PERSIAN
MINIATURES
WINTER
THE SUBLIME PORTE OF KAZVIN
PERSIAN
MINIATURES
By H. G. DW1GHT
J \\
AUTHOR OF STAMBOUL NIGHTS
ILLUSTRATED WITH DRAWINGS
BY
WILFRED J. JONES
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1917
Copyright, 79/7, by
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
All rights reserved, including thai of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian
FOR
CLARA KHANUM AND CECIL SAH'B
"/ have eaten your bread and salt,
I lave drunk your water and wine,
The deaths you died I have watched beside
And the lives that you lived were mine."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Confidential xi
I. Caucasian Prologue 3
II. Anabasis 20
III. Kazvin 42
IV. The Country of the Sky 62
V. The Bazaar 71
VI. Leaf from the Book of Ser Marco Polo . 89
VII. Persian Apparatus 92
VIII. Jimmy & Co 113
IX. The Great Slaughter 121
X. Old Wine in New Bottles 151
XI. The Factory 177
XII. The Satrap 188
XIII. About Rug Books (But to Be Skipped by
Those Who Neither Read nor Write
Them) 196
XIV. The Gramophone 236
XV. The Sea of Sciences 243
XVI. Wild Boar 258
XVII. Vignette of a Time Gone By .... 283
XVIII. Avicenna 288
XIX. The Caravan 324
vii
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Sublime Porte of Kazvin .... Frontispiece
PAGE
Colophon: Persian prayer rug in the Metropolitan
Museum (See title page)
Headpiece 3
Boats at Enzeli 20
Pilgrims 39
The Tomb of Prince Hosein 42
Hamadan Street 73
The Office 77
A Court in the Bazaar 85
Pot Shops 87
The Tomb of Esther and Mordecai 91
Ye Laundress 103
Ye Butler 107
The Flagellants 122
Zobeida's Litter . 145
A Mourner of Kerbela 149
Rug Weavers 177
Hamadan and Mt. Elvend 196
The Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil . 243
The Tomb of Avicenna 288
Camels 324
IX
CONFIDENTIAL
"In good sooth, my masters, this is no door. But it is a
little window which looketh into a great world!'
NO, dubious reader. Your book is no treatise
on those little pictures, sometimes gaily
coloured, sometimes faintly sketched, of tur-
baned princes and flowering trees and dancing
gazelles, which it has become so much the fashion to
collect and to forge. It contains not even one photo-
graph of a true Persian miniature; though if the war had
not made it impossible for me to get hold of a certain
portrait by the great Behzad, I would have borrowed it to
reflect distinction on my pages. And having learned by
pungent experience that ye reviewer is somewhat given to
jumping from a title to a conclusion, and then visiting his
disappointment upon ye scribbler's head, I make it my
duty to give warning as loudly as I may that no Orientalist
need waste time in turning over these pages. They con-
tain nothing but a collection of sketches in printer's ink,
very d'ecousus, as that good friend of mine among their
worships the editors said who best understands the sub-
tle art of gilding a pill, in praying me to excuse him the
honour of presenting a few of them to his public very
"unsewn," illustrating in their random way but one small
corner of Persia, and designed not at all to catch the eye
xi
PERSIAN MINIATURES
of the serious-minded.* For my experience of the Land
of the Sun was such as might have been gained by a
mechanic sent out to instal a force-pump for a travelled
Khan, or by a gentleman's gentleman in the diplomatic
service whose master fell ill by the way and never reached
Tehran. I had friends; the destiny of my friends led
them to Hamadan; they were good enough to invite me to
follow them; I did so a little more promptly, I fear, than
they expected. The rest was pure cacoetles scribendi
aggravated by the fact that I happened to be in that
remote theatre of the Push to the East when the German
War broke out.
I can admit, however, that I thought twice before suc-
cumbing to this incurable itch of the writer to make
copy out of what he sees and hears, and that in the end
I made next to nothing of any journalistic timeliness. If
I had been an Englishman, perhaps, I would not have
ventured to add a volume even half as portly as it might
have been to a bibliography so rich as that of Persia. Yet
I have never been of those who look at English and
American literature as at two separate things. When
the East India Company was formed, when Abbas the
Great invited the British factors to help him drive the
Portuguese out of the Persian Gulf, my ancestors had not
emigrated to New England; and when they did they only
secured my title to share in the great Anglo-Saxon tradi-
tion of the gentleman adventurer. Not that I mean to
qualify them as gentlemen, or my own slight and com-
fortable experience of Persia as an adventure. But hav-
ing had a far more prolonged experience of other parts of
the Near East, I take a particular interest in that exten-
sive literature of our language which interprets the East
xii
CONFIDENTIAL
to the West. It has counted for not a little, I am per-
suaded, in the unparalleled success of Great Britain as a
colonial power. And I must further admit that I have
been unable to put away from myself an ambition of
contributing my mite to that literature.
As an American I have felt at greater liberty to do so
because our half of the race has grown up in a greater
isolation. Much of the anomaly of our position during
the early part of the war was due to the simple fact that
many good Americans seriously believe the world to have
been created in 1492. If we took cognisance at all of
the hypothesis that there might be a world outside our
own, we saw it from too great a distance to credit its
reality, or to imagine ourselves as bound with it in one
fate. And we attached to a school atlas something of
the finality claimed for Holy Writ. This yellow patch
was literally Austria. That crimson splotch was no more
than Germany, and must have been so from all time.
And Strasbourg and Serayevo were as integral parts of
them as Potsdam or Schonbrunn. All too slowly did
what was going on in Europe come to mean anything to
us, because we knew too little what underlay it all.
As for so remote a corner of the world as Persia, it is
too much to expect that many of my own fellow-country-
men, at any rate, are ready to believe in its existence.
Still, anything that attempts to make even so shadowy a
land a little less shadowy is perhaps worth trying. It
was not for me, of course, to do so in any encyclopedic
way. Too many scholars now living have written of the
history, the geography, the literature, the antiquities, the
resources, and the politics of Persia for a mere impression-
ist to compete with them in their own generation. The
xiii
PERSIAN MINIATURES
Persian bibliography, however, contains other names,
like those of the inimitable old Sir Thomas Herbert, of
Sir John Malcolm, of "Hajji Baba" Morier, and of Lord
Curzon's enviable relative Lord Zouche. Their books,
or some of their books, while less compendious are per-
haps more successful in evoking the true I rank flavour.
For they exemplify the saying of Sadi that "a little is a
proof of much, and a sample as good as an ass-load."
And they possess a quality which has always seemed to
me highly admirable in a book, and a surprisingly un-
common one : that How shall I put it? That it should
not be too hard to read! In fact, if I were to turn out the
dregs of confession, I should have to admit that that is
the kind of book I would most like to write. But it
will please me well enough if people who have been to
Persia find it possible to turn over these pages with no
more than the usual amount of derision. And if a few
who have not been to Persia find here enough of the look,
the light, the incommunicable tang of those ancient up-
lands, to explore the more serious literature of which I
have spoken, to discover how far from simple is it for
East and West to be just to one another, these loose
sketches will not have been stitched between covers in
vain.
If I have not fringed the bottoms of my pages with
notes, it has not been solely out of anxiousness not to
enfuriate the typesetter. I must here acknowledge, how-
ever, my great indebtedness to those whose ampler knowl-
edge of Persia has so constantly come to the rescue of my
own. I have borrowed right and left from Browne,
Curzon, Le Strange, and Sykes, as well as from Mr.
Stanley Lane-Poole, whose "Mohammedan Dynasties"
xiv
CONFIDENTIAL
is an indispensable compass to the wanderer through the
maze of Near Eastern allusions. I have also helped
myself without scruple from the Hakluyt Society's "Vene-
tian Travellers in Persia," from the French translations
of Yakut and Masudi, and from other authorities great
and small more numerous than in a book of this kind it is
fitting to specify. It would be unfitting, however, if I
did not specify how much information, particularly about
rugs, I owe to my friend Mr. A. C. Edwards of Hamadan
and many other places, who if he chose could write a
more competent rug book than has yet been written.
Mr. Henry Hildebrand of Hamadan was likewise good
enough to give me valuable hints on the same subject,
while Dr. and Mrs. J. W. Cook of Tehran have taken the
trouble to clear up for me various doubtful points of
orthography. Indeed if I were to name all those in Persia
and out from whom I have received facts and kindnesses
without number, I would have to make a catalogue too
long to print. But I cannot omit thanking, for their
encouragement, help, and suggestions, Mr. Eugene F.
Saxton, my collaborator Mr. Wilfred J. Jones, and Mr.
and Mrs. F. Mortimer Clapp. And let me here express
my obligations to the editors of Asia, The Bookman, and
The Century, for permitting me to republish four chap-
ters or parts of chapters which first saw the light in their
magazines.
There remains to say a word with regard to the spelling
followed in this book. The question of rendering the
sound of Persian words and names in English is one of
peculiar difficulty, because at least three of the Persian
consonants are unknown to us, while the letter a is quite
as variable in Persian as it is in English. The trouble is
xv
PERSIAN MINIATURES
that those variations are not quite identical, and that one
of them, in Persian, being officially described as equivalent
to the vowel sound of the English word cat, really verges
toward the vowel sound of bet. And officially neither
e nor o exist in Persian. So there you have one prolific
cause of an unending row between two camps of orthog-
raphers. The Orientalists, on the whole, have the best
of it; for they transliterate according to a fixed system,
paying no attention to English phonetics and denying
the letters e and o as the Pope did the rotation of the earth.
Eppur si muove ! answered Galileo. And my ear has too
long been sharpened to the sound of strange tongues for
me to be frightened by Professor Browne when he cries
out against the barbarity of putting an e or an o into a
name taken out of Arabic letters. The Turks quite in-
controvertibly make the sounds, if they lack the letters.
The Persians pronounce them less distinctly; yet for the
novice to take Professor Browne's word for it that Enzeli,
for instance, should be Anzali, is to risk straying in two
equally false directions. Let it not be gathered that I
am so foolish as to argue against Professor Browne's
spelling in Professor Browne's books. It is the more
scholarly and among Orientalists it is indispensable.
But why should I, who am no Orientalist and who do not
write for Orientalists, mystify my reader and set the
heart of the compositor against me by distinguishing
between k and q, by writing db when I mean ?, or w when
I mean u, and by strewing my book with dark dots and
accents?
I shall not. For it seems to me highly advisable to
discourage the layman from adding to the chaos which
already reigns in his spelling of Oriental names. I 4 there-
xvi
CONFIDENTIAL
fore choose the simpler system of the Royal Geographical
Society. If it has its own conventions, they are at least
more familiar and more comprehensible. The conso-
nants are pronounced as in English, except that c, g, and 5
never encroach upon the sounds of k, j, or ?. The vowels
are pronounced as in Italian, each separately and none
silent. I have made one concession to the Orientalists
in retaining the I after a final e, because nothing on earth
will make the average Anglo-Saxon pronounce Sine, for
example, otherwise than as the mystic consort of Cosine;
whereas he will be obliged to make two syllables out of
Sineh. I have further borrowed, for certain Turkish
words, the German umlaut for a u which does not exist
in our language, and the French circumflex for a still more
unpronounceable Turkish /. Otherwise I make no use
of accents, for in Persian and Turkish the stress falls
almost invariably on the last syllable.
