DAMGHAN  , a

town of Persia in the province of Semnan va Damghan, 216 m. from Teheran on the high-road thence to Khorasan, at an elevation of 3770 ft. and in 36° 1o' N., 54° 20' E . Pop. about ro,000 . There are post and telegraph offices, and a great export trade is done in pistachios and almonds, the latter being of the kind called Kaghazi (" of paper ") with very thin shells, famous throughout the country . Damghan was an important city in the middle ages, but only a ruined mosque with a number of massive columns and some fine wood carvings and two minarets of the rrth century remain of that period . Near the city, a few miles south and south-west, are the remains of Hecatompylos, extending from Frat, 16 m. south of Damghan, to near G{lsheh, 20 m. west . Damghan was destroyed by the Afghans in 1723 . On an eminence in the western part of the city are the ruins of a large square citadel with a small white-washed building, called Molud Khaneh (the house of birth), in which Fath Ali Shah was born (1772) .