Notes From a Persian Diary

THE Land of the Lion and the Sun lies off the beaten track. Travelers who, like Puck, are concerned for time when putting their girdle round the world, hold Persia hardly worth the long detour from the Red Sea highway and the reversion to primitive methods of progress.

The shortest and easiest approach to Teheran is the overland route through Russia to Baku, the centre of the oil region on the west shore of the Caspian. The monotony of this long railroad journey may be broken, however, by leaving the railway at Vladikavkas, taking a carriage through the magnificent scenery of the Daria! Pass to Tiflis, and proceeding thence by the Caucasus line to its eastern terminus at Baku. Or we may avoid European Russia altogether by sailing on one of the Russian steamers from Constantinople through the Bosphorus and Black Sea to Batoum, which is the western extremity of the Caucasus railroad. This route affords glimpses of the Asia Minor coast,—at whose cities of Ineboli, Sarnsun, and Trebizond, the steamer touches; some distant but rather disappointing views of the snow-topped Caucasus range as the train skirts its southern flank; and for the traveler whose enjoyment depends upon recollections of the past as well as visions of the present, there will be memories of the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, and the Retreat of the Ten Thousand.

The Caucasus route is absolutely free from all danger except as we happen upon such stormy times as recently made the streets of Tiflis and Baku to run with the blood of warring races. Peopled as is the Caucasus with fragments of nations, of semi-nomadic habits and widely differing origins and beliefs, which have wrestled for centuries in bloody conflict, any such relaxing of the governing hand as accompanied the recent Russian disasters in the Far East naturally resulted in an outburst of the underlying race hatreds. But the single governing hand is there, as it is not in the Balkan peninsula, and, so far as the semi-Oriental administration of Russia means pacification, the Caucasus may be said to be pacified.

Tiflis, a generally well-ordered city, whose museum contains a complete collection illustrative of the ethnology, archæology, and natural history of the region, may well detain the traveler. The West and the East meet here in sharp contrast, — meet, without mingling. From the broad streets and open squares of the Russian quarter, in whose modern opera house I heard Rubenstein’s Demonio worthily given, one passes without transition to the narrow passageways and crowded bazaars of the old city where Persian, Georgian, and Armenian, Turk, Kurd, and Tartar jostle each other in endless variety of costume and tongue.

Except for its oil wells, which have filled the city with a restless population of adventurers and speculators, Baku contains little of interest. Less Eastern and more commercial than Tiflis, its pretensions to civilization are more offensive than barbarism itself. All genuine civilization, especially of the sanitary kind, is left behind at Tiflis, and it was in the so-called Grand Hotel of Baku, under conditions impossible of description, that I began to devise ways and means for getting my wife into Persia without too great a shock to her sensibilities. So much worse than pure nature is half civilization.

Once at Baku by any one of these three approaches, we proceed by steamer down the Caspian Sea, to the Persian port of Enzeli at its southern extremity.

The seasoned or more adventuresome traveler may discard the Caspian route altogether, either leaving the steamer on the Black Sea at Trebizond, to follow the old caravan route over which the riches of the East once found their outlet to Europe, or the Caucasus railway at Tiflis for the branch line terminating at Erivan under the shadow of Ararat. The long journey from Trebizond, as also that from Erivan, must be made in the saddle and has the Persian city of Tabriz as terminus. Tabriz in the west, Teheran in the centre, and Meshed in the east, form the three northern city gates of Persia; but only the traveler who crosses the Caspian to visit Khiva, Bokara, and Samarkand, would enter by the Meshed gateway.

Steadily pushing the development of her railway system and the construction of her military roads south of the Caucasus and trans-Caspian lines toward the Persian frontier, Russia is systematically tightening her hold on the northern provinces. Nothing comparable with the energy, intelligence, and military genius which foiled her plans in Manchuria bars her way to northern Persia, where there is neither patriotism, as we understand it, nor any desire or capacity to assimilate western ideas adequate to loosen the grip of its colossal neighbor. There is a creed — but creeds have never checked the advance of Russia.

While the traveler may enter Persia by various routes, he can do so in only one frame of mind. He must rid himself of all memories of Lalla Rookh, rose gardens, nightingales, and houris. He must be able to find compensation for the loss of the ordinary comforts of life in his love of freedom and wide horizons. He must often be content with the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, and able at all times to rejoice in his nearness to nature, animate and inanimate. If he is dependent upon the factitious, or is of the temper of one whom I heard lamenting that there was no Ritz in Toledo, it were better not to invade the kingdom of the Shah. But if he loves the early start at sunrise, when horses are saddled and packs strapped, if the rushing waters at the ford are music to his ears, if he can forget the limbs stiff with yesterday’s fatigues in the glorious views from the passes of the mountain ranges which traverse the Iranian plateau like the teeth of gigantic saws, and welcome at nightfall as a haven of rest the crowded caravanserai with its seething turmoil and babel of noises of man and beast; and can say with L’Estrange as he sinks in slumber, “We have a horror for uncouth monsters, but, upon experience, all these bugs grow easy and familiar to us,” then Persia will prove a joy, as one of the last strongholds of untrammeled out-of-door life in the unadulterated Orient.

