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PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
WITH NOTES OF TRAVEL
IN THE CAUCASUS
NOTE
Portions of this book have been printed in " The
Irish Times," " The Manchester Guardian" " The
Morning Leader" and "The Chicago Daily News,"
and we have to thank the Editors for leave to reprint
here. We have also to thank Vahid-d-Mulk of Teheran,
Messrs. Riding and Fergusson, and the Masters of the
Georgian School at Kutais for allowing us the use of
certain photographs which are not our own.
fli
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The Sipahdar.
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
WITH NOTES OF TRAVEL
IN THE CAUCASUS
BY
J. M. HONE
AND
PAGE L. DICKINSON
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
DUBLIN: MAUNSEL & CO., LIMITED
1910
All Eights Eeserved
INTRODUCTORY
There are people who go to Persia
adventurously and for travel's sake; and
the result is, often enough, a book. The
country seems to attract a wonderful
number of writers. We do not, however,
cast any aspersions on the literature of
Persian travel ; and indeed we regret that
this book is not within its domain. Where
this book of ours " comes in "we shall
explain. Some voyagers have gone across
Persia in motor cars, others on bicycles,
but nearly all seem to have taken the
same line — that from Bushire on the
Persian Gulf to Enzeli on the Caspian.
Now, on this road one passes over the
graveyard of a great antiquity, and through
many cities once renowned, and through
some cities that are noted still ; and the
voyager, though he lack the seeing eye, will
V
INTRODUCTORY
have a happy excuse and occasion for
writing a book, say, with this title —
THE HISTORY OF CYRUS
BY ONE WHO HAS SEEN HIS TOMB.
But this old native highway is now weU
worn by the horses and carriages of the
feringhi ; the " copy " which it can still
furnish wiU be disdained by the true
explorer.
We, who traversed but a part of this
highway — ^and, this part, dully enough
twice — need not, after the foregoing re-
marks, explain that our voyage was of a
modest kind indeed. But we relate impres-
sions and incidents upon the road and in the
capital, which indicate the methods and
manners of the Persian Revolution — a new
thing, even under the sun — as it " raged "
when we travelled to Teheran at the
beginning of 1909.
Chapter IV. gives a summary of events
leading to the deposition of the late Shah
in July, 1909, with comments, and brings
vi
1
INTRODUCTORY
the story of the Revolution and of its
results up to date. Sometimes, as in this
chapter, we have abandoned the narrative
form in order to represent the general
situation of affairs and that the reader may
appreciate our allusions elsewhere to parties,
persons, and circumstances of the moment.
The latter section of the book — ^in Trans-
caucasia— ^has, however, nothing to say of
Persian revolutions or of Persian politics.
Still, it is not a far cry from Northern
Persia to Transcaucasia ; the transition is
not violent, both belong to the " Middle
East " ; the one is a Russian province, the
other is in Russia's sphere of influence.
What Transcaucasia said yesterday, Persia
is saying to-day. To Western Europe the
chief political interest of this part of the
world lies in the doings of Russia therein ;
and there is a connection between the
Persian section of the book and the section
about the Caucasus, because both in Persia
and the Caucasus the persons with whom
we mostly came into contact represented,
vii
INTRODUCTORY
variously, the anti-Russian feeling of the
*' Middle East."
We may appear to have treated too
lightly the aims and aspirations of Persian
Nationalism, but that has not been our
intention. It has amused us to write of the
Revolution and of its ways ; and our
Persian friends in Teheran, to whom we
owe thanks for many courtesies, will ac-
knowledge that much that happened must
have been fantastic to a stranger's eyes.
After all the cause triumphed ; had it failed,
we'd have written in another spirit.
vm
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
FROM WARSAW TO RESHT
FAQH
Ways to Persia — Warsaw — In a Russian train — The
Caucasus 1
CHAPTER II
A GLIMPSE OF THE REVOLUTION.
The capture of Resht — Voyage on Caspian Enzeli — The
Chooa-es-Sultaness — The Revolution at Resht — Resht —
Caucasians 14
CHAPTER III
FROM RESHT TO TEHERAN
Posthouses— The Russian road— Mend j 11— Kasvin— The
Shah's army— The Rules of the game 30
CHAPTER IV
A NOTE ON THE PERSIAN REVOLUTION
Causes — Musaffer-ed-din and the Nationalists — The Shah —
The Mejliss — Civil war — Great Britain and Russia —
The Shah's collapse— Russia, Persia and the Anglo-
Russian agreement 53
iz
CONTENTS
CHAPTEK V
IN TEHERAN
PAGE
Agha Mohamed — ^The Meidan-i-Mashk — The cannon of
pearls — Khiaban-i-Dowlet — The appearance of Te-
heran — European ideas — Political talk — A Basti —
Schools and hospitals 70
CHAPTEK VI
KAJARS
Ahmed Mirza— The Sefavis— '* Blood royal "—Mohamed
Ali and bombs — Colonel Smirnoff — The ZUl-es -Sultan
and Ispahan— The Shah and King Edward VII. —
A conversation on the telephone 98
CHAPTER VII
COLONEL LIAKHOF
Persian cossacks — Bombardment of a mosque — Street
figliting 117
CHAPTER VIII
THE BULGARIAN ADVENTURER AND BRITISH
PRESTIGE
As newspaper correspondent — ^In St. Petersburg — Expulsion
from Persia — A Parsee and British prestige — Mistaken
identity — ^An execution — Doubtful evidence — A fallen
hero 124
CONTENTS
CHAPTEK IX
THE SHAH'S PALACES
PAGE
A miracle play — Solomon and a motor car — Demavend —
Method of raising money — The marble throne — The
Shah's taste in art — Arabic MSS. — The Peacock
Throne— Kasr Kajar 133
CHAPTER X
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Kasvin — Mihtary spirit — The desert and mountains — A
theatrical " hold up " — Caucasians and " Haji Baba " —
A courageous scout — In the woods — Development in
Resht— "The North Wind "—A fishing story— A
charming beggar 144
CHAPTER XI.
BAKU
Mixture of races — Kidnapping — The Maiden's Tower — The
oil springs — Schamyl and Alexander — The author's
arrest — Brigandage — Dumas and a tragic legend . .168
CHAPTER XII.
TIFLIS
Ancient divisions of the Caucasus — Georgian civilisation —
Relations with Persia — Unrest in Georgia — A picturesque
cathedral — An unfinished enterprise 169
xl
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIII
THE GEORGIANS OF TIFMS
PAGE
As social reformers — Hatred of Russia — Grievances and
internal rivalries — Patriots — Attitude of official Russia —
A national poet and Georgian literature — A story of
Schamyl — Social life in Tifiis — Beautiful dancing . .181
CHAPTER XIV.
WESTERN GEORGIA
A fertile country — Kutais — The Circassians — A disillusion —
Ghelati — Georgian architecture — Queen Tamara — The
loneliness of the Georgians — An interesting lecture —
Batoum — A gruesome political trick — The Black Sea —
An Italian and a Turk . . . . " 203
zU
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The SrPAHDAR
Map of Northern Persli and the Caucasus
Nearen^g the Caucasus
Revolutionists, Caucasians, &c., of Resht
A Hut in the Woods near Besht .
The Bridge of Mendjil
A Kurd Village ....
A Bad Piece op Road near Kasvin
Ruined Kasvin ....
The Shah's Soldiers from Tabriz
Kasvin Gate, Teheran
Rebuilding the Mejliss
Persian Notables Waiting the Arrival
OF THE Young Shah
Soldiers of Fortune
The Meidan-i-Shah
Outside the French Legation
A Garden in Teheran
Gardens of the Royal Palace
Musaffer-ed-din's Burial-place in the
Theatre of the Royal Palace
Colonel Liakhof with Cossack Officers
Foreigners and Natives
Refugees in Turkish Legation
The Marble Throne — Shah's Levbe
Kasr Kajar ....
xiil
Frontispiece
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Fahbabad . . . . .
To face page 142
Changing Horses . . . .
146
The Revolutionaey Soldiers
148
A Caravan est the Elburz .
152
A Smaller Caravenserai between Resht
AND Teheran . . . .
156
Beggars on the Quay at Enzeli
160
Doorway, Georgian Church of Bagbat,
KUTAIS
166
A Georgian School . . . .
174
Stonework, Georgian Church of Bagrat,
Ktjtais
184
A Piece of Kutais
194
Gardens on the Rion, Kutais
204
Ruins near Kutais . . . .
210
I
Map of Northern Persia and the Caucasus.
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
FROM WARSAW TO RESHT
A YOUNO English subaltern who had been
in India was asked by an acquaintance how
Persia might best be reached, and replied :
"It is near India, isn't it?" "Yes,"
said the other. " Then, take a liner to
Bombay," advised the subaltern. " And
then ? " " Oh, then, take a camel."
There are other routes, and we, on the
way to Persia, found ourselves upon one
cold January morning in the town of
Warsaw, having acted suddenly upon the
advice of a distinguished Persian exile in
England, who recommended the Berlin,
Warsaw, and Baku Une. From Warsaw
A
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
to Baku the train runs across Russia in
a south-easterly direction — a four days'
and four nights' journey. Then if the
traveller be lucky, and barring strikes and
other mischances, he may, on arrival at the
Russian port of the Caspian, step on board
a boat which will land him in a day or two
at the Persian port called Enzeli, two
hundred miles south of Baku on the same
shore ; and his seven and sixpenny passport
is being examined little more than a week
after issue. But Persia is a big country
(lying somewhere near India), and the
choice of route depends upon the district
to which the traveller is going — whether,
for instance, his goal be Teheran or Tabriz
in the north, or Ispahan in the centre. We
wished to observe the revolutionary move-
ment now in progress (January, 1909),
which might be done, as we understood,
in any of these cities. It appeared that
the struggle between the Shah and his
enemies would be decided at Tabriz, now
besieged by royalist troops. Now to reach
2
FROM WARSAW TO RESHT
Tabriz we should have to turn westward
from Baku, and travel by the Trans-
caucasian Railway to Tiflis. But the over-
land journey from Tiflis to Tabriz via
Julfa on the Russo-Persian frontier is a
very difficult one in winter on account of
the great snows ; nor were we certain that
the road from Julfa was still open ; more-
over, Tabriz had already its share of news-
paper correspondents. Indications pointed
on the whole to Teheran. The capital is
reached with comparative ease from Enzeli ;
and once there we might turn northwards,
if we so desired, towards Tabriz. But we
spent our four days in the train between
Warsaw and Baku without coming to any
definite decision.
Ispahan is, of course, the city of Persia
from the point of view of the tourist.
We could make our way there too from
Teheran. However, we had pretty well
given up any thought of seeing Ispahan.
Having chosen the Warsaw-Enzeli-Baku
route, we were not likely to go south of
3
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
the capital, for we wished to spend some
time in the Caucasus on our way home,
and the idea of going to Ispahan from
Teheran, and then back to Teheran over the
same road, was unaUuring. Had we aimed
for Ispahan we should have gone, in the
first instance, by sea from Marseilles to
Bushire on the Persian Gulf, whence one
rides over the Kotals to Shiraz, and drives
by "carriage-dak" from Shiraz to the
famous city. Teheran, the Caspian, and the
Caucasus, are then stages on the homeward
journey.
Warsaw is one of the few European
capitals that the tourist has not yet wooed.
A few governesses in high Polish families
are practically the only resident British
subjects, and these ladies are mostly Irish,
because they must be Catholics. The
Polish aristocracy cultivate the EngHsh
language, like their feUow-subjects, the
Georgian princes in Transcaucasia, though
not perhaps to the same extent. There are
4
FROM WARSAW TO RESHT
Georgians in Tiflis, as we afterwards dis-
covered, who, unlearned in their own tongue,
and unwilHng to speak Russian, use English
as the language of every-day life. In
both towns quite a number of Irish
governesses will be found. Sometimes
young girls, the daughters of small
farmers and shopkeepers in the West of
Ireland, arrive in answer to advertise-
ments, and, being usually unsuited to
the positions to which they aspire, their
passage home has to be defrayed by the
Consular authorities.
The noble Pole calls himself a " realist "
in politics, and cultivates a lofty indifference.
He has formed an exclusive society from
which he excludes the Russian. You may
say that in his world the Russian does not
exist. The best club in Warsaw contains
only three Russian members. In Tiflis,
too, there is a very sharp dividing line
between native and foreign society. But
a Georgian prince does really hate, or try
to hate, the Russian. He has not yet
5
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
acquired the power of indifference ; he is
concerned, querulous ; the stranger's
presence keeps him uneasy.
About fifty years ago there was no
bourgeoisie in Warsaw. The middle class
that now exists is practically composed of
Jews. Out of the 800,000 inhabitants of
the town, 350,000 are Jews ; and the
Semitic element is in proportion to the
population numerically more powerful than
in any other town in the world except
New York. It has a quarter of the
city to itself, is well organised, aggres-
sive, and independent, being entirely un-
affected by such considerations as have
brought about the present attempt to
boycott German goods. Fifteen years ago
the Jews of Warsaw were as weak as
possible, but now they are the only people
in the town who seem to see a future
for themselves. The Governor-General of
Warsaw has his hands full. He has to
deal not only with the patriotic and revolu-
tionary sentiment of the Polish democracy,
6
FROM WARSAW TO RESHT
but with that advanced socialistic organisa-
tion, the Jewish Bund, Of the two, the
Poles will be the easier to satisfy.
Warsaw is said to be the brightest and
most cheerful city in the Russian Empire.
Socially it claims to be second in impor-
tance only to St. Petersburg. There is,
indeed, a terrible enough poverty about
the town, and the poorest people have on
their faces that look of dumb animal
resignation which one associates with the
Slav. In winter it is a wretched sight to
see the pitiable horses that drag shabby
droschkies over frozen streets, but here,
as in Rome, everyone who can afford it
seems to drive. Of the other side of
Warsaw's life it is easy to get a glimpse :
one has merely to go any evening to the
magnificent Hdtel Bristol, There Polish
nobles and their ladies, Jewish financiers,
Russian generals and Russian officials, see
each other day after day and make no bowing
acquaintance. Through the night the Poles
play and dance, the Jews watch, the
7
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Russians feast. Occasionally there are
strangers in the midst of a gathering which,
for variety and distinction, would hardly be
matched outside the Russian dominions —
German business men, Georgian officers of
the Russian army, Asiatics. While we
were in Warsaw a Persian prince, the
Shah's brother, was a visitor at the
hotel, but he had made himself dis-
Uked by remarking " You Poles are less
barbarous than we Persians, but not so well
educated."
In the cafis and theatres of Warsaw the
crowd is always interesting. It has a
variety. Women are usually handsome.
There is an individual distinction and
courtliness.
By no stretch of the imagination can
Warsaw be called a beautiful city. The
larger buildings are modelled on those of
the western capitals of Europe, and are out
of scale with their surroundings, and the
town as a whole is shabby. If Warsaw is not
a dirty city, it is an untidy one. Somehow
8
FROM WARSAW TO RESHT
one fails to get the impression that it has
had a heroic and terrible past. Still it
has a damaged look, as though it had been
battered from time to time by some sullen
enemy. Here and there are large modern
warehouses arising out of the midst of what
seems mere debris, and on the other side
of the frozen Vistula, chimnied Praga,
a large manufacturing district, stretches
across the lonely snow-covered plains.
The indescribable confusion of a Russian
railway station remains with us as a last
memory of the Polish capital. Long queues
of travellers waited their turn at the book-
ing offices. Peasants, returning from the
monthly market, business men on their
affairs, and Jew pedlars mingled with the
brighter figures of Cossacks and priests.
Having gone through many formalities
we entered the train, which at length drew
slowly out of the station. A commercial
traveller and a prize fighter, both of
them Belgians, were our companions. In
execrable French they gave us a store of
9
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
information about themselves. The pugilist
was bound for Tiflis, the man of business
for Rostov. A restaurant car was attached
to the train our first night on board. Next
morning we had parted from it, and we
breakfasted in the refreshment room of a
wayside station. The food of these places
is always good, and the rooms clean and
comfortable, if overcrowded. All the world
seems to attend the arrival or departure
of a train, and you are invited to pray and
to eat, a shrine and a statue being features
of every buffet The bookstall stands here
too, and the works of Gorki and of Tolstoi
lie side by side with Russian translations
of " Sherlock Holmes."
Rostov, on the Sea of Azov, is the chief
town on the railroad between Warsaw
and Baku. As the train passed over the
great bridge that spans the river Don,
we looked down on the wharves and
shipping of a frost-bound town. Graceful
little Black Sea schooners lay amid the
frozen waters ; sledges and pedestrians
10
PROM WARSAW TO RESET
picked their way across the ice and through
the shipping. The town, built on either
side of the river, stood out, glistening and
white, with an early morning emptiness —
very lone and desolate. We left this out-
post of western civilisation behind, and again
we were moving across the Steppes.
The sense of enormous space and desola-
tion that these give is indescribable. There
is no break in the horizon, and the wide and
barren plain stretches out as far as the eye
can reach til] it mingles with a white and
patternless sky. No growing thing is to
be seen, except, occasionally, a patch of
scrub, on the north side of which the drift
has gathered, or, more rarely, a wood of
delicate silver birch ; and no sign of human
life, except now and again the low sledge
of a sheepskin-coated peasant, drawn by
rough ponies across the plains. During
the first three days we travelled under a
grey light, and it was impossible to gauge
distances, but the fourth day brought a
wonderful sunrise with it. It was then
11
^
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
that we had our first sight of the Caucasus.
There they were, far away across the
desert ; peak after peak jagged and pointed,
their long ridges serrated hke the Chamounix
Aiguilles. Quite abrupt they seemed to
rise from the plain, stately and beautiful.
A cloudless sky, tinged with the faintest
greens and lilacs, lay above the great peaks,
which threw back the light from their
glittering walls of snow. The western
slopes were aU in blue shadow, and each
ridge stood out sharp and clear.
The passengers at the stations became
less Slavonic in appearance, and the
Semitic and Mongolian types were often
obvious. Cossacks in their crimson coats,
priests with their hair flowing to the
waist, stood among men with huge sheep-
skin hats and great black coats, with
long, tight coats and small Astrachan hats.
Sometimes a turban or a fez was to be seen.
The sight of these Tcherkesses, Georgians,
Turks, Persians, Tartars, and of others, who
would have been hard put to name them-
12
I
Nkaring the Caicasus.
Id
FROM WARSAW TO RESHT
selves, made us realise that we were nearing
the East, and would soon be on that well-
worn threshold of Asia that lies between
the Caspian shore and the eastern
extremities of the Caucasus.
13
CHAPTER II
A GLIMPSE OF THE REVOLUTION
In Baku there is onJy one hotel at which
the stranger cares to stay ; and here we
met two travellers en route for Teheran.
They were a Georgian and an Englishman.
The Georgian, B., knew Persia well, was
keenly interested in Persian affairs, and
spoke the language — ^he was, in fact, a
Persian subject — and we gladly assented
when he proposed that we should join forces
and travel together. C, though he had
been brought up in Paris, was of English
birth, a calm and phlegmatic man, and a
contrast to his companion.
Immediately on our arrival in Baku we
were startled by the news that Resht,
the town whose port is Enzeli, and through
which we must pass to reach Teheran,
14
A GLIMPSE OF THE REVOLUTION
had been captured by the revolutionists.
The royaUst governor and a large part of
his retinue had been done away with, and
the administration was in the hands of the
Nationalists. B. was bound for Teheran,
and as he had already arranged to leave
Baku at once, we made his destination ours
without further ado. We went down with
him to the Quay and took our passage-
tickets in one of the little flat-bottomed
steamers that run between Baku and Enzeli,
the port through which, inefficient as it is,
a great part of the trade of northern Persia
passes. Resht is some seventeen miles from
Enzeli.
We learnt that the Chooa-es-Sultaness was
in Baku ; he was the brother of the Persian
prince en voyage of whom we had heard in
Warsaw, and the half-brother of the Shah
himself. The Chooa was about to return
home as a naturalized Turkish subject to
face the dreadful monarch. It seemed that
he might intend to join the revolutionary
party ; for it was significant of some im-
15
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
portant undertaking that he was travelling
surrounded by priests. We could not
discover where he stayed, but it appeared
that he had taken his passage on our ship,
and so we hoped to be enlightened upon the
subject of Persian politics during the voyage.
We were disappointed. The prince was,
indeed, travelling, but he and his suite had
filled up aU the decent accommodation. We,
the four of us, were relegated to a wretched
little box, some eight feet square, called the
second-class cabin. B. declined to start
under these conditions, and, after having
interviewed the skipper, and received back
the fares, he led us back to the hotel.
Fortunately another boat, the mail, was
due to leave on the following evening, and
we had not too long to wait.
Subsequently our voyage down the
*' Lake on the World's Edge " was un-
eventful. The waters were without a
ripple. We had our first sight of a true
Eastern crowd in the powerful picturesque
travellers — ^Persians for the most part, inter-
16
A GLIMPSE OF THE EEVOLUTION
spersed with Caucasian Mohammedans —
who lay stretched out in a shapeless heap
on the lower deck. They would have made
fine figures in a nautical melodrama ; and,
on one occasion at least, the captain and
crew of one of these boats have been held
up and the mails seized. The moment was
the psychological one now that the " forces
of disorder " were growing more and more
triumphant in northern Persia — Russia's
sphere of influence — and at dinner down
below the Russian captain said that it was
necessary to despatch 20,000 Cossacks to
guard Russian and other foreign interests
at EnzeU and Resht. He quarrelled with
the mate, who differed from him in politics.
But certainly the burden that the ship
carried was docile enough, only stirring —
and then heavily — when prayers went up
at sunset.
We stopped at a port to take up and let
down passengers, and here overtook the
Chooa's steamer and lay alongside her for
hours. She was off again before us ; but
17 B
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
eventually we arrived at Enzeli only a few
minutes after the prince had landed.
Looking across a harbour sea, noisy with
the cryings of innumerable swooping sea-
birds, to the soft and delicate outlines of
the coast, one would imagine oneself come,
at Enzeli, to an undiscovered country,
were it not for the buDdings on the Quay,
and the gaily painted pavilion of the
Shah's, rising beyond them above the reeds
of the lagoon. This country was like one's
fancy of Japan. But we knew from our
books that this was not the real Persia, for
we would have to cross swamps and climb
majestic heights to find the plateau, the
desert, the lights of gold and of rose — the
true Persia, or, at least, the Persia that
Loti discovered.
As we stepped on to the Quay the prince
was addressing a crowd from the balcony of
the Custom-house, but we failed to discover
the gist of his harangue. His speech was
completed before the authorities, who
seemed to take very little note of his
18
A GLIMPSE OF THE REVOLUTION
arrival, had done with their examination
of ourselves and of our baggage, and we
watched him drive from the courtyard with
his friends. A few moments later, how-
ever, we, having procured a couple of
droschkies, were following him over a
rough track into the swamp country that
lies between Enzeli and the town of Resht.
At the first post-house we came up with
his cortege and passed it. He had retired
within, but a couple of armed men sat in
his carriage, and a few beggars lounged
about the gates. Hearing us pass, he sent
a messenger after us to invite our party
in to share his rest and refreshment, but
we had already been delayed on the
Chooa's account, and it occurred to us
that we had best reach Resht and engage
our vehicles for the drive to Teheran before
this more important voyager had put in
his claims. As it happened, we need have
had no fears on this account. We had not
left his cortege two hundred yards behind
us when a band of armed horsemen, headed
19
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
by a young man — evidently a foreigner —
in a gorgeous green uniform, flashed round
a bend of the road ahead of us. For a
moment he mistook ours for the Chooa's
party, and his men surrounded us, holding
pistols in our faces ; then, with apologies
from their leader, they dashed onwards.