One unfortunate consequence of this system is that I
add a new variation to an already too various name:
that of the poet Firdeusi. This, to an enraged Oriental-
ist, is a barbarity more shocking than Mehmed. Yet
it comes much nearer the true sound than his Firdawsi,
or the popularised Firdowsi, or the perhaps most com-
mon Firdausi unless you remember, which you won't
unless you know Persian, that that a is a cattish a verg-
ing on e. The Italian eu hits it almost exactly. But I
must end by confessing that consistency is too rare a jewel
for me always to keep hold of it. If I say Enzeli, as
Professor Browne very aptly points out, I should also
say Tebriz and Hemedan. Well, I don't! For usage
seems to have taken the matter out of my hands as in
other cases have ignorance or the idiosyncrasies of the
xvii
PERSIAN MINIATURES
English tongue. And Tehran? As to that, it is high time
English-speaking people stopped using a French spelling
for a name which really has only two syllables. After all,
they will not be so upset as if I had followed Professor
Browne and said Tihran!
xvm
PERSIAN
MINIATURES
CAUCASIAN PROLOGUE
Here thou at greater Ease than hee
Mayst behold what hee did see;
Thou participates his Gaines,
But hee alone reserves the Paines.
Hee traded not with Luker sotted.
Hee went for Knowledge and hee got it.
Then thank the Author: Thanks is light,
Who hath presented to thy Sight
Seas, Lands, Men, Beasts, Fishes, and Birds,
The rarest that the World ajjoords.
The Lord Fayrfax, Baron of Cameron, on Sir Thomas Herbert,
his:
SOME YEERES TRAVELS INTO DIVERS PARTS OF ASIA AND AFFRIQUE
WE HAD formed the habit, during a week
of leisurely Black Sea travel, of waking
up every morning off a town of low red
roofs and slim white minarets, set under
a high green coast. Batum also sat under a high green
coast if so much higher than usual as to be tipped with
snow. But instead of anchoring offshore and bargaining
3
PERSIAN MINIATURES
with the crews of tall-prowed Turkish boats, we tied
up to a quay and walked ashore with no more ado than a
brief session with my lords of the customs and the pass-
port bureau. And more conspicuous than any minaret
Were the syringe domes of a Russian cathedral. Whereby
it appeared that something had happened in Batum since
it stopped being a Turkish town in 1878.
That fact was still more apparent when I stepped into
a true Russian droshky, driven by a true Russian coach-
man a kind of centaur so at one with his box that no
human being could tell where coachman stopped and
carriage began and rattled away over true Russian
cobblestones. I suspect, however, that if I had had the
courage to scratch that coachman I would have found a
Georgian, if not a Tartar. In the Caucasus whenever
they don't know what to call a man they call him a Geor-
gian. That they are not always right I once or twice
proved by asking the man himself and finding out that
he was what I thought; namely, a Laz. Those quick-
tempered people are almost as common in Batum as
they are in Trebizond, and they look enough like Geor-
gians to be their cousins. They all wear the same top
boots, the same slack breeches, the same short jackets,
and the same long-flapped hoods with a tassel at the
point which serve them equally for turbans, mufflers,
or capes. The big black policemen of Batum dress like
that, being Georgians. I wondered if the house boys of
the Hotel de France were, too. They wore black Russian
blouses and spoke no known language. But there are
still plenty of Turks left in the town, as I discovered while
prowling around before it was time to take my evening
train.
CAUCASIAN PROLOGUE
They say that a famous bridge over the Golden Horn
is a good place from which to admire the nations of the
earth. It struck me that the railway station of Batum
might be a better one, when I went there in charge of an
Armenian porter from the hotel. A good many among
the crowd that packed the waiting rooms were his own
fellow countrymen. They were darker and fierier looking
people than the Armenians I had seen before, with an
odd look of the Latin Quarter about many of them. One
group of young men in broad-brimmed hats, string ties,
and peg-top trousers stood tightly under an electric light
around an intense young woman with a slight moustache,
who read aloud to them out of a brand new book of
poetry. How do I know? It rhymed! But they were
there, my porter told me, to do honour to the memory of
a certain Armenian philanthropist who had recently
died in Constantinople and whose body, having been
brought to Batum on my ship, was about to be taken to
Tiflis by my train, thence to be sent for burial to the great
Armenian monastery of Echmiadzin. Sure enough, at
the end of the train stood a freight car which had been
turned into a chapelle ardente, with flowers and candles
standing around a black catafalque. However, Armen-
ians were but a fraction of that polyglot company, among
whom were Greeks, Turks, Tartars, the inevitable Geor-
gian, and the equally inevitable Russian, together with
such exotic specimens as the tall Swede who had travelled
most of the length of the Black Sea in my steamer chair,
the fat German who had left no stone unturned to find
out where I was going and why, and an English agent
of the American Licorice Company.
The train in which my Armenian presently deposited
5
PERSIAN MINIATURES
me was the St. Petersburg express; for to get from Batum
to St. Petersburg by rail Petrograd had still to be in-
vented you must cross the Transcaucasus to Derbend
and then come back to Rostov on the north side of the
mountains, before striking up country for Moscow. It
was the usual roomy Russian train, thanks to the broader
gauge of the Russian rails, and my compartment was the
roomier because the seats in it were numbered. What
interested me first, however, was the view. That was
striking enough in the moonlight as we ran along the edge
of the sea toward the ghostly heights of the Caucasus.
Then I began to be interested in my fellow travellers.
They turned out to be all Greeks and all of one party, on
their way to a wedding in Tiflis. This information was
vouchsafed to me by the bride herself, in an English
much more creditable than my flimsy Romaic. As for
her short, fat, ugly, gay mamma, she was more fluent in
Italian and Turkish. There were also two younger
daughters, one plumper and one more pinched, dressed
as exactly alike as two magpies, an older married daughter
with a diamond, a dumpy, talkative person who had the
air of a poor relation, and a rakish husband or two. They
all seemed to be as much at home in Russian as they were
in Greek, and between the odds and ends of other lan-
guages which we possessed in common we got along
famously.
The gay mamma, to whom I would have proposed
before the night was out if I had been quite sure that
neither of the rakish husbands belonged to her, finally
announced that she was tired of doing all the talking
and that we must take turns telling stories, propounding
enigmas, or otherwise helping to pass the time. She
6
CAUCASIAN PROLOGUE
opened this Decameron with a Turkish folk tale which
I had heard before but never with so much verve and
mimicry. One of the rakish husbands came next. He
tried to get out of his turn by declaring that none of the
stories he knew could be told in such company. The
ladies all cried out that he should try them and see.
Whereupon he compromised with a string of Turkish
proverbs. The bride followed, and she told a Caucasian
version of the story of Cupid and Psyche, about a fairy
who was a fairy by night and a flower in the daytime
to the infinite despair of her lover. The fairy told him,
however, that if in the morning he could distinguish her
from the other flowers in the garden, and carry her away
in his hand, he would break the enchantment and she
would^ always be his. So in the morning he went into
the garden and he broke the enchantment, because of all
the flowers the one he picked was the only one that had
no dew on its petals. . . .
In the meantime my knees knocked together; for tell-
ing stories is not my strong point, and least of all in
strange tongues. But in the end I was saved by the gay
mamma, who could not stop talking long enough for the
turn to go the entire round. She then proposed that we
do something which all could do together. She therefore
lifted uft a far from disagreeable voice in song, and the
others joined in I wondering what they would make of
it next door in the Damencoupe. As it transpired, most
of us belonged in the Damencoupe, though the bride had
sung in her marriage morn before she retired thither
with her younger sisters and her poor relation. After
that the rest of us arranged ourselves for the night. To
that end we turned up the backs of the seats, as may be
7
PERSIAN MINIATURES
done in a Russian car even when it is not a sleeper, and one
of the rakish husbands and I stretched out on the upper
storey, while the gay mamma and her married daughter
at last dropped into silence below. The only discomfort
about it was that the double windows were hermetically
sealed for winter.
In the simplicity of my heart I had imagined that one
travelled most of the way from Batum to Baku in roman-
tic mountain passes. To my great surprise and dis-
appointment, accordingly, I 1 discovered in the morning
that no mountains were near us. They had receded
during the night to either side of a wide bare brown
valley with water in the bottom of it. They did, how-
ever, draw together a little as we went on, and towers
decorated the tops of hills. Sheepskin caps, further-
more, began more thickly to decorate the roads beside
the track, where I also noticed sheets of ice, and about
half-past eight we stopped at Tiflis. This for me was
doubly an hour of doom, for not only did I pine to look
at Tiflis but I died to accept the gay mamma's invitation
and go to the wedding with my lively friends. The
trouble was that I had other friends to meet in Baku,
and a Caspian boat to catch. So I had time only to be
introduced to a smart Greek bridegroom, to eat an ex-
cellent breakfast, to stare all too briefly at the as|ounding
people in the station, and to admire Tiflis from the com-
partment window as we rumbled away from it, hanging
on either lip of a deep gorge with a cog railway climbing
a mountain behind. After that the bare brown valley
widened again, giving view of distant snow mountains
on the right and more distant snow mountains on the
left. In front of the latter ran a line of low hills, fluted
8
CAUCASIAN PROLOGUE
with sharp erosions, that looked sometimes like mud vol-
canoes and sometimes like an old shore.
I was not, I must confess, too upset at being torn from
my Greek friends to take notice of my new compan-
ions. Chief among them were a Russian matron, much
more serious than the gay mamma whose corner she took,
and her big bold black daughter with a bang, with an
eye that looked as if it might have been drawn by Mr.
Maurice Ketten, and with a willingness to cultivate
casual masculine acquaintance. That eye filled me with
mingled emotions, for while it alarmed me a little it
was the first Russian eye into which I had gazed for more
than two seconds since 1 had set foot in the Caucasus.
And for Russian eyes, as for many other things Russian,
I have always had a weakness. I hardly know why.
Perhaps because I went to school with some boys from
Taganrog, at the mouth of the Don. Perhaps because a
railway clerk in St. Petersburg once insisted, with con-
siderable asperity, in spite of my feeble protests, on giv-
ing me change for ten pounds out of a five pound note,
to the no small advantage of my depleted exchequer.
Perhaps because an old lady who might have taught me
far more than she did set me reading Tolstoy and
Turgeniev long before 1 knew anything about Hardy
and Meredith, or Howells and James, or even Jack
London and Richard Harding Davis. With the unhappy
result that when in time I came to the latter, and
particularly the last two, I failed to derive quite the
satisfaction I might have felt if I had happened on them
first.
These things, of course, are largely a matter of the
personal equation, and the world is luckily big enough
PERSIAN MINIATURES
for Tolstoy and Richard Harding Davis to sit on the same
shelf. I find, though, that- on my shelf the Russians have
a curious, if a perfectly unconscious, way of putting out
everybody else's eye. They are so human. They are
so simple. They see around so many corners. Nothing
frightens them; but they are not prudish about it, as an
Anglo-Saxon has a tendency to be, or cynical about it, as a
Latin has a tendency to be. Neither are they senti-
mental about it. And behind it all there is a strange
trouble, which somehow contrives not to be childish even
in the face of an American Glad Book. Dostoievsky
rather puts his finger on it, in "The Brothers Karama-
zov": " It is different for other people; but we in our green
youth have to settle the eternal questions first of all.