One approaches Enzeli with a dread, and leaves the Caspian steamer with a regret and a wonder: a dread of the bar which steamers cannot pass, which in rough weather will give you a thorough drenching ere your frail boat has crossed its stormy breast, and which at times is altogether impassable, necessitating a return to Baku, — whither a certain French diplomat was once carried back four times before a landing could be effected; a regret to leave the home of the delicious fresh gray caviar which, once tasted, makes all the black potted stuff we are familiar with seem like so much wheel-grease ; a wonder that the Persian government should ever have surrendered its rights on the Caspian Sea. When in 1789 Hadji Mirza Akasi, then prime minister, ceded the sole right to navigate this sea to the Russians, he flippantly remarked, “Not being water fowl, what need have we of salt water ?” adding, with a complacency which did little credit to his political sagacity, “ nor for a few drops of it should we embitter the palate of a friend.” While the writer was in Persia the strategic value of this concession was being tested by experiments with the Russian merchant fleet, with a view to ascertaining the force which could be landed within a given time on the Persian coast in the event of offensive operations.

Along the south Caspian shore and eastward along the whole northern Persian frontier stretch the Elburz Mountains, generally snow-covered, and terminated near Teheran by the splendid volcanic peak of Demavend, variously estimated at from 18,000 to 22,000 feet in altitude. Clothed with verdure and crowned with snow, they form a magnificent background at Enzeli, where naught but man is vile. A pagoda-like building situated in an orange grove and devoted to the entertainment of newly arriving ministers and officials is the only attraction of which Enzeli can boast; and like most royal edifices in Mohammedan countries, it is marked by the neglect and decay which characterize all buildings not built or occupied by the reigning sovereign. The Shah’s yacht lends what dignity it can to official entries, but is more suggestive of a tugboat than a royal yacht, though very useful in crossing the great Enzeli lagoon, a shallow basin within the bar, many miles in extent, where passage in a rowboat is a tedious affair, enlivened only by the pelicans, cranes, ospreys, and gulls which swarm among its reedy shores and islands. A muddy river, ascended by alternate rowing, poling, and tracking, leads to Per-ibazar, consisting of a few huts and the omnipresent custom house, whence one struggles for six miles through a veritable sea of mud to Resht, where the real journey to Teheran begins. This a few years ago, when there was no Russian road from Enzeli to the capital, when one followed the old caravan track which countless feet have worn from the days of Darius, — worn literally in the rock in holes so deep that unless your mount has his right foot forward he must in places stop and start afresh.

Before the completion of the carriage road travelers unencumbered by baggage made the journey of some two hundred and forty miles to Teheran in the saddle, covering two or even more stages of twenty-five miles each per day, and putting up with such shelter, food and horses as the post-houses or villages afforded. But more commonly, and especially with ladies, it was customary to travel “caravan,” that is, with one’s own animals, the necessary impedimenta of folding-beds, tables, chairs, rugs, curtains, and cooking utensils, permitting of only one stage a day. The length of a stage varies throughout Persia, depending on the character of the country, and is reckoned in farsaks, the old Greek parasang. The farsak is a most elastic and uncertain measure, and as animals are paid for per farsak, as many as the credulity of the traveler will allow are crowded into each stage. “How far,” I once asked an old Kurdish muleteer, “is a farsak ?” “As far as one can distinguish a gray from a brown camel,” was the discreet answer. They average about four miles, and the stage about six farsaks, or twenty-five miles.

At the end of each stage is either a caravanserai or chapar-khaneh where the night is passed. The caravanserais, the more important of which are ascribed to the reign of Shah Abbas the Great, of that Safavi dynasty which perished in the Afghan invasion of 1722, consist of a gateway leading into an open court surrounded by stables, with rooms overhead. The chapar-khaneh is a rest house for those who travel by post. In either case your servants hunt up an empty room, spread a rug, hang a curtain, unfold table, chairs, and bed, and, if you have been provident, fill your rubber bath, and in an incredibly short time, the samovar is steaming and your cook has an appetizing meal ready. Subsequently you will stroll in the courtyard crowded with camels snarling at their drivers, or calmly eating their dry-as-dust fodder with that sardonic disdain peculiar to them, with donkeys patiently wailing to be relieved of their loads, and the noisy mongrel humanity which makes up an Eastern caravan. Then darkness comes on, the hubbub gradually subsides, the stars come out, the smoke ascends from flickering fires into the silence and the night, and you seek your own rest, — to be awakened perhaps by the tinkling bells of a late-arriving caravan, and most certainly to be reminded before dawn of the plaint of the French traveler, “Ce west pas la piqûre dont je me plains, c’est la promenade.”