Our driver naively remarked : — " They are
going to kill the prince."
He was mistaken. The idea, carried out
with success, was to take the Chooa aUve,
and to hold him for ransom at Resht. In
about ten days' time the prince arrived in
Teheran safe and sound, though a little
out of pocket, as the result of his adventure
on the road. But what sort of welcome
he received from his brother we were never
able to ascertain. The Chooa, in fact,
dropped altogether out of sight. His
captor on this occasion, Panoff, a Bul-
garian (we afterwards learnt the name and
nationality of the man), was a star of some
account in the revolutionary firmament —
we were told of his history in Teheran,
20
A GLIMPSE OF THE REVOLUTION
and read of his doings in the English and
Russian newspapers. We were destined to
meet this young leader of cavalry again.
Thanks to this slight adventure we had
at once an indication of the character of a
Persian revolution. The casual and hap-
hazard way in which the Chooa returned
home, the fact of his being allowed to
proceed from Enzeli, the picturesque and
theatrical style in which Panoff captured
him, were all highly characteristic. Did
the Chooa know that he was running into
danger ? Did the authorities at Enzeli
know ? If they knew why did they not
warn him, or, if they were in sympathy
with the Nationalists, why did they not
arrest him themselves and save Panoff
his trouble ? It is inconceivable, of course,
that they did not know. Possibly they
looked upon the Chooa and the revolution
itself as a mere joke. More probably they
wished the Chooa to be taken in right
dramatic fashion. Certainly Panoff's force,
when on its way to capture the prince
21
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
and the droschky, was the most imposing
military display which we saw while in
Persia.
We entered the town of Resht early in
the afternoon, and drove slowly across the
market-place and through the narrow
muddy bazaars into a Meidan, or open
square where, after a violent jolting, our
carriage drew up at the doors of the Hotel
Europe. The proprietor, a pleasant-faced
Greek, came out to greet us, and showed
us over his premises, which were rather
rickety indeed, but had quite an air of
Western gentility.
Almost immediately we were honoured
with a visit from two members of
the revolutionary committee which now
dominated the town. They were, naturally
enough, in high spirits. Our conversation
turned to the subject of Charles I. of
England.
From our visitors, and, afterwards, from
one or two resident Enghshmen, we were
given some details of the part Resht had
22
A GLIMPSE OP THE REVOLUTION
taken in the constitutional struggle. Since
the Shah had dissolved his Parliament by
force of arms in June, 1908, there had been
a certain amount of discontent in Resht,
but the Liberal leaders there had for a
long time confined themselves to a warfare
of words. Resht is connected with Teheran
by telephone ; thus a party from one of
the Anjumans^ or political clubs, in the
former town would now and again capture
the line, and ring up his Majesty at the
Bagh-i-Shah outside the capital, to tell him
that his subjects in Resht demanded a
constitution. With a startling suddenness
the progressive party had adopted stronger
measures. One morning the royalist
Governor went to call at the pleasure house
of a friend a few miles out of town. Two
citizens of Resht, Serdar Homayun and
Serdar Motamid, were of the party. After
the mid-day meal the four men sat outside in
the sun, and played cards until the trump
of doom. Suddenly the quiet garden was
raided by a band of Caucasians directed by
23
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
one Muiz-es-Sultan, a well-known Nationalist
of Resht. The Governor attempted to
hide ; he was caught, and Muiz-es-
Sultan, greatly daring, held his captive
by the coat while the Caucasians killed
him. Serdar Homayun and Serdar Motamid
were dragged back to the town. There
was a suspicion that these two men were
in the plot, which appears unlikely, for
it was pointed out that they would
scarcely have run the risk of going where
bullets were to fly.* The Governor's
host escaped successfully. He lay for a
while hidden under the roof of his summer-
house, and had time to consult his
conscience. He reappeared in public life
as a pledged NationaUst.
In the town another section of the rebel
" force " had already bombarded the
Governor's house and had destroyed his
guard. The revolt was over. " The entire
movement," says an English observer, " was
* Mr. Churchill's Memorandum. White Book, Porsia
No. 2, 1909.
24
II
A GLIMPSE OF THE REVOLUTION
planned in the Caucasus and carried out
by a determined band of Caucasians, not
exceeding fifty in number I "
The Sipahdar, a relative of the Shah's,
and a notable gentleman in many respects,
happened to arrive at Hesht on the evening
of the great day. He was offered the
vacant Governorship and accepted the post.
A month or two ago a General in the
royalist army that was besieging Tabriz,
he was henceforth one of the most promi-
nent figures on the Nationalist side.*
In the town order was being well main-
tained by the Nationalists, and the change
of administration seemed to be working
out smoothly enough. Resht was now
ruled by a secret committee, which issued
orders to the various civil departments.
But there was danger for such people as
were suspected of royalist leanings. In
a shed by a house where we visited one
evening, a servant of the late Governor,
run to earth at our very doorstep, was
* See infra, Chapter YI.
25
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
himted out and shot as we sat at dinner.
On the road to Teheran at a post-house
we met one of this man's fellows who,
more lucky, had escaped the vengeance of
the mob.
Resht is not by any means a typical
Persian town. Turkish and Russian
influences are evident. Still it has
many Eastern features. The streets of
the bazaar are generally about twelve to
fifteen feet wide, open overhead. On
either side little shops with deep projecting
eaves line the way. Here the various
merchants sit and cry their wares, while
others, bakers, fishseUers, and the like,
wander up and down, displaying their
goods on large brass trays and calling on aU
to buy. Packhorses and donkeys push their
way through the throng, and, when neces-
sary, the foot passenger is upset — ^no one
ever troubles to get out of the way. But
a Persian crowd is good humoured.
This district suffers from depression in-
duced by fever, for, unfortunately, Ghilan,
26
A GLIMPSE OF THE REVOLUTION
which is the most beautifu] province of
Persia, is one of the most unhealthy places
imaginable. Consequently, old people seem
very numerous, because they are actually
almost as numerous as the middle aged;
in other words, if a Reshti reaches middle
age, he must have the constitution of a
Methuselah and is pretty certain of real
long Hfe. It is said that snakes brought
from the valleys of the Elburz to the
country about Resht lose their venom.
Certainly the people of Resht seemed to
lack fire and energy. Persia was, accord-
ing to the newspapers, awakening from her
sleep of centuries, but the populace did not
seem aware of it. However, every well-
to-do citizen carried arms, and that most
peaceful of vehicles, the little vis-d-vis,
was to be met with at every turn, with its
four frock-coated occupants, a Mauser
rifle between each pair of legs, and a plenti-
ful supply of cartridge belts across each
bosom. These highly respectable gentlemen
were not, as we at first supposed, about to
27
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
drive to battle in the ancient manner ;
they were merely members of some Anjuman
or committee.
Such spirit of revolt as there was in
Resht must be credited to the foreign
element, its own Armenian population, and
the swashbuckling soldiers of fortune
from over the border. The latter people
were mostly Caucasians, Tartars, and
so forth. It was supposed that the Shah's
interests were Russia's, hence the presence
in Resht of these enemies of Russian power
at home and abroad. There were also
Greek and Bulgarian mercenaries in the
ranks, and others — fugitive Anarchists from
south-eastern Europe for the most part.
These men, who were afterwards described
by the Persian correspondent of the Times
as " walking arsenals," had, suddenly, on
the very evening after the coup-d^Stat,
dropped from the sky and swarmed over
the town. Already a monster house for
the manufacturing of bombs had arisen
near the residence of the deceased Governor.
28
A GLIMPSE OP THE REVOLUTION
The native Armenians, on the other hand,
kept in the background, but, no doubt,
the movement was to some extent financed
from their quarter. They are the well-to-do
section of the inhabitants of Resht, being
largely engaged in the prosperous silk
industry.
At night a wonderful stillness would
envelop the town. People did not care to
face the challenge at the street comers
in the electrical conditions that prevailed.
From the balcony of our hotel, as we sat
out at night, we could hear only the rever-
berating echoes of the sentries' footsteps
and the cries of the night watchmen on
their rounds. Once as we listened there
came along the street below us the noise
of hurrying, scuffling feet, and then a shot
rang out in the vaporous air.
29
CHAPTER III
FROM RESHT TO TEHERAN
B , our fellow-traveller, had no time
to spare. He had business in the south
of Persia, and was impatient to press
forward lest the road should be blocked.
For our part, we would have Uked to
study further the methods of this revolution
in Resht, which, as we were already growing
dimly aware, had a strange originality of
method. On the other hand, it would be
a rehef to leave the humid air of Ghilan
behind us, and to be on the glittering
plateau — " over the hills and far away."
So forty-eight hours after we had arrived
in Resht our Greek host saw us packed
with our luggage into a pair of old Russian
carriages. Each vehicle had its four
horses, which were to be changed at the
30
FROM RESET TO TEHERAN
end of every stage. The distance from
Resht to Teheran is about two hundred
and thirty miles, and stages vary in length
from about fifteen to twenty miles. The
little post-houses, or " caravanserais," at
the end of each stage, are controlled
by a Russian company, which works the
road under a concession from the Persian
Government. Some of these post-houses
are old and genuine Persian caravanserais
that have been taken over by the company ;
others were designed for its special use;
one is the old palace of a Governor ; and
while some of them again are mere huts
by the wayside, the structure of others
is of a quite fantastic magnificence. There
are not always beds for all who come, but
the traveller will often find his rooms
furnished after a fashion with carpet and
wash-stand. A tooth-brush is kept in the
best rooms of the best houses (as in that
Governor's palace).
This, the ordinary system of travelling
along the Russian road, is known as
31
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
" chapar " or " carriage-d^k." When one
caravans, one keeps to the same animals
throughout, and consequently travelling
is slower. Caravaning is the cheapest
method and the more comfortable, but for
us it was out of the question ; we had
decided that we were in a hurry.
The varying character of the " hotel
accommodation " along the road con-
stitutes the pecuhar excitement of the
journey. When one has driven, fifteen
hours at a stretch, over rough roads in a
springless carriage that is crowded with
baggage ; when one has grown weary of
oneself and one's company, weary of
watching the changes of scenery, weary
of thought, the breaking point is reached.
The journey has become intolerable.
One has to estimate at the start, each
morning, what kind of establishment one
is hkely to be reaching fifteen hours later,
and arrange one's strategy accordingly —
that is to say, hurry or delay over certain
stages, hurry or delay at certain post-
32
FROM RESHT TO TEHERAN
houses. B.'s knowledge of the character
of every post-house was at his fingers'
ends, and we came to trust him impUcitly.
Always the stage over which we drove
towards midnight led to a resting-place
that was of the better class.
It is possible, by going right through,
to reach Teheran in fifty hours. Then
it is best to shut oneself up in a closed
carriage and cultivate, if possible, an utter
indifference to languor and pain. This
attitude in existing circumstances was im-
possible. We understood that our road
was in a short time to become the scene of
great events. A royalist army had been
sent out from Teheran along it, and the
revolutionists of Resht were among the
hills. Perhaps we should witness the first
encounter in a new sphere of the civil war.
The scenery throughout this journey is
extraordinarily diversified. From Resht
the road goes, mounting always, through a
well-watered and well-wooded country —
thus the first two stages are completed.
33 c
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
There are no villages in this forest country ;
the houses with their thatched and steep
roofs, their timber-framed and wattled
walls, are isolated, and built in the clearings
of rice fields. Just as we were definitely
leaving the low lands we passed through a
big caravan station that was crowded with
merchants and their camel trains, south-
ward bound, busy Kalyan sellers, and
shrill-voiced, ragged-haired Dervishes.
We covered another stage, and near the
sound of waters in a wide and gracious
valley found a resting-place. This was a
big house with wooden balconies, old rickety
stairways, a flat mud roof, and large bare
bed-rooms opening into one another. We
had just passed a military outpost and the
caravanserai was full of revolutionists. We
should say that now, as later, and as on our
return journey through the same country,
we received nothing but courtesy from these
people. On this occasion a young servant
of liberty joined us at our meal, and gave us
information about the road ; afterwards
34
FROM RESHT TO TEHERAN
he amused us with jests and stories which
B translated for our benefit. For
throughout the civil war the Nationahsts
were, above all things, anxious that no
action on their part should give a foreign
Government, were it British, or Russian,
or any other, the excuse for intervention,
and hence no revolution was ever carried
out with such order and restraint — one
might almost say with such ceremony — as
was theirs.
The Nationahsts of Resht and their aUies
held the country as far as the little town of
Mendjil, and about fifty miles of the
road to Teheran. We had left Resht early
in the afternoon, and were still, at this
caravanserai, some distance from their
furthest outpost. All the country people
had seemed to be working with a will.
Driving through the darkness we had passed
groups of peasants returning home after
their labours at the fortifications. Here and
there among the trees along the hillsides we
had noticed the lights of bivouacing parties.
35
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Communication between Resht and Teheran
was naturally extremely uncertain, and the
masters of the various post-houses were
fluttered owing to the unwonted excitement
that prevailed. Russia was supposed to
be unfavourably inclined towards the
revolutionists and awaiting her chance for
intervention ; they being the employes
of a Russian company, and, at the same
time, in sympathy with NationaHst projects,
felt the difficulty of their position rather
keenly. Indeed, the master of our post-
house denied us the means of traveUing
any further that night.
We were on the road again, by the Ught
of a majestic sunrise, beginning our day
early because we knew that its journey
would contain the most difficult stages.
Yet we hoped to reach the plateau before
the next midnight. Our road ran first
through a succession of wide, barren valleys,
or along the lower slopes of the mountains,
but suddenly we began to climb in earnest,
and the view narrowed — ^we were high in
36
FROM RESHT TO TEHERAN
the wooded foothills of the Elburz. Ravines,
streams, little stone bridges, crowded on our
way. This was a land of trees. Here were
plantations of elms and pines, of maples,
silver birches and poplars, clumps of box,
amid a dense undergrowth. We passed
through the pretty village of Rudbar, with
its groves of olive, and were stopped for a
second by horsemen. ... The wayside
houses had quite changed their character.
Doors and windows were larger, their walls,
of split timber, their roofs, of bark, while
their deep projecting eaves recalled a simple
type of Swiss chalet. The people in this
district seemed brighter, more active,
busier. . . ♦ .
From Rudbar we passed into a wilder
country, where the road ran switchbacking
along a great ledge which might have been
blasted out of all but sheer rock — a
precipice above us ; and below, a precipice,
the river, and the old Persian caravan
route. About mid-day we crossed the
Kizil-Ouzen by the bridge of Mendjil, which
37
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
is the most important strategical point on
the road. The little town of Mendjil is
perched on a peak, and over its crumbling
mud walls we could see down winding,
luxuriant valleys, and, far across them,
to weU-wooded slopes. A few smaller
villages lay along the hills. Some women
in orange-coloured dresses were working
in the fields, and boys were driving goats
and cattle out to pasture. The children of
the town were playing around the public
baths. The peach and almond trees were
about to blossom, and the colour of early
spring contrasted with many suggestions of
a patriarchal undying civilization.
During the morning we had been con-
stantly meeting bands of reconnoitrers from
Resht, but after leaving Mendjil we saw
no more of military display. We were in
the Shah's country, and desolate enough
it was. By nightfall we had penetrated
into the barren heart of the mountains.
In the dark we drove through the opening
gorges of the Elburz. Steep slopes rise off
38
I
^,.
■/,''
;/
m
U.
FROM RESHT TO TEHERAN
these grim valleys, often to a height of four
or five thousand feet to the ridge of the
sky line. They are like the serrated edges
of extinct volcanoes, and are devoid of any
vegetation, but sometimes when one obtains
a view down a valley, the sunlight on them —
as we did on our return journey — their
colours are extraordinarily vivid and beauti-
ful. Pale tints of orange and of violet, of
greens and of reds of all sorts, appear, and
are accentuated by shadows of deep blue
and purple on the rock faces that catch
the light. On this night voyage there
were certain formations to which the dark-
ness lent wonderful effects. The over-
hanging peaks of tall lonely pillars of rock
seemed like the castellated towers of some
castle of romance in Provence or Bohemia ;
and the debris gathered about the outlets
of a valley shaped itself into a great gateway
that might have led into a stronghold
of giants. It was a fantastic, horrible,
miraculous scenery.
This district had an air of immense
39
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
weariness and incredible age, which made
that stir of forces, of which we had had a
ghmpse in Resht, seem unreal and remote
in the memory. Never yet had the road
been so lonely. In the evening Hght,
before the darkness had thickened, we had
noticed villages belonging to the nomad
Kurdish tribes, which shelter during the
winter times in the hills — ^low mud cabins,
lying heaped in the corners of valleys, in-
distinguishable but for the dark silhouettes
of their interiors against a grey back-
ground of earth. But now we drove con-
siderable distances and met none but the
people of the post-houses. mm
We were on the edges of the great |
plateau of Iran before dawn, 5,000 feet j
above the sea level. Onward, two stages,
was the town of Kasvin, an ancient capital
of Persia. The road was intolerably
rough ; our driver and our horses were
wearied ; the air was piercingly cold. We
were on those stages — the two between
Kasvin and the point of descent to the
40
^
FROM RESET TO TEHERAN
Caspian Coast — which are the most
difficult ones of the journey between Resht
and Teheran. In winter and early spring
there are parts of this road which are
impassable; one may as well go over the
desert. The pathetic sight of a derelict
coach by the wayside is not uncommon.
Both on our outward and on our return
journey we wrestled with these stages at
their worst — on each occasion at night-
time. The road is little more than a rutted
frozen track among snowdrifts. On our
return journey the driver lost it, perhaps
purposely, and drove us for miles over the
desert, until suddenly our vehicle lurched
over, one of its wheels catching in the
rocky bed of an old watercourse, the other
trembhng on the verge of the bank. We
had expected a catastrophe, and were on
the alert, ready to spring. By a miracle
the carriage had not been shattered, and we
succeeded in extricating it. But now one
of our horses refused to do its share of the
pulling, and our driver sank into a state of
41
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
despair. We loosened the animal and it
was off like the wind. Presently we came
up to it where it stood, panting, and then
one of us rode it for a while, while another
of us led the way with a lantern. The
third man of our party sat on the box by
the driver, who, whenever the carriage
gave an unusually violent lurch, collapsed
and fell among the hind legs of his horses.
On the outward journey our adventures
in this district were slighter, and it was the
sudden change of atmosphere — the in-
tensely cold winds blowing across our
faces from the plateau — that we found
most trying. Our intention was to sleep
not at Kasvin, but at the previous post-
house. A circumstance delayed us. Some-
where about the middle of the stage we met a
four-horse carriage, travelling Resht-wards.
Now the driver has at the end of a stage to
bring back his horses to the post-house
from which he started, and to which they
belong — the travellers resuming their
journey with a fresh quartette. But he will
42
FROM RESH;T to TEHERAN
save himself the double journey if on the
way out he be lucky enough to meet a
colleague going in the opposite direction.
The drivers are then permitted, by the
rules of the road, to exchange horses. Our
two friends, who were ahead, had managed
apparently to persuade their man not to
exercise this right. Ours, on the meeting,
descended from his box. We, absolutely
bewildered — for we had not been informed
of the custom — and half frozen, raged in
dumb signs. It was of no avail. Our
driver proceeded quite slowly and quietly
to unharness his horses. The exchange took
a good half hour to complete. Our fellow-
victims — who were four Persians — ^in the
other carriage, were more patient than we ;
during the whole time not one of them put
his head out of the window to see what was
happening. But they were perhaps asleep.
We took a long rest after our second day's
journey, and it was almost noon on the third
day when we sighted the walls of Kasvin.
Our horses took us at a gallop through a
43
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
high tiled gateway. We were now in one
of the cities of the real Persia, in an old
capital of the Empire, and at a distance of
but ninety miles from Teheran.
But the glory of Kasvin has departed,
and it is to-day a ruined city. A mosque,
a telegraph station, and a post-house should,
as the guide books would say, be visited.
The mosque is crumbling into ruin, but
must once have been vast and imposing ;
the post-house is of enormous size and
consuming desolation. The great bare
chambers of the caravanserai, and especially
the dining-hall, filled with row upon row of
empty ginger ale bottles and biscuit tins,
still finger in our memory. Somehow this
caravanserai, where one could get more
than eggs and tea to eat, and which
is the nearest approach to an hotel on
native lines in Persia, seemed to us
the most inhospitable and horrible of
shelters.
Kasvin abounds with picturesque associa-
tions. That mediaeval personage, the Old
44
FROM RESHT TO TEHERAN
Man of the Mountain, lived not far away,
and paid occasional visits to the city.
Zerin Tay, the poetess of Babism, an
emancipated Persian lady, was born in
Kasvin. It had a share of the milder
excitements of the civil war A royalist,
army, which we shall have occasion to men-
tion again, sat for weeks about its squares,
and then fled in the end at the coming of
the Nationalist enemy ; the Nationalists of
Resht in their turn occupied the city ; and
when at last the Sipahdar and his men
moved onwards towards the capital, a
detachment of Russian Cossacks marched
through its gates to maintain a peace which
in truth had never been disturbed.
The crossing of the ninety miles which
separate Teheran and Kasvin constitute a
wearisome journey. In the daytime the
road seems never ending as it runs across
the level monotonous stretch of stone and
sand. But dawn and sunset on the plateau
are beautiful, seen, as they should be seen,
from vast spaces.
45
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
To the south and east rise an eternal
succession of peaks and ridges.
We passed a few villages, the temporary
settlements of wandering Kurds ; we passed
shepherds with their flocks of goats and of
little black cattle ; now and again the
tinkling of camel bells sounded in our ears.
Sometimes the hills stretched out and,
hiding the whole rim of the horizon, seemed
to bar our path.
Distances on the plateau are very decep-
tive, and we always misjudged and under-
estimated them. The range of one's horizon
alters constantly. In the early morning,
peaks, purple and sharp, stand out against
the light. The sun rises over them and they
vanish. Where a moment ago a solid moun-
tain had stood, there is nothing but sky.
We had not yet encountered the three
thousand horsemen who, according to our
information, had been sent out by the Shah
against the Resht revolutionists. An army
had, however, been seen at the post-house
where we stayed on the third night ; but
46
-m
FROM RESHT TO TEHERAN
at that point it had left the main road and
taken, for safety's sake, a bridlepath across
the mountains. We say " for safety's
sake " advisedly. At first we supposed that
the royalists were taking a short cut into
the revolutionary country. But that was an
error. The army never reached Ghilan, and
it spent another fortnight in reaching Kasvin.
We heard in Teheran that this army num-
bered three hundred, not three thousand,
men. Certainly the authorities in Teheran
had telephoned to the Sipahdar in Resht
that three thousand men had gone out
against the revolutionists. It is improbable
that the Sipahdar believed the statement.
However, by way of reply, he informed the
Minister of War that the Reshtis had blown
up the bridge of Mendjil. On our arrival
in the threatened city we were able to
reassure its inhabitants that their postal
service was as yet unbroken ; that the
bridge was safe.
Later on we did meet an army of the
Shah's, but it was not the particular army
47
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
that we had expected to meet. These troops
were not setting out to battle, but returning
from it. They were stragghng over five or
six miles of road when we passed, about
four hundred of them, knots of weary and
dispirited but good-humoured men, who
allowed themselves to be photographed.