That's what we care about. Young Russia is talking
about nothing but the eternal questions now." And
the things that come into their heads ! Do you remember
Svidrigailov, in "Crime and Punishment"?
"'I don't believe in a future life/ said Raskolnikov.
"Svidrigailov sat lost in thought.
"And what if there are only spiders there, or something
like that?' he said suddenly.
"'He is a madman/ thought Raskolnikov/'
And so, perhaps, do you. But only a Russian would
think of that. And only a Russian could have written
that tremendous scene between Svidrigailov and Sonia,
surely the most shaking of its kind in all literature, when
he gets her into that garret and then lets her go.
I regarded the bold black eye of the young lady with a
bang and asked myself, with some misgiving, if it were
seeking the solution of eternal questions. I went into
the corridor to think about it. There 1 found myself
10
CAUCASIAN PROLOGUE
beside another lady, much older, who presently asked
me something in Russian. She looked so much like an
English or New English woman of the kind I most like
that I didn't answer, as I often do under such circum-
stances, that I hadn't a match and didn't know what
time it was. I told her instead that I didn't know Rus-
sian. And before I knew it she was telling me that she
was going to Petersburg for the winter but that she lived
in Batum, or just outside of it, where she had a house and
a garden in sight of the Black Sea. In her hand she held
some violets from that garden and she offered me a few
of them, telling me how quickly everything grew there,
even subtropical things, under the high white wall of
the Caucasus. Anarchists, she said, preach the destruc-
tion of property; but it is an instinct of man to have
something of his own. When one is young one can
travel, and be alone. Later one wishes a home, and a
garden. Her garden she had planted herself, from the
beginning. It was like her child, now that her chil-
dren were grown up. She and her husband had done every-
thing by degrees, as they could save money from their
pay. Her husband was a retired civil servant of some
kind. She didn't go into particulars and I didn't ask
for them: but she told me that they had lived in many
parts of Russia, adding that she had been very fortunate.
She had married young a young and handsome husband,
with whom she had always been happy. Her children,
too, had never caused them any unhappiness except one
daughter, who died in the flower of her age. At first,
she said, she took it for. granted. Later, however, when
she saw how many marriages of her friends were unhappy,
she discovered how fortunate she had been. Her chil-
PERSIAN MINIATURES
dren, of course, she missed, now that they were married
and living in homes of their own. But there had been
among them none of the disasters of which one was con-
stantly hearing. And there was her garden. . .
She said it all quite simply, without polite prelimi-
naries, just as if she had walked out of Turgeniev. And
she said many other things which I have often thought
of since. "My country makes me sad," she said "so
large, so varied, and he who should govern not strong
enough, and those who do govern thinking only of their
pockets. There is too much unhappiness. There will be
another uprising." That was in November, 1913. " Peo-
ple cannot speak or think. Those who do, have to leave
the country. Tolstoy was the only one who stayed, and
whom they dared not touch." The mention of that name
brought up other names. I told her that I had been in
New York when Gorky went there in 1905, was it
and that I had not been proud of the zeal which my
fellow countrymen showed in casting the first stone at
him. To my surprise she rather took their part against
me, although she considered Gorky the greatest of living
Russian writers. She surprised me, too, by saying that
he had deprecated the reading of Dostoievsky by the
younger generation though perhaps I misunderstood
her. Of Artsibashev's "Sanin" she cried out that it was
a dreadful book. She told me I should rather read
Korolenko, and the plays of Ostrovsky. When I told her
what an impression "Evgeni Onegin" made upon me,
years ago, in Moscow, and what new things had been
revealed to me when Safonov came to New York to
conduct the Philharmonic Orchestra, she was evidently
pleased. "Yes," she said; "I love Chopin, Schumann,
12
CAUCASIAN PROLOGUE
Beethoven. But our Russians have something they have
not a sadness, an understanding."
All this time we had been standing up in the corridor.
My old lady out of Turgeniev finally invited me to sit
down in her compartment which happened to be the
Damencoupe. And there I walked into Dostoievsky.
For the back of one of the seats was turned up, and on
that upper shelf another lady was lying, of whom I hesi-
tatingly asked if I did not disturb her. She had a strange
thin face and a quantity of pale hair piled loosely on top
of her head. "Monsieur does not disturb me," she re-
plied. "He is a stranger, and therefore not a bore yet.
Afterwards we shall see!" She said it in a deep, hoarse
voice, and in a French much more fluent than the old
lady's or mine, but with an extraordinary accent. At
first she only listened to the two of us who sat below,
supplying every now and then the word we groped for.
Then she began to talk, too, asking me what I was up to
and telling me about the barbarous Caucasus, the mag-
nificent scenery, the pass from Tiflis to Vladikavkaz. She
was from Tiflis herself. " I would have liked to travel,
too," she remarked. "But now it is finished. I go
to Petersburg, to die." She said it without heroics,
without sentimentality, in her deep, hoarse voice, her ter-
rific accent, stroking her pale hair on her upper shelf.
And she and the older lady presently fell afoul of each
other over the Russian peasant. The lady from Tiflis
insisted that he was lazy, stupid, drunken, the curse and
despair of the country. The lady from Batum took up
his defence, saying that she had spent all her life with
the muzhik and thought the world of him. If he was
drunken it was largely the fault of the Government, who
13
PERSIAN MINIATURES
forced vodka upon villages even when they didn't want
it, for the sake of the revenue. Ignorant he certainly
was, that muzhik; but what chance had he had? And
she went on to tell with what difficulty she had obtained
permission from Petersburg to open a night school for
peasants in one of the cities of Little Russia where her
husband was then stationed. More peasants had come
than there was room for, and soldiers, too till her hus-
band was suddenly transferred to another province.
For the rest, the muzhik merely followed the example
set him by his betters, in this generation without restraint,
without faith, without God. As for her, she cared noth-
ing for pictures and confessions, she said: only the Gos-
pel, and to hold something sacred. . . The lady
from Tiflis listened from her upper shelf, her eyes strangely
intense in her thin face. "Yes," she finally uttered in
that hoarse voice: "To hold something sacred " And
she turned her face to the wall.
It suddenly came over me in the silence that followed,
as I stared at that pile of pale hair, that there was some-
thing more terrific than an accent on that upper shelf.
Yet the eyes that looked at the wall were not terrified.
And who knew what they saw? They saw, at any rate,
that the stranger was after all a bore. So I went back,
awkwardly enough, to my own compartment. The
matron and her big black daughter were still there. They
at once made it known to me that they were not seeking
the solution of eternal questions, and I found, after my
visit in the Damencoupe, that I would not lay it up against
them. The only thing I laid up against them was that
they looked a little too arch over my violets, and asked
me whether the lady from Batum were a governess or a
CAUCASIAN PROLOGUE
school teacher. They had evidently been listening. I
assured them that the lady from Batum was, on the
contrary, the wife of a Governor General. It may not
have been true, but it impressed them considerably.
As for them, they were the wife and daughter of a Colonel,
now stationed at Vladikavkaz. Was I going to Vladi-
kavkaz? In the summer it was delicious, when the beau
monde of Tiflis and Moscow and Petersburg came to the
resorts on the north side of the mountain. In the winter,
however, it was a little sad. Then the daughter began
to prepare me for Vladikavkaz by giving me a Russian
lesson, giggling in spite of herself at my dreadful pronun-
ciation. But presently a tall lieutenant made his ap-
pearance, and the Russian lesson came to an abrupt end.
I did not mind, for I caught sight through the window
of a rose-coloured lake. By this time we had come much
nearer the mountains of Prometheus, whose white heights
wore a delicate flush. Far away on the other side a row
of silver peaks ran sharp against a painted sky. Were
they Persian peaks, I wondered? If they were, the sight
of them gave me no such thrill as should be felt by the
right-minded pilgrim when first he beholds the distant
goal of his desire. Even the summits of Prometheus,
whose flush paled imperceptibly and took on a phos-
phorescent glimmer, failed to do what they should for a
man who had sat in the theatre of Dionysus. Instead
of thinking about the Greek Titan and his rock and his
vulture, I found myself thinking about the Russian lady
from Tiflis, lying on her upper shelf in the Damencoupe
with her wide-open eyes to the wall. Also, I grew rather
sleepy. The train rumbled on. The country outside
turned dimmer, flatter, fantastically blanched. Could
15
PERSIAN MINIATURES
that be sand? Like enough. For all of a sudden I caught,
through the corridor window, the glint of wide water
under a climbing moon. The Caspian Sea! I did the
Caspian Sea the honour to wake up and go into the corri-
dor. I then discovered to my astonishment that the
Caspian Sea, for all its moon of Turkestan, looked exactly
like Lake Champlain under the moon of Vermont until I
spied on the shore a vagrant camel, the silhouette of him
dark and exotic as the East against a rippling glamour. He
saved the day for the Caspian, did that camel! Then
ruddier and more melodramatic fires began to flare on
the horizon, to the north. And at last, latish in the
evening, I said good-bye to my Russian friends and got
off at Baku.
Those fires and that camel are the symbols and epi-
tome of Baku. Baku is, if you like, a jumping-off place.
It is, at any rate, the place from which you jump off to
Tehran or Samarkand. But it had to me an almost
American air as it were a Pittsburgh dipped in Asia.
That is perhaps because Baku flames and belches, too, if
after a manner of its own, and without the diabolic
beauty with which nature and man have conspired to
endow the true Pittsburgh. Baku sits on lower and more
barren hills, regarding a greasy gray-green sea that never
again looked to me so picturesque as when I first beheld
it in the moonlight behind a camel. The houses of Baku,
furthermore, make no attempt to scrape the sky, al-
though they look solider than those of Pittsburgh. They
are astonishingly new, however, a great many of them.
And Baku bustles in a way that is quite upsetting to
one's theories of that part of the world. What gives this
process its particular colour is that Baku is, as a matter
16
CAUCASIAN PROLOGUE
of fact, a fairly venerable town. Some twenty years
before America was discovered a Venetian ambassador
by the name of Giosafat Barbaro passed that way and
wrote, or his quaint English translator did, of "a citie
called Bachu, whereof the sea of Bachu taketh its name,
neere vnto which citie there is a mountaigne that casteth
foorth blacke oyle, stynkeng horryblye, twhich they,
nevertheles, vse for furnissheng of their lightes, and
for the anoynteng of their camells twies a yere." And
all honest tourists, of whom I regret to confess I am not
one, piously visit in Baku a place where the fires of Zoro-
aster have burned these two or three thousand years.
The remnants of this more ancient Baku are to be seen
in certain higher parts of the town, where a castle stands
in light stone, rather like the tufa of Naples, adorned
with Persian lions and inscriptions. Beyond it stretches
a quarter which went far toward consoling me for the
discovery that I might after all have stopped of? in Tiflis,
inhabited as it is by fragments of more strange races
than I know anything about. The races of Pittsburgh
are no doubt as varied, but they all dress and look more
or less alike, whereas in Baku many thousands of
good people still dress as their ancestors did before
America was discovered. As I sat one evening in my
French Hotel d' Europe, eating a Russian dinner, I over-
heard a group of English engineers discussing the merits
of oysters. They warmed my patriotic heart not a little
by the favour with which they mentioned Blue Points
and Lynn Havens, though they ended by giving the palm
to a certain unpronounceable mollusc of Rio de Janeiro.