The journey to Teheran may be divided into three parts, each distinct in character, — the Caspian border, the mountains, and the desert plain.

The Caspian border is the zone of rain and cloud which rarely pass the Elburz. Nearly all the moisture is precipitated on the northern slopes, winch are therefore covered with forest and verdure. The first two stages lie through level reaches of mulberry, — for Resht thrives on the culture of the silkworm,groves of olive, and forests of tamarisk and oak. On the second day you spread your lunch under the last olive, and on the third the track leaves the haunts of moss and fern and violet, to enter the rocky valley of the Sefid Rud, which it frequently fords, sometimes following the bare portions of the channel, sometimes clinging between a rock wall and a precipice where to pass a caravan is a ticklish business, sometimes scrambling up ledges where angels might well fear to tread, only to descend again on rocky stairways where angels would positively refuse to venture. My companion was quite ready to discard the seat of her sex for a cavalry saddle, especially after having forced one of a passing train of loaded donkeys over a precipice, to be seen no more. A pack animal knows well the safety side of the path. When in full possession of the whole track he will skirt the edge with provoking assurance, but when meeting another animal he will stubbornly contend for the inside passage. Some idea of the amount of traffic may be gained from the fact that in one day’s journey on the two stages between Rustemabad, Menjil, and Paichenar, I counted 1394 animals.

The ford at Paichenar in flood time often proved a disastrous obstacle. In its foaming waters the pack mules of the wife of an English diplomat lost their footing, recovering themselves only after having soaked the contents of their loads. I met their owner, on her way to England, at Tiflis where, as lady-in-waiting to the then Princess of Wales and anticipating a London season, she was bemoaning her condition of “nothing to wear.”

My own audience with the Shall was delayed some weeks by the non-arrival of baggage, and for a time I feared it might be lying where I had seen a piano destined for a Teheran legation, — in this same ford of Paichenar, where, still awash in its case, I saw it again, six months later. A mishap of some kind was not unfrequent on the Resht-Teheran journey. It was at the end of the Menjil stage that the wife of the manager of the Imperial Bank at Teheran arrived one night to find her baby missing. It had slipped from the kejaveh, or panier, on the mule’s back, and was found, with the aid of a lantern, some distance back by the roadside, uninjured.

The trail rises steadily on the fourth stage, and on the fifth climbs sharply to the summit of the Kazan pass, about seven thousand feet in altitude. Around you stretches a sea of mountain billows, crested with snow, and southward lies the great Iranian plateau, on which, thirty miles away, a dark spot marks the site of Kasvin, an ancient capital of Persia. Crossing this pass in April, we heard no patter of rain on leaves again till late December. You have left the zone of cloud and forest and will hereafter see no tree or flower that does not grow in garden or by running water.

From Kasvin to Teheran, about one hundred miles, you are riding along the southern flank of the Elburz, the illimitable plain stretching to the east, south, and west, the deep turquoise blue overhead. So abrupt is the change, it is difficult to realize that just over that bare mountain sky line are cool forests, the shadows of clouds and falling rain. But these bare mountains clothe themselves at dawn and twilight with the most delicate shades of color, and the dry clear air and sunshine of the Iranian plain is far preferable to the muggy atmosphere of Mazendaran and Resht. The old emblem of the fireworshipers, the sun, is a fitting national device. The woman’s face in the centre was added, it is said, by one of the Persian monarchs as a memorial of his favorite wife. The lion below the sun is the sign of the Mohammedan conqueror, for Ali was called the Lion of God.

Over this so-called road from Kasvin to Teheran, whose dozen mule-tracks twist and turn between the loose stones like a loosened braid of rope, you may drive if you choose in a lumbering carriage drawn by four horses abreast, à la Russe. On this road our luckily halfstarved post horses once ran away. When it became clear that they were beyond control I shouted to the servant on the box to urge the driver to hold on. “He speaks to them but they will not listen,” was the picturesque reply. The anticlimax was at hand. For after sheer exhaustion had brought them to a halt, a wheel came off and we were obliged to walk three miles to the next post-house. Here a discarded cart wheel was fitted to the axle by sawing off a portion of the hub. It groaned at every revolution, but it revolved.

Stealing the fodder and grain of animals is a universal Persian habit. An English official told me that during his many years of residence in Persia either he, his wife, or the governess, had never failed to be present at the feeding hour. Coachman and stableboy invariably steal all they dare of each day’s allowance, to sell it for a pittance in the bazaar, and on several occasions I had my own horses fall under me from weakness, although apparently in good condition, they having missed a day or two’s food.