Their baggage wagons and horses were
laden with filthy rags and rotten rusty
firearms, and their officers sprawled over
the backs of mules in a half sleep. This
regiment had been selected from the tribe
of the Hamadans, who are hereditary
soldiers, and it had been fighting, evidently
with poor results, round Tabriz. We had
been told that the presence of the Shah's
soldiers was dreaded in every village, and
now, seeing the condition of this lot, we
did not wonder.
There are many ways of conducting a
civil war. From a letter of the period we
take the following extract : —
" There are in Persia several revolutions
48
i
FROM RESHT TO TEHERAN
in progress ; there is one at Resht, another
at Tabriz, a third at Ispahan. Each of
these towns is connected with Teheran by-
telephone or telegraph, and the Nationalist
chiefs call up or wire the Shah in turn every
afternoon so that His Majesty may not feel
lonely. The telephone rings and the Shah
goes over to the box and takes down the
receiver. The conversation runs like this : —
' Hullo, is that the Revolutionary Party at
Tabriz ? Very well. Now, look here, the
game's up. I've sent a couple of thousand
men against you. What ? Have I paid
them ?* That's not your affair. What ?
Mustn't fight after darkf No, certainly
not, of course not. It's a civil war after
all. Oh, you joker ! '
" The rules of the game are very strict.
If the Shah should send out an army, say
against Ispahan, and if on the road, say at
Kum, this army should find the enemy in
possession, it must not fight at Kum
* Persian soldiers are not usually paid.
f It is not customary to fight after dark.
49 D
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
without permission. For it has orders to
get to Ispahan, and, if it should fight at
Kum, it might never go further. The
General must wire to Teheran for instruc-
tions. Thus — ' Kum. What are we to do ?
The enemy is here. Reply paid.' ' Teheran.
Assume you are certain to win. Have you
reason to believe that there are any
wealthy individuals among the rebels ? If
so, fight, and take them alive. But
casualties must not exceed one killed,
three wounded.' *
" Fighting is very safe here, in fact it is
almost dull ; soldiers here live longer than
anyone else. They don't die of buUets but of
boredom. The royal troops are very smart,
as pickpockets. They don't wear much
in the way of uniform — indeed, when you
see one of them ten yards away, you
* A correspondence of this sort actually did take place,
after the establishment of a Nationalist Government,
between the Government and one of their Generals whose
army having been despatched to quell certain dis-
turbances in Ardehil, met with opposition on the road-
(Times, Nov. 22, 1909.)
50
;i.
FROM RESHT TO TEHERAN
can't tell which side of him is towards you —
back or front. Personally I like the view
from the south-west. When you are fighting
in Persia you don't attack unless your side
is stronger than the other chap's ; if he
be weaker, he won't attack you.
" Some of our civilians are funny too.
After the Parliament House was looted
last June, a Persian brought a deputy's
chair to a friend of mine, and asked him to
buy it. My friend is a sentimentalist, and
thought the original owner mightn't like it,
so he didn't buy. He found out afterwards
that the deputy had sold the chair to the
other chap himself. It wasn't his own
either, it belonged to the Government."
The road had become as lonely as ever.
The evening mists were gathering. It had
rained. Pools glimmered on the road, and
the desert had the soft aspect of an Irish
landscape. Far off yet were the low walls
of the capital, hidden by a circle of trees.
51
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Beyond the purple fringe of the poplars,
above it — over the further edges of the
city — a wonderful mist of blue was hovering.
The lights upon the mountain peaks changed
from white to gold and from gold to rose,
and then were white again in the twilight
gloom.
62
1
CHAPTER IV
A NOTE ON THE PERSIAN REVOLUTION
The situation, manifesting itself in the
curious conditions, which we now observed,
had been shaped slowly and inevitably.
The Persian revolution did not lack
for excuse. All through the latter part of
the nineteenth century the very existence
of the nation had been imperOled by
the extravagance of the Persian court,
and of the Persian governing classes, and
their unconcern for the future of the
country. " The (modern) history of
Persia," says a pamphlet written by two
distinguished Persian Liberals, " has been
chiefly remarkable for two things — the
steady increase of Russian influence at the
Persian court and the increasing extrava-
gance of the Shah's courtiers, for whose
53
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
selfish pleasures the national wealth has
been squandered and the country's resources
drained." The Liberal movement claimed
to have a double purpose ; it not merely
aimed at the introduction of repre-
sentative ideas of government consonant
to Western ideas, but also sought to take
the destinies of Persia out of the hands of
European diplomatists and to place them
in those of the nation. The powers of the
Shah, and so the powers of Persia herself,
were in pawn with Russia and England.
The important r61es played by Russia
and England must be appreciated. Persia,
under the old Shahs, had played off the
rivalries of the one Power against those of
the other ; and in this way a semblance
of a national policy had been maintained.
With the rise of the Liberal party conditions
were altered, for it occurred to the Shah's
enemies that they also might turn English
and Russian rivalries to advantage. Now
it seemed that the success of Persian
Liberalism would be a slap in Russia's
54
THE PERSIAN REVOLUTION
face, especially if the Constitutional party
should have come to an understanding
with British agents in Persia ; and the
Nationahsts argued with some force that
such an understanding would be to the
mutual advantage of both England and
Persia.
The Shah, Musaffer-ed-din, father of
Mohamed Ali, would have been powerless
to resist a serious revolution. But the
Nationalists at the moment were equally
helpless. Still, something had to be done.
A move of some sort or other must be made
which should attract English attention.
This is what happened. The grounds of
the British Legation were invaded one
morning by a few thousand citizens of
Teheran. It was the method called " Bast."
In effect the agitators had declared war
upon the Sovereign; they had also
" touched wood."
Poor Musaffer-ed-din, who lay on his
death-bed, was so struck by their daring
and determination, that he acceded to
55
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
every demand. The Ten Thousand took
the precaution of getting letters of safe
conduct from the British Minister, and
then saUied forth in triumph from the gates
of the Legation.
The nation had given birth to a Con-
stitution which was described by Persian
Liberals and Russophobes as England's
" spiritual child." Russian diplomatists
agreed that England was its mother, but
they called the child illegitimate. England,
if she had not acknowledged her parenthood,
had certainly been god-parent. Shortly
after the ceremony she, however, made
friends with Russia (the Anglo-Russian
agreement), and henceforward, if we are
to believe the Persian Liberals, she forgot
to look after the child, which died, poor
little waif that it was ! She stretched out
no hand to save.
Mohamed Ali Shah had now ascended
the throne. He was another man from
his father, and in no mood to accept Umita-
tions upon the royal purse and the royal
56
Rebuilding the Mejliss
THE PERSIAN REVOLUTION^
prerogatives. Reading the signs of the
times much as his enemies read them, he
took his courage in both hands. By June,
1908, he had discovered that the Con-
stitutional regime was contrary to the
Law of the Prophet. So he decreed the
dissolution of the Mejliss or Parliament,
and sent out his Persian Cossacks, under
the command of the Russian Colonel,
Liakhof, into the streets of Teheran. In
a few hours the Mejliss was destroyed, and
all the Nationalist deputies in flight. The
Shah of Persia was again an autocrat.
There is no doubt that the Mejliss had
given clear proof of incapacity. It had been
dependent upon revolutionary societies. It
had confused administrative with legis-
lative functions. The methods of election
to it had been scandalous. Many of its
members were corrupt and unscrupulous.
The Constitutional regime had been estab-
hshed hurriedly, and needed revision. To
revert to our metaphor the MejUss had
never learnt its catechism. On the other
57
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
hand, the Shah's action was taken on
merely personal and selfish grounds. He
wanted money which the MejUss refused
to vote. The excuses he gave were in part
valid, but they did not represent his real
motives. It is Hkely, too, that, at this
time, he was receiving moral support, at
least, from Russian agents in Teheran.
A struggle succeeded : a civil war. When
we arrived in Persia early last spring the
empire seemed to be at the point of dissolu-
tion. The situation for months had been
kaleidoscopic. There had been no dramatic
events — the progress of the Persian revolu-
tion was extraordinarily dissimilar in this
respect from that of the Turkish — but the
scene was constantly shifting and changing.
By January the power of the Shah had
become merely nominal. His treasury was
empty ; his army and his administration
were unpaid, and had to live by plunder.
He himself dared not stir, for terror of his
life, from the pavilion in the Bagh-i-Shah
outside Teheran. It seemed that only the
58
THE PERSIAN REVOLUTION
Persian Cossacks, a few hundred in number,
stood between him and death.
Provisional revolutionary governments
had been established in many of the more
important towns — for instance, in Ispahan,
by the Bahktiari tribe, as in Resht, as we
had ourselves observed. Caucasian revolu-
tionaries were over-running the whole
of north-eastern Persia. Tabriz, in the
province of Azerbaijan, had already
sustained a lengthened siege against the
Shah's troops and his tribal allies. To
the outside observer it might have seemed
as though Mohamed All's chances were
negligible. But no one in Persia believed it.
The general indifference of the people,
and the military incapacity of both sides
were so marked, that no European observer
within Persia anticipated a decisive con-
clusion. It was supposed, however, that
the Shah's financial straits would compel
him in the long run to accede to British
and Russian representations, and to re-
establish, though on a more limited basis,
59
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
the Constitutional regime. Otherwise there
had been no reason why this pale shadow of a
struggle should not continue tiU the world's
end. The real question at issue appeared
to be one between the British and Russian
Governments ; and was, at what point
should monetary assistance be afforded to
the Persian Government ? The British
Government were unwilling to sanction
any loan before a representative assembly
in Teheran had accorded its approval.
M. Isvolsky, on the other hand, pointed out
that the Shah could not be expected to
grant concessions until he was certain of
such assistance as would give stability to a
reformed administration. Meanwhile, the
condition of the besieged city of Tabriz
with respect to the safety of British and
Russian residents, caused alarm to both
Governments. Its gallant defender, Satar
Khan, the modem national hero of Persia,
was at the end of his resources ; and the
entry of the " royalist " hordes into the
city was fraught with frightful possibilities.
60
THE PERSIAN REVOLUTION
In May last it was decided to send a
Russian army into Azerbaijan to relieve the
situation.
From this time out Mohamed AH seems
to have lost his old obstinate determination.
He had been in his youth Governor of
Tabriz, and it was supposed that he
cherished a deep hatred of the place, and
that it was his heart's desire to capture it,
and to have the inhabitants put to the
sword. It may be then that, seeing his
personal passion baulked, he had now less
interest in the continuation of the struggle
elsewhere. At all events, as soon as the
siege had been raised, he issued a proclama-
tion, in which he promised to restore the
Constitution at the earliest possible date.
The changed outlook, however, can have
given little satisfaction to the sincerer
Nationalists. It was the direct result of
the Russian occupation, and had not been
brought about by any efforts of their own.
Russian prestige was in the ascendant, and
er
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Russian influences would be paramount in
the reformed administration. Only the
prophets were jubilant, for it was an
ending, futile as this, which they had
always expected.
The unexpected was to happen. Suddenly
in July our friends, the Caucasians of Resht,
under the Sipahdar, and the Bahktiari at
Ispahan, under their chieftain, Sardar
Assad, at whose purposes aU had mocked,
decided to descend upon the capital. Coming
from northerly and southerly points they
joined forces near Teheran. The Shah's
troops offered a futile resistance. Colonel
Liakhof and his Cossacks parleyed with the
rebels. The Shah drove under cover of
night from his summer quarters to the
Russian Legation, by the act tendering his
resignation. The combined Nationalist
forces took possession of Teheran, and
Ahmed Mirza, Mohamed All's young son
reigned in his father's stead.
While we were in Persia little note was
62
II
THE PERSIAN REVOLUTION
taken of the doings of Sardar Assad or of
the Sipahdar. Interest was concentrated
upon the fate of Satar Khan in Tabriz,
upon the decisions of the Shah, and upon
the action of Great Britain and Russia.
The Anglo-Russian agreement had stipu-
lated that neither Power should intervene
in the internal affairs of Persia. Neverthe-
less, throughout the struggle both Great
Britain and Russia urged the Shah
to come to terms with his subjects, and
to restore the Constitution. Russia,
moreover, robbed the Shah of an impending
victory at Tabriz, which would have
bolstered up his rule, at least for some
time to come. An attempt was made to
justify the despatch of Russian troops into
Azerbaijan, by arguing that the lives of
the foreigners of Tabriz were in danger ;
still it is clear on the face of things that
action of this sort was contrary, at least,
to the letter of the Anglo-Russian agree-
ment. The Persians were not left to fight
out their quarrel among themselves ; the
63
n
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
fact being, for all the agreement might say,
that the integrity of the country, marked as
it had been into two spheres of influence,
was already sapped. The conditions were
humiliating then, and, indeed, are humiliat-
ing still, for Russia yet moves troops in and
out of Persia at her will.
Thoughtful Persians perceived from the
start that their country could not become
'' a nation once again " by its own efforts ;
the evil work of the Shahs had gone too
far before the awakening. Half the terms
of the bargain with Russia had already
been signed by the Kajars. The fortunes of
Persian Nationalism must depend upon
extraneous circumstances. For complete
success it was not enough that the autocracy
should be destroyed. Russia's prestige
in Persia, which had had its being under the
old regime, must be lowered ; and only
England could lower it. But the Anglo-
Russian agreement admitted the prestige
of Russia in Persia ; by it the five great
cities""of Persia — ^Teheran,' Ispahan,'Meshed,
64
THE PERSIAN REVOLUTION
Yezd, and Tabriz — were placed in Russia's
" sphere of interest."
However, the disappointment caused in
Persia by the Anglo-Russian agreement,
though intelligible a^d reasonable enough,
was not justified by events. Russia, un-
questionably, would have interfered on
the Shah's behalf during the civil war had
the agreement not existed. She would have
intervened necessarily on behalf of the
existing Government, but not necessarily
with an ambitious motive. Anarchy, such as
ruled in the province of Azerbaijan, near her
own borders, was her very direct concern.
Nor is it certain that Great Britain would
have cared to take, or would have been in a
position to take, any effective counter-action
which should have been favourable to the
NationaHsts. In short, the old regime
would have received a new and long lease
of life. The Anglo-Russian agreement, there-
fore, ensured for Persian Nationalism the
half loaf which is better than no bread.
There is this to be said in excuse for
65 E
n
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Persian grumblings, that Russia's good
faith was not certain at all times during the
course of the struggle. There was the
Affaire Liakhof, for example, which had
an ugly aspect. Liakhof was the Russian
Instructor of the Shah's Persian Cossacks,
whom he led in the attack upon the Mejliss,
afterwards allowing himself to be appointed
Commandant of Teheran, then placed under
martial law. The Russian Government
disclaimed any responsibility. " Colonel
Liakhof," wrote M. Isvolsky, " acted with-
out the orders, knowledge, or approval of
the Imperial Government." But M.
Isvolsky refused to withdraw Liakhof from
the Persian service as he might have done,
the Colonel being still on the active list
of the Russian army. And the conduct
of other Russian agents in Teheran was
equally questionable.
A certain party in Russia did indeed
clamour for adventure in Persia, but the
policy of this party was not that of the
Government, for whose attitude "^^enough
66
THE PERSIAN REVOLUTION
allowance was not made by the friends of
Persia in England. Threats were being
directed against its agents in the country.
The commercial interests of Russia were
being imperilled. Northern Persia was
filling with the most determined enemies
of the Czar — ^terrorists from the Caucasus
and elsewhere — who were an important
asset to the Nationalists. The success of
the Persian Constitutionalists, whatever
the merits of their cause, would be in the
nature of a triumph for aU the revolu-
tionary elements in Russia itself.
The Caucasian and other revolutionists,
who aided the Nationalists, came to Persia,
not merely as Persia's friends, but also as
Russia's enemies. Their presence increased
the difficulties of Russia and of her agents
in Persia a thousandfold. " The agitations
at Tiflis and Baku," writes a French
observer, " had their natural counterstroke
at Tabriz, Resht, and Teheran. It was
Russian Mussulmen, taking advantage of
the anarchy of the Caucasus whose action
67
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
determined the Persian Revolution." *
Hence the nervous anxiety of Russia as she
followed from their beginnings the course
of events which led to the Shah's down-
fall. The strain was not relaxed when
the Persian Nationalists, triumphant,
appointed, as if to mark the accomplish-
ment of their ends, a Russian subject
of the Caucasus, " wanted" by the police
of Tiflis, as Chief of Police in Teheran, f
Russia, therefore, was not able to view
the dispute between the Shah and his
subjects with impartial eyes. The Shah's
overthrow would do harm to her prestige.
At the same time the workings of the Anglo-
Russian agreement seemed likely to ensure
a shadowy triumph for the Nationalists
in the long run. So she saved herself by
intervening at Tabriz, becoming directly
responsible for the insubstantial Nationalist
victory, now in sight. It was a master-
stroke, whether intended as such or no.
* La Perse d^Aujourdhui. By Eugene Aubin.
t Contemporary Review, Oct. and No7., 1909.
68
THE persia:n revolution
The relief of Tabriz was the turning-point
of the Civil War, and never can Russia's
prestige in Persia have been higher than
when she had saved the Nationalist
garrison of this town from destruction.
Later it fell a little, for the Sipahdar and
Sardar Assad captured Teheran without
asking for anyone's leave. Russia, on the
whole, had, however, manipulated a very
awkward situation cleverly and without
moral discredit. Carrying out her under-
takings with England she had run the risk of
serious setback in Persia ; but eventually she
gained in one direction what she lost in
another. She has not tightened her grip
upon Persia, but is in a position to do so
when and if she should desire. She may be
outside the counsels of the new Govern-
ment, but, with debts due to her, and — ^by
England's leave — with her troops in the
north of Persia, she has come out of a
doubtful affair decently enough, and
more prosperously than the other parties
concerned.
69
CHAPTER V
IN TEHERAN
One hundred and sixty years ago it pleased
Agha Mohamed, the Kajar Shah, to
estabhsh his Court at Teheran. Tabriz was
dangerously situated near turbulent fron-
tiers, and at Ispahan his tribe was hated ;
so, moving in southerly directions, he
stayed at a certain village as far from the one
town as from the other. The site chosen
thus lay at the junction of two caravan
routes, where long camel trains, laden with
rare and strange merchandise, were wont
to pass, filling the air with odours of the
South ; and where fierce dark horsemen
often stopped to plunder and to feast as they
returned from battles in the North to the
dear rosy and golden cities of Shiraz and
of Ispahan. The monarch of the Elburz,
Demavend, a giant even among the
70
IN TEHERAN
mountains of Asia, stood sentinel over the
new capital of Persia. Beneath it palaces
and legations arose ; gardens with trees and
flowers and ponds were laid out ; and the
mud roofs of the ancient village stretched
far and wide to the hne of delicate poplars
that broke the onward roll of the desert.
A deep ditch or bank, eleven miles in
circumference, circles Teheran. We crossed
a bridge and, passing under one of the
thirteen gateways of the town, entered an
untidy thoroughfare with low mud houses
on either side. A tram crowded with
passengers ran along the edge of the noisy
and dirty street. Shopkeepers sat crossed-
legged upon their stalls and among their
goods. There was little colour or charm
here and our hearts sank ; we were reminded
of Kasvin. Further on, the town opened
out, and we passed on our left-hand side a
barren stretch of stone and of sand, enclosed
on three sides by a high wall, on the fourth
by the brightly painted barracks of the Per-
sian Cossacks, — ^low plaster buildings with
71
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
gleaming tin roofs. Through an opening
we had a gUmpse of this morsel of desert
that hes unreclaimed in the very heart of
the city — the Meidan-i-Mashk. It is the
playground of the populace, and yet not
a tree, not a blade of grass grows upon it.
No benches have been set out, and there are
no pathways, but such as have been scored
from gate to gate by the wheels of carriages
and the hoofs of horses.
Afterwards we often climbed to the roof
of an adjacent house and looked over the
great parade ground of Teheran. There
one saw, as it were, the immemorial
monotonies of the desert in miniature.
Yet all the world passed by, for there is
no place in Teheran where a citizen is
more likely to encounter his friend or his
enemy. Sometimes the sun blazed down
and transformed the scene. Then one
seemed to be watching under a microscope
the little crowds and groups, the carriages,
the riders, that dotted the passages from
one gate to another. Now and again a
72
IN TEHERAN
Cossack mounted at the doors of the
barracks, and dashed madly, bHndly,
lengthways or breadthways, over the
Meidan, his horse's hoofs resounding across
the silent atmosphere.
In some of the villages through which we
had passed we had noticed children playing
a curious and rather ineffective game.
The implements used were a stick and a
light wooden fragment half a yard long
and three inches wide. The " batsman "
holds the sticks and hits the piece of wood
as high as possible into the air ; it drops
among the " fieldsmen " who stand about
fifty yards away. In our experience, as
spectators, the " batsman " always got
himself out. Efforts were made, but never
once was the fragment caught in the
crowd. The batsman retired when, wearied
by his exertions, he missed his aim and the
" ball " dropped to the ground untouched.
The parade ground which we have described
is the home of this amusement in Teheran.
The more heroic game of football is also
73
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
played on its unkindly soil by the English
employes in the Imperial Bank of Persia
and the Indo-European Telegraph Company.
Matches are decided under difficulties. '
Crowds of Persians assemble along the touch
lines and shriek with delight whenever a
faU occurs. These spectators have not yet
grasped the more elementary idea of the
game, and it has been suggested by some
among them that each side should kick
the same way, for then many goals would be
scored. When a game is in progress all
the dried fruit sellers of Teheran arrive on
the scene, and erect their flimsy little wooden
stands immediately behind the goals. The
distracted owners have to be compensated
for the full value of their stock whenever
a misdirected shot showers their dates,
nuts, raisins, and plums in wild confusion.
A detachment of Persian Cossacks is always
present throughout. Armed with their
thonged cutting whips, they ride up and
down along the touch lines, and prevent the
crowds from encroaching over them.
U
i:.
IN TEHERAN
We arrived in the Tup-i-Meidan, and were
confronted by a fantastically shaped and
gaily coloured pavilion — the Imperial Bank
of Persia. In this square a detachment of
the Shah's troops was being reviewed, prior
to an expedition against the rebels, by
the side of a line of cannon. Here we
turned to the left and drove up the Avenue
des Ambassadeurs or Khiaban-i-Dowlet, in
which our hotel was situated.
Another road from the Tup-i-Meidan
leads, through the Nasariyeh Gate, which
stands by the side of the Imperial Bank of
Persia, into the bazaars and native quarters
of the town ; and through the Dowlet Gate
at the southern side of the square
one reaches the royal palace of the
Shahs. The Dowlet Gate also leads into
the Meidan-i-Shah, which lies alongside the
palace gardens. The large water tank in its
centre gives to this Meidan a cool luxurious
air. It is a little oasis occupied usually by
ragged sentries, beggars, and camel trains,
and contains the sacred and inviolate
75
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Cannon of Pearls, under whose shadow the
hunted poHtician or criminal may have
sanctuary. He has a choice between the
British Legation and the Cannon of Pearls.
Personally we should, prefer the British
Legation, as being more favourable to one's
materia] welfare ; there the Basti"^ is fed.