Later I came to know one of those engineers very well,
and he told me that in spite of Giosafat Barbaro and
17
PERSIAN MINIATURES
the Zoroastrians, Baku did not begin to bustle until
about thirty years ago. Then it was a ruinous village
of Tartars and Persians, together with other ingredients
of the usual Caucasian pie. One day a Russian officer
took it into his head to buy some land there for a farm.
Having bought his farm, he presently found out that
nothing would grow on it. Wherever he ploughed, more-
over, a disgusting black liquid would ooze out of the
earth, and nothing could drain it away. Of these mat-
ters he made bitter complaint to an Armenian, offering
him the farm for an extremely small sum. The Ar-
menian kindly consented to take the place off his hands,
having a suspicion that that black liquid would bear
looking into. That suspicion made the Armenian a mil-
lionaire. The Tartars and Persians who owned most of
the rest of Baku had suspicions of another kind when
other people tried to buy their land, and for a long time
they wouldn't sell. In the end, however, they became
millionaires, too. They couldn't help themselves. And
that is why Baku is so amusing. The Russian and Ar-
menian millionaires go away, like the millionaires of
Pittsburgh. The Tartar and the Persian millionaires
don't, having no idea what on earth to do with their
money. So they roll around Baku in such automobiles
as these mortal eyes have ne'er beheld, painted the most
recondite colours, gilded, jewelled, bearing passengers
with sleepy or with boiling black eyes as the case may be,
with all the noses of Asia, with beards that as often as not
are dyed scarlet with henna, with such headdresses as
never were seen on sea or land. They also go to the
movies, marvelling over the manners and morals of
Europe and the New World as exhibited to them in the
18
CAUCASIAN PROLOGUE
films of Pathe and Charlie Chaplin. And for them are
the shops of Baku stuffed with every gimcrack that the
heart of man can desire provided he wants to pay for it
ten times as much as he would in Pittsburgh.
It was the middle of November when I arrived in Baku,
but it was still warm enough for the band to play in the
park. That park is the quintessence of Baku. It is
not a very leafy park, even in midsummer, for nothing
will grow in it except in tubs of earth imported at vast
expense. Neither is there anything wherewith to water
those tubs except by distilling, again at vast expense, the
greasy gray-green mixture of salt and oil that fills the
shallow basin of the Caspian Sea. Nevertheless, it is a
very agreeable park, laid out at length on the edge of
the water. There are trim sanded paths, there are showy
casinoes, there are boat-houses and bathing-houses, there
are above all Russian caps set on more kinds of heads
than I can begin to catalogue. There are also hats, and
turbans, and woolly kalpaks, together with coats of many
colours, and rows of cartridge cases, and wonderful dag-
gers, and more wonderful ladies, attached or otherwise,
and heaven knows what. And as they move to and fro
on the trim sanded paths, or lounge on the wooden benches.,
a band better than ever I heard in New York plays Verdi
and Wagner and Bizet and Glinka and Chaikovsky.
And at last, there on the edge of nowhere, the electric
lights come out with a pop, and far away, over the dark
Caspian, a slow moon climbs out of Samarkand.
19
II
ANABASIS
We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred witb snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea. . . .
J. E. Flecker: THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND
FROM the deck of the unsteady little paddle-
wheel steamer that churned out of the bay
toward a low red moon we looked our last on
Baku a receding crescent of lights accented
at one end by a dark hill and at the other by the angry
glare of the oil fields. Then we went down to a porten-
tous Russian dinner. At the head of the table sat a grave
Lettish captain who at once made me conscious of all I
20
ANABASIS
had missed by never embarking on the Caspian before.
Beside him sat the tall Swede who on the Black Sea had
formed such a predilection for my steamer chair, and
who now looked at me through his monocle with immense
disdain. It appeared that he was going to Persia to be
an officer of gendarmes. Opposite him sat a Belgian
customs inspector and his family, also bound to the same
country for the first time. Then there were two hand-
some Russian officers, two frock-coated Persian Khans
with black pill boxes on their heads, and our three
selves, who came from yet more distant portions of
the earth. It was polyglot, it was pleasant, and after
dinner Madame T Inspect rice sang us some charming
French songs. I shall not try to pretend that I was
too world-weary to be taken in by it all. As a matter
of fact, I was delighted. But I was also able to perceive
that we might just as well have been on the Black Sea or
the Baltic.
The next morning, however, the Caspian really looked
as the Caspian might be expected to look. It was the
same greasy greeny gray, and birds that should fly
over no true sea fluttered about the chopping side-wheeler
or even lighted on it, playing hide and seek with belted
Russian soldiers who tried to catch them in their hands.
We passed a full-rigged ship, too, stubby and black, with
a square counter that came out of no yard of born ship-
wrights. It was such a ship as Master Anthony Jenkin-
son might have set sail in from the mouth of the Volga up-
on the disastrous affairs of the Muscovy Company. Then,
about noon, the bank of gray in the south began to resolve
itself into a rampart of cloud that grew taller and solider
as we chugged toward it. And at last a semicircle of trees
21
PERSIAN MINIATURES
pricked the edge of the sea, making the rampart behind
it higher and more tenebrous than ever.
"What is that?" cried the Belgian lady of the captain,
who paced back and forth near us, grave as ever and a
little grim.
" It is Persia/' he answered like that, as if Persia were
an every-day affair.
"And when shall we smell the roses, and hear the night-
ingales?" pursued his pretty passenger.
The captain waited a discreet moment before answering
cryptically:
"Madame perhaps forgets that it is November. We
shall arrive in an hour or two."
He pursued his walk, leaving me to consider the grim
case of the Belgian lady. Of Persia I knew no more
than she, but of certain regions contiguous thereto I
knew a little, and I trembled for her. What I really
found myself considering, however, was that rampart of
growing grimness that towered across the south, unbe-
lievably high, increasingly seamed and patched with
shadows of green and white. Such a coast as that,
at any rate, I had never seen in my life. The prickly
trees on the horizon grew taller and darker, they some-
how established a connection with the stupendous moun-
tain chain behind them, and at last we slid between
two long wooden breakwaters into the still lagoon of
Enzeli.
At sight of it that unhappy Belgian lady burst into tears.
I knew much better than if she had told me that she had
seen precious things in museums, that she had read an
expurgated edition of the "Arabian Nights," and that she
expected palaces of porcelain set among roses and night-
22
ANABASIS
ingales, with no doubt a palm or two in the background,
a camel in the foreground, and who knew what else?
Perhaps an elephant, or an ibis standing on one leg in a
pool of lotuses. It may be that if I had been booked
to live in Enzeli, like Madame 1'Inspectrice, I might have
burst into tears, too. As it was I found the lagoon of
Enzeli a highly pleasing place, with its gray sheen framed
in trees with its quaint, unpainted row-boats turned
up at either end; with its junk-like ships moored along the
low shore, and its encircling houses of weathered wood,
rather scattered, of which the most pleasing had steep
thatched roofs.
Leaving the larger town of Enzeli at the right, we sidled
up to the opposite edge of Kazian. There we were im-
mediately boarded by a swarm of bare-legged ruffians
who chattered, to my immense astonishment, in a lan-
guage perfectly unintelligible to me. They drawled or
whined, rather, in a way that reminded one a little of
Naples; but there was nothing else familiar about them
except the leather humps on their backs, whereon they pro-
ceeded to balance our trunks. Some of them looked as if
they might be kin to the Tartar porters of Baku. The
flapping clothes of these had once been white, and they
wore dusky skull caps of the same material. Others
covered their hair with a kind of sheepskin muff, sewed
up at one end. But the rags of most of them were dull
blue or green or russet, girdled at the waist and skirted
to the knee, and they contrived to keep on their heads
an astounding erection of black or brown felt, shaped
rather like a boiled auk's egg with the small end chipped
off.
These picturesque individuals piloted us and our lug-
23
PERSIAN MINIATURES
gage to a big archway opening into an interior court of
the custom house. True, we had inadvertently thrown
our checks overboard ; but on the Caspian what is a little
matter of receipts, between friends? In that archway
our passports were duly examined by a superb personage
in a long coat and a black pillbox adorned with the lion
and sun of his country in brass. If he had followed the
dictates of his own dark heart he would doubtless have
looked into our trunks; for I could see he was dying to
know what on earth we had in so many bags, boxes,
bundles, and other receptacles beginning with b and other
letters. But since we were the travelling companions
of a Belgian customs inspector, and since my friends were
well known to his own Belgian chief, we were passed
through with no more than an interval for me to admire
the passengers who sauntered off the Russian boat with
gay saddlebags and painted wooden trunks. There were
also two distinguished looking English ladies whom I had
not seen on board. One of them sat like a symbol of
her empire on a stout metal box so appropriately labelled,
in big white letters, IRONSIDES, that I very nearly
smiled at her like a bounder. Then we climbed a flight
of stairs to thank the Belgian customs inspector for his
courtesy. We found him in a cosy salon full of rugs and
Persian bric-a-brac and talk about aniline dyes and the
export duty charged on carpets containing them. This
gentleman also had a pretty French-speaking wife, upon
whose sympathetic shoulder our own Belgian lady
was drying the tears of her disillusionment. And so,
separating ourselves from all but our lightest luggage, we
hopped into a funny little victoria and drove away to
Resht.
24
ANABASIS
ii
Resht is an example of the unwillingness of the East to
change its habits. Resht is an important city, capital
of the rich seaboard province of Gilan. Yet because the
sea has never meant anything to a Persian, and because
the caravan roads naturally take the inner side of the
lagoon, Resht grew up out of sight of the Caspian. In
the good old times those who insisted on doing so took
ship to Enzeli, just as you do now. But at Enzeli they
embarked in one of those turned-up boats, sailed across
the lagoon, and rowed or got themselves towed up a
river to within a mile or two of Resht, where after pay-
ing all the gold of Ophir to get themselves transported into
the town itself they really began their journey inland.
Now you still begin your real journey at Resht. In the
meantime, however, the Russians have built a macadam-
ised road around the lagoon.
Beside it ran a pair of Decauville rails, which at that
time shared with a short line running between Tehran
and one of its suburbs the honour of being the only rail-
road in Persia. And Persia is bigger than Alaska, about
as big as California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas
put together or France, Germany, Austria, and Italy.
But for my own part I was enchanted to be in a car-
riage rather than in a compartment. That Decauville
track, moreover, and one or two auto-busses that
whizzed past us, interested me infinitely less than the flat
country through which we drove at the end of a mild
gray afternoon. It grew woodier as we left the sand
dunes and the Caspian behind us. A cormorant or two
flapped away across marshes of plumy reeds. Crows
25
PERSIAN MINIATURES
flew up from bare rice fields crisscrossed by causeways of
earth. Still streams wound away among poplar trees
that had not yet lost their last leaf. Under them thatched
wooden shanties stood on stilts. And we passed any
number of woolly little black cows with humps on their
shoulders, just as you see in pictures of India. Those
cows gave me only the first of many subsequent hints
that if Persia reaches out one hand to Turkey, she stretches
the other toward that land so much older and more re-
mote.