The completion of the Russian road has bettered the conditions of this particular journey. Elsewhere they remain unchanged. The passage of the Kazan pass in winter was formerly a critical matter in stormy weather. Whole caravans have perished there, and Teheran was not unfrequently without mails for a fortnight. It was, moreover, a curious thing to see the pack trains refusing to take such portions of the new road as had been completed, following the old rough trail although no tolls were then exacted. For the enjoyment of travel in Persia one must be properly equipped, have good horses and servants, and be fond of life in the saddle. Persian servants are at their best on the road, for they are born nomads. Habits permissible on a journey are a source of constant vexation in town life, and they have little conception of neatness or care of what is really good. When moving up to the Shimran for the summer it was somewhat discouraging to find hens and chickens comfortably installed in imported salon furniture, which had been so loaded on the heavy wagons that the seat of every chair was threatened with puncture by the legs of its neighbor. Tents are not necessary unless the post roads are abandoned, but are a luxury; for the caravanserai and chapar-khaneh are often crowded and always filthy. In this case the maximum of luxury is a double outfit, one equipment being on the road while you are yet asleep, to be ready for your arrival at the end of the day’s journey.

An official entry into Persia is a shield of two sides. On the one hand is the novelty and freshness of Oriental life, and the pleasant sense of importance due to the ceremonies of reception by the governors of provinces and cities through which one passes, as well as at the capital itself. On the other hand, while most European governments provide traveling expenses, not only for the minister but also for his family and household servants, and in some cases an allowance for outfit, an American minister starts on his journey with no such provision, arrives at his post homeless, with a salary in my day of $5000,¹ as against the £5000 of his English colleague. Other governments too have much prized decorations, sometimes bestowed in acknowledgment of special courtesies received on the road, although a rifle, a watch, or even money are accepted without hesitation. Baksheesh of this variety forms no inconsiderable item of the traveling account, and must be reckoned with as a universal obligation. The official who entertains you at breakfast or at whose house you pass the night, the mounted escort which meets you a half day’s journey from the city gates, and accompanies you on your departure, the imperial envoy, or memendah, who greets you at the frontier and is charged with your journey to the capital, the various officials concerned in your official reception, the servant who brings the horse presented to each newly arriving minister by His Majesty, must all be remembered in a substantial manner. When my horse was brought, the Vice-Consul-General, whose long residence in Persia renders him a valuable adviser, counseled its immediate return. “What, a gift from the Shah!” “Oh, the Shah knows nothing about it. He will be charged a hundred tomans for a beast not worth ten.” The horse was in fact returned and a good Arab substituted. His Majesty himself is not above this form of baksheesh, and on one occasion, after dining at the house of the prime minister, accepted one thousand gold pieces, a number of richly caparisoned horses, besides silks, carpets, and embroideries for the harem, as a token that his condescension was appreciated.

The East loves splendor and reckons worth by display. A Persian nobleman never walks abroad without his retinue of followers, ragged though they may be. Too much economy may be fatal to the consideration and influence necessary to the effective discharge of official duties, a fact never lost sight of by governments accustomed to the ways of the Orient. An amusing illustration of the effect of our democratic business methods occurred after the death of the present Shah’s grandfather. The envoy sent to Washington to announce the advent of the new sovereign to the throne was met by no memendah on landing, nor did any escort greet him on his arrival at Washington. He made his way with his suite to the hotel and was assigned to number so-and-so like any other traveler. Nor did any state carriage convey him to the State Department on the day of the presentation of his credentials. On entering the elevator with the Secretary of State on his way to the White House, the Secretary excused himself a moment, having left some important papers behind, and when at last he had presented his credentials, and the customary exchange of speeches had taken place, the President excused himself on the plea of important business with the Secretary of State. All this is inexplicable to the Oriental mind, to which there is no business more important than the ceremony attaching to rank. This gentleman left our shores sore and indignant, and although later, when I knew him, he could laugh over his experiences, having like most Persians a keen sense of humor, it was only through the tact of the Vice-ConsulGeneral that the reprisals at first intended were averted.

Teheran claims a population of three hundred thousand souls, but no statistical information of value is available. The death-rate is roughly computed from the dead brought to the wash-houses, but is unreliable, as the bodies of children, among whom the mortality is great, are not as a rule taken to the wash-houses. Surrounded by a dry moat and parapet, and entered by twelve more or less imposing gates of variegated tile, the city lies on the plain ten miles from the Elburz mountains, which rise without foothills of any importance, like a series of rounded blocks set on a checkerboard. Immediately north of the city they have an altitude of twelve thousand feet, the snow disappearing for the most part in August. Demavend, however, keeps its snow mantle throughout the year, and long after the last rays of the sinking sun have faded from the neighboring crests its great white cone glows like an opal in the sunset fires. This mass of color, which lingers when all below and around has disappeared, suspended, detached as it were from all support, is a vision of marvelous beauty. When at length the gray shadows creep up the cone and extinguish the great opal at its summit, the world seems dead indeed, and the mighty mountain itself but a ghostly shadow.

