembled a
spacious amphitheatre, around which hundreds of huts rose, tier above
tier, like the cells of a monster pigeon-house, affording shelter in
times of peril to all the inhabitants of Lasgird, and to such refugees as
might come in. At the first alarm of the dreaded man-stealers' approach,
the outside villagers repaired to the fortress with their portable
property; the donkeys and goats were driven inside and occupied the
interior space, and the massive stone door was closed and barricaded. The
villagers' granaries were inside the fortress, and provisions for
obtaining water were not overlooked; so that once inside, the people were
quite secure against any force of Turkomans, whose heaviest arms were
muskets.
The suggestion of an amphitheatre, as above described, is quite patent at
the present day, in something like two or three hundred tiered dwellings;
in the days of its usefulness there must have been a thousand.
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