On the farther side of a wooden bridge, under which a
turned-up boat paddled off between reeds and rice fields,
our driver proceeded to initiate me into the most deep-
rooted of the customs of Persia by stopping at a half-way
tea house. Picture not to yourself, however, any lady-
like establishment of linen-covered tables, trim waitresses,
and Dresden china. This was a thatched house on
stilts, like the others along the road, open in front to the
world and presenting to our admiration a row of legs more
often bare than not, a line of auks' eggs one or two
with a neat round indentation in the top and a suc-
cession of long black pipes, together with splashes of
russet, green, and blue, a casual glitter of brass, and a
quantity of what, might have been whiskey glasses, con-
taining about three fingers each of nothing stronger than
tea. They also contained plenty of sugar, as I presently
had occasion to find out, and perhaps a sliver of lemon.
But milk Heavens, no! The Sahib or the Sah'b,
as the coachman and everybody else in Persia seemed to
call the head of our small party told me that those
black pipes were more than likely to contain opium.
And he went on to narrate enlivening tales of what some-
26
ANABASIS
times happens to carriages in Persia when their drivers
smoke too long at a tea house.
Our driver happily did not, and at nightfall we drew up
in front of the cbapar kbaneb, the post-house, of Resht.
Upon this post-house, its immense eaves, its balconies
hanging on nothing, and its archway leading into a dark
inner court, I gazed with an intense, a pathetic, interest
such is the power upon certain innocent spirits of things
seen for the first time. I had, indeed, seen a post-house
before, but never one that had the dignity of a national
institution or of a lineage that stretched back unbroken
to the time of Achaemenian kings. The Sah'b in the
meantime engaged himself in a long and somewhat
heated colloquy with the naib, the deputy road master to be
found in every post-house. During this unintelligible
conversation there continually popped up the esoteric
word asp. Now an asp never reminds me of anything
but Cleopatra and her monument, to say nothing of her
woman Charmian; and what on earth had those good
Egyptians to do with a journey into Persia? It ap-
peared that they had a good deal ; for an asp, pronounced
almost exactly as in English, is in Persian a horse.
Moreover, the naib swore he could give us none
till he had sent the Russian mail on to Tehran. And
it was very heavy to-night. Apparently, therefore,
there was nothing for us to do but to climb the open
wooden stair leading from the court to the upper gallery
of the cbapar kbaneb, to enter a room furnished with two
beds, a long table, a quantity of rugs, and a balcony, to
eat such meats as the naib had at his disposal, and to
wait until horses were sent back from the next station up
the road.
27
PERSIAN MINIATURES
There might, indeed, be something else to do, thought
I in my secret heart even after the Sah'b assured me
there was nothing to see in Resht. Perhaps! But what
if your theory of life happens to be that there is something
to see everywhere? What if you have just set foot, for
the first time in your life, on the virgin soil of Persia?
What if you find yourself in an inn at the edge of a Per-
sian town, which lies somewhere beyond the balcony in
the dark, which fills the night with strange sounds and
smells and possibilities, and which you would mightily
like to prowl in, to say nothing of spending a night in
and looking at by daylight? What, however, could I
do? I had cheated the Sah'b and the Khanum, by a too
literal reading of a friendly invitation, out of a Golden
Journey to Samarkand. It was not for me, therefore, to
hinder them from hurrying as fast as asps would carry
them to a brand-new house in Hamadan. And, after all,
there were enough characteristic things to see in my
first clapar khaneh. One of them was the exchanging of
our handy Russian money for a sack of Persian two-kran
pieces, worth some eighteen cents each, which with the
cartwheel tomans that it needs ten krans to make, and the
tiny shahis of which there are twenty in a kran, constitute
the sole coin of the realm. Then came the affair of buy-
ing our "ticket" for Hamadan. It cost, for the use of
one carriage and the four horses necessary to draw it
250 miles, together with the incidental toll charges of
the Russian road, not far from $100. Evidently one
would have to think twice before travelling in Persia,
thought I, who dreamed of Isfahan and Shiraz. True,
three persons, or as many more as can squeeze into one
carriage, pay no more than one; but even so it struck me
28
ANABASIS
that in some other parts of the world $33 might take one
considerably farther than 250 miles. However, we pro-
ceeded to follow a lantern into a huge shadowy stable at the
back of the court where we picked out our carriage for the
journey. It was a big rattlety-bang landau, patched and
scratched beyond belief, that might almost have come
down itself from Achaemenian times. I thought so all the
more when the Sah'b told me that the contractor who ran
this particular post road for the Russians was a Parsee.
The night began to look darker than ever when the
Russian consul telephoned to the naib for another team of
horses though handful was what he really said. He
telephoned, mind you! In Persia! The naib telephoned
back, at the top of his voice, that the only handful of asps
he had was engaged. The Russian consul, not suspecting
that a newly arrived fellow-countryman of Mr. W. M.
Shuster, at the other end of the line, was highly inter-
ested in this practical aspect of the Anglo- Russian Agree-
ment of 1907, replied that it did not matter: asps he
must have. He was of course within his rights, for this is
a Russian road. Nevertheless the Sah'b, as a subject
of a friendly semi-allied Power, and as a frequent client
of the road, went over to interview the Russian consulate.
The Russian consulate, as the paramount Power in north
Persia, stuck to its guns, saying that the mail had
precedence over all travellers and that the naib had no
business to sell us a ticket on Wednesday night. So the
subject of the semi-allied friendly Power came back eating
enraged cow, as the French saying goes. And we sat
twirling our thumbs while the mail jingled away to
Tehran and beyond the balcony invisible Resht filled the
night with romance.
29
PERSIAN MINIATURES
Hard on midnight, when we got tired of twirling our
thumbs and began to think we might better go to bed, the
naib suddenly produced horses. Out of the lamplit room,
down the wooden stair, into the mud puddle at the bottom
of it, through the smokily lighted arch of the post-house we
hastened, and prepared for flight. There was something
dark and furtive about this hasty midnight departure that
reminded me of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, when
they fled away to Varennes in that berline of Carlyle's.
Into our berline we crammed all the luggage we could
between the seats, over the whole affair we spread rugs
and cushions so as to make a species of bed, and the
Sah'b and the Khanum, like King Louis and Queen
Marie, settled themselves with what ease they might
in this Persian sleeping car, while I, an elderly Dauphin,
headed the opposite way, stuck my legs between them.
Then the mekbter, the post-boy, appeared with the long-
awaited horses and when I saw them I didn't wonder
that they were called asps! an auk's egg with a sleepy
driver under it mounted the box in vast disgust, and
away under a cloudy moon to Varennes, or Hamadan,
we began to roll.
in
King Louis and Queen Marie would no doubt have been
highly amused had they known how thrilling to the Dau-
phin seemed this mild adventure, how strange the gray
moonlight and black trees of which he caught glimpses
through the window of the berline, how romantic the
jingle of bells that kept growing louder or fainter through
the dark, how impossible to close one's eyes upon one's
first journey in Persia. Between two and three o'clock
30
ANABASIS
in the morning the berline halted at the first stage of our
anabasis. This was at an invisible place called Kudum,
six parasangs out of Resht. I was delighted to meet an
old friend in so unexpected a spot. For you are to know
that a parasang is no invention of Xenophon, but a word
still used in Persia to measure distances, under the Arabi-
cized form offarsakh. It is, however, a somewhat vague
term, being according to different authorities the distance
at which you can see a camel and distinguish whether it
be white or black, the distance at which you can first
hear the roll of an approaching drum, or the distance
which a loaded mule can travel in an hour. It varies
accordingly from two to five miles. In this case six
farsakbs is equal to sixteen miles.
There was a sound of voices, of horses being unhar-
nessed and led away. Then a kola, which is the true name
of a Persian auk's egg or any other hat, for that matter
darkened the window, and a post-boy drawled very
distinctly the two syllables:
"Malnist."
These mysterious words elicited such sounds of des-
peration from the.Sah'b that at first I couldn't get out of
him what they meant. It finally appeared that they
meant "there is no property," and that on the road prop-
erty and asps are interchangeable terms. Expostulation
was of no avail. Bribery was of no avail. The post
had just gone on in four, no in five, gharries gari is a
true Persian word and there was no property for im-
patient subjects of friendly semi-allied Powers or even
for fellow-citizens of Mr. W. Morgan Shuster. There
would be no property for an hour, or at most an hour and
a half. So there was nothing for it but to snooze pleas-
PERSIAN MINIATURES
antly in the berime while carts rattled by on the Russian
road, while strings of mules and donkeys went by with
much jingling of bells, while caravans went by, real
caravans of real camels, slouching dimly past to a extraor-
dinarily broken music of different-toned bells. Beside
them dark figures trudged silently. I thought of that
wretched Belgian lady and smiled, secretly, at my own
foolishness.
The next thing I knew it was past five in the morning,
twice the hour and a half the mekbter had promised, and
we were still standing serenely in front of the post-
house at Kudum, without property and without prospect
of property. As the Sah'b showed no sign of being con-
scious of this intolerable situation, I crawled gingerly
out of the berline to stretch my cramped legs. A vague
figure materialised off the ground behind us and walked
away. Other vague figures trudged down the road,
kola on head and bag or tool on shoulder. It was be-
ginning to get light, and it drizzled a little. Events of
the deepest significance for one's first morning in Persia!
"Call the mekbter," suddenly suggested the Sah'b out of
the berline. Having no other means of communicating
with a mekbter, I proceeded to pound on the closed shutter
of the post-house. After a time the shutter was with-
drawn, a greasy kola stuck part way out and nothing
more happened.
In the end, of course, it was the Sah'b who got us out
of Kudum. Once under way, we soon began to climb
into a country of hills and woods that gradually nar-
rowed to the valley of a river. Sefid Rud is the name of
it, or White River. I smiled again, thinking of another
White River whose valley in Vermont I have long known.
32
ANABASIS
The Persian White River is a much bigger stream, flow-
ing where first I saw it in a wide, sandy channel, and its
valley is on a more heroic scale. The sky cleared as we
went on, and we caught glimpses in front of us of the huge
mountain wall of Elburz, with scarfs of cloud drifting
across its incredible heights. But the lumber rafts float-
ing down on the current, the colour of the autumn foli-
age, the ferns and brooks beside the road, and the talk
of my two companions, made it hard to believe that we
were really in Persia. No Vermonter, to be sure, would
ever walk abroad like the peasants we met in such rags
of such faded blue. The women's rags were gayer, and
they often carried a child on their backs. Gayest of all
were the high two-wheeled carts we passed, with hoop
tops, and the bigger four-wheeled gharries, with passen-
gers sitting on piles of boxes and bales. And the harness
of their horses was bright with brass and with dangling
tabs of brilliant wool or polished metal. The khans
and tea houses along the way, for the use of such travellers
as do not travel post, were of the now familiar peaked
gray thatch. And we passed a camp of camels, which
always travel at night except in cold weather. Their
packs and pack-saddles lay scattered on the ground and
the big beasts crouched in rows or circles, munching hay
as superciliously as if it had been Nesselrode pudding.
But while I knew in my heart that under these casual
unfamiliarities life is after all life, whether in Persia or
Vermont, and that a man will probably find out more
about it by sticking to his own valley, I somehow derived
an immense inner satisfaction from the mere fact that
this was Persia and not Vermont. On such simplicities
hangs the happiness of man!
33
PERSIAN MINIATURES
Suddenly, toward noon, just before we reached the
post-house of Jamshidabad, a strange thing happened.