The proximity of the mountains affords Teheran an indispensable retreat in summer, most of the richer class, the legations, and royal household, having summer houses in the Shimran, or mountain district. The English government, besides its large city compound containing the minister’s residence, separate houses for secretaries and resident English doctor, stables and garden, owns the entire village of Gulahek in the Shimran, where the summer legation is located. The Russians also own a Shimran village. The American Minister must not only hunt up his winter and summer quarters, often a difficult matter, but when transferred must bear the burden of unexpired leases. The furnishings of the official apartments, silver and table service, are also the property of the English government. To establish in a suitable manner several legations when, as frequently happens, several transfers occur within the space of a few years, is no slight undertaking, and it is certainly a curious fact that a great nation of democratic ideals should so scale the compensation of its representatives as to put its diplomatic honors beyond the reach of the great mass of its servants and make it necessary, in the consideration of their appointment, for talent and experience to give way to the aristocracy of riches, — a determining factor whose importance has greatly increased since the Spanish-American war.

From the mountains also Teheran derives its water. There is no public ownership or municipal supply. It is brought either on the surface in shallow open channels, or underground in tunnels, called kanáts, built and owned by private individuals. One follows an open waterway by its line of trees, and a kanát by the row of mounds of earth which come from the shafts of construction.

These shafts are sunk a hundred or two feet apart, and in some instances are several hundred feet in depth. The earth is raised by a windlass, and the shafts connected at their bases by an unlined tunnel, dug by hand as a mole burrows, without any instrument of precision. Certain kanáts come to the surface only within the city, where their water is sold to the pools and gardens of private houses, or is stolen, like any other commodity. Small earthen dams divert the stream as it runs by the roadside, where women wash and men drink within sight of each other. The kanát of the English legation, which comes to the surface only within the walls of the compound, and, moreover, runs under no villages or cemeteries, was by courtesy the source of our drinking water, brought in skins and afterwards boiled and filtered. Ice, gathered in winter from trenches dug along the north side of high walls, is used by Europeans only in special vessels with outside pouches, the ice itself never coming into contact with the contents. The water of the public baths, where our servants bathed weekly, was renewed about once a week, and as may be imagined was not pellucid. Living amid abundance of water, we forget how dependent is all the beauty of the vegetable world upon moisture. A line of trees marks the Shimran road, because their roots are fed by the stream running beside it. Beyond is the baked, cracked earth, above which the hot air trembles as over a chimney-top. Far away in this furnace of hot air is a yellow mud-brick wall. You approach, open a door, and enter a paradise, — shade of trees, running water, deep pools, flowers, and the songs of birds. Do you wonder that the Persian poet praises these cool retreats of nightingale and rose ? Not because they are common, but rare, — as a western poet might sing of heroic virtues. Some of the Shimran gardens, especially that of the Naibu’s Sultana, a brother to the late Shall, laid out with stone terraces forming stairways of falling water, and avenues of stately plane trees, are truly royal. But there is no sod. No grove of palm or richness of southern foliage can compensate for the absence of lawn. One walks in gravel paths. There is no wandering on the smooth turf in the shade of widespreading beeches, and — greatest privation of all—one cannot lie down on the breast of our common mother. The Persian spreads a rug, — to rest, to eat, to say his evening prayer. Hence often the thick coating of dust which the merchant at your door must rub away before you can fairly discern the design of your contemplated purchase.

Many of the gardeners of Teheran are from the Parsee population. This remnant of the ancient race of fireworshipers is in general a superior class in point of morals and honesty, although they do not appear to possess the ambition and energy of their Indian brethren, — a difference, however, which may be accounted for by the more favorable conditions of English rule. Persecuted by the Mohammedan Persian, the Parsee looks down upon his persecutor. When endeavoring to purchase a small Christmas tree from the Parsee gardener of a Persian villa, whose master was absent, I suggested that from so many trees one surely would not be missed. “Am I a Persian dog that I should do this thing,” was the reply. A few krans would have sufficed for the ordinary Persian gardener. Teheran is more tolerant of the Parsees than other Persian cities, where, as in Yezd and Kerman, they are obliged to wear a dress which distinguishes them from Moslems. Until within recent years they have been subjected to a variety of vexatious extortions in the form of special taxes, and irritating restrictions, such as the prohibition to build houses of more than one story, to ride in the public streets, to wear white stockings or garments of certain colors, to frequent the public baths, or to make use of spectacles and umbrellas. Edicts of the late Shah, and of his father, relieving them from many of these restrictions, have not proved of much effect, it being easier to issue a firman than to overcome native intolerance. We are just beginning in America to understand race hatred as a deep-seated fact of human nature which cannot be exorcised by meetings in Faneuil Hall or eradicated by abstract theorizations. Its fierce intensity appalls the traveler in the Balkans and the East. Jewish merchants are permitted to show their wares in Teheran harems, for a Jew is not a man. The Armenians are scorned not only as Christians, but as a cowardly, womanish race. Persians are themselves of two races, and as the Ionian Greek despised his ruder neighbor of Dorian blood, so the fanatical descendant of the Turkish tribes in the north, whose earlier home lies east of the Caspian, is despised by his clever, lighthearted brother in the south, of Aryan stock, who avers that the ass once complained to God, asking, “ Why has Thou created me, seeing Thou has already created the Turk?” To which answer was made, “Verily We created the Turk in order that the excellence of thine understanding might be apparent.” ²