The Avenue des Ambassadeurs is the
most important street in the European ized
quarter of Teheran. It contains the various
foreign hotels, Russian, French, and
German ; one or two photographers' shops ;
a library, and, at the northern end, the
Cercle des Etrangers, the Russian Bank,
and the British, Turkish, French, and
United States Legations. It should not be
supposed, however, that the avenue re-
sembles at all a large westernised street, in
Pera or Galata, for example. A part of its
* Basti = Refugee. In times of stress it is the custom
of Persian politicians to take " Bast." Thus the late
Shah, when overthrown by his enemies, took " Bast **
in the Russian Legation. The British Legation was
similarly favoured by the Nationalists in 1906 and 1908.
76
^
IN TEHERAN
space upon one side is occupied by native
shops — stalls, that is to say, divided the one
from the other by partitions, and protected
above by boards laid crossways upon these.
Armenians and other foreigners have also
set up places of business in the street, but,
as they have acquired for their purposes
Persian dwellings, which have no window
but at the back, there are no means of
indicating to the passer-by that he should
stop, as the case may be, to be photo-
graphed, to buy damp biscuits, or to pur-
chase back numbers of the English, French
and German comic newspapers. The houses
of the Legations are, of course, built, with
certain allowances for climatic conditions,
in the European manner, and various
rich Persian own, in the neighbourhood
of the Khiaban-i-dowlet residences, gaudily
decorated like villas of the rich French
bourgeois, which rise, tall and narrow,
over a desert of mud roofs. But most of
the buildings in the avenue are of the
ordinary Persian sort, as they are in the
77
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
similarly planned streets that run parallel
with it to the east, and in the more open
and wealthier districts of the town generally.
The roofs are of mud, usually fiat, but some-
times in the form of a dome, and the walls,
of brick or of mud. Decoration is, as one
would expect, geometric. Distemper is
freely used, and coloured tiles are often
introduced on wall spaces in odd formal
patterns. The most important houses are
built with double courtyards, round each of
which runs a wide verandah. At least two of
the hotels in the Avenue des Ambassadeurs
must once have been the houses of Persian
grandees. Their general structure has not
been altered. Ours was a one-storied series
of buildings, and contained a porter's lodge,
a tower, and two pretty and well-planted
courtyards on to which apartments opened
across shady balconies. Within, however,
English style reigned supreme. Truly
British were food, furniture, and orna-
mentation. An enlarged photograph of the
late Shah, Musaffer-ed-din, good lover of
78
IN TEHERAN
Europe that he was ! hung upon the dining-
room walls.
Nasr-ed-din Shah tried to turn his
capital into a European city but failed in
the attempt. He began by widening its
borders. Consequently the circumference
of Teheran is vast in relation to a population
of 150,000 people. A part of the area is
mere desert, on which the builder is not
likely to operate for a long while yet. West
of Legation Street is what may be called
the fashionable suburb, one can note
evidences of a deliberate plan. The roads
are well laid out and run at right
angles to one another. Space is abundant.
Nearly every house has its garden. The
architecture of this western district is poor
enough, seen in detail, but the hot sun casts
purple shadows everywhere, and there is a
certain picturesqueness of light and shade,
especially remarkable in the Avenue des
Ambassadeurs itself. Then the snow-
covered mountains, though in truth long
leagues away over the desert, are always
79
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
in the picture, seeming to rise on the
northern outskirts of the town.
Pierre Loti having first visited Ispahan,
Shiraz, and the south, la vraie Perse, arrived
at Teheran in a jaundiced mood ; he has the
airs of a very superior traveller indeed in
that part of his beautiful book in which he
describes the capital. We do not know
whether that inn to which he went and
from which he fled was called " The EngHsh
Hotel." Perhaps. The sign over the gates
would alone have deprived him of any
judgment his vanity yet allowed him.
At the moment of Pierre Loti's arrival,
Musaffer-ed-din Shah was about to start
for Europe with his suite. His Majesty
had a restless soul. No traveller during his
reign ever reached Teheran, or at least no
traveller who published his notes, but his
Majesty was at the point of departure from it.
Less happily circumstanced, his son only
once travelled to Europe, and then, not only
as Musaffer-ed-din could weU do, at the ex-
pense of the State, but in its care, an exile,
80
IN TEHERAN
What is there to be seen in this city ?
" Rien," says Loti, " de bien ancien ou
de bien beau sans doute." There are
numerous mosques, with Turkish outhnes,
often followed in gateways and other
structures of a Hke nature ; minarets and
domes are of green and gold. Examples of
an improper use of timber are frequent.
Sagging results, no repairs are made, and
ruin shows everywhere. At least there are
the thirteen city gates, each of them impos-
ing enough from a distance. But on a closer
inspection they turn out to be ill-designed
and ill-executed. They are generally of
sun-dried brick or mud with a covering of
queerly-patterned tiles in gay colours. The
round arch, sometimes of simple mud, some-
times of a sort of extraordinary composite
material, is used, as a rule ; and, more
rarely, the pointed arch in brick. There are
the bazaars with their narrow streets and
strange little booths, often but a few feet
square, lighted only by ornamental holes
in the brick vaulting. Itinerant traders
81 F
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
wander with trays through the dense
throng which opens at intervals for the
passage of carriages, camel trains, or the
humble donkey. Life here is worth the
watching. It is curious to observe the good
tempered apathy which informs every pro-
ceeding. Suddenly someone has a momen-
tary desire to act energetically. Tableau !
All the rest would amiably give way,
but know not how. There are the gardens
of Teheran, the Shah's gardens, the gardens
of his nobles. The art of formal landscape
gardening is well understood, and many
a gate upon the dusty road leads into an
oasis of trees and flowers, lakes and water
channels — a paradise of precise severe
beauty. There is the palace of the Shah,
whose wonderful eastern treasures have
been so often descibed, and where yet the
vulgarity of the west, brought hither by
the Shah Nasr-ed-din, cries out in every
chamber and along every corridor.
Teheran is the chosen city of the Kajars,
82
IN TEHERAN
and by the will of that dynasty alone was
it raised to its present level of importance.
Poetry, romance — the words vanish at the
mention of the name of these remarkable
people, and there is no touch of either in
in the modern history of Teheran. For
the glamour of Persia you must travel
further — to Ispahan, Shiraz, and the cities
of the South. On the other hand it is best
to stay in Teheran if you would understand
the Persia of the last hundred years, the
Persia of the Kajar Shahs. For it was
under the Kajars that Persia first turned
her gaze westward.
The Shahs visited Europe, and the
members of their suites learned to talk of
politics, and, perhaps, of kings also, in the
phraseology of the West. Musaffer-ed-din
thought, or, it may be, the first idea first
occurred to Nasr-ed-din, that it would be
nice to have a Cabinet. So one courtier
was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs,
another. Minister for War, a third. Minister
of the Interior. If the King of England
83
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
had a Cabinet, why should not the Shah of
Persia have one too ?
It was appearances that they cared
about, not the thing itself ; there must have
been something essentially snobbish in the
characters of these two monarchs. Not
having the resources at their command,
they were unable to transform the aspect
of their capital. But they worked hard
to turn the palace of the Shahs' into a
Harrod's Stores of Pantomime, and the
richer among their courtiers erected
European dwellings for themselves and put
ornaments from Birmingham upon their
walls and chimney pieces. Teheran grew,
but it never acquired the dignity of a capital,
nor any charm. As a native product,
it is a duU and over-grown village. As an
exotic growth, it reflects the snobbishness
and the senseless vanity of its masters.
These qualities of the Shahs' had a disas-
trous influence upon the national life.
Western ideas spread, but the Shahs had
not the will, nor the nation the means, to
84
IN TEHERAN
adopt Western methods. The Japanese
contrast is striking. In Tokio Western
methods were adopted in order that the
nation might compete with Europe, and,
certainly not, at least in the first instance,
for love. But in Persia the middle classes
learned to talk the " shop " of English
politics, merely, as it might seem, for the
sake of displaying the appearance of a
European culture.
The subject is a delicate one. It is
questionable, let us say — for we would
avoid suspicion of an insolent patronage —
whether the East has anything to learn
from the West. We may even ask why in
Heaven's name should Persia want a Parlia-
ment, a Mejliss, Constitutionalism. . . .
Possibly, however, it is the wiU of God that
every nation in the world should establish
a Parliament on English lines, and listen
twice a year to a speech from the Throne.
On this assumption such Westerners as
frequented Nationalist society in the
capital were at an advantage, their countries
85
n
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
having already performed the wiU of God
at least in one respect.
Unconsciously they came to regard the
Persian nation, in so far as it was repre-
sented by the reformers, as people do a
family which apes the manners and con-
versations prevailing in higher stations
than its own, and which yet has not the
means or capacity of changing its milieu.
The atmosphere surrounding such a family
must be one of futility, destructive of
dignity. The snobbishness may in the long
run have good results. But meanwhile
those whose superiority is thus assumed
cannot be blamed if they talk lightly upon
the subject, laughing now and again at
many a well-meant effort.*
* We are writing here from the point cf view of the
superficial observer ; in other words, we are dealing with
the more obvious aspects of things Persian. For instance,
we have taken no account of the religious movement, called
Babism, with which we did not com '3 into contact. The
rise of this native religious movement is, however, the most
interesting circumstance of Pe sian history in the nine-
teenth century, as its growth and influence will probably be
in the twentieth. Babism is, we are assured, indirectly con-
nected with the modern political aspirations of the country.
86
L .IBM am LI 'HDl J.IJtM
IN TEHERAN
We found it hard to realise that we were
living in the capital of a country in revolu-
tion. One woke, indeed, every morning
to the sound of mournful martial music,
and, going out found soldiers, such as they
were, everywhere in the street, or, passing
by the Turkish Embassy, entered its garden
to chat with the crowd of Bastis there.
Yet Teheran remained absolutely quiet till
the shelookh,* long attended, came at long
last months later. At the same time
Teheran was the city of Persia, in which the
Nationalist cause was best understood ;
all the citizens, except such as were directly
in the service of the Shah, were Consti-
tutionalists. Even the miserable soldiers of
the Shah must have looked forward to the
day when the Sipahdar and the Bahktiari
should enter the capital, and the shelookh,
which neither they nor the populace had the
courage to force, should take place. For
a shelookh means loot, and there was some
looting done upon that day of last July
t Shelookh = Street row.
87
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
when Teheran was captured by the
Nationalists — it was the royalists, however,
who seized the opportunity, on the principle,
no doubt, that they might as well be hanged
for a sheep as a lamb. The average
Teheranee is not a heroic figure. " Our
friends in the capital," said Satar Khan,
the defender of Tabriz, " might take the
Shah and his palaces with sticks if they had
the slightest energy and courage."
Talk was the order of the day. The
educated Nationalists seemed to feel —
mistakenly, as time showed — that the issue
of the struggle depended neither upon the
efforts of the Shah nor upon those of his
enemies, but upon the actions of the British
and the Russian Governments. Wherever
one went brilliant talk reigned upon the
subtler points of British and Russian
diplomacy. And one might go anywhere,
visit anyone. One day we called upon
Colonel Liakhof, Commander of the Persian
Cossacks and Governor- General of the city,
another day upon Saad-ed-dowleh, the
88
IN TEHERAN
Minister for Foreign Affairs, to whom we
talked, through his secretary and inter-
preter, a young man fresh from Harrow.
Occasionally an incident added some lighter
element to those daily visits of ours. One
such we recall. As we were being shown
into the sittingroom of a prominent
Nationalist, we heard a sudden noise as of
a bumping on the floor. Our host entered
and put the usual political conundrums.
Ought ciphers from the Shah's Govern-
ment to be accepted by the officials of the
Indo-European Telegraph Company ?
Ought not the Russian Government to
inform the Shah that neither now nor at
any future time would he be received as
a Basti in the Russian Legation ?
From whom was the Shah in receipt of
funds ?
Exactly in what sense was the word
" non-intervention " used in the Anglo-
Russian agreement ?
Was it not true that the Shah had sworn
allegiance to the Constitution ? Had he
89
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
not broken his oath ? Was he not, there-
fore, an usurper ? Ought the British and
Russian Governments to negotiate with an
usurper ? Did not such negotiations imply
a direct intervention in the internal affairs
of Persia ? Did not the Nationalists, so
long as the Constitution was in abeyance,
represent Persia ? Therefore, had they not
the right to any money that might be
going ? Would not a loan to them be
merely a question of business courtesy such
as prevails between nations, compromising
not at all the independence of Persia ?
What was the political significance of the
term "Nationalist"?*
Suddenly, while we were in the very
middle of the discussion, a scared face, over
* Several Nationalists were at pains to point out that
the term was an unfortunate one. Being in bad odour
owing to " those Irish," it would not attract the sym-
pathy of EngUsh people. The point was brought before
us by the [Persian] correspondent of the Times among
others. Curiously enough at this very moment an Irish
M.P., under misapprehension that the Times had dis-
missed this gentleman from its service, asked a question
90
IN TEHERAN
which a look of reUef was gradually dawning,
appeared from beneath the sofa, followed
by a body wrapped in flowing Persian robes.
This was a Basti to whom our friend had
given succour. Now he came from his
hiding place and sat beside us. The host
acted as interpreter, while the Basti
talked about the marriage-adventures of
the late Shah, Musaffer-ed-din.
The smart little Kaleshys in Teheran are
a bright feature of the streets. Modelled
upon the Russian droschky, built very
lightly to carry two passengers, and usually
drawn by a pair of Turcoman horses, they
go at a terrific pace, and their drivers —
usually Tartars — ^take a keen delight in
on his behalf in the English House of Commons. This
gentleman's use of the phrase " those Irish " and his
anxiety lest a parallel should be drawn between the
Irish and Persian NationaHsts were, in the circumstances,
unkind. The ingratitude was of course unconscious ;
the English newspapers containing the Irish M.P.'s
question and the Times' explanation of the facts had not
yet arrived in Teheran.
91
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
shaving comers, and in racing their fellows.
Collisions are frequent, but harm is seldom
done, and the culprits, after exchanging
torrents of abuse, continue on their
impetuous ways.
Teheran ought to be one of the healthiest
cities in the world, lying as it does 5,000
feet above the sea level in a great open
plain, and owning one of the most delightful
cUmates in the world. But the poorer
parts of the town are terribly overcrowded,
and possess no system of drainage ; hence
fearful epidemics sweep periodically over
it. Native doctors are quite unable to
cope with these situations as they arise ;
so that the year 1872, when the Board of
Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church
of the U. S. A. established a branch, with
a hospital in connection, should be a red
letter year in Persian annals. The funds
of the society were at first very limited,
and the idea of opening a medical mission
in this stronghold of Mohammedanism was
92
Gardens of the Royal Palace
m TEHERAN
met on every hand with prophecies of
failure. Nothing daunted, however, the
Board soon brought its ideals into the
realm of fact, and a flourishing school
and hospital stand to-day as witnesses to
the soundness of their judgment and the
reality of their courage. The Rev. Mr,
Esselstein and John G. Wishard, M.A.,
M.D., are now the respective heads of the
scholastic and medical departments ; and the
confidence reposed in them has more than
justified their Board's choice, as for more
than twenty years they have both remained
in exile, side by side, steadily gaining
ground in the city where they have
chosen to work. The schools at present
contain some 180 girls and 250 boys, about
fifty per cent, of whom are Christians.
Over 3,000 children have received their
education in these schools ; whose old
pupils may be found occupying important
positions throughout Persia, for both
boys and girls on leaving them are much
sought after by employers. The cost of
93
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
carrying on the work is borne practically
entirely by American subscriptions. It is
true that when possible the parents of the
children are supposed to pay a small annual
sum as a fee. But Dr. Esselstein assured
us that this is a very elastic rule, and no
child who wishes to enter is ever turned
away. It is impossible to estimate the
influence this work is having in a land
where there is absolutely no education
offered to any save to the children of the
nobility.
The hospital is located in the north-east
quarter of the town, near the Doshen Tepe
Gate, about two miles from the schools.
The buildings, including Dr. Wishard's own
residence, stand in a large Persian garden,
the main wing being a long low house of
brick, with a simple fa9ade. Dr. Wishard
courteously showed us over the whole
hospital, and explained the system on which
the work is carried on. The wards are
capable of accommodating about seventy
persons, and are delightfully clean and
94
IN TEHERAN
comfortable. Also, there are two small
private wards for well-to-do patients who
desire privacy. Patients of every creed,
sect, and class are admitted, and the huge
majority of cases are treated free. The
patient is, however, asked to contribute, if
possible, towards the hospital funds ; but
the amount received from this source is
trifling compared to the annual expenditure.
The value of the property is now about
fifty thousand dollars. One of the most
interesting features is a new wing for
women, which has lately been added by
a Mohammedan lady of high rank, who
had herself been cured of a painful disease
at the hospital. The operating theatres
are three in number, and the largest is
up-to-date in all respects, air tight, and
Uned with white glazed tiles.
Not the least important part of the work
is that of the dispensaries. In them one
may always see men and women of many
Asiatic nationalities gathered together, wait-
ing their turn to be attended to by the
95
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
doctor, or by one of his native assistants.
The amount of private work is enormous,
and both Dr. Wishard and Dr. Mary
Smith have always their hands full. The
total number of patients treated annually
amounts to about 20,000, and this takes
no count of the patients who are visited
at their own homes. It is here that Dr.
Smith plays so important a part, as she
is permitted to penetrate into the women's
quarters of the Persian native houses.
American interests in Persia are limited.
Happily the United States has not the
evil reputation for ceaseless intrigue against
this unhappy country which belongs to
more than one European State. Americans
are associated in the Persian mind chiefly
with the work of the Mission of which we
have spoken ; and to it even the late Shah —
reactionary in religious matters though he
was — paid a tribute. The death, too, of
Mr. BaskerviUe, an American of Tabriz,
who trained a band of men during the
siege, and was shot by the royalist troops
96
m TEHERAN
in a sortie, will not be forgotten by the
patriotic party, and is put to the credit of
American ameUorative efforts in the land
of the Sun and the Lion. However, America
does not yet rival France in the affections
of educated Persians, in whose eyes the
latter country is indeed " mere des arts,
des armes, et des lois." The United States
is remote, as an American once remarked
to us of Persia. By way of a joke they
say in Teheran that the presence of the
American doctors, and of the American
clergyman, who are the heads of the Mission,
is the only reason for the existence of a
United States Legation.
97 G
CHAPTER VI
KAJARS
The Shahs of Persia ! The words evoke
wonderful, strange, and mysterious visions
which carry one's imagination back to the
days of Solomon and of the Queen of
Sheba, to monarchs who were above all
the fears of life except satiety. But Ahmed
Mirza, who is the ruler of Persia to-day,
calls himself the unhappiest boy in the
world — he is but fourteen years old —
because he has been crowned Shah ; he
weeps in the Royal Palace at Teheran,
and will not even be interested in the
choice of wives that is being made for him.
He is the seventh of the Kajar Shahs.
This remarkable dynasty comes of a
tribe of Turkish origin which, during the
period of the first invasions, encamped
98
KAJARS
upon the plateau of Persia. They claim
descent from Turc, son of Japhet, and it
is certain at any rate that their fame is
old — ^they have figured prominently in
Persian history for nearly one thousand
years. In mediaeval times they were
granted the privilege of wearing the Red
Turban, and henceforward ranked as one
of the seven red-headed tribes of Persia.
They aimed at a supremacy among the
tribes ; and the path of their ambition
was stained with blood. During the
seventeenth century one of the heads of
the tribe, Path Ali Khan, was made joint
Commander-in-Chief of the Persian Army,
with a certain Nadir Kuli Khan, of the
Sefavis, son of the then Shah of Persia.
Nadir Kuh Khan having quarrelled with
his colleague, murdered him, and so began
a blood feud between the Sefavis and
the Kajars, which ended when every
member of the Sefavi dynasty had been
removed by death or torture, and a Kajar
seated on the throne of Persia. This Kajar
99
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
was the great Agha Mohamed Shah. It was
Agha Mohamed' s nephew and successor,
Fath Ali, who is famous for the number
of his wives, though one doubts if they
were, as history says, seven hundred. One
of Fath A]i's progeny, Nasr-ed-din, was the
most illustrious ruler that Persia has pro-
duced in modern times. The first Persian
sovereign to visit Europe, he was much
influenced by the new ideas with which
he came into contact. He, too, the father
of forty children, married often, and was,
like most of the Kajars, handsome, strong,
and a great sportsman. His rule was
sometimes violent, but under it Persia
became united and comparatively peaceful.
Brigandage ceased. Travelling became safe,
and so it is to Nasr-ed-din that we owe for
good or evil the very considerable literature
of Persian travel that now exists.
The House of the Kajars adopt the
" blood royal " system of succession —
that is to say, the eldest son succeeds only
if his mother's blood be royal. She must
100
KAJARS
also be a wife, an ahdi (four akdis are per-
mitted), something more than an ordinary
lady of the harem or sighe. Formerly,
however, it was the custom for the Shah
to nominate his successor from among his
sons, without regard to the seniority or the
nobility of birth of the mother. The new rule
has been broken. For instance, the mother
of the late Shah was of royal blood on one
side only. One can see how a state of doubt
as to the actual rights of succession must
make for jealousy and hatred, and jealousy
and hatred have always been, and are to
this day, features of the relations between
members of the Persian Royal House.
There are, of course, an enormous number
of Shahzadahs (king's descendants), and
many Persians with royal blood in their
veins occupy most modest positions in
telegraph offices or in banks, but all must
be provided for in some way or other.
Hence these king's descendants are a severe
drain upon the resources of the country.
You may see at any Royal levee in
101
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
the Palace a row of seedy unhappy
individuals with frock coats and jeweUed
swords — they are Shahzadahs. The royal
family of Persia represents a very definite
organisation, at the head of which stands
that important official, called the Ilkhani
who has jurisdiction over it and the care
of its interests.
As for daughters of Shahs, who know
where they go, the majority of them,
ladies who are named very charmingly —
Pride, Purity, Chastity, Splendour, and the
like?
Nasr-ed-din was succeeded by his son
Musaffer-ed-din, whose reign is still fresh
in everyone's memory. His visits to Europe,
during the course of which enormous sums
were squandered, for the sake of a tawdry
display, attracted much attention, largely
owing to his habits and customs, which are,
perhaps, the better without recapitulation.
Innumerable photographs hand down to
posterity the pleasant features of a monarch
whose private life, like the rabbit's in the
102
KAJARS
Bad Child's Book, was a disgrace. Musaffer-
ed-din had, too, a scandalous taste in art.
Otherwise he was a worthy and good-
natured man, peaceful and anxious to
live —
Musaffer-ed-din the Good
Lived just as long as he could
(the rhyme says) — and to let live. He
granted, as we know, the Constitution,
but, dying, left his country in a disastrous
condition.
The newly enfranchised people of Teheran
welcomed the young Shah, who came from
Tabriz, with manifestations of joy ; and
Mohamed AH was crowned on January 19,
1907, a date fixed by the Court Astrologers,
with great pomp. He had been named
Vali Ahd by his father, and was the eldest
son ; he had been Governor of Tabriz, as
all Vali Ahds are — a cruel and violent
Governor — but there had been a good deal
of intrigue against his succession to the
throne. Certain of his relatives argued
103
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
that they had a prior right. To begin with,
his mother's father, Mirza Taki Khan, a
distinguished statesman who married the
sister of Nasr-ed-din Shah, and was after-
wards murdered by order of that monarch,
was not a Kajar. Moreover, the lady
herself, who was the statesman's daughter,
Mohamed Ali's mother, and Musaffer-ed-
din's cousin- wife, had turned out so badly,
and had become such a Scandal, that the
brothers and uncles of Mohamed AU had
the gossip of the teashops to repeat, which
gossip questioned the Vali Ahd's legitimacy.
