a town of Persia, province of Khorassan, the capital of a district of its own name, stands in a beautiful valley, 46 miles W. by S. of Meshed. It is meanly built, for the most part of mud, and many of the houses are in ruins. A wall and ditch, with a circumference of about 4000 paces, surround the town, in which the only public buildings are an unsightly mosque and a pretty large and well-filled bazaar. About 40 miles W.N.W. of Nishapoor there are eight or nine mines of very fine turquoises, from which our supply of these stones is chiefly derived; but most of them are very ill worked, and some have been entirely abandoned; so that their produce it much less than it might be under proper management. The town is said to be very ancient, and to have existed in the time of Alexander the Great, by whom it was destroyed. Under the Seljuk dynasty it was one of the four royal cities of Khorassan. In 1269 it was sacked by the Tartars; again by Jhengis-khan; and, in 1749, by Nadir Shah; from which last calamity it has never recovered. Pop. estimated at 8000.