The lion and the sun of the national emblem bear witness to the further blend of races with the Arabian conquerors. After the struggle between the Kajar tribes and the Zend dynasty, which established the former as the reigning race, Teheran became the capital, and the ancient seats of Persian power in the south, Isfahan and Shiraz, where absolutely no loyalty or affection for their present rulers exists, were neglected. Official announcements of the Kajar usurper borrow the language of a glory which is not his, as if the Shah were a descendant of Cyrus, — an ethnological absurdity. “The Sovereign whose standard is the Sun, and whose brightness is that of the skies, whose armies are as the stars, whose greatness is that of Jemshid, and whose splendor equals that of Darius,” etc. Whose armies are as the stars! At once I see the ragged soldiers assigned to the guard of the legation, whose shoes and overcoats were furnished by the American Minister, whose pay was a few paltry krans a month, yet who passed their spare time in the bazaar as changers and lenders of money!

The hatred existing between the Persian and the Turk is intensified by their religious differences, the former belonging to the Shiah and the latter to the Sunni faith, these being the two great rival sects of Islam. The sufferings and martyrdom of Hussein the son of Ali, whom the Shiahs regard as the legitimate successor of the Prophet, are the theme of religious ceremonies at which women wail and weep as at a burial, and men work themselves into a frenzy of religious fervor. The Persian curse, directed at the first three caliphs and recited like the Catholic “Hail Mary ” as an act of virtue, voices the intensity of Shiah bitterness: —

“O God, curse Omar; then Abu Bekv and Omar; then Othman and Omar; then Omar, then Omar.”

Although of a sunnier disposition, the Persian Shiah is far more bigoted than his Turkish co-religionist. One may visit with impunity the mosques of Cairo and Constantinople, but it is difficult to obtain access to a Persian mosque except in disguise, a proceeding likely to be followed by unpleasant if not dangerous consequences. Yet, though intensely bigoted, he is passionately fond of speculative discussion. This is true not only of the cultivated classes, but equally so of the huckster in the bazaar and the idler in the tea-house. In no other land do the problems and mysteries of life which we relegate to the schoolmen form so absorbing a theme for every-day conversation, and this characteristic brings one at once into intimate contact with the thought and heart of the people. A desire for discussion, an eagerness to probe the reasons for your own beliefs, and a wide familiarity with the mystic poetry and literature of their own past, constitute a distinctive charm of Persian society. It is as if every Persian heard the words of Hafiz: —

When dining once with an English professor of Oriental literature, the latter quoted a line from Saadi. The quotation was immediately taken up by the host and then in turn by each of his Persian guests, till, when the circle of the table had been made, the entire poem had been recited.

Professor Browne has pointed out that this characteristic is not one that would be looked for in the most bigoted sect of a religion preeminent for intolerance, since “ a dogmatic theology is notoriously unfavorable to speculation.” Whether, as he suggests,³ the Arabian invader, victorious over the ancient political and religious systems of Persia, was powerless to extinguish the Aryan passion for speculation, or whether Islam itself contains the germs of Pantheism,⁴ the fact remains that since Hafiz first sung of “the ten and seventy jangling creeds,” freedom of thought has been a marked characteristic of the Persian.

The Persian of the lower orders, especially in the north, is not a lovable person, has no reputation for honesty, and is far less manly and faithful than the Kind or Turk. But those of the higher classes are delightful companions, punctilious in all matters of etiquette, and generally well informed. Many have been educated abroad, or by foreign tutors, are most hospitable, and entertain lavishly in Teheran in European style. The dinner given by the Sadr Azam to the diplomatic corps on the Shah’s birthday, followed by a display of fireworks

specially ordered from Japan, was a fête not unworthy of Versailles. With that same Sadr Azam I dined six years later in a European capital, it having been intimated to him that a pilgrimage to Mecca would be conducive to his health. To his energy of character the late Shah probably owed his throne. Fearing that the Shah’s eldest son, the Amin i-Sultan

— a strong personality who held the governorship of several provinces, and had a large following well armed, with artillery