We had been climbing steadily through autumn woods,
with the picture growing increasingly clear in front
of us of the northern wall of Persia, to say nothing of the
problem of getting over it, when, at a turn of the road,
woods, autumn leaves, the very trees, disappeared as if
by magic. We had the better opportunity to take in
this extraordinary change because, again, there was no
property at Jamshidabad. However, if all the post-
houses of Persia were like Jamshidabad the fashion of
driving in day and night might become less popular than
it is. The rugs on the brick floor looked clean enough to
sleep on though the real proof of that would be to try it!
Behind the house opened a little walled quadrangle, cut
into quarters by two transverse paths, with flower beds
in each corner and a round brimming pool in the centre.
We lunched on the porch in front, looking down on a wide,
sandy valley of parted water, some of the threads steely
bright, others strangely blue. The opposite slope of the
valley was cleft by a ravine whose mouth was stopped or
deflected by a flat hill spur. We amused ourselves by
building castles there, within hearing of the river and in
sight both of the green lower region of woods to the north
and of those higher and barer peaks of the south toward
which we were bound.
It was the middle of the afternoon before we succeeded
in getting away from Jamshidabad. The road houses of
the bleak country into which we now began to penetrate
farther indicated the suddenness of the change from the
lower valley. They no longer had thatched or peaked
roofs, but flat ones of mud. All the more surprising, there-
34
ANABASIS
fore, was it, after having begun to get used to this timber-
less land, to dip down to the river again and discover a
plantation of olive trees. Such tall and bushy olive trees,
too, I never saw in Greece or Sicily. As a matter of
fact, they were planted, the Sah'b told me, by veritable
Greeks, who form quite a colony at Resht and who cannot
exist without the olive oil which forms no part of the
Persian menu.
There at Rudbar we changed horses again and rattled
away through a long village street dimly lighted by a
few lamps but allowing one to catch vague moving pic-
tures of shops, tea houses, smithies, and an American
sewing machine which had somehow found its way into
the Greek olive grove of that Persian valley. Beyond the
olive trees the valley narrowed to a black gorge, where
the air at last began to feel like the end of November.
And the wind blew so hard, especially when we crossed
the river on a long Russian bridge, that we were glad
enough to get out at the post-house of Menjil, just be-
yond, and drink some scalding tea. Menjil is, so to
speak, another White River Junction; for three valleys
come together there, and a caravan trail, not carriage-
able as the French and Italians conveniently say
follows the Sefid Rud part way to Tabriz, while the main
road presently branches off to Tehran.
The latter was the one we followed, through a high, dark,
windy land of stars, with water somewhere in the bottom
of it. I caught the pallor of that water, and the delicious
sound of it, when we stopped at midnight at a post-house
appropriately named Bala Bala, which means High High.
Louis and Marie Antoinette slept like reasonable beings,
having enjoined me when I got out to stretch my legs to
35
PERSIAN MINIATURES
see to it that the naib kept his word and brought us asps
in twenty minutes. The twenty minutes passed, and the
half hour, while I, false friend, dallied to admire a caravan
that jingled up out of the dark in front of us. I could
make out the shapes of curved necks, high-piled bales,
and marching men, that passed to a strange accompani-
ment of bells. This obbligato seemed to play in a chord
of four notes, of which the loudest and deepest was also
the rarest. The caravan rounded the curve of the cbapar
kbaneb, jingled off up a black side ravine, jingled back
more softly on the upper side of the tilted hair-pin bend,
and finally made away diminuendo in the direction of
Menjil, the bells growing fainter and fainter till there was
nothing to hear but the rush of the water in the dim
valley below. Near by, in the post-house, I could see our
driver and the meklter and half a dozen ragamuffins
among whom might or might not be our new driver, drink-
ing tea and smoking those straight black pipes with
enough opium in them, perhaps, to make them indiffer-
ent as to whether they stayed on the road or pitched over a
precipice into the river. I watched and listened, lost to
all sense of duty. But the Sah'b mumbled something
sleepily out of the carriage and I, brought back at last
to the realities of life, made such sounds to the naib that
his post-boy presently brought us our handful.
One remembers the nights of life for reasons the most
diverse; but among remembered nights I think I shall
always include that particular one. The sky was so
clear and the air, after all, so mild, that we had dropped
the top of the berline. The wind in our faces was de-
liciously fresh, therefore, and as we lay comfortably tucked
up in rugs and pillows we could open our eyes, without
36
ANABASIS
the slightest effort, upon the dark shapes of the moun-
tains, the endless caravans we met or overtook, the moon
that suddenly peered from behind some jagged height.
It was amazing what a quantity of silver contrived to
drip out of that dried-up little moon and what tricks it
played in that wild pass Part of the magic, of course,
was that I was only half conscious. But I remember
waking up once, or passing from one dream into another,
in a hollow enchanted with moonlight, where we stood
still while invisible water rushed past us and somewhere
over our heads echoed a long-drawn chime of camel bells.
IV
The second morning found us stranded again beside
the road, in a barren place called Molla AH, where the
dawn broke over a background of the Venetian school.
Near by were the same slim poplars of a few faded leaves,
and in the distance were the same sharp blue peaks.
They presently turned rosy, however. And what is
more they stayed so, even after the sun had cleared the
heights of Elburz and brought the world back to its
normal colour. It was a stonier and loftier world than
the valley of olive trees where the light had left us, made
up entirely of ruddy rocks, cleft by deep canyons and over-
looked by soaring crags where the road looped and zig-
zagged in the most fantastic way. We gained the sum-
mit of one pass, only to plunge down again into new
depths and narrower. In them, while we waited for
horses at the post-house of Yuz Bashi Chai a perfectly
authentic Turkish name meaning Captain's Brook a
caravan of Canterbury pilgrims, or pilgrims from Kerbela
rather, was good enough to ride under the terrace on which
37
PERSIAN MINIATURES
we kicked our heels. A Persian Wife of Bath was one of
the most conspicuous figures in the cortege, being en-
veloped from top to well, not quite to toe in a shape-
less black domino which I believe they call a chader. As
she rode astride like the men, we had no trouble in seeing
her toes, which were encased in emerald green stockings
that were apparently a part of some wonderful trousers
she wore. And the face of the poor wretch was com-
pletely covered by a thick white cloth which had in it
only a strip of open-work embroidery in front of her eyes
for her to look out of. Other ladies, who had small chil-
dren with them, sat on little railed platforms slung on
either side of a mule's pack saddle. Is not such a plat-
form what used to be called a cacolet, before the word
and the convenience passed out of use in our part of the
world? And still others crouched uncomfortably in a
double litter which the Persians name a kejaveb, a sort
of domed cage or kennel mounted in pairs on a pack ani-
mal.
From the Captain's Brook we climbed again, this time
to the real top of the pass, 7,000 feet above the Caspian
though the Caspian, you remember, lies a little lower than
the Black Sea. A sort of bare plateau was here, over-
looking various branching valleys and overlooked in turn
by loftier snow peaks of Elburz. That northern ram-
part of Persia is really the most imposing range in Asia,
after the Himalayas, though here it reaches a height of
no more than ten or eleven thousand feet. In this wild
place we came upon the gravestone of a Russian en-
gineer. "He who dies in a strange land dies the death
of the martyrs," say the people of the Prophet. And in-
deed it must have been an unhomelike place for a son of the
38
PERSIAN MINIATURES
steppes to breathe his last in, among those remote heights
whose older associations are all of the Fire Worshippers
and of the gruesome order of the Assassins. But so
many of our own race have left their bones in unlikely
corners of the earth that we did not need to feel too
sentimental about the engineer who lay on that great
divide, among the rocks he had made passable for the
feet of his countrymen.
From there on we descended, overtaking at Buinek
another Russian, a live one, reported to us as having come
up with the post. We looked darkly at him, suspecting him
to be the guilty man for whom the consul at Resht had
snatched our horses. However, there were soon better
things to think about than our wrongs. For another brusque
change brought us into a new country that opened in
front of us almost as far as we could see, till the sunlight
caught a white, upturned rim at its outer edges. "This/'
said the Sah'b, "is Persia." I looked at Persia with vast
interest, thinking involuntarily again of our Belgian lady.
There were certainly no roses or nightingales about,
neither palaces of porcelain or so much as a camel. It
was, though, a country of a kind I had never seen before:
wide, flat, or at most sloping a trifle toward the east,
tawny-coloured, with a tawniness that had an under-
painting of pink in it, and walled on the north by the
snowy serrations of Elburz. They looked less formidable
than before, and with good reason, since this side of the
mountain is three or four thousand feet higher than the
other. But what struck me most was the light that lay
over the land, of utter clearness, yet not hard or cold,
and indescribably serene.
As we rolled down the long, tilted plain I looked hope-
40
ANABASIS
fully for the white cone of Demavend that not quite ex-
tinct volcano which towers 19,000 feet behind Tehran
in vain. But the city of Kazvin soon made something
else to look for, darkening the tawny levels with its blur.
The vicinity of it began to be indicated by the look of the
fields about us, by thickening orchards and clumps of
poplar trees. Then, as sunset started to do poetic things
with the tops of the mountains, we saw above the trees
a brown city wall, irregularly scalloped, and above the
brown city wall two domes blue as jewels.
Ill
KAZVIN
Let me give you somewhat to memorise Casbyn, wherein have
been acted many Tragick scenes, in their time very terrible.
Sir Thomas Herbert: SOME YEERES TRAVELS
WE ENTERED Kazvin by a gateway
which among gateways was a sight to see.
The frame of wall about it was gaily faced
with green and yellow tiles, which also
encrusted the stubby pinnacles rising above the wall on
either side. When I looked at those tiles again, in a more
uncompromising light, I admitted to myself that I had
seen much better tiles. But the quaint and decorative
effect of them in the twilight should have consoled Ma-
dame T Inspect rice for her porcelain palaces, as they made
me forget the loss of Resht. Through that gate we
42
KAZVIN
clattered into a long street, not quite straight and only
wide enough for two carriages to pass, which was
crowded with strolling kolas. The lamps had just begun
to twinkle in the little shops on either side, bringing
out sudden glints of metal, spots of colour, shining eyes,
shallow porticoes full of tea drinkers, big arches leading
into dark courts, and upper balconies where one caught
now and then the red glow of a pipe. These things
and many more delighted me so much that I at once put
up a petition to Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate,
to the end that with heaves, glanders, and all other
equine ills might be smitten the asps of the post-house
of Kazvin.
The street presently split in two in front of a high mud
wall, rudely crenellated like the wall of the city. This
we proceeded to skirt, turning first to the right and then
to the left, till we came out into such an esplanade as I
have seen only in certain great western capitals. Hum-
ble New York, at any rate, has never been able to treat
herself to such a perspective. At the end by which
we entered it the crenellated wall gave place to a monu-
mental white archway, looking down the length of the
esplanade toward an imposing palace at the opposite
end. We drove toward it, between lines of plane trees
and locust trees still in the sere, the yellow leaf, that
partly hid the low houses behind them. Arriving in
front of the palace I had time to make out between the
poplars surrounding it a lower arcade, an upper loggia,
and certain fanciful decorations in coloured tiles, before
we turned the corner of it. And I was wondering whe-
ther it were the governor's palace or the headquarters of
the Russian commandant, when we suddenly drove
43
PERSIAN MINIATURES
through an arch into a brick court behind it. This porce-
lain palace, if you please, was the cbapar kkaneh !
Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate, heard my cry.
At the Sah'b's anxious inquiry with regard to asps, the
naib solemnly swore he had none. Now this was a patent
and easily refutable contravention of the truth. At
Kazvin, if anywhere, there are always asps; for at this
halfway house the Russian road forks, one branch going
east to Tehran and one south to Hamadan. But by the
time the naib got around to confessing that, upon minute
search, there might be found in his stables a jade or two,
just returned starved and breathless from a journey of
many parasangs, the good-natured Sah'b took pity on his
passenger. He decided that a night in a bed might not,
after all, be amiss after two nights in a berline.
At close quarters the porcelain palace looked a little
less splendid than it first appeared at the end of its vista
in the Persian twilight. Nevertheless, the white arcade
opening upon the court, surmounted by an upper terrace,
was highly effective. Within, two spacious brick corri-
dors cut through the lower floor at right angles. An
anxious underling in a long black coat and a tall black
kola stepped forward to escort us to our rooms. The
Sah'b's and the Khanum's was perhaps more luxuriously
fitted out with rugs and sketchy toilet arrangements.
What mine lacked in these humble conveniences it made
up in its palatial size, in its glimpse of the esplanade
through outer arches and poplars, and in its floor of square
tiles turquoise and dark blue, set obliquely to the lines
of the room. And while I discovered to my sorrow that
the bad Turkish which had proved vaguely intelligible to
certain of the inhabitants of Baku and even of Resht
44
KAZVIN
produced nothing but blank looks upon the countenances
of Kazvin, I did contrive at last to wash off some of the
dust of the Russian road into a tin basin set on a chair.
Having ordered dinner, we took a stroll in the now dark
esplanade. At our end of it a quantity of fruit and vege-
table stalls were set up under the plane trees. Lanterns
lighted the overhanging branches and obscurely made
visible the tiny panes of certain high windows behind
them, and brought a little colour out of pyramids of
apples, melons, and grapes. The latter did not look
quite like the ones which Sir John Chardin describes as
"the fairest Grape in Persia . . . being of a Gold
Colour, transparent and as big as a small Olive," of which
he further avers that "they also make the strongest Wine
in the World, and the most luscious." But it is a long
time since the French jeweller of Isfahan saw them, and
it was now November. So we treated ourselves to a long
yellow melon, and after a look at the ghostly gateway
at the farther end of the esplanade returned to our inn.
Dinner was somewhat provisionally served in a big
brick room ornamented with Russian advertisements of
beer, vodka, and agricultural machinery. The table-
ware, moreover, was not quite of palaces, or even of third-
class hotels in other parts of the world. But the feast
itself left nothing to be desired or so it seemed to us,
who had not indulged in what might be called one square
meal since we left our Caspian steamer two days before.
And after it I, in spite of my propensity to prowl in
strange towns at night, was good for nothing but bed.
Yet even that night was not without its impressions. For
twice before morning was I roused by an extraordinary
uproar in the esplanade. It made itself vaguely known
45
PERSIAN MINIATURES
through my dreams of camel bells by a wild clamour of
pipes, trumpets, and drums, blaring out something that
neither was nor was not a tune. The first time I jumped
up to look out of the window, seeing nothing but a smoky
flare of torches in the distance. The second time I merely
turned over in bed, saying luxuriously to myself: "This
is Persia!" Strange what will exhilarate or console the
heart of man! But I have no idea what it was. A
wedding procession, perhaps? Or one of those wonderful
orchestral performances, a nakara, that used to greet the
rising of the Persian sun and still may in some places,
for aught I know? Or could it have been a dream of that
picturesque orgy which honest George Manwaring de-
scribes in his account of the meeting between Abbas the
Great and Sir Anthony Sherley in 1600? After a banquet
in the palace of Kazvin and a festivity in the Bazaar,
one feature of which were twenty dancing girls "very
richly apparelled," the Persian king took the English
adventurer on his arm and walked "in every street in
the city, the twenty women going before, singing and
dancing, and his noblemen coming after, with each of
them one of our company by the hand, and at every turn-
ing there was variety of music, and lamps hanging on
either side of their streets, of seven heights one above
another, which made a glorious shew."
ii
The next morning was a heavenly one, warm and clear,
throwing such a light on Kazvin that the Sah'b may his
shadow never grow less! who had known me too long
to be ignorant of my simple curiosity about the outward
appearances of life and my incurable habit of carrying a
46
KAZVIN
camera over my shoulder, postponed his first view of
that new house in Hamadan long enough to let me prowl
a little in the fallen capital of the Sophies.
Among the cities of Persia, Kazvin is by no means one
of the oldest or of the most famous. Still, it is able to
boast a reasonable antiquity, having been founded, as
the story goes, by the Sasanian king Shapur the Great,
who reigned from the day he was born in 309 to the day
he died in 379. Kazvin entered upon a more authentic
period of its history in the time of the Caliph Harun al
Rashid, himself half a Persian, who built a mosque there
in 786 and otherwise beautified the town. It had the
honour to be captured some three hundred years later by
the Old Man of the Mountain, chief of the order of the
Assassins, whose modern successor is that loyal Indian
personage the Aga Khan. Kazvin was captured again
and all but destroyed by the Mongols in 1220. Enough
was left of it, however, for Hulagu Khan to make his
headquarters there in 1256 when he set about sweeping
the Assassins out of their mountain eyrie of Alamut, in
the Elburz, thirty miles away. Toward the end of the
next century the place was again captured and destroyed
by Timur and his Tartars. But in 1 548 Tahmasp Shah,
second of the Safevi dynasty, finding Tabriz a little too
near the Turks for comfort, moved his capital to Kazvin.
And during the next half century or so, until Abbas the
Great decided that Isfahan suited him better, the city
enjoyed the period of its greatest prosperity.
A number of celebrated Persians were born in Kazvin,
among them being that half-fabulous fabulist Lokman,
the Oriental Aesop, the historian Musteufi, the poet
Kazvini, and the painter Mir I mad, whom Abbas the
47
PERSIAN MINIATURES
Great caused to be put to death for a too witty poem.
And they say that when the Indian Mogul Jahangir
heard about it he burst into tears, crying out against the
cruelty of the Persian Shah, whom he would gladly have
paid for poor Mir I mad his weight in pearls! Many other
renowned people have lived or died in Kazvin, and famous
Europeans not a few have described it in their travels.
Whether Marco Polo actually passed that way in 1280 I
do not quite make out from his entrancing book. But
the Spaniard Don Ruy Gonzalez di Clavijo, who went
to Samarkand on an embassy to Timur in 1404, passed
through Kazvin. Pietro della Valle stopped there in
1618. The English ambassador Sir Dodmore Cotton
died and was buried there in 1628, as his companion Sir
Thomas Herbert so inimitably relates. Sir John Chardin
spent four months there in 1674. Master Anthony
Jenkinson took up the affairs of the Muscovy Company
with Tahmasp Shah in his new capital in 1562, followed
by Arthur Edwards in 1 566. And during the eighteenth
century Elton, Hanway, and several other Englishmen
connected with the British Russia Company might have
been seen on that handsome esplanade.
Englishmen have always been great travellers and
great writers of travels, and so many of them have walked
the esplanade of Kazvin that I cannot begin to catalogue ,
the associations it has with men of our race. Whereat
let no American prick up patriotic ears. For when Sir
Dodmore Cotton, for instance, died in the city of Tah-
masp Shah my own ancestors had not quite made up their
minds to move from Old England to New England; so
that for Sir Dodmore Cotton and his contemporaries I
have quite as close a fellow feeling as any Briton born.
KAZVIN
And among those contemporaries, among all the English-
men indeed who have visited Kazvin, none makes a more
picturesque figure than that Sir Anthony Sherley of whom
I just spoke unless it be his brother Sir Robert Sherley.
This Sir Anthony was, I fear, a sad dog, and one who
might serve to point the moral and adorn the tale of a
German historian of the British Empire. Requiring
him, however, to adorn my own tale, I shall take pains to
point out at once that he was discredited in his own day,
which was much less squeamish than ours. And I shall
add that even in his follies he illustrates the difference
between the gentleman adventurer, that most typical of
British products, and the equally characteristic German
type of the secret agent. Sir Anthony was the scion
of a country gentleman of Sussex, of whom the most that
can be said is that he lived to see his three sons celebrated,
in Shakespeare's lifetime, in a play called "Travailes of
the Three English Brothers," and two of them "worn like
flowers in the breasts and bosoms of foreign princes."
He is also supposed to have suggested to King James I
the idea of creating the order of baronets. For the rest,
he was most successful in getting himself into debt. This
trait was inherited in a conspicuous degree by the young
Anthony. The latter went to Oxford long enough to
acquire "the ornaments of a gentleman," and then opened
the chapter of his adventures by accompanying the Earl
of Leicester to the Low Countries, in that campaign of
1586 which cost Sir Philip Sidney his life. In 1591, going
with Essex to the wars in France, Sherley got himself
decorated for bravery by Henri IV to the fury of Queen
Elizabeth, who cried: "I will not have my sheep marked
by a strange brand, nor suffer them to follow the pipe of a
49
PERSIAN MINIATURES
foreign shepherd!" This scrape and his marriage got
him into so much trouble that in 1 596 he sought peace on
the high seas, setting forth with a small fleet of six vessels
to capture from the Portuguese the island of Sao Thome,
in the Gulf of Guinea. Having raided the town of San-
tiago, in the Cape Verde Islands, he decided that the
West Indies offered a more promising field for his worthy
endeavours than the Gulf of Guinea, and he descended
in turn on Dominica, Margarita, Santa Marta, and
Jamaica with little profit to the inhabitants and not
much more to himself. Being deserted at Havana by
his companions, he returned to England and engaged in a
brief privateering cruise with his patron Essex. The
latter then sent him to Italy to help Don Cesare d'Este
gain the Dukedom of Ferrara. But this matter had
been settled by the Pope before Sherley arrived on the
scene. Our disappointed gentleman adventurer therefore
consoled himself for a time by seeing the sights of
Venice.
It was there that his thoughts were first turned toward
Persia, by the merchants and travellers whom he met on
the Rialto. Their accounts of the magnificence and
liberality of Shah Abbas the Great so excited Sherley's
sixteenth-century imagination that nothing would do
but he must go there himself. To that end he gave out
that Essex had sent him to make an alliance with the
Shah against the Turks. And in 1599 he embarked at
Venice with his younger brother Robert and some twenty-
five English companions, together with an interpreter he
had picked up in Venice, "a great traveller newly come
from the Sophy's court, whose name was Angelo, born in
Turkey, but a good Christian, who had travelled sixteen
50
KAZVIN
years, and did speak twenty-four kinds of languages."
I know those good Christians !
Of the many strange things which befell this self-
appointed embassy I cannot begin to speak. They were
shipwrecked and shanghaied. They were robbed and
imprisoned. They made the acquaintance of "a cer-
tain kind of drink which they call coffee: it is made of an
Italian seed; they drink it extreme hot; it is nothing tooth-
some, nor hath any good smell, but it is very wholesome."
They borrowed goodly sums from the factors of the Levant
Company in Constantinople and Aleppo and from a
Florentine in " Babylon," as our forefathers called Bagh-
dad. Then passing through "Curdia, a very thievish
and brutish countrie," they at last arrived in Kazvin.