Mohamed Ali put an end to the man
whose mistress his mother had been, but
even thus he could not silence the scandal-
mongers who were embittering the days
of his youth.
As Shah he had certain merits. He
economised, worked hard, and kept him-
self well informed, to which end he used
very direct methods, being ready to converse
with the humblest of his subjects. His
advisers found him generous, but at the
104
KAJARS
same time, obstinate and suspicious, always
ready to believe the darker tale and to take
the less generous course.
Bom in 1872, he is still a young man.
Stout and below the middle height, he is
not at all kingly in appearance, and lacks
that dignity for which his family have been
noted. With his gold-rimmed spectacles,
and the curious habit he has of moving his
head from side to side, he is like some
strange bird. He is little of a sportsman,
and here again he differed from his pre-
decessors, who spent much of their time
hunting or shooting on the slopes of the
Shimran. But his education is very fair,
and he speaks two languages, at least,
besides his own, and these fluently, Turkish
and Arabic.
Once he was driving through the streets
of Teheran in a procession formed of a
motor car in front and a carriage behind,
when a bomb was thrown at the former
vehicle in which the would-be assassins
supposed that he sat. Fortunately he sat
105
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
not in the car, but in the carriage. He
remained quite cool, but, as he stepped from
the carriage, three or four shots were fired
from the roof of a house close by. Then
he gave way to furious anger, seized a rifle
from one of his guards, with the intention
of returning the shot, and cried out that he
would have the whole quarter destroyed
and its inhabitants put to death. After a
while, when his fury had abated, he went
back to the Palace on foot and reached it
safely. A week later he left the royal
building, and took his wife and family,
and a great part of his personal property,
to the pavilion of the Bagh-i-Shah (the
Shah's gardens) outside the town. Here,
during the remainder of his troubled reign,
he was practically a prisoner, and the
sequel — ^his abdication and flight to the
Russian Legation when the revolutionists
entered Teheran in July, 1909 — ^was really
inevitable. No monarch ever had fewer
friends than Mohamed Ali, and if there
was one thing on which the Nationalists
106
KAJARS
were determined, it was that the country
should be rid of his presence.
Some years before coming to the throne
he had married the daughter of Naib-es-
Sultaneh, his uncle, a former Commander-
in-Chief of the Persian Army. This lady
Malek-ed-Djehan, the Queen of the World^
is an extremely capable woman, who
exercises a considerable influence over her
husband. He, in his turn, shows great
devotion to her. This may account for
the fact that he took but one legal wife,
but one ahdi. It is Malek-ed-Djehan' s son
Ahmed Mirza, who is the unhappy boy.
Shah of Persia to-day. Mohamed Ali has
two other sons, one of whom, the son of a
sighe, is older than Ahmed Mirza. While
we were in Teheran we used to see this lad,
the Etezad os Soltaneh, standing on parade
by the side of the giant Colonel Liakhof.
He was second in command in the
Persian Cossacks. Another Russian, Colonel
Smirnoff, was responsible for the education
of all three children, a fact, no doubt,
107
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
suggestive to those who suspected an all-
pervading Russian influence at the Court.
Certain members of the Kajar family,
near relatives of the late Shah, deserve
mention.
There was a half-brother who, wishing
to conquer India, began by practising the
art of war in the province of Hamadan.
He was not that brother, the Chooa-es-
Sultaness, sometime Governor of Shiraz,
and Panoff's captive. There was again a
brother who had been thrown into chains
at Teheran, and yet had managed somehow
to escape to Europe ; he was the tactless
prince of whom we had heard in Warsaw.
The late Shah was well able to deal with
these exuberant young men ; but a person
whom he really feared was his uncle, the
ZiU-es-Sultan, a brother of Musaffer-ed-
din's. Marriage takes place early in Persia,
yet it is curious to think that Mazid Mirza,
Shadow of the King, who was born no
further back than 1850, is a great uncle of
108
1
KAJABS
the present Shah's. The Zill has ever just
missed the tide that bears to the highest
fortune. But even in Nasr-ed-din's reign
he was a prominent figure on the political
stage. He was older than Musaffer-ed-din,
but Musaffer-ed-din was nominated VaU
Ahd, for the Zill's mother had been of
simple birth. For a time, however, the
Zill was regarded as a candidate for the
succession, such evidence of capacity did
he give as Governor of Ispahan. Under the
old regime it was the custom to farm out
provinces to the highest bidder, who in
turn farmed out this or that district, and
was quite independent in the matter of the
levying of taxation, and the Zill acquired
governorship after governorship in the
South of Persia, made an immense fortune,
trained an army, and practically ruled
over an independent kingdom. His justice
was heavy, but he was known as a man
of ideas and culture, a " free thinker," the
friend of many distinguished Europeans,
who offered free hospitality to every
109
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
traveller who passed through the wonderful
city where he reigned.
Naturally his activities aroused the
jealousy of the Court at Teheran. Then
Musaffer-ed-din died, and the Zill was again
passed over, although Mohamed All's claims
were as questionable as his own, and on
much the same account. Lively passages
were exchanged between the Shah and his
nominal subordinate. On June 26, 1908,
a few days after the destruction of the
Mejliss, Mohamed Ali telegraphed to King
Edward VII., his " good and exalted
brother." He complained that his Govern-
ment had been thwarted by the actions of
certain members of the British Legation,
and incidentally named the ZiU chief
" mischief-maker." It was the opinion of
the British Minister that the ZilFs presence
in Persia would render the restoration of
tranquility difficult, and he was advised
to arrange for an immediate departure.
The Zill accepted the advice and left his
native land for Europe. His house in
110
KAJARS
Teheran had meanwhile been pillaged, but
he carried guarantees as to the safety of his
other properties.
The Zill's politics have always been a
mystery. Certainly the Liberals loved him
no more than they loved his nephew.
They did, indeed, succumb at last to the
boyish charms of Ahmed Mirza, but the
Cry, while we were in Teheran, was " Not
another Kajar."
The Zill returned to Persia in July, 1909.
He landed at Enzeli just at the time that
the Bahktiari and the Caucasians, united
under Sardar Assad and the Sipahdar, had
begun seriously to threaten the Court and
the capital. We at home read of his
arrival, and it struck us that the Shah's
suspicions of his uncle were being justified.
It scarcely seemed an honourable thing
that the Zill was doing. The understanding
had been that he was retired from politics.
Now he was on the stage again — for the
third time a candidate for the throne.
The Zill landed at Enzeli, indeed, but he
111
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
proceeded, at least as a free man, only as
far as Resht. For at Resht the same fate
that had overtaken the Chooa a few months
previously overtook him. The Nationalists
gave him board and lodging, and a ransom
of £400,000 was demanded. The new
administration that was being estabhshed
at Teheran needed money, and the Zill is
the richest man in Persia. He proved
more obstinate than his nephew, and had
to be brought inland and confined in a
fortress among the groves of Rudbar.
Apparently it was just a chance that he
arrived in Persia when a new Government?
in desperate financial straits, strove to
establish itself. By his coming he indicated
characteristics as naive, a faith as simple,
as even his relative, the Sipahdar, or his
nephew, the Chooa, could boast. All
three quietly put their heads into the
hornet nest of Resht without troubling to
enquire as to the nature and intentions of
the little insect world.
The Chooa sailed from Baku, landed at
112
KAJAHS
Enzeli, and drove to Reslit so soon as he
heard that the Nationalists had killed a
royalist governor, yet he himself had been a
royalist governor in Shiraz, whence he had
had to fly a few months previously. The
Sipahdar, at one time an active royalist,
arrived at Resht on the very evening
of the successful uprising. Three political
somnambuUsts !
The Sipahdar (a Kajar, too, being the
Shah's cousin), was charming and handsome,
but a poor man. In fact his estates were
in pawn with the Russian bank, and had
also been confiscated by the Shah. Both
processes took place simultaneously. How-
ever, it would be a pity, the Eeshtis thought,
if they made no use of so distinguished a
passer-by.
To be just to the Sipahdar, he was by no
means a figurehead governor. His manage-
ment of affairs in Resht, as, later on in
Teheran, on the occasion of the pourparlers
with' Liakhof, was excellent, and won
golden opinions from all parties.
113 H
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
After the deposition of Mohamed Ali
the Sipahdar was appointed Minister for
War vice Emir Bahadour (Reactionary,
resigned). Nasr-el-Mulk of Paris, however,
refused the Premiership, and the Sipahdar
was given the vacant post Thus the one-
time royaUst general became the leader
of the new Nationalist Government, in spite
of the suspicions entertained of him by
more advanced politicians.
We have imagined the following conversa-
tion between the Sipahdar, Mohamed Ah,
and Panoff. It is supposed to take place
through the telephone. The Sipahdar is
Governor of Resht, the Shah is Shah still.
We put it down because it seems to illustrate
the fantastic side of things which is upper-
most in one's mind as it runs on the Kajars : —
The Sipahdar. — Hullo ! Are you there ?
Is that Mohamed AH? WeU, I'm the
Sipahdar.
The Shah.— Oh, you old villain ! What
are you doing in that gaUey ?
The Sipahdar. — ^Never you mind, my boy.
114
1
KAJARS
But, look here, we've just blown up the
damned Russian bridge at Mendjil.*
The Shah, — ^Talking of Russian bridges
reminds me of Russian banks ; and I'm
hoping to get a loan from Exemplaroff f on
the security of your estates, which I've
been obliged to confiscate.
The Sipahdar, — My dear sir, they're
already mortgaged with Exemplaroff.
The Shah. — Damn !
The Sipahdar. — You'd better reach for
your hat and take the jewels out. Hullo !
Can you hear ? We've caught your brother,
the Chooa. A splendid fellow, called Panoff,
just arrived here, did it.
The Shah. — For God's sake, keep him.
Don't let him come along here. He'd be
a frightful expense at the Palace.
The Sipahdar. — ^All right ! As I was
saying — about this Panoff. A regular devil,
I assure you. He and his Caucasians will
* Important strategical point on the road between Resht
and Teheran.
■f Director of the Russian Bank at Teheran.
115
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
be off down the road like an express train
in a second. ... So take care of your-
self. I should advise you to take out
your pa's motor.* What ? You've sold
the engines. So sorry. And the road that
Panoff '11 be coming by is the only one in
this beastly country that a motor can go.
Poor fellow ! Try the Russian Legation.
Panoff (seizing the receiver). — Is that
you, you monstrous old reactionary. I tell
you I've the very best line in bombs. Just
you wait and see ! How's Liakhof ? Tell
the brigand he'd best put his red and blue
dressing gowns f in a safe place — the Russian
bank or somewhere — before he jumps.
Just you look out, you two ! I shan't be
long — due in China next month. J . . .
The Shah rings off.
* Musaffer-ed-din was the proud possessor of a motor-
car.
t Sarcastic allusion to the beautiful uniforms of the
Russian colonel.
J It was said of Panoff and his comrades from Europe
that when they had put " Persia on its legs," they intended
to go and do the same for China. (Letter from the Times
correspondent, The Times, Nov. 22, 1909).
116
CHAPTER VII
COLONEL LIAKHOF
We visited Colonel Liakhof, Instructor of
the Persian Cossacks, who was then
Governor-General of Teheran. The cor-
respondent of the Novoe Vreyma drove
with us to the Colonel's house and intro-
duced us to the man whom we had heard
called " Dictator of Persian Destinies,"
" The Shah's Evil Genius," &c.
We saw ^ young officer, six feet four
inches high, with a small bullet-shaped head
and a trimmed yeUow beard. He wore a
beautiful dark uniform, and walked with
graceful, light movements that gave him an
air of great distinction ; in ordinary civilian
dress he might have seemed too slight. He
had blue, deep-set, gentle eyes, and a strong
chin. We had supposed, from what we had
117
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
read of him in the newspapers, that his
demeanour would be overbearing and
brutal ; but he looked like a character out
of the New Testament.
Before coming to Persia Colonel Liakhof,
then on the General Staff at Tiflis, had been
employed several times on reconnaissance
work in Eastern Asiatic Turkey. He re-
ceived his appointment in Teheran in
September, 1906.
His term of office feU during a particularly
trying period. At the start a big difficulty
was that his men had to go without their
wages. It had formerly been the custom of
the Exchequer to hand over at regular
intervals to the Cossack Colonel a sum out
of which he should pay his men ; but soon
after Liakhof's arrival the practice lapsed.
The Government trusted that the Russian
Banlr would provide the necessary funds.
The Brigade, they argued, is not our concern.
Personally we regard it as rather a nuisance.
However, we must put up with it to please
the foreigners. But let the foreigners them-
118
COLONEL LIAKHOF
selves support it ! Had not a British
military attache written that '' in case of
disturbance they (the Cossacks) are the only
organised body of troops available for the
maintenance of order in the capital, and for
the protection of the lives and property of
foreigners, and it is, therefore, to the
interest of all Europeans, that they should be
maintained in an efficient state." Well, the
Russian Bank advanced 80,000 tomans, and
the Shah smiled shrewdly.
Of course, the Shah used those troops,
when the time came, against his subjects.
Some of them besieged Tabriz, and the
others watched over his precious person
at the Bagh-i-Shah, or cantered about
the streets of Teheran. The pro-British
Nationalists raised an outcry, arguing that
but for the Russian Bank's loan he would
have been without his Cossacks, and help-
less ; asserting, too, that the Bank was
secretly advancing from time to time
further sums for the maintenance of the
brigade.
119
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Liakhof struck out a new line when he
ordered the bombardment of a mosque, on
the occasion of the attack on the MejHss, in
June, 1908. Whether he had the right even
to lead the Cossacks in this encounter
remains undecided, but it seems certain
that his determined, ruthless, momentary
violence saved Teheran from a great deal of
bloodshedding.
^ His life must have been in real danger, if
not from the Nationalist, at least from the
religious fanatic ; and, though liked at the
Legations and in the foreign society of the
town, he spent most of his time between his
house, that was closely guarded by Cossacks,
and the barracks over the way, where it
was supposed that he presided in person at
the cross-examination of political suspects.
Our impression was of a shy and retiring
man, a simple soldier, wrapped up in his
military duties. His talk was mostly of his
Brigade — " My men," " My regiment."
" I saw His Majesty this morning," he
said, and that " His Majesty was well,"
120
COLONEL LIAKHOF
and that " His Majesty was always well."
Because there was no human being but he
whom we ever knew to speak respectfully of
Mohamed Ali, we convinced ourselves that
the picturesque colonel was deeply attached
to the Shah, as to a lost cause ; and we
seemed to see a halo of romance settling
around the brows of the Kajar. There was
at least one man who would never desert the
King. But when the Sipahdar and his allies
attacked Teheran, though Liakhof indeed
commanded the royaHsts, his resistance
was half-hearted, for he gave the order to
cease firing before the victory of the Nationa-
lists was certain, and allowed the rebels a
walk-over. Then, having run the Russian
flag up over his house, he hobnobbed with
the Sipahdar, and they made a handsome
pair as they rode amicably through the
streets of Teheran. And then, a month or
two later, he left the country, unnoticed,
forgotten and forgiven.
Liakhof was accused of being in league
with the jingo party in Russia, and of having
121
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
acted on its behalf in Teheran. But the
secret history of Russian intrigue, if intrigue
there was, in Persia during the civil war,
remains yet to be revealed. Meanwhile the
Colonel's " policy " admits, on the outside,
of a straightforward and simple explanation.
Twice, when the consequences must be
serious, was he called upon to make up his
mind as to a course of action — first in June,
1908, and again, a year later, in July, 1909.
On the earlier occasion he saved the Shah.
But he did more than that, for he saved the
foreigners of Teheran from a great deal of
inconvenience and discomfort. There was
no more street fighting in the capital — ^he
had put the fear of God into the hearts of
people — ^until July, 1909, on the arrival of
outsiders — ^namely, the Reshtis, the Cau-
casians and the Bahktiari. Again Liakhof
seems to have acted in the interests of the
foreigner ; he fought, for decency's sake,
awhile ; and then abandoned a cause which
had become hopeless. According to this
view, Liakhof regarded his responsibilities
122
COLONEL LIAKHOF
as being, in the first instance, towards the
foreigners of Teheran ; and only in the
second towards the Shah, or Persian
Government.
That the commander of a native Persian
regiment should dare take such a view as
this of the duties and uses of his men, and
act upon it, illustrated the topsy-turveydom
of Persian national life ; and the moral, as
usual, went to strengthen the Nationalist
case, at least in theory.
123
CHAPTER VIII
THE BULGARIAN ADVENTURER AND BRITISH
PRESTIGE
While we were in Teheran a piece of news
arrived which greatly excited the town's
talk, and raised the hopes of the Nationalists,
though only for a moment, to fever pitch.
A young man had sent word that he was
about to enter Teheran at the head of an
army in order to kill Colonel Liakhof.
The prospect attracted our special attention,
because on enquiry it turned out that the
young man was none other than Panoff,
the Bulgarian, by whom we ourselves and
the Chooa-esSuUaness had been " captured "
on the road from Enzeli to Resht.
It appeared that Panoff had already
been in Teheran. From June to December,
1908, he had acted as the Teheran correspon-
dent of an important Liberal newspaper in
124
I
I
,11
THE BULGARIAN ADVENTURER
St. Petersburg, whither he had sent a
great deal of sensational news, mixed with
violent abuse of Colonel Liakhof and other
Russian agents. Subsequently he was sent
out of Persia by order of the Russian
Legation. He then spent some time in St.
Petersburg, where he delivered a course of
lectures on Persian affairs, becoming a
favourite with many ladies in advanced
society. Later on he raised a band of men,
set out for Persia, and marched into Resht
while the banners flew and the drums beat
to the tune of the Marseillaise, He had
said : "I shall come again. Mark my
words ! "
A very close watch was kept by the
authorities so that Panoff should not enter
Teheran by stealth. Colonel Liakhof ob-
served to his men how important it was
that a certain Bulgarian, whom he described
in detail, should be arrested at sight. The
man would probably be carrying bombs
upon his person. Next day, to show their
zeal, a body of the Cossacks arrested a
125
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
very well-known citizen who bore no
resemblance whatever to the redoubtable
journalist and soldier, being a middle aged
man of blameless airs, whose business
constantly brought him to Teheran, for
he held the responsible position of the
agent for the Parsee community in
Persia. The event occurred in the foUow^
ing manner: —
The Parsee, on leaving his house in the
morning, noticed that he was being
"shadowed" down the street by Cossack
horsemen. He did not think that he was in
for serious trouble, but surmised he was
being annoyed in this deliberate manner on
account of his reputation as a friend and
counsellor of the Persian Liberals. How-
ever, he took " bast " in a photographer's
establishment, where he remained for three
quarters of an hour, hoping to wear out his
tormentors. But as soon as he had again
crossed the threshold he was seized and
hustled into a carriage, in which he was
driven at a gallop to Cossack headquarters,
126
THE BULGARIAN ADVENTURER
the road on either side being closely guarded.
On the way his capturers insulted and ill-
treated him, the while they quarrelled
among themselves over the spoil. His
protests that he was not their man, and
that in fact he was a British subject, were
completely disregarded. Fortunately he
was recognised at headquarters, and
released ; later on he had the satisfaction
of receiving through the British Legation
an ample apology from Colonel Liakhof
himself. He was a master of fluent English,
who had the Nationalist arguments at his
finger-tips ; and for the next week he was
occupied in relating the incident to every
British resident, and discussing it, as he
himself would have said, in relation to the
general situation. It was an evidence of
the sad phght of British prestige in Persia
when the Cossacks dared thus to handle
a British subject in the broad dayhght.
So he argued, and could not be convinced
that his captors had truly mistaken him for
Panoff. Did not the case of the young man
127
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
n
from Tabriz, who had been pubhcly
executed in the Meidan a few days ago,
point the same moral ?
The unfortunate Tabrizi had been seized
in the bazaars by the Shah's pohce. It was
alleged that he was carrying bombs.
Nationalists denied that he had had any
explosives in his possession. Who had seen
them ? True, a pair of bombs were on
show at the Bagh-i-Shah, whither the
captive had been dragged. But, as every-
one should know, the Shah always kept
bombs in his house, and this pair had
already done service in incriminating a
number of captives.
The real reason why the Shah had
wished to destroy the Tabrizi was that the
man had once been a " Basti " at the
British Legation. The trial seemed to be
proceeding in favour of the prisoner until
he had^ brought forward in defence his
British letters of protection. It was then
that the Shah had said : " You must
certainly be hanged at once."
128
L«^
i^*'
^.•^r*^-.
^-^
i -^■>^i^^^4mt
^i
THE BULGARIAN ADVENTURER
There were no gallows in Teheran, and the
Tabriz! was brutally killed in the Meidan
like a sheep. Then his body was brought
to one of the city gates there to be hung up,
and thither came the crowds day after day
to gaze at it sadly and solemnly. It
sickened one to see that there was never any
sign of protest, never a movement of
disgust on the part of the spectators ;
and yet the spectacle was protected only
by a thin cordon of the most miserable of
the Shah's soldiers.
The atmosphere of Teheran was not
favourable to men of daring, and Panoff
never executed the move which he had
threatened. On our way homewards some
weeks later we found him still at Resht.
And, alas, in what altered circumstances !
The captor of the Chooa-es-Sultaness and of
ourselves, the dashing young leader of
cavalry, was in disgrace. He sat through
the livelong day in his hotel, in a gloomy
and taciturn mood, a few faithful allies
round him, not daring to stir from beneath
129 I
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
that roof, which flew the flag of some
European Power or other. Two explana-
tions of his sad ease were offered to us.
One was that he had exhibited, as a
military leader, a folly so marked that his
activities constituted a public danger. He
had tried, for instance, to insist that a fort
should be raised in the middle of the town
for the purposes of defence. Another
explanation had already been given us by
one of the revolutionary bands which we
had met upon the road. Being asked how
Panoff fared, they had repudiated the
man ; he was a member, said they, of the
Azeff tribe, a spy, or an agent-provocateur.
Later on a writer, whose sources of informa-
tion were obviously quite different from
ours, brought an accusation of the same
sort against Panoff. We quote from an
article in The Outlook : — " This Panoff
deserves special mention. By birth a
Bulgarian, he was for some time with the
Macedonian bands. Later he attempted
to betray his former comrades; both in
130
n
THE BULGARIAN ADVENTURER
Vienna and to the Russian authorities
he offered for sale plans and documents
useful against his late comrades. Still
later he drifted into Persia. A St. Peters-
burg paper was ill-advised enough to engage
him as a correspondent, and his stories were
wired to London. When expelled from
Persia he reappeared in St. Petersburg in
company with a ' very holy man,' a Persian
mutjahid, who gave interviews to mislead
correspondents of London papers. . . ."
Panoff seems to have left Resht very
shortly after our own departure. The writer
in The Outlook (April 17, 1909), states that
he was living at Astrabad, where he com-
manded the countryside, and had hoisted
a flag of his own, bearing the words, " Down
with the Shah ! " over the Governor's house.
So, apparently, he again saw better days.
During the summer, however, a telegram
was published in the English newspapers,
which announced his death. Wounded in
several places during an affray with the
Turcomans, and deserted by his men, he
131
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
shot himself to avoid capture. But again
we heard that he had neither fought nor
died. So difficult is it, in writing of Persia,
to establish the simplest of one's facts.
Who was Panoff anyway ?
