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201 interred secretly, so that the Khwarijs, his bitter enemies, should not desecrate it. It is on this account that it is held in the greatest veneration by the Muslims of all sects in the country. Once a year, during early spring, a great fair is held here, called the Mela-i-Gul-i-Surkh (the Festival of Red Tulips), during which the blind, infirm and maimed of many distant regions crowd into Mazar and, encamping around the shrine with the belief in miraculous power of healing, watch day and night for the Saint's interposition on their behalf. The tradition goes that during the reign of Sultan Sanjar a man named Mohammad found in some books the information that Hazrat-i-Ali was buried in the Khairan Fort, near Balkh. He therefore came to Balkh and spread the news. Some of the Sayyeds of the town said that they too had a dream to this effect. The story was related to the governor, but a priest stubbornly denied it. That night, however, Ali himself appeared to this mullah and sharply reprimanded him for disbelieving these reports. The governor with all his staff at once went to the spot, where the grave was believed to be, and opening it, found the body of Ali in perfect preservation with an epitaph. By the order of Sultan Sanjar (1117—1157 A.D) a building was at once erected over the grave. Changez Khan, during his depredations in the early part of the thirteenth century, destroyed the edifice, and only the grave known as the grave of Khoja Khairam remained intact. Later on, a descendant of Bayezid Bustami made it known again that the grave was that of Ali, and the coffin was reopened by the order of Sultan Hussain Bayaqra (1467—1504 A.D.). A red brick was found in the grave on which it was recorded that this was the grave of Hazrat-i-Ali. By the order of the Sultan a new shrine was built over it in 1481, which exists to this day.