— might claim the succession, he concealed the mortal character of his master’s wound, supporting the dead body in a sitting posture during the ten-mile drive from Shah-Abdul-Azim, where the assassination took place, to the palace in Teheran, secured a loan for the payment of the troops, issued ammunition and posted regiments in the bazaar and public squares, telegraphed for the heir apparent at Tabriz, and announced the Shah’s death only after the situation was well under control. Exile and sudden death walk hand in hand with greatness in Persia. and the cruel mutilations which Darius inflicted upon the Median chieftain, recorded in the king’s own words in the rock inscription of Behistan, are not uncommon to-day. Hands are still cut off for trivial offenses. All the butchers of Teheran, one day during my residence, were suspended by their heels before their shops for overcharging in their wares; faring, however, better than their confrères of Shiraz, whose tongues were cut out for a like indulgence in high prices. Confronted with the rottenness of officialdom, the suffering and open discontent of the lower classes, and the pressure from without of rivals for the succession, my first impressions of Persia were that the end was at hand. “So I thought,” said a resident of twenty years’ standing to whom I imparted my opinion, “when I first arrived.” And then,reading the narratives of travelers, I found they were of the same mind a century ago. Fortunes are paid for the provincial governorships, and the governors in their turn dispose of lesser positions of authority. The Embassy at Constantinople commands a high price, owing to the opportunities for exactions from the resident Persian community. The Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs was bought several times during my residence, and at one time it seemed almost impossible to get an unregistered letter in or out of the country. A western thief steals registered mail, — a petty method. Under the Persian system of farming out the postal service, it was clearly more advantageous to suppress all ordinary mail matter, for thus registration became imperative, and registration enormously increased the postal revenues.

A small indemnity of a few hundred tomans, secured for a naturalized American illegally arrested, was paid in the form of an order on the governor of the province where the arrest was made. This order became a sub-order on an official of lower grade, and finally a third order upon still another official who, having apparently no one under him upon whom he could shift the burden, after vainly endeavoring to compromise for half the amount, wrung the entire sum from an innocent village utterly foreign to the whole transaction. Ultimately, of course, the burden always falls upon the peasant, from whom is taken “even that which he hath.” The soldier in the ranks buys his furlough and pays for the right to eke out his meagre wage by working in the bazaar. Every traveler on the Kum road learns the story of its construction, cited by Curzon as a typical example of administrative methods. This road, which with that to Resht shares the honor of being one of the two carriage roads of Persia, is an important one, for Kum, like Kerbela and Meshed, is a holy city, all devout Persians who can do so taking their dead thither for interment. It is also a place of sanctuary, where criminals, however great, are safe from apprehension. The road is therefore thronged with pilgrims and refugees, and with animals bearing in long narrow boxes or cloth bundles corpses on their way to burial near the sacred shrine. Some twenty-five years ago a straight caravan road traversed the salt plain between Teheran and Kum. The Sadr Azam, foiled in an effort to purchase the caravanserais on this road from their obstinate owners, constructed at his own expense a new one, which, being some dozen miles longer, the traveling public persistently refused to patronize. He therefore removed the dikes of the neighboring river, flooding the coveted caravanserais and completely obliterating the old road by a sheet of salt water many miles in extent. Thereupon the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, deeming it more to his advantage to construct a third road than to pay the tolls over that of his rival, built the present post road, which is longer still. The only consolation of the muleteer who plods over those added miles is that the creation of the great salt lake of Kum has possibly increased the rainfall in the vicinity.

The following story, told to me by a brother of the late Shah, carries its own moral. This prince was formerly an important personage, being general-inchief of the army and head of the Teheran police. He fell from favor at the time of his father’s assassination when, suspected of ambitious designs, he shut himself up in his Teheran house, where he has since remained neglected. During a call upon him I noticed two superb diamonds on the clasps of his coat, and as I expressed my admiration he asked if I would like to hear their history. Between sips of tea and puffs on the kalian, this in substance was his story:—

“On going one morning as usual to the palace I found my father in a rage. A large sum in gold and jewels had been stolen in the night from the peacock throne.” (This is the throne, incrusted with precious stones and gold, said to have been brought by Nadir Shah in the eighteenth century from the sack of Delhi.) “ My father, walking to and fro in great excitement, stopped as I entered.

“‘You are the commander of my armies and the head of my police,’ he said.

“’Yes, Sire.’

“‘Find me then this culprit who has stolen my throne from under my eyes.’

“‘I will try, Sire.’

“‘Try!’ he exclaimed, shaking his longest finger significantly; ‘find me some one.’

“For two days I searched in vain, when I thought of the baker who brought the bread for the palace guard, — the only man about the palace who had not been examined. He was summoned, but denied everything. Luckily I observed scratches on his hand. He explained that they were caused by a struggle with a neighbor over the possession of a stick.

“‘Liar! ’ I cried, ‘thou art the man.’

“He threw himself at my feet and confessed. Under the earth floor of his house I found everything, — not a stone missing. Overjoyed, I hastened to the palace. In the garden I met the prime minister returning from an audience. He took me aside and said, —

“‘What are you doing?’

“’I am bringing my father his throne. Everything is here in these bags.’

“‘Why do you do this?’ he said. ‘Your father did not ask for the gold, he asked for some one.’

“‘No,’ I replied, ‘I will go to my father; ’ for I was proud of my success.

“‘Your Majesty,’ I said, ‘the thief is taken.’

“He smiled, approvingly.

“‘No, no,’ I exclaimed, knowing what was passing in his mind, ‘I have the gold, every jewel, — they are here,’ and I bade the bearers enter. Whereupon my father, astonished, took his coat from his shoulders and threw it about me. On its clasp were these two diamonds.”