I
132
CHAPTER IX
THE SHAH'S PALACES
Since his accession the late Shah followed
the practice of the Kajars, and resided
entirely in Teheran, or in the immediate
vicinity. After the attempt upon his life
in December, 1907, he, however, as has
been said, left the Palace and retired to
the pavilion of the Bagh-i-Shah. So when
we were in Persia last Spring all the
picturesque order of a Persian Court was
practically in abeyance for the time being.
We had not the opportunity of witnessing
during our stay in Teheran any of these
interesting ceremonies such as the often-
described levees that are held in the Royal
Palace. We did, however, see the annual
performance of the Tazieh or miracle play,
which represents the martyrdom of Hasan
133
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
and Husein, but it was a private perfor-
mance in the Bagh-i-Shah, and not the
usual pubUc one that is held in the Takieh
or theatre in the grounds of the Royal
Palace. The representation was carried
out with extraordinary dignity, despite such
humorous features as the entry of Solomon
upon the stage in a motor car, the leisurely
meals taken by the performers, and the
constant prompting of an ubiquitous stage
manager, who read every speech aloud
before it was made by the actor.
All the Shah's residences, his great palaces
in the city, and his numerous country
seats, are in Teheran and the neighbour-
hood. They are set in a beautiful
inheritance, for Teheran is nobly framed by
the Elburz range, whose lofty peaks would
seem, owing to the wonderful clarity of the
atmosphere, to rise just beyond the very
walls of the city. And always Demavend,
with all its legendary associations is in
sight, though sixty miles away, that royal
mountain, the third highest in Asia.
134
"PT
THE SHAH'S PALACES
The Royal Palace is hidden away by the
walls of the grounds in which it stands,
and only one fa9ade is visible from the
street. It is within a part of this building
that the Salaam or Royal levee takes
place, when the monarch shows himself
at a window to his favoured subjects in
the garden below. It is a curious function
but one that is rather unsatisfactory from
the point of view of the guests, to whom no
hospitality is offered. By the way, the late
Shah, being of an economical disposition,
always dined alone in the Palace. State
banquets were unknown during his reign.
However, he would dine now and then upon
his own invitation with an important
dignitary, such as the Foreign Minister.
When he was seated, Persian fashion, at
table, he would find beside him a large
plate into which the hundred guests were
expected to drop a certain sum in gold.
Sometimes His Majesty departed a thousand
pounds the richer for his visit.
One enters the Palace through a large
135
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
garden court, with two-storied buildings
of white stone round it. An erection at
the end opposite to the modest gateway-
has an opening covered by a great curtain,
and this hides the Takht-i-Marmor or
Marble Throne of the Shahs. A long tank,
paved with blue tiles, of running water
runs the whole length of the garden, which
is laid out with geometrically planned
flower beds. Tall maples and pines throw
a pleasant shade, and the picture is dehght-
ful, and an excellent example of the art of
landscape gardening. The curtain of the
loggia drawn across, the gleaming white
throne stands out from the gloom of its
background. When a public salaam is
given, it is in these grounds, opposite the
loggia, that the people assemble, while
the Shah sits within, crossed-legged on the
Tahkt-i-Marmor, smoking a kalyan, and
listening to the odes of his head poets.
The loggia is a fine example of mirror work,
walls and ceiling being a mosaic of small
mirrors set at varying angles. The throne
136
THE SHAH'S PALACES
itself, which is made of the marble of Yezd,
and came from Shiraz, is carried on twisted
columns and fantastically carved figures ;
it is over six feet in height, and the seat
is about the size of a billiard table. The
great columns before it, that support the
roof of the loggia, came from Meshed, and
it took twelve years to drag them across
the desert sand to Teheran.
There are other groups of buildings in
the Palace enclosure, and one goes through
the private apartments of the Shah, some
of them left almost as they were when
Musaffer-ed-din died, also through a truly
mediocre but pretentious picture gallery,
and again through a series of rooms, where
are deposited the objects which Nasr-ed-
din and Musafier-ed-din Shahs brought
back with them from their European tours.
Some Royal personages have presented
the Kajars with fairly good portraits of
themselves, but for the rest, one finds
in these rooms only cheap oleographs,
terra cotta statuettes, Swiss clocks, toys,
137
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Austrian glass, and those musical boxes
for which Persian Monarchs have such
a fancy. It is a collection of bizarre
rubbish. In the grounds, which, from
every aspect, are always beautiful, stands
also that theatre, the Takieh, which
has been mentioned, deserted now but for
the mollahs who pray for the repose of
Musaffer-ed-din, for it is there that the
father of the late Shah lies, awaiting
burial in some special shrine ; while across
the rose garden, or Gulistan, rises a very
charming pavilion, the Shems-el-Imaret.
The women's apartments or anterooms
were not to be visited while we were in
Teheran, as they had still their occupants.
The State apartments are in another
courtyard. They contain the Library
which holds, or used to hold, many
priceless Indian and Arabic MSS., and
the Museum, where stands the famous
so-called peacock throne. This " beauti-
ful imposter," as Lord Curzon has called
it, was not the Delhi throne of the
138
THE SHAH'S PALACES
great Mogul, but an article made in
Persia, called by the pet name of the
favourite of some long dead Shah, and
intended for her marriage bed. Many of
the fine stones embedded in it, emeralds and
rubies for the most part, have been picked
out by thieves, and some have gone to the
making of Nasr-ed- din's jewelled globe.
The thing is, indeed, more Uke a bed than
a throne, with its wide seat, ten feet by
five, and the small flight of steps at its
base. On it the late Shah was crowned.
For the occasion the real throne of the
great Mogul was produced, or the remains
of it, and the splendour of its jewels made
it the cynosure of all eyes, but Mohamed
Ah ascended the " beautiful imposter,"
while his heir, the present Shah, sat on the
steps. An enormous melon-shaped crown,
adorned by spoils won in India in the old
times, was placed on the Monarch's head,
but being found too heavy, had to be
replaced by an ordinary Persian hat, on
which sparkled a magnificent aigrette, once
139
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
tiie property of the Emperor of Delhi.
Afterwards the Shah received the fehcita-
tions of the Court Herald and Poet, of his
ministers and courtiers, and of the foreign
representatives. It is to be feared that
Ahmed Mirza was not surrounded on a
similar occasion by so many symbols of
the past magnificence of the Shahs. Before
his fall, Mohamed Ah sold, it is said, the
jewelled globe, the old MSS. and many
more of his heirlooms. At least he would
not divulge where they had gone ; and
it was over what remained of the personal
property descending to him as Shah that
he and the new Government had such long
and futile negotiations. The squabble was
amusing from one aspect, as Ahmed Mirza,
on whose behalf the Government were
in a sense acting, cared for none of these
things, and only desired to be allowed
to accompany his parents to thek exile
to the Crimea.
The Shah's country seats are delightful
places, owing to their grand situation
140
%4
|i^^.lH| --y w Xl ^ "hH
^^^E^;4 ./ . -. ilta 1.*:
THE SHAH'S PALACES
beneath the mountains, and some of them
have escaped the vulgarization, which
is a feature of the Teheran Palace.
Musaffer-ed-din used to spend much of the
summer in the country, for the sake of
sport and of health, and often changed his
residence month by month. Kasr Kajar,
which stands about five miles from Teheran,
is, perhaps, the most attractive of these
Palaces. The garden is about half a mile
in length and a quarter in breadth, and
its plan is rectangular. From the wide
avenue, terrace after terrace carries the
eye up to a great white house. There are
in all six of these terraces, and they rise
some 150 feet to the base of the actual
building. On the fourth a miniature
lake is laid out. Round it is planted a
stately row of pines and poplars. Next
comes a stone-faced terrace forty feet high
which has at the centre a wide flight of
steps. When these are climbed a large
space laid out in flower beds is reached,
and immediately opposite is a final series
141
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PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
of steps, forty of them in beautiful coloured
lime and sandstones over two hundred
feet in length, which make an extra-
ordinarily impressive base to the white
Palace above them. The Palace, framed by
the peaks of Elburz in the background,
is of simple design, being divided into two
stories, each of which consists of arches
carried on slightly projecting piers with
a high pointed doorway in the centre.
The other country houses of the Shah's —
Sultanatebad, built by Nasr-ed-din right
under the shadow of the Elburz, and again
on the cool slopes of the Shimran Hills —
Eshretabad, Nieveran, Agdasieh, Doshan
Tepe, where the Shah keeps a menagerie,
and Fahrabad a shooting-box — have each
of them their charm, notably Sultanatebad,
with its stately gardens and its domed
and mirrored hall. In Sultanatebad we
went through long-deserted anterooms
into a little courtyard with a blue tiled
bath in the middle, and apartments like
bathing-boxes opening on to it. These
142
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THE SHAH'S PALACES
women's quarters, though pretty, are
simple enough in design, and certainly do not
suggest that the country life of the harem
is over luxurious. It was in Sultanatebad
that the Shah spent the two last months
of his reign ; he was there when the invad-
ing army arrived in Teheran, and thence he
fled to the Russian Legation. Many of the
rooms in Sultanatebad, both in the women's
and in the main portion of the building,
have queer mosaics in large tiles on the walls
representing the Persian monarch in various
heroic attitudes, as lover, as warrior, and
as hunter. In this, as in other haunts of
bygone Shahs, such evidences as these of
a picturesque life that is passing away
have a melancholy interest.
143
CHAPTER X
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
More fortunate than our previous journey,
we left Teheran in a big roomy vehicle,
half-landau, half-wagon. And we were
again accompanied by a first-rate linguist,
F., who was travelling to Constantinople.
On the first evening there was a sunset,
glorious even for this land of sunsets, and,
as we looked back at the city, its minarets
were purple against the rosy slopes of the
mountains. We felt acutely that strange
feeling of depression that one has on
leaving a place in which one has been
more than a passer-by, and to which
one will not return. We could not afford
the time for bed that night, and pushed
on through the darkness, only allowing
144
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
ourselves an hour's halt at midnight for
food and a brief sleep.
The next day was laborious and unevent-
ful. In the late afternoon our carriage
rolled into the big Meidan at Kasvin ; for
we had been lucky with our horses and
were making a rapid journey. Here we
found the Shah's troops encamped, those
troops which had been despatched towards
Resht weeks ago. We understood that
their apparent fixity of tenure was due
to a rumour that had spread. It was
whispered that the Reshtis were in
possession of a quick-firing gun!
This force never got beyond Kasvin, and
when the Reshtis eventually marched into
the town it was empty of soldiers, and
the ancient capital was taken without the
firing of a shot ! The Reshtis wisely sent
word that they were coming.
Meanwhile the royalist army, which
numbered about three hundred men, slept
about the streets in the sun.
It made room for the revolutionists from
145 K
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Reslit; and then, when the Sipahdar, his
Afghan second-in-command, and his
army, after long delay, moved onwards
towards the capital, a detachment of
Russian Cossacks filled the city again. The
Russians took up a position in Kasvin in
order that they might be at the call of the
foreigners in Teheran in case of danger. The
capture of the capital by the Nationalists
was, however, carried out in so peaceable
a manner that the presence of a foreign
force was not required, and the Russian
troops never advanced nearer Teheran than
Kasvin, though they stayed at Kasvin
throughout the summer and longer. Kas-
vin, in fact, had a fine time of it during
the year 1909. Three separate armies upon
their various purposes were there. It had
all the excitement incidental to the presence
of the military. And not a shot fired in
anger !
Twilight saw us moving slowly over the
desert, upon the exceptionally bad bit of road
which we have described in Chapter IV.
146
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Dawn promised a good day : and the
hope that we might at any moment meet
the army from Resht tempted us to make
an early start. In the course of an hour,
during which the carriage had performed
amazing feats of gymnastics over banks
and water-courses, we came to the edge of
the plateau, and entered the first of that
series of strange gorges that lead to the
foot hiUs and the coast.
Here was no sign of life at all, and the
sun beat fiercely on the brown rocks that
rose sharply to the right of our road. On
our left a sloping cliff of perhaps 300 feet
carried the eye from a loosely built para-
pet of stones to the dry bed of a stream.
Our horses cantered merrily ; the only
sound to be heard was the sharp ring of
their little hoofs on the ochre road.
But in a moment, in this theatrical setting,
we saw round a projecting spur, some fifty
yards in front of our team, four armed and
mounted men. Held up in the approved
fashion, we were approached by the leader
147
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
who had dismounted, and came to the side
of our carriage to have a word with us. All
four were bearded, rugged, and determined-
looking men, clothed in the high astrachan
hat and long sheep-skin cloak of the
Caucasian. This was a scouting party of
the Reshtis. F. addressed the leader, first
in Turkish, then in Greek, and it was amusing
to note the surprise on the excellent
fellow's face. F.'s second shot, however,
was correct, for the revolutionary soldier
was a Greek. We asked what had brought
him to Persia. " Is not poor Persia in
need of help," said he, " and must we not
give aU service to a country in distress ! "
Of his companions, two were Armenians
and one a Georgian, intelligent men who
had read " Haji Baba." It was hard to
judge how far they were mere adventurers,
how far they were genuine servants of
liberty. But they were four typical repre-
sentatives of the foreign revolutionary and
anti-Russian element that did so much to
ensure the victory of Persian Nationalism.
148
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
They were anxious to know all about
events in Teheran, and the number and
condition of the troops in Kasvin. After,
perhaps, half an hour's conversation we
parted : they galloped wildly up the gorge,
waving their rifles over their heads, and we
continued down it. Out of sight we
watched them, and then urged our boy
to hurry his horses. About mid-day we
encountered a single horseman. Seeing
him some way off riding rapidly
towards us, somebody said : "I am
sure he is not a Persian." The surmise
proved correct, and when he pulled
up beside us, we saw that he was a
Caucasian. He was riding in haste with
orders for the other four. He asked us how
far ahead they were. We told him, but he
hardly waited to thank us. This was our
first experience of the Caucasian soldier
on active service, and we were moved to
admiration of a reckless courage. For the
man rode alone, apparently perfectly in-
different to the fact that he was in the
149
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
enemy's country, and, moreover, in the
kind of country in which an army might
be concealed anywhere.
Towards evening we met a troop of
about forty horse, heavily armed. They
were bivouacking near a lonely post-
house. They crowded round us for
news, and we had leisure to examine
them. There were not half a dozen
Persians in the lot. One was a
professional photographer, an Armenian,
who offered to send us prints of any interest-
ing pictures he might take.
We pushed on after dark, although our
driver was anxious to rest, and at about
10 o'clock were again challenged and
stopped ; being then a mile outside the
village of Mendjil where we intended to
pass the night. Our baggage was searched,
apparently for despatches, but when the
officer in charge of the patrol had satisfied
himself of our innocence he gave us a body-
guard for escort. By this time we were
accustomed to the casual way in which
150
n
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Caucasian soldiers handled their rifles,
and the proximity of the man on our
step who kept his cocked, his hand on the
trigger and the muzzle waving about in
the carriage, did not prevent us plying
him and his friends with questions about
the Sipahdar, Panoff, and their own inten-
tions and opinions.
In the morning, after some little delay
that occurred owing to a difficulty in pro-
curing horses, we hurried to the bridge
of Mendji] to inspect the fortifications.
There were none. However, the formation of
the mountain and river bed made an ideal
natural fortress. All day we drove on and
on in great heat. Our skins began to peel,
our limbs grew cramped. Presently we left
the mountains and dropped down into the
wooded slopes through which the pass winds,
crossing little stone bridges that spanned
deep ravines. There was a glow of great
blue violets, primroses and stars of
Bethlehem over the undergrowth of the
iresh green woods. It was a new country,
151
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
and one forgot the fierce mountains and the
little fighting men who were crossing them.
After a passage over the desert a wood in
leaf is pleasant to see. From time to time
we met small bodies of troops, each of
which stopped us as a matter of form.
At nightfall we entered Resht, our post
boy for the last stage (an excellent driver,
by the way) being supphed by the
authorities; and the Greek landlord of the
one hotel in the town, that little hotel
where the floors are dangerous and the
food excellent, served us immediately with
the first real meal we had had for four
days.
We found that no ship left Enzeli for
Baku for three days, and so had plenty of
time to send the wires we had promised
to a correspondent in Teheran, and also a
detailed account by post of what we had seen
on the road.
In the square soldiers drilled, and on
inspection of the types it was clear that
not all of the six hundred men who com-
152
I
imrw^^tn^^mmn
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
posed the fighting force of the Nationalists
were of Persian blood.
The situation in Resht had developed
rather than altered since we had passed
through the town on our outward journey.
Everything was orderly then, though it
was but a week since the Governor had been
killed and replaced. Everything was
orderly still. But we noticed a general
increase of activity, a consciousness on the
part of the people of big events. We
looked out upon the public gardens of the
Zadzi Meidan, where in the afternoon all
the town seemed to congregate. At one
comer a large crowd of both men and
women was being addressed by various
orators. Between the speeches a band
within a square wooden palisade struck up
when the cheering had died down.
The orators' platform was the balcony
of a pretty house, and on it were moUahs,
Caucasian men-at-arms, important citizens,
members of the committees. Most of the
people in the Zadzi Meidan were listening
153
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
to the speeches, but here and there were
other small groups. Old men walked up
and down in a leisurely fashion among the
barren almond trees. " Young Persians "
sat on benches and read the " North
Wind," the re-established journal of Resht.
Dervishes, beggars, cake-sellers with their
booths, and bootblacks, dotted the scene.
Our hotel, which had been lonely enough
on the occasion of our first visit, was now
fuU of life. A serious-looking and pale-
faced man, with a thin beard and sunken
eyes, occupied a room on our landing ; he
was a skilled artizan in the bomb business.
All night long he received visitors, and
talked in a high-pitched voice. We hked
better the rough Caucasian soldiers who
played cards, and ate and drank so heartily
in the diningroom below.
We visited Panoff , who, as we have already
told, was now in disgrace. It was a
melancholy occasion. We sat at one end
of a long deal table, and he at the other.
Occasionally he glanced at us, and we
154
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
glanced at him. He had but little French.
Two friends of his marched in, in the
middle of the doleful proceedings. They
glared at us. We made our excuses and
went out.
In the afternoons we rode out across
the rice swamps and through the woods
around Resht, and had a glimpse of the
notoriously unhealthy jungle where tigers
were to be found fifteen years ago,
The last stage of our journey from
Resht to Enzeli, although only some
eighteen miles, proved very wearisome. The
road runs through the swamp and jungle,
or scrub, and is quite monotonous and
devoid of interest. On the way a curious
incident occurred, which would have been
a godsend to the collector of fishing tales.
When about ten miles from the coast we
noticed two huge hawks (called eagles
locally) flying almost overhead. We lay
back in our carriage, lazily interested,
and, as they drew near, we could see that
155
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
one bird carried something or other in his
talons. We shouted loudly together, and
the big fellow swerved and dropped his
burden. It was a fish. Jumping out of
the carriage we ran to where it lay, some
forty yards off, and picked up a carp
between two and three pounds weight, and
alive. It was an unusual experience to
see a great fish drop out of the skies, many
miles from any water.
On the Quay the usual crowd of beg-
gars with distressing deformities gathered
and asked for alms — some pleading,
some fiercely demanding. Most of them
were sound in mind and body, others
evidently were not (as our photograph
shows). In the crowd there was one
complete beggar family, composed of a
girl and a boy, and a veiled woman, their
mother. Both brother and sister were
remarkably beautiful children, and the girl,
whose manners, however, were mature
enough, could not have been more than
156
I
i
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
twelve years old, for her whole face, and
not her wonderful dark eyes only, was un-
covered. She had mastered her trade
already. All the coins that were thrown
from the ship were thrown to her, and, what
was more, reached her in the end. Every
official upon the Quay was her ally, and
there was no chance for the less attractive
mendicants. One coin was seized by a mon-
strous cripple whose mind was wandering.
Then she stormed and she raged in a wild
and graceful fashion. Then she became
pitiable, and appealed to the passengers. In
despair she withdrew her family to the back-
ground. Meanwhile the big beggar was
being interviewed, and at last gave up the
coin to his tormentors. It was carried to her
and she came forward again to the ship's
side, serenely radiant, to bow her thanks.
Then as we sailed from the harbour of
Enzeli, a red flag was hoisted on a staff
over the topmost cupola of the Shah's
pavilion— the flag of the cause that was
to win.
157
CHAPTER XI
BAKU
Leaving Persia sooner than we origin-
ally intended, we were now able to carry
out the original part of our plan of
voyage which included a visit to the
Caucasus. While on board the ship between
Enzeli and Baku we decided to stay a while
on landing there, at the latter port, and then
to travel to Batoum — ^whence many ships
sail to Constantinople — by the Trans-
caucasian Railway, making stoppages in
several other towns — Tiflis, Kutais, &c.
We had letters of introduction to various
representative persons in this part of the
world, most of them Georgians. None
were, however, resident in Baku. But we
wished to see more of this town, of which
158
BAKU
a glimpse on our outward journey had
made us curious.
Baku has had, recently at any rate, a
very exciting history. The remarkable
properties of its naphtha wells attracted
many of the more adventurous commercial
spirits in Europe, and the town was erected
into a great industrial centre. Always the
home of violent primitive peoples, this
change in its fortunes has produced social
conditions as bizarre as it is possible to
imagine. It has been a Mecca of adven-
turers, and is strewn, as it were, with the
flotsam and jetsam of the Middle East.
One understands that every nationality
west of Suez is represented in Baku, and
that you may hear seventy different
languages spoken in the streets — Tartars,
Russians, Lesghians, Persians, Georgians,
Greeks, Armenians, and Turks, being the
predominating elements of the crowd. It
is said again that an enemy may be dis-
posed of in this town at a cost of five
roubles, and that the average number of
159
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
murders per day is five. Prosperous
citizens are kidnapped in broad daylight.
A stranger must avoid being seen entering
the banks, which, by the way, are always
closed before mid-day, because at that hour
the populace is at leisure. Here all the Wm
romance, if you care to call it so, of Russian
political life may be studied in miniature —
there is no feature of the Czar's police
system that is not represented, and nowhere
in his dominions are democratic organisa-
tions more terrible and earnest in purpose.
In another aspect Baku is a city of gamblers,
and passions are as crude and violent,
nerves are as highly strung, as they were
in any of the digging towns of Cahfornia
at the era of the great gold rush.
The town has always been of some
importance. Being situated at the foot
of the eastern extremities of the Caucasus,
it is on a high road from Europe to Asia,
and has had connections with Persia as a
port of trade for centuries. Consequently its
vicissitudes have been many. The Persians
160
N
w
H
>
<
BAKU
captured this city of the Tartar Khans, and
then the Turks: then again the Shahs
were its masters, until 1723, when it became
Russian. Its close connections with Persia
are, however, still maintained ; and, as we
have pointed out, the revolt in Resht was
partly engineered in Baku by the Persians
and cosmopolitan revolutionists of the city.
On three sides of Baku are huge dreary-
wastes of stone and of sand ; on the fourth,
the almost tideless Caspian. From the
harbour at night the Mosque of the Shah
Abbas stands out darkly, and from a great
tower at the bay's mouth, that is called
the Maiden's Tower and crumbles under
the weight of tragic memories, lights
twinkle round the curves and up the slopes
of the hill on which the town is built.
Beyond are the barren uplands of the
Eastern Caucasus, than which there can be
no unfriendHer country in the world.
Within the town shoddy buildings in the
European manner jostle shoulders with
Oriental booths and tea-houses ; renaissance
161 L
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
villas in white stucco face squalid rows
of Tartar shops. There seems to be no
design whatever in the structure of the
place. One passes through laneways of
hateful aspect into pretensions modern
streets, or beneath the gateways of the old
walls into districts which would appear to
consist entirely of scrap iron. The oil
springs themselves are outside the town
near the coast. They break the monotony
of the view as the train approaches the town
from the north — a far-stretching, closely-
huddled collection of wooden conical
chimneys, which are continuously belching
forth thick clouds of black smoke.
The hero Schamyl, himself a native of
the Eastern Caucasus, being once asked to
explain the multiplicity of races and of
tongues about Daghestan, repUed : —
" Alexander the Great took a dislike to this
district on account of its barrenness, and he
turned it into a place of exile for all the
criminals of the world." It is, however,
improbable that Alexander was ever in the
162
BAKU
Caucasus. Baddeley, in his " Conquest of
the Caucasus," suggests that the real
explanation is a geographical one. Trans-
caucasia is, or was, one of the great highways
of the world where all the proud races of
ancient times passed, driving before them
in turn innumerable vanquished tribes, who
eventually found refuge in the mountain
gorges. However, the traveller in Baku
will hold that Schamyl's theory ought to
be, if it is not, correct.
The violent disturbances which shook
the power of Russia a few years ago were
quelled, more or less successfully, in
Transcaucasia, but in Baku the forces of
anarchy and of authority still struggle on
fairly even terms. The police are still
extremely nervous, as we proved to our
satisfaction. For we succeeded on one
occasion in being arrested as spies on the
ground that one of us had taken a photo-
graph of a group of mounted Cossacks.
A sergeant watched us, and, when we had
refolded the camera, he arrested us and
163
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
marched with us to the jail under a guard
composed of the subject of our pictures.
We had a hopeless and helpless half hour
with the police officer in whose care we
were left, until at last he offered to release
us if we would give up the films. We
could but refuse. M. Andre, of the
Hotel Europe was sent for, but he proved
an inefficient and timid interpreter, who
complicated rather than eased the situation.
Hours passed, and eventually we were let
go on signing a document, the purport of
which we did not, however, grasp. But
we went carrying the films with us.
A form of brigandage, much in favour
in Baku, is simpler even than blackmail.
Suppose you should be a successful man,
and it is obvious that your oil mill or other
business is paying well. You arrive at
your office one morning to find a letter in
which is an order to pay a sum of money —
very often out of all proportion to what
you can afford — ^to a certain individual who
is named, and who, it is explained, will
164
BAKU
call upon you at such a day and hour.
If you be wise, you will raise the money
and pay ; it will be a foolish thing to have
the man arrested when he comes, for, in
that case, you will surely be shot, sooner
or later, or forced to pay a very much
larger amount. In the hotel we met a
Russian who had just received an intimation
of this unpleasant kind. He was unable
to raise the amount required, yet he could
not communicate with the secret society
which threatened him, as he had no know-
ledge of its personnel or head- quarters.
He was in actual fear of death, and could
do nothing, and was in this predicament
when we left. Kidnapping is the second,
more or less common, method of obtaining
money, used by the secret societies of
Baku. In the hotel we were shown a citizen,
weU known to our informant, who had
recently been kidnapped from his own office
in broad daylight. Two respectable-looking
Tartars had entered his rooms ; placing
revolvers to his head they had ordered him
166
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
to accompany them. They put him into
a droschky that waited outside, and told
him to behave as though they were friends
who drove with him, threatening him with
death should he give the alarm. A house
occupied by Armenians was reached. But
Tartars and Armenians fell a-quarrelling, for
the Tartars wished the Armenians to hold
the captive until the ransom should arrive.
The Armenians, however, refused to have
a share in the adventure unless paid in
advance. The unfortunate captive, fearing
the Armenians less than he feared the
Tartars, implored his hosts to look after
him. They consented, and the Tartars
disappeared. Immediately the Armenians
drove the prisoner back to his office and
released him unconditionally in order to
annoy their partners. This was the victim's
story, but it is probable that he paid a large
sum to the Armenians, but feared to admit
it. Our informant dined with us one night,
and arrived rather late at the hotel, because
he had stayed out to see two policemen
166
Doorway, Georgian Church of Bagrat, Kutais
BAKU
shot. The thing happened in broad day-
light, and in a principal street.
This is the most famous story in the annals
of Baku. We relate it from Dumas'
*' Impressions de Voyage " (" Le Caucase,"
Vol. II., p. 19), where alone we have been
able to find it. It has to do with the
lovely daughter of a Persian Khan, and is
the legend of the Maiden's Tower at the
harbour's mouth.
" One of the Khans of Baku conceived
an evil passion for his daughter. In
despair she made certain conditions ; she
would yield if, in proof of his love, he
would build a tower which should be
stronger and higher than any other tower
of the town.
" Immediately the Khan called together
his servants and set them to the work.
" The tower began to rise rapidly ; the
Khan spared neither stones nor men.
" But, in the opinion of the girl, the
tower was never high enough.
" ' Another stage,' said she, whenever
her father thought that the work was
completed.
167
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
" And the tower, although it rose from
the edges of the sea, that is to say, in the
lower part of the town, grew until it
reached the heights of the minarets in the
upper part.
" But at last she had to admit that the
tower was ready.
" There was the question of furnishing it.
*' It was furnished with the richest cloths
of Persia.
" When the last carpet had been put
down, the daughter of the Khan climbed
to the top of the tower for the first time.
" She arrived on the platform and said a
prayer. Then, recommending her soul to
Allah, she threw herself from the battle-
ments into the sea."
168
CHAPTER XII
TIFLIS
From Baku the train takes one to Tiflis
in about eighteen hours, which is slow
going over the distance of five hundred
versts. EUzabetopol, the capital of the
Government of that name, is the only-
town of any importance which is passed.
The country remains lonely and barren
until one is in the heart of Georgia proper,
the modem province of Tiflis, the old
province of Karthli.
Georgia to-day comprises, according to
the political division imposed by Russia,
the Governments of Tiflis and of Kutais.
But before the Conquest of the Caucasus
these were the provinces of Georgia —
Kakhetia, Khartli {ix,, Georgia proper),
Mingrelia, Imeritia, Swania and Guria
(i.e., the Western Georgian Kingdom).
169
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
The historical and geographical divisions
are still fairly well marked by differences
of language and customs.
Transcaucasia is a mere political expres-
sion, and denotes the group of Russian
provinces which extend from the Caucasus
southwards to where the Persian frontier
runs for the time being, and, east to west
in that area, from the Caspian to the Black
Sea littorals. It is, in fact, a part of the
world which has always been No Man's
Land, neither definitely European nor
definitely Asiatic, always a cockpit of the
races. The Georgian chieftain-king, the
Shah, the Sultan, have all been supreme
here, turn and turn about. To-day Russia
upholds the Cross against the Crescent with
some difficulty. Nevertheless, the traveller
in this city of Tiflis will understand how
rapid has been the growth of European
influences, if he contrast present appear-
ances and conditions with those described
by Alexandra Dumas and others who were
there fifty or sixty years ago.
170
TIFLIS
In 1762 the Georgian monarch, HeracHus
of KarthH and Kakhetia, became the Czar's
vassal ; his successor, Gregory XIII.,
yielded up his Kingdom in 1801 ; and in
1810 Imeritia was also ceded to Russia.
Russia then undertook the Conquest which
the Georgians had never been able to
accomplish. In 1829 the great Schamyl,
a Mussulman of the Eastern Caucasus, to
be precise, a Lesghian from Daghestan, set
up his heroic opposition which lasted till
1859.
Throughout the centuries the only
civilisation native to Transcaucasia has been
Georgian. The Georgians are what the
Germans call a " culture-folk," and one of
the oldest of such in the " Middle East."
Converted to Christianity in the fourth
century, they have had written traditions
since that date, a long unbroken line of
kings ; they have produced scholars, poets,
preachers, historians. Always a weak
people numerically, and often, too, divided
among themselves, their country has been
171
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
plundered by the Saracen, the Kajar, the
Turk, and the Persian ; and yet at times
they were able to establish a sort of Empire
over the other peoples of the Caucasus,
extending their dominions on every
hand. Their neighbours, meanwhile, never
emerged from tribal conditions. Caucasian
civilisation has been marked indeed by
Byzantine influences, but these influences
were imposed from without by the conquer-
ing Shah or the conquering Sultan. The
Tartars, the Lesghians, and the rest of the
Moslem peoples are energetic and turbulent,
they have causes and ambitions of their
own, and will be found in every dangerous
organisation that is started. Now and
again they unite with the Georgians, but
always only for some immediate purpose,
and never under the banner of an ideal
patriotism.*
The heritage of Caucasian patriotism has,
therefore, been always in the keeping of the
Georgian people, although the Georgians
* Schamyl fought for a religious idea.
172
TIFLIS
proper in Transcaucasia are a compara-
tively small minority of the whole popula-
tion. In Tiflis itself, which has a popula-
tion of 160,000, the Georgian element
numbers not more than 20,000 ; adding
the representatives of a kindred race, the
Armenians, to it, the total is not yet 40,000.
In Baku the proportion must be even
smaller. But, putting the Russian garrison
out of consideration, the Georgians are,
socially and intellectually, the most active
citizens of Batoum and Baku, Tiflis and
Kutais ; and they also take the lead in
politics and in the learned professions. The
Armenians, however, who are the most
industrious of the Caucasian peoples, have
established a commercial supremacy.
It was a Georgian, the King Vahktang,
who founded in this valley of the Kur, the
old Tfilisi, the modern Tiflis. That was in
453.
The contour of the town is like that of a
saucer, and one climbs from the hollow
centre up rims that are crowded with the
173
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
ruins of old castles and forts, to view
campaniles and domes, gardens, streets, and
squares, red and green roofs that shimmer
in the sun. From the summits of the hiUs
the eye can follow the Kur for great
distances, from the gorge to the north
where it emerges, then through the town,
a whirling flood, then away over the Eastern
plains until it is lost at the horizon. The
Kur is a winding river, and it takes in its
course through the town more than one
great bend to the confusion of the stranger
who is learning his way. Houses are
crowded about its banks ; there is one point
at which their walls stand on the very
edges of great rock, sheer and perhaps a
hundred feet high, through which it has
had to cut its way. Where the current is
less rapid there are many little floating
mills moored near the shore. Higher up
the river a very ingeniously arranged ferry
makes the passage. Two boats are laid
side by side by means of a deck upon which
passengers stand. Two steel cables run
174
TIFLIS
from shore to shore, and the boats are
attached to these by short chains, running on
pulleys. The bars are swung with an oar
until they meet the force of the stream
which drives the boat before it.
But Tiflis has been described too often !
Over the southern hills a road, running to
Julfa upon the Persian frontier, carries the
smart and trim telegraph poles of the
Indo-European Company, and we who had
come to Tiflis from Teheran via Enzeli and
Baku, greeted them again as old friends,
for had we not had them by us all along
the road from the Persian capital to Kasvin ?
It was at Kasvin that we had last seen
them ; there they had turned off towards
Tabriz, taking the Julfa route into Russia.
Indeed, to be in Tiflis is to have many
recollections of Persia. Agha Mohamed
once devastated the town ; and the name
of the Kajars is not hated here less than in '
Tabriz or Teheran. During the Persian
revolution committees were as active in
Tiflis as in Baku. And from Tiflis a
175
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Russian army was sent later on in the year
to relieve Tabriz and make its occupation
in the north of Persia.
When Doctor Wachtang Hambachize,
a Georgian, and a well-known citizen of
Tiflis, called upon us at the hotel on the first
afternoon of our arrival, he was ready to
survey for us the whole field of Georgian
politics and history ; and, indeed, there is
no man in Tiflis better qualified to give the
visitor his information. But we had to ask
him first to translate for us any news of
Persia that might be in the Russian and
Georgian newspapers. He did so. It
appeared that the Shah and his sons had
fled from Teheran, and that they were at
this moment in Tiflis, at the Palace of the
Governor-General. Liakhof had been re-
called, &c.
In Tiflis manners are less violent than we
had found them in Baku. PubHc gardens
and pubHc buildings grace this town. It
is divided into four quartors, one called the
German, and inhabited by the descendants
176
TIFUS
of a religious sect which emigrated from
Wiirtemburg in 1818. The other quarters
are the Russian, the Armenian, and the
Georgian. To the chief thoroughfare of the
Russian quarter, the Golovinsky Propect,
belong the Grand Thedtre, the Cathedral
of the Garrison, the Palace of the Governor-
General, the National Library, and the
Museum of the Caucasus. AU these build-
ings are of nineteenth century date, all are
Russian. We did not enter any of them
except the superb Grand ThSdtre, where we
heard an opera that was a mixture of
operas. The fact was that we had decided
to interest ourselves in Georgian life ; and
we did not use any of our introductions to
Russian officials or do more than note the
obvious features of the Russian develop-
ment of Tiflis.
But though this town has changed so
much, it is always interesting to wander
in, even blindly, especially when one has
reached the Persian and Armenian bazaars
which lie to the south, near the Georgian
177 M
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
quarter. These bazaars are a ceaseless
delight, these bazaars in which each
nationality has its own streets, and each
street its own trades. Nor has the life of
the democracies lost its old excitements.
For the populace carries on the violent
civic traditions of Tiflis, and its spirit has
evidently not been daunted by the violent
repressions in which the authorities now
indulge. We did not walk out any day,
but we saw an arrest being made ; and a
really serious street fight occurs, we under-
stand, at least once a week.
Only how hard it was to believe that the
handsome Georgian, the debonair Tartar,
whom we passed in the meaner streets,
framed in the doorways of those curiosity
shops in which Tiflis abounds — ^noble
figures in their long cloaks, covered with
cartridge holders and silver daggers — ^were
the owners of the premises and versed
probably in all the trickery of their craft.
Behind Tiflis there rises a steep conical
178
TIFLIS
hill — eight or nine hundred feet of crag
and cHff shadowing the town. The summit,
to which a cable railway runs, is a pleasure
resort of the citizens, who, on a fine evening,
fill a dozen or so Uttle cafes. One Sunday
we went up the zigzag path and stopped half
way to enter the old Georgian Cathedral,
which, seen from below, seemed to hang
precariously enough from the rock face of
the hill. The building is quite small, built
on a cruciform plan in the Byzantine style,
with white stucco walls that gleam against
the brown cliff. The congregation was
composed of shopkeepers, soldiers, and very
devout peasants with their children whom
our presence made uneasy. The singing was
beautiful, but, as In the case of all Georgian
Churches, without accompaniment.
Patriotic Georgians are discontented
because the native language is not taught in
the schools which the Government provides.
Indeed, until a few years ago even in
private schools the teaching of Georgian
was forbidden. Now, however, Georgian
179
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
is an optional subject. Encouraged by the
withdrawal of various prohibitions, the
patriots have, in spite of the " b'^d times,"
erected, or aU but erected, a magnificent
college on a site at the outskirts of the
town. This great school is the chief novelty
in Tiflis at the present moment, and an
important architectural undertaking indeed.
Jt is hoped to accommodate one thousand
students. Unhappily the building was
planned on too lavish a scale, and the
money needed to finish the work has not
been forthcoming. We saw a few boys
wandering from one vast class-room to
another on the ground floor, and a master
took us up improvised stairways and
through long corridors leading to a chapel
and a gymnasium. Outside it was dreary,
with piles of rubbish stacked where gardens
and playgrounds ought to be. But the
place interested us after what we had heard
of the extravagance of the Georgians ; and
we were already noting that they lacked a
sense of proportion.
180
CHAPTER XIII
THE GEORGIANS OF TIFLIS
TiFLis loses its Asiatic character, but the
Georgians — although their sympathies are
mostly Western — seem to take little pride
in the new European dignity of their city.
It stands to the credit of a hated garrison
with which the patriot must have as little
as possible to do. Dumas ^pere, travelling
in the Caucasus, compared Georgia to a
Ught-hearted slave, gay even in her servi-
tude ; Russia to a heavy-hearted queen,
sombre in her grandeur, bowed beneath
the weight of her cares. Times have
changed. To-day what strikes the visitor
among the Georgians is, above all else,
the serious attitude of the upper and middle
classes towards public affairs — their concern
181
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
for the people's education, their reforming
energy, their dehght in abstract thought,
their hopes for the destiny of their country.
Russia is now the enemy, no longer the
Shah or the Sultan, although the Georgians
hate the Turk and the Persian stiU. Yet
their Russian governors were well disposed
towards them at the beginning, when,
about the middle of last century, as the
conquerors of Schamyl, and certain at last
of Naboth's Vineyard, they breathed freely.
The great Lesghian chief who had made so
mighty a war could not but have stirred
their imaginations ; and the traditions of
this land of barbaric splendour and chivalry
seemed worthy of incorporation in Russia's
own heritage. They were in a mood to be
generous, and looking round them they saw
the Georgia:! people, who had suffered so
much — ^like themselves at the hands of
Schamyl, but back, too, beyond Schamyl's
days, down the centuries, at the hands of
every heathendom — a people of their own
religion, a people of high and mysterious
182
THE GEORGIANS OF TIFLIS
lineage, of a race, scholars said, older than
the Egyptian.
Georgia, enjoying at that moment an un-
accustomed security, rejoiced. She allowed
herself to be made much of by the stranger.
But she has realised again that she is a
disappointed nation. Now when Georgians
curse their fate they curse Russia too.
There are land questions and language
questions, and other discontents exist of
whose reasonableness the passer-by cannot
be certain. It is said, for instance, that no
Georgian need apply for work to any
Russian corporation, and that this explains
why the able-bodied vagrant in town
and country is usually a Georgian. The
Russians argue that he is lazy and
idle, and less efficient than the Armenian
and Tartar. Who knows ? Rivalries
and hatreds between the Georgians, the
Armenians, and the Tartars, took from the
recent revolt any small chance of success
it might have had. And now the Tartars
have given up the struggle, while the
183
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Armenians consider that the continued
unrest is bad for trade. The Armenians
are the Jews of the Caucasus. The Tartars
are the spoilt children — fancy a Tartar
being a spoilt child ! But the Georgians
say that it is so.
They are great political theorisers, the
Georgians, especially those that belong
to the professional classes. We spent
many an evening among men of this type.
All would agree in their hatreds, but some
would have their special cure for the evils
of the world. Social democrats raised
issues with disciples of Henry George, with
obvious Tolstoyans in blue smocks, and
with landlords who (luckily) did not want
their rents. There were patriots, pure and
simple, in these parties, who distrusted
the theorisers. They, when Government
in the abstract was denounced, would say
heartily enough, Bien entendu I And yet
on a point of policy they disapproved of
the wild dreamings of their comrades.
How could a great national movement be
184
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Stonework, Georgian Church of Bagrat, Kutais (See Ch. XIV)
Ml
THE GEORGIANS OF TIPLIS
conducted if every man had his private
ideal ?
In method the Russian administration
has been violent and probably unscrupu-
lous, so that no one race in the Caucasus has
really much advantage over another in
the matter of practical grievances,
although the grievances of the Georgians,
the Tartars, the Armenians, are not
necessarily identical. However, if one
people has been at all favoured, this is
the Georgian, and yet the Georgians are,
least of any, likely to be reconciled to
the occupation. It is because they have
a stronger sense of patriotism than their
fellows; the intellectual headship of the
Caucasian peoples being theirs, they alone
possessing a sense of nationhood. Mean-
while the intelligent Russian official occupies
himself with the customs, the history, the
language, the antiquities of the Caucasus,
and vies in this respect with the patriotic
native student.
There is a Government Museum in Tiflis,
185
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
called the Musee du Caucase, which con-
tains a remarkable collection of pictures,
antiquities, and objects of natural history-
relating to the Caucasus. " Do not visit
it," our Georgian friends said to us, " you
will only be deceived by the officials there."
We went instead with them to the rooms of
the Society for the Propagation of the
Georgian Language, where the poet
Tsereteli, like Mistral in the Proven9al
Museum at Aries, presides. His enthusiastic
assistants were arranging a precious col-
lection of coins, ornaments, illuminated
manuscripts, and minute editions of the
Gospels, which displayed the ecclesiastical
characters still used in the Georgian
Church. Tsereteli himself, a handsome
man of about seventy, arrived while we
were inspecting the treasures. Two years
ago he celebrated a jubilee. He showed
us numerous presents and addresses,
which were laid out on certain shelves
in this museum. The money collected on
the occasion was devoted to the founding
186
THE GEORGIANS OP TIFLIS
of a national academy for the encourage-
ment of Georgian literature.
Tsereteli was born in 1840, in a feudal
castle near Kutais, the capital of the old
western kingdom of Georgia, and was in
youth and middle age the comrade of the
now famous Tchavtchavadze. His first
essays, " Bagrad the Great," " Theornic
Eristhavi," &c., epics of various heroic
periods in Georgian history, were published
by Tchavtchavadze in a Georgian journal
called The Dawn (Tsiskari). He has since
written a great deal of historical drama
and romance. But it is apparently as a
lyrical poet of considerable technical ex-
cellence that he has achieved his greatest
fame and popularity.
According to history the Georgians are
not a warlike people, and it is significant
that their national hero should be a literary
man and a language propagandist. The
portraits of Tsdreteli and Tchavtchavadze
are to be found side by side in most Georgian
houses, with prints near by representing the
187
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
poets, like Rustaveli, Wachtang Orbeliani,
Eristhavi, of older epochs.
Tchavtchavadze was assassinated in Tiflis
in 1907, after having been the prophet of his
people for many long years. He had been
the inspirer of a new literary tradition, a
chief of romanticism, the Hugo of Georgia.
His activities during a long life must have
been extraordinary, for he estabhshed and
edited several periodicals, wrote romances
and epics one after another, translated
Pushkin (whose statue is in Tiflis) from the
Russian, was a politician (a land reformer —
the preacher of a new way of life to the
aristocracy), the president of a bank, and
the first Georgian prince to take his place
in the Russian Council of State when it
was opened to members of his nationality.
Another poet, Lermontof, the Russian,
met with a violent death in the Caucasus,
of which in his exile he had sung. He
was kiUed in a duel during the era of the
Murid war.
Tsereteli is styled a prince, so was
188
THE GEORGIANS OF TIFLIS
Tchavtchavadze. Among the Tartars to
own so many head of cattle is to be a prince.
The writers do not know what it is that
makes a prince in Georgia, but the title
is a common one, and there is no other
rank. On the other hand, there are
princes and princes, and two or three great
families stand out from the ordinary ruck
of the aristocracy ; for instance, the family
to which the poet Ilia Tchavtchavadze
belonged. These families are closely con-
nected, have the blood of the old Georgian
kings, and boast of wonderful origins —
the ancestor of one noble house is said to
have come from China in the fourth century.
The ups and downs in their fortunes must
represent the ups and downs in the fortunes
of Georgia through the centuries. The
interest of the stranger among them is
heightened when he realises this, and that
every dramatic period in Georgian history
is indicated by a dramatic incident in the
history of the people whom he is visiting.
There is a house in Tiflis where we met a
189
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
very old lady — the daughter of a Georgian
princess, whose country estates were raided
by Schamyl's Lesghians in 1854. She is
proud now when she tries to recall a
terrible journey across the mountains of
Daghestan, a meeting with the Lesghian
chief, his chivalry toward his captives ;
proud above aU that they had a part in the
drama of the great man's life. For Schamyl
had a son who had been taken as a child
to Russia and brought up in St. Petersburg.
The Czar Nicholas purchased her mother's
liberty in returning the boy.