What, it may be asked, constitutes the fundamental charm of the East ? Not, certainly, mere local color, — strange costumes and unfamiliar scenery. Every country possesses something of the latter for the stranger, and as for dress Persia furnishes none of those brilliant effects which dazzle the eye in India. Rich and poor wear the plaited frock coat of sombre hues, the absence of a collar producing a slovenly appearance, while the snowy turban of the Arab and the red fez of the Turk are replaced by the black lambskin kolah and the brown felt skull cap of the peasant. Temporary interest, indeed, is aroused by certain curious inversions of procedure. You are amused by the bare-legged, scantily dressed woman who, surprised at the fountain as you ride by, hastens to cover her face and leaves her person exposed. You ask why the carpenter should draw his plane towards him, why the horse is backed into his stall, or the boat dragged stern foremost on the beach. You notice the footnote at the top of the page, and that your morning egg is invariably served with its small end uppermost. But not, certainly, in such trivial matters does the charm of the East reside. We are nearer an explanation when we acknowledge the release from care and artificial conventions which accompanies a relapse to the conditions of a freer and more primitive life. To enjoy an ease, even luxury, of life we could not afford at home, to have a servant for every task, to ride in Bombay or Teheran when we would walk if in Piccadilly, to be free from the burdens of a civilization which has created civic responsibilities and duties to one’s fellow men, to have no Young Men’s Christian Association to support or fireman’s ball to patronize, to be able to play the rôle of self-indulgence to one’s heart’s content, and be, in truth, a little king, — in these things, alas, for many lies the secret of this charm. But there is another and more potent spell, the inexplicable workings of the Oriental mind.

You engage animals for your journey. You are to start at noon. Solemn promises of punctuality are made. These muleteers are dependent upon your pay. One, two, three o’clock arrives, — no animals. You mount, impatient, and go to the bazaar. Your muleteers are asleep in the sun. You wake them and angrily exclaim, “Did you not promise to come at noon ? ” How explain this sphinx face which looks into yours and calmly replies at half-past three, “ Is it noon ? ”

“ We mistrust and say ‘ But time escapes,

Live now or never.’

He says ‘ What’s time ! Leave now for dog’s and apes,

Man has forever.’”

You are hurrying over the Kazan pass to catch the Russian boat at Enzeli. Lost in the snow-bound plain, you seek shelter in a poor village. While waiting for the exhausted horses to eat the food absolutely necessary to further progress, you pace up and down the narrow room at two in the morning, anxiously thinking of the steamer you may miss. All the village is gathered in that room, knowing your anxiety and watching your every movement. At last an old man speaks. “ What does he say ? Are the horses ready ? ” you ask your servant. “He says, ‘Why does your Excellency walk, when he can sit down ? ' ”

You go to the bazaar to buy. In Cairo or Constantinople, tainted by contact with the West, the shopkeeper, especially the Armenian, will entice you into his net with coffee and soft words. But this Persian merchant, who sits calmly silent on his mat while you examine his wares, who is surely there to sell, and has what you are there to buy, yet makes no effort to tempt you, and even allows you to go your way without showing you the real treasures concealed in the dark recesses of his little shop, which you have vainly sought to discover, — how explain him ?

The immense advantages secured by the West from the conquests of science and their material results would make it appear impossible that the civilization of the future, even though the seat of empire drift eastward again, should be Oriental in character. Yet the tides of Christian civilization have beaten now for centuries on the shores of the East with a hardly perceptible result. Although of eastern origin, the present doctrinal forms of Christianity are so characteristically western that it has failed to take root in its primitive home. Christian proselytism, says a recent writer in the Contemporary Review, fails in India because it attempts to make the convert an Occidental, while Mohammedan proselytism succeeds because it leaves the convert an Asiatic. The American missionaries in Persia make no effort among the Moslems. Their purely religious work is confined to the Armenians, who, as belonging to the old Nestorian church, are already nominally Christians. They are an exceptionally fine body of men and women, having I think usually more tact than their English brethren, content to earn by their conduct of life the Moslem tribute, “ Your religion is black, but your justice is white; ” and to accomplish through the instrumentalities of school and hospital incalculable good.

The political movement now in progress in Persia is not of modern origin. To Professor Browne we owe a better understanding of the intellectual fermentation initiated by the Bab, whose mystic prophecies his followers have made the pretext for practical reform in the existing political and social order. Against this movement the nominal government, that is the Kajar dynasty, can offer no serious resistance. It has done nothing for the development of the country’s resources or for the betterment of the masses. Its entire record is one of extortion and oppression, and its reward is the hearty execration of its subjects. The real opponent of reform is the priesthood, which has lost none of its authority or prestige with the people, and before whose power the government has in every conflict gone down in defeat. All questions of interior policy are, however, overshadowed by the larger question of foreign control; for whether England and Russia come to blows or mutual agreement over their respective spheres of influence, the ultimate future of Persia is in their hands.