The Princess' brother EDico had already
been Schamyl's prisoner. She was captured
with his wife — her sister-in-law — the French
family governess and her daughter. Dumas,
from materials that the captives afterwards
supplied to him, gives the following account
of their meeting with Schamyl : —
" Varvara," said he, without giving the
princess her title, " I hear that you are
wife of EUico, whom I knew and whom I
190
THE GEORGIANS OF TIFUS
loved. He was my prisoner ; he was a
man of courage, with a noble heart, and
tongue that could not tell a lie. I mention
this because I, too, have a horror of lying.
Do not then try to deceive me, you would
do wrong, and you would fail. The Sultan
of Russia has taken my son ; I wish him
to give me back my son. Nina and Varvara,
I hear that you are the grand- daughters of
the Georgian Sultan. Write, therefore, to
the Russian Sultan ; tell him that he must
give me back Djemal-Eddin ; I will then
return you to your friends and relations.
My people will demand a ransom as well,
but for my part I only want the boy."
The interpreters translated Schamyl's
words. The Chief added ; —
" I have letters for you ; but one of
the letters is neither in Russian, Tartar,
or Georgian. It is useless for people to
write to you in an unknown language ;
I have everything translated, and what
can't be translated shall not be read.
Allah recommended us to be prudent ; I
follow his counsels."
The Princess Vavara replied : —
" Schamyl, we have not sought to deceive
you. Amongst us is a Frenchwoman.
She belongs to a nation with which you are
191
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
not at war, and which, on the contrary,
is at war with Russia. I demand her
liberty."
" Quite right," said Schamyl ; '* if her
village is near Tiflis, I will have her sent
home."
" Her village is a great and beautiful
town which has a million and a half inhabi-
tants," replied the princess, " and to reach
it one must cross the seas."
" In that case," said Schamyl, " she shall
be free when you are free ; and she may
then return to her country as best she may."
Then, rising :
" We wiU give you," said he, " some
letters that are written in Russian ; only
remember that every lie is an offence in
the eyes of Allah, and in the eyes of his
servant, Schamyl. I have the right to
cut off heads, and I shall cut off the head of
him who seeks to deceive me."
Having spoken thus, he retired with a
supreme dignity.
Here is his description of the son's
return. The boy was first presented to
the two princesses, who thanked him as
their Uberator. Then he was led towards
192
THE GEORGIANS OF TIFLIS
Schamyl by the Russian officers who had
accompanied him from Petersburg.
His (Schamyl's) Oriental dignity, his
spiritual calm, had not allowed him, how-
ever he may have desired it, to go forward
and greet his son. He waited, motionless,
seated beside two old Murids. One of them
held a parasol over his head.
His beauty was so perfect, his attitude
one of such simple majesty, that the
Russian officers stopped, dumbfounded.
Djemal-Eddin, meanwhile, had ap-
proached to kiss his father's hand.
Schamyl could no longer contain him-
self ; he opened his arms, pressed his
son to his heart and breast, and, broken
with emotion, burst into tears.
The first embraces over, Djemal-Eddin
sat down at his father's side. Schamyl
continued to look at him, pressing his
hand. His eyes seemed to devour the
boy. He sought to recapture all the long
absence of his son from him.
The two officers remained motionless,
and said not a word, as with respectful
emotion they witnessed the spectacle.
But a too lengthy absence on their
part would have made the General
193 N
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
uneasy, and at last they had Schamyl
informed that they were the two officers
sent to hand his son back to him.
Having carried out their duty, they
asked to be dismissed.
Schamyl saluted them and said :
" Hitherto I was doubtful whether
Russians kept their word or no. Now I
know that they do. Thank the Baron N.
on my behalf, and tell Prince T. that I
have behaved towards his wife and sister-
in-law as though they were my own
daughters."
Then he thanked the two officers in their
turn.
They approached Djemal-Eddin to say
farewell to him. The young man threw
himself into their arms, and gave to each
of them, according to the Russian custom,
a triple kiss.
Schamyl was not annoyed by these
demonstrations of regret, but, on the con-
trary, watched them with a kindly air.
The officers then saluted Schamyl for
the third time. Their horses were brought
forward, and, accompanied by fifty Murids,
they rode off.
Now they heard the noise of gunshots
behind them ; but this was quite a pacific
194
THE GEORGIANS OF TIFUS
demonstration. Schamyl's men were wel-
coming Djemal-Eddin on his return home
after a long absence.
Meanwhile the two Russian officers and
the fifty Murids said farewell to each other
and separated. The Murids returned to
Schamy], and the officers continued on their
way to meet their General and give him
an account of what had happened.
A story of the sort is told. The visitor
rubs his eyes, recalling where he is — in a
forgotten corner of the world — among the
representatives of families with whose fate
all the wonder and glamour of a romantic
barbarism has mixed — not in the remote
past only, but yesterday — and mixes still to-
day. He sees the life of the Georgian people
in its tribal aspect. Thus the poet of the
tribe belongs to one of its great families.
It may be that he avoids violent adventures
in his youth. But in a blameless old age
he is assassinated. Yet how incredible it
all seems in the drawingroom of a Georgian
house, in this company with its note of
195
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
cosmopolitan culture, with these people
who are, many of them, ignorant of their
own language 1
Dumas saw at the house of the
Orbelianis a young and beautiful girl,
evidently a daughter of the peasantry,
and on making enquiries he was told how
she — then a baby in arms — with her mother
and her grandmother had been captured
by the Lesghians. After a time relatives
sent the ransom that was required, and the
unfortunate beings were set at liberty.
But hardly had they left the camp when
the old woman died. The Lesghians seized
her body. The bargain had said nothing
about a corpse. If the grandmother was
to be buried (as she had prayed she might
be) in Christian soil, a further sum must be
produced. " Go home," said they to the
mother, " get more money from your friends,
come back, and we wiU give you the baby
and the body." The woman had no choice
but to return home alone. She found
196
4
THE GEORGIANS OF TIFUS
the money and went back with it to
Schamyl's people, who, honourable always
according to their lights, handed her back
her belongings. She set off again with
the child and the corpse, but, at the
journey's end, died, owing to the priva-
tion she had suffered. The Orbelianis,
having heard the sad story, brought the
survivor into their own family.
We spent our last evening in Tifiis with
a Georgian doctor and his children, who have
a great reputation for their dancing. Two
young girls first sang, to the accompaniment
of a guitar, duets describing episodes in
the lives of the great dead of Georgia.
The feeling of the songs was easy enough
to follow, though, of course, we missed
the detail. Afterwards these two girls
and one or two of their guests danced in
turn with the son of the house, a young
Cossack in red leather boots. These were
the national dances of Georgia. One of
them, a very beautiful dance, pictured a
197
PERSIA TN REVOLUTION
wooing. The accompaniment for tHe open-
ing steps was low ; the girl scarcely moved ;
the man made slow circles round her with
dignified, restrained steps. Then the tune
quickened. The man advanced, he caught
the girl's hand — she retreated. Again the
tune quickened, but the girl's steps grew
faster and faster, and she hurried from her
pursuer. Now one could scarcely follow
the rapid bewildering movements of the
dance. Both girl and man went on feet light
as thistledown. Sometimes the girl
advanced towards her wooer, but when he
made to hold her, she was away again,
looking at him across her shoulder.
Suddenly there was a crash of music. The
man held the girl in his arms for a brief
second, and the dance was over.
Other dances followed ; sometimes one
pair only, sometimes two or three, held the
floor. All the Georgian dances have had
their being and developed on great open
plains, and in wild mountain gorges, and
know nothing of stages, crowded floors and
198
THE GEORGIANS OF TIFLIS
orchestras. But there is no note of
barbarism in them. They are the dances
of proud and happy people, dances such as
the Queen Thamar might have taught to
her courtiers after a banquet en the night
of a great chase.
The Georgians ought to send a troupe
of their dancers to the capitals of Europe.
The repertoire would be sure to delight
audiences in London and in Paris, and the
name of Georgia, unheard of by many
would become known. It would be a way
of attracting the attention of the West
towards the circumstances of their nation,
which is what the Georgians desire to
do. The project has occurred to several
enthusiasts ; and once it seemed about
to leave the world of day-dreams, but
negotiations which were being made with
a theatrical manager in Paris fell through.
The family which supplied us with this
excellent entertainment was, we should
say, fairly typical of its class. Dr.
regretted that it was not summer time,
199
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
when he could have invited us to spend
a week in his country house. He belonged,
no doubt, to a family which had lost most
of its lands and wealth during one or other
of the turbulent periods of the last century.
Its sons now adopt professions. After
serving their time in the army they become
doctors, bankers, lawyers or schoolmasters,
and spend the greater part of the year in
cities. The medical profession seems a
favourite one. The doctor can work at
home during the hot months of the year.
He is occupying the strong castle of his
ancestors, and the little Jew practitioner
of the countryside is cut out for the time
being. His children look forward to the
summer months, when they will live a
wild life hunting the eagle and hawk by
day time, dancing at night, merry-making
at aU times. Removal is a great enterprise,
for the country house is left stark and
bare and utterly deserted during winter,
so that every stick of furniture, down to
the last broom, has to be brought hundreds
200
THE GEORGIANS OF TIFLIS
of miles, it may be, out into a country
that is often served neither by train nor
by coach.
The dancing over, we feasted on nuts,
raisins, sweets, and apples. Dumas, by
the way, states that it was thus too that
he was fed in most Georgian houses.
Perhaps this diet accounts for the sprightli-
ness of the Georgian intellect. At all
events nuts, raisins, sweets and apples
are very suitable things on which to discuss,
from eight to eleven at night — according
to the custom of intellectual society in
Tiflis — Tolstoi, Henry George, and the
prophets. The young people of the house
spoke Georgian only, and only two or three
people out of a big group could communi-
cate with us in French or English. Hence
long pauses and the cracking of nuts in a
silence.
Russians appreciate food that is more
solid. There being no restaurants of a
continental kind in Tiflis, the hotel, a
German establishment, was crowded every
201
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
evening with great bearded officers of
Cossacks. These poor fellows, most of them
in mild disgrace at St. Petersburg — or they
would not be beneath the aUen skies of
Tiflis — grew happier at the approach of
dinner hour. We had the feeling that they
might at any moment open their mouths
and roar as caged lions do at the coming
of their food.
202
CHAPTER XIV
WESTERN GEORGIA
We left Tiflis for Kutais, the capital of the
modern province of that name, the old
capital of Imeritia, and of the Western
Georgian Kingdom, which is the land of
the Imeritians, the Mingrelians, the
Swanians, the Gurians, and of who
knows whom. The town is situated about
half way between Tiflis and Batoum,
and is connected with the main line at
Rion by a branch line two or three miles
long, which runs up into the shadows of
the mountains. On the way to Rion the
railway crosses the ridge that connects the
Caucasus with the Armenian mountains^
after which the country becomes very
beautiful. One descends into a plain that
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PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
is framed on either side by high wooded
mountains, pgissing thus from the valleys
of Georgia into the valleys of Imeritia.
The western division of Transcaucasia is
incomparably more fertile than the eastern ;
and we were immediately convinced on our
arrival at Kutais that it was the most
haunting spot in the Caucasus. Kutais is
situated on a terrace at the base of the
hiUs. The slopes to the north are dotted
with the Swiss-like chalets of the peasantry ;
laneways between innumerable fruit gardens
of walnut, apple, and peach lead down-
ward into the town, which is itself full of
verdure and colour, with mossy paths,
grassy byways, lawns, and orchards. In
the town the better houses are detached,
and have grown up here and there without
asking their neighbour's leave. They are a
bit ramshackle, even the best of them, and
not unlike a Persian caravanserai in
structure ; they have wide verandahs of
wood, and airs that are deliciously cool.
There are no big buildings in Kutais, and,
204
WESTERN GEORGIA
as our idea now is, no regular streets ;
nor could we rid ourselves of an impression
of novelty, as of an experiment ; for, indeed,
Kutais is at the time of rains — and it was
then that we had come — a garden city of
fruits and of flowers.
The age of Kutais is great ; the
city, however, which stood hereabouts in
B.C. 1100, has utterly disappeared. Relics
in the neighbourhood — two monasteries and
a Cathedral — attest its mediaeval grandeur.
It contains a quarter that is obviously
Jewish, and the bazaar, which is a poor
one, is busy on market days when
Hebrews bargain with grave -eyed
mountaineers and folk of the valleys, the
representatives of peoples as old as their
own.
The Christians of Western Georgia are
bound by ties of history and of race to
the Kakhetians and Karthlians of Georgia
proper, as are their neighours, the
Mingrelians, the Gurians, and that people
which has not changed its name since
205
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
the time of Pliny, and is now the
obscurest and most wretched of Caucasian
peoples — ^the Gurians.
It was the Imeritians who supplied the
Christian slaves one reads of in the stories
of Turkish harems. But the Imeritians
ought not to be confused with the Circas-
sians or Tcherkesses. For the Circassians are
Mohammedans who occupied until 1864,
the date of their great emigration westward,
a strip of coast between Anepa and
Pitzunta on the Black Sea. " Who are the
Circassians ? " was a question which we
were constantly asking, but we never
received a definite answer, until, on our
arrival home, we consulted authorities.
Probably the Georgians whom we questioned
were aware that the word " Circassian "
conveys to the European romantic associa-
tions concerning beautiful girls in distress,
and were, therefore, unwilling to let us
know that they and the Qrcassians are
different peoples.
Our cicerones, four masters from the
206
WESTERN GEORGIA
Georgian school of Kutais, called the school
of King Bagrat, spoke French and
German, and, being vehement patriots,
omitted to show us the model nursery-
gardens and farms established by the
Government. However, it was better to
go with them to the wonderful monastery
of Ghelati in the hills, or among the ruins
of the Cathedral of Bagrat near the town.
The architecture of this Church represents
the best Georgian period — the eleventh
century — and we reproduce illustrations
of some of the stonework and ornamenta-
tion, which is exceedingly beautiful.
To Ghelati we went one afternoon by a
zig-zag road up hillsides crowded with
wild almond and cherry blossom, through
a smiling and happy country. But life in
this part of the world is often violent
enough ; and our companions told us that
Kutais had been a storm centre three years
ago. The carriage in which we drove had
belonged to a murdered Governor of the
province, and we saw the patches in its
207
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION ^^
hood which marked where a bomb haa^^
damaged it. Then at a bend of the road
near the monastery we met the Abbot setting
out for Kutais — a venerable, bearded man,
in the robes of a Patriarch of the Church, |
who rode a mule with solemn dignity.
He was attended by a solitary guardsman
on foot. One of the monks welcomed us
to Ghelati, and showed us over the shapely
Byzantine Church, in which priceless
ecclesiastical manuscripts and vestments, j
the crown of Imeritia, and the shoes of a
^queen are kept.
There was a Georgian monarch named
Tamara, who was celebrated for her wisdom
and beauty, the kindliness of her rule,
and the success of her arms. She reigned
from 1184-1212, succeeding King David,
who, having expelled the Seljuks, extended
the Georgian dominions towards Armenia,
and beyond Trebizond into Asia Minor,
and to Tavan and Kars. Tamara sent out
missionaries far and wide, and built churches
208
WESTERN GEORGIA
everywhere. Yet her court was a gay and
extravagant one, and the traditional
Georgian — sensual and pleasure-loving, a
poet and a dancer, a great huntsman — dates
from her days, About the time lived
Rustaveli, the celebrated poet who wrote
an epic, "The Man in the Tiger Skin";
and, indeed, such was Tamara's reflected
glory that she was called " King."
The shoes that we saw in a cupboard
within the Church of Ghelati had belonged
to this great lady.
After Tamara's death Georgia retained its
prosperity until the end of the fourteenth
century, when Tamarlane, the invader, laid
waste the land. In 1403 Alexander I. left
his three sons each a part of the dominions,
and an internecine strife followed. Hence-
forward the independence of the Georgians
was threatened by rivalries between Imeritia
or Mingrelia, Karthli, and Kakhetia, by
Persian and Turkish invasions, and by the
growing ambitions of Russia, who interfered
spasmodically in their affairs, and, indeed-
209 o
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
definitely took the three kingdoms under
her protection in 1755.
We have akeady spoken of the final
Conquest of the Caucasus and of Schamyl
who resisted that Conquest. But here, in
writing of storied Ghelati, it seemed well
to recall the glorious days of the Queen
Tamara, when all Georgia was united, and
to note the separation of interests, conse-
quent upon Alexander's division of the
kingdom, which marked the beginning of
the end of the country's greatness.
The cloisters of Ghelati command a
wonderful view across the valleys to the
mountains of Imeritia, and glimpses of a
panorama of forest and plain beyond.
May was blossoming ; and here, upon such
a day as this, the Prince Ilia Tchavtchavadze
might have written his lament.
" Now the benign sun laughs once again ; the lark
sings once again ; there is nothing that does not revel
in the sweet dehght that the Spring is carrying.
** Fresh flowers already sparkle on the plains and in
the woods. But, when will our Springtide reappear ? "
210
1
"Vl
WESTERN GEORGIA
Of Ghelati Wachtang Orbeliani, the poet
wrote : " The Eden that man lost at Adam's
fall is found again." But alas ! the peace
of Eden is broken sometimes even at
Ghelati. The monastery was destroyed
in the old times by the Turks. And more
recently a community of nuns established
itself in a house opposite. The nuns went
elsewhere after a while, but then bandits
of the Caucasus came to disturb the quiet
of mind which should of right belong to
the people of Ghelati's cloisters and of its
grass-grown courts. A few soldiers are
now quartered in Eden — ^it is an incongruous
thing.
Our companions told us that the Abbot
had to beware of others beside the bandit
and the outlaw. This Russian Governor,
or that, or, it may be, his wife, takes a
Georgian heirloom to have it " reported
upon " in the Museums of Petersburg and
of Moscow, and it never returns. We
realised again the loneliness of this people.
Intensely patriotic as they are, yet their
211
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
patriotism is, as it were, an acquired habit,
unnourished by the soil, the air, the colour
of their home, which awake the sense of
their isolation only. It is rather of the
nature of a fellowship ; and this fellow-
ship is so artificial, and at the same time
so keen, that the visitor among this people
may imagine them passing westward one
day in a united movement, searching for
happiness and success. They are, as a
family, lost, knowing itself lost, here in
this corner of the world, dropped on an
old highway. Once there were other way-
farers along it, companions, whose voices
from Europe their ears are strained to hear,
but these passed by long since.
One night we went to the theatre of
Kutais. A smart young man was lecturing
upon the poet Ts^r^teh. Here and there
we could catch a word. Part of his argu-
ment had to do with Oscar Wilde, SymboHsm,
and the rest of it ; and apparently this
young man in the frock coat was contrast-
ing the poetry of Tsereteli with the poetry
212
WESTERN GEORGIA
of what he would surely have called the
cUques, the decadence. The theatre was
crammed, which seemed very wonderful on
first thoughts. There were young and old
folk, of every class and type, crowded in
the theatre of a provincial town. And the
lecture was about poetry ! Fat elderly
officers with their wives and daughters sat
in the boxes, students lined the galleries on
one side, schoolgirls lined them on the
other. In the parterre were all sorts and
conditions of people — long-haired priests,
fierce heavily-cloaked patriots, young
Cossack officers, and workingmen. Our
companion, however, told us that none but
Georgians were present ; aU belonged to the
fellowship. In short, the affair was a sort
of patriotic demonstration. The audience
would have been the same one had the
subject been another, say, astronomy or
engineering, and the hero — the astronomer
or engineer — a Georgian. To-morrow a
provincial Russian company would per-
form, and the theatre would be almost
213
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
empty. A few of the garrison might
come.
The lecture was divided into three parts,
between each of which the lecturer retired
behind the curtain. We sat it out heroically,
feeling that we paid a compliment to
Georgian patriotism by listening to a three
hours' speech in a language of which
we knew not a word. The audience
apparently thought so too, and we
were rewarded prettily, a present of
flowers being sent to us during one of the
intervals.
We stayed in Kutais for three days ;
on the fourth day we were called about
2 a.m., and an hour later were being driven
from the hotel to the railway station.
Railway stations in Russia are apt to be
crowded at every hour of the day and night,
and the departure platform was full of
bustle and activity. The journey down to
Rion is a pretty one, the railway running
alongside a stretch of delicate forest until
214
WESTERN GEORGIA
it reaches the main Une. At Rion we had
a long wait for the train from Tiflis.
It was dawn when we stopped at the little
station of Santrddi — the junction for the
port of Poti. The way to Poti lies among
great forests of oak, through the marshy,
feverous plains of Mingrelia, which is the
land of the Golden Fleece. Batoum is
about sixty miles south of Poti on the Black
Sea, and we kept always under the shadow
of the Armenian mountains, the level
lands to the north stretching out towards
Mingrelia and Akbhasia. Soon we were
on the Riviera of the Black Sea approach-
ing Batoum, passing the gardens of the
numerous villas that have sprung up upon
this fertile and flowery piece of coast.
Batoum is a town which has prospered
exceedingly since it was annexed to Russia.
It had previously maintained for centuries
the level of a dirty Turkish village. Now
it has become the most important Russian
port on the eastern side of the Black Sea,
and, with the ships of the Nordeutscher
215
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
Lloyd and the Messageries Maritimes calling j
there, a quantity of pretentious hotels
have been built on the Boulevard along the
harbour. Its modern streets are fine, wide
thoroughfares ; in one of them one of the
great financiers of the world has a house M
in which, however, he seldom stays.
Batoum, being the westerly gateway from
the Caucasus, has had, from a commercial
point of view, a very important situation
during the past few years, sharing the ]d
fortunes of Baku. In the older part of the
town there are two decayed mosques ;
and, in the newer, a big Russian Church.
But although there is in Batoum nothing of
any historical or architectural importance,
we had a difficulty in shaking off a guide.
He wished to show us over the park, a vast
place lying off the shore, with lakes, lawns,
and tropical plants, which is an example
of the excellent manner in which the
Russians dispose of the public spaces in
their towns. This park contains two tennis
courts — surely the only ones in the
216
WESTERN GEORGIA
Caucasus — and we saw a girl and a boy,
Russians, playing.
Batoum, it is said, endeavours to rival
Baku in the violence and nastiness of its
manners. During the recent disturbances,
some of its Georgian inhabitants played a
gruesome trick, by means of which they
hoped to attract the sympathy of the
newspaper correspondents. They went to
the mortuary at night time, and, having
carried off a number of bodies, dressed
them up in Georgian costume, put bullets
into them, and laid them out along the
corner of streets where they might be
seen in the morning. People vrere asked to
believe that the Cossacks had perpetrated
a horrible massacre of Georgians.
Early in the afternoon we went down
to our ship. She did not start till night,
and we had for long a view of the coast
and of the succession of snow-covered
mountains that seem to rise straight
from the water's edge.
217
PERSIA IN REVOLUTION
a
A Georgian prince came to see us oflE,
and on board were two other travellers
from Persia — an Italian who had escaped
from Tabriz, and a Turk from Teheran.
Both were glad to have seen the last
of Persia, and the Turk's spirits were
tumultuous. His gaiety suffered an eclipse
during the voyage, for the Black Sea was
the most disturbed area that he had yet
crossed. He had had an escort from
Teheran to Enzeli, making safety doubly
certain, and now was he to be cast to the
mercy of the waves ? The storm abated,
but his sense of a grievance remained. A
week later how he must again have longed
for the security that only a Persia in Revo-
lution affords, when battle and sudden
death had fallen upon his city, and the
Young Turks were at its walls !
218
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