Abbas happened to be away on some military expedition,
but Sherley was handsomely received by "the Lord Stew-
ard" and offered, in the manner of the time, 20 a day
for his maintenance. When this sum was first brought
him, Sherley magnificently pushed it aside with his foot,
saying: " Know this, brave Persian, I come not a-begging
to the King, but hearing of his great favour and worthi-
ness, thought I could not spend my time better than come
to see him, and kiss his hand, with the adventure of my
body to second him in his princely wars." Which did
not prevent brave Anthony from later accepting from the
Shah all manner of splendid gifts, including "very faire
crewel carpets."
When Abbas returned to Kazvin, Sherley and his com-
pany went out to meet him, as the Persian custom is:
"First, Sir Anthony himself in rich cloth of gold, his
gown and his undercoat; his sword hanging on a rich
scarf to the worth of a thousand pounds, being set with
PERSIAN MINIATURES
pearl and diamonds; and on his head a tulipant accord-
ing/' i. e. a turban "to the worth of two hundred
pounds, his boots embroidered with pearl and rubies;
his brother Mr. Robert Sherley, likewise in cloth of gold,
his gown and his undercoat, with a rich tulipant on his
head; his interpreter, Angelo, in cloth of silver, gown and
undercoat; four in cloth of silver gowns, with undercoats
of silk damask; four in crimson velvet gowns, with damask
undercoats; four in blue damask gowns, with taffety
undercoats; four in yellow damask, with their undercoats
of a Persian stuff; his page in cloth of gold; his four foot-
men in carnation taffety." Was not that a sight to see?
There was likewise something to see when Abbas made his
state entry, preceded by twelve hundred men bearing
human heads on the points of their pikes. Some also
wore necklaces of ears, while others played on trumpets
two and a half yards long. And the Shah lost no time in
showing his English visitors their first game of Polo
played, I believe, on the esplanade. Sir Stanley Maude's
officers perhaps lost as little time after their triumphal
entry into Baghdad in playing a Polo match; but a ground
for this old Persian game was first laid out there by the
Caliph Harun al Rashid in the eighth century.
Sir Anthony was well born, and he must have been well
made and well spoken, to have induced so many of the
great of the earth to lend him money and send him on
wild goose chases. Abbas was apparently enchanted with
him. He gave him a written charter granting all Chris-
tian merchants in perpetuity the right to trade in Persia,
together with freedom from customs and religious liberty.
And five months after his arrival Sherley got himself
sent back to Europe on an embassy from the Shah, ap-
52
KAZVIN
pointed to treat concerning that famous alliance against
the Turks. In Moscow, where Sherley went first, he was
badly received by Boris Godunov. But this is not the
place to recount the long story of his other adventures.
For I regret to state that he never returned to Persia or
sent the Shah any report of his embassy. This was per-
haps because he had been disavowed at home, where he
never returned either. He continued to wander around
Europe in pursuit of patrons and grandiose schemes against
the Turks until, poor, garrulous, conceited, and discredited,
he died in Spain in 1635.
When Sir Anthony went away on his mission for Abbas
the Great, he left his younger brother Robert behind him
as a hostage, Abbas promising "that he would use him
as his own son, and that he should never want, so long
as he was king of Persia." When two years had passed
by, and no word had come from the faithless Sir Anthony,
the Shah began to look askance at Robert. But the
young Englishman, then no more than twenty-two or
three, proved his own fidelity by fighting for the Persians
against the Turks. For this service he was given a high
command, and seems to have undertaken to reorganise
the army, especially in the matter of artillery. Abbas
further showed him his favour by renewing the charter of
religious liberty first given Sir Anthony, by issuing an
edict of a more substantial kind, declaring that "this
man's bread is baked for sixty years," and by presenting
Sherley with a Circassian wife, a relative of one of his own.
And in 1608 the Shah sent young Sherley in turn on an
embassy to Europe, which was so much more successful
than the other that Sir Robert turned up again in 1615.
The Circassian lady accompanied him on this expedition
53
PERSIAN MINIATURES
and both of them attracted the greatest attention wher-
ever they went, as Sherley, in his character of Persian
envoy, always dressed in the Persian manner and only
consented to remove his turban in the presence of his
own rightful sovereign King James I. But he does not
seem to have accomplished anything very definite, even
in England, where the Levant merchants objected to a
mercantile treaty with Persia, on the ground that it would
spoil their profitable Turkish trade.
At the end of 1615 Abbas sent Sherley abroad again.
The most apparent results of this second embassy were
that Sherley and his wife got themselves painted in Rome
by Van Dyck. Those portraits were long visible at Pet-
worth, and perhaps are yet. The mission was brought to
an end in 1625 by the appearance in England of another
ambassador from Abbas Shah, a Persian, who pronounced
Sherley an impostor and struck him in the face when first
they met. What in this cloudy affair militated most
actively against Sherley, in the minds of his countrymen,
was that he did not strike back ! As there was no one in
England competent to pass on the authenticity of Sher-
ley's credentials, and as he insisted on his own good faith,
King Charles I appointed Sir Dodmore Cotton as envoy
to Abbas Shah and sent the three ambassadors packing
to Persia Sherley and the Persian refusing to travel in
the same ship. And when they arrived in India in 1627
the latter committed suicide, thereby proving to his
English companions that he dared not face the Shah in
their company.
The Shah, for that matter, when they finally found him
in his summer palace of Ashraf, north of the Elburz, con-
firmed Cotton in this opinion by the friendliness of his
54
KAZVIN
reception of Sherley. But Abbas was now an old man,
near his own end, and during the thirteen years of Sher-
ley's absence the government had fallen into the hands
of favourites unfriendly to the Englishman. When,
therefore, Cotton requested an official statement with
regard to Sherley's credentials, and gave them up to be
examined, the vizier of the moment again accused Sir
Robert of being an impostor and refused to return the
letters, finally saying that the Shah had destroyed them
in a rage. This second affront was too much for the
unhappy Sherley. He died not long after and was
buried under the doorstep of his house, in that same city
of Kazvin where he had been received with so much
honour twenty-eight years before. What is more, Cot-
ton himself died ten days later. As for Lady Sherley,
the Circassian whom Van Dyck painted, and whom an-
other painter, "one lohn, a Dutch man," robbed with
the connivance of the jealous vizier, she retired to Rome.
Thither she caused her husband's remains to be transferred
in 1658 and buried in the church of Santa Maria della
Scala.
Of these matters and many others Sir Thomas Herbert,
the associate and charge d'affaires of Sir Dodmore Cot-
ton, has inimitably written in his "Some Yeeres Travels
into Divers Parts of Asia and Affrique" a book which
so competent an authority as Lord Curzon calls "by far
the most amusing work that has ever been published on
Persia." I suspect that Chardin thought so, too, and
borrowed more than one leaf from it. If I had not al-
ready given a little too much space to this Sherleyan inter-
lude, I would like to follow Chardin's example. As it is,
I can only quote what Herbert says about Sir Robert:
55
PERSIAN MINIATURES
"Hee was the greatest traveller in his time, and no man
had eaten more salt then he, none had more relisht the
mutabilities of Fortune. He had a heart as free as any
man: his patience was more Philosophicall than his In-
tellect, having small acquaintance with the Muses: many
Cities he saw, many hills climb'd over, and tasted of many
severall waters; yet Athens, Parnassus, Hippocrene were
strangers to him, his Notion prompted him to other em-
ployments: by Rodulph the Second hee was created a
Palatine of the Empire; and by Pope Paul 3. an Earle of
the sacred Pallace of Lateran; from whom he had power
to legitimate the Indians; and from the Persian Mon-
arch had enricht himselfe by many meriting services:
but obtained least (as Scipio, Ccesar, Belisarius, &c.)
when he best deserved and most expected it. Ranck me
with those that honour him."
in
As soon as I saw the esplanade again, the Meidan-i-Shah
as the Persians call it, by sunlight, I at once made up my
mind as I have similarly done a hundred times before
that nothing would please me more than to spend the
rest of my days in Kazvin. Other esplanades, to be sure,
may be carried out with a more grandiose perfection of
detail. Yet it had never before been given me to behold
an esplanade where strings of camels marched, perfectly
at home, between yellowing plane trees, or under loggias
with quite such an accent of slenderness and height.
And the monumental triple white gateway at the farther
end was really perfect of its kind. This Ali Kapu or
Sublime Porte of Kazvin is all that remains of the old
palace of the Safevis, which Chardin says was built by
KAZVIN
Tahmasp Shah on the plans of a Turkish architect, and
enlarged by Abbas the Great. The doorway stands in a
square white frame, taller than the wings on either side,
recessed in a pointed arch and set off with a little blue
tiling. No wonder George Manwaring, one of Sir An-
thony Sherley's company, thought those tiles more pre-
cious than they are, and described them as "rich stones very
bright, the like I think the world cannot affoord!" What
gives its particular air, however, is the stalactite groining
of the recess, and a pointed window over the door, filled
with an intricate grille of plaster. And on either side of
it are two smaller arches, set one above the other, the lower
a plain white ogive, the upper a larger ogive of stalactites,
forming a railed balcony or loggia, in the back of which a
door corresponds to the great window of the central arch.
Seen in its perspective of plane trees, with the standard
of the Lion and the Sun floating above it, the gateway pro-
duces an indescribable effect of strangeness and dignity.
Over the door, according to Chardin, is written: "May
this triumphant gate be always open to good fortune,
by virtue of the confession we make, that there is no god
but God." It opens, now, upon the headquarters of the
Swedish gendarmerie!
There were other doorways to be seen in the esplanade,
behind the trees, decorated with bricks and tiles in an
interesting way. And I was struck by a stone head
stuck in the upper cornice of a house, set off by a pair of
horns. But what presently began to intrigue me beyond
endurance was a green dome I could see above the house
tops, while farther away were the tops of two blue min-
arets. I therefore set out in the southwesterly direction
in which I saw them, and very soon lost myself in a maze
57
PERSIAN MINIATURES
of silent streets whose mud walls were too high and
too close together for me to catch sight again of that
tantalising green dome. I did discover, however, any
number of admirable doorways, recessed in pointed
arches of brick and set about with coloured tiles gener-
ally very bad ones, truth compels me to add. The doors
themselves were low and heavy, adorned with a fan-
tastic variety of knobs, clamps, locks, and knockers. 1
also passed several dark arches from which steps or in-
clined planes led down into the bowels of the earth;
and out of them men staggered with dripping goatskins
of water. Some of these arches were very decorative
indeed with tiles and stalactite vaulting, and perhaps
an inscription of tile, or cut in pale stone, set above
them.
And I did come at last upon those two blue minarets.
They were not true minarets, being little turrets with a
covered loggia at the top; for the Persian muezzins, un-
like their Turkish cousins, call to prayer from the roofs
of their mosques. This mosque lay so successfully hidden
behind ruinous mud walls that I could catch only a
glimpse of it from the rear. But that was where its great
blue dome was best to be seen, crowned by a second tiny
dome, set like a closed bud on the stalk of a high drum.
This must have been one of the domes that caught my
eye from the plain. What I had not distinguished then
was that among its turquoise tiles were set smaller green
and yellow ones, making a spiral pattern that waved up
from a richly decorated base. I would have liked to think
that this was the masjid-i-juma which Harun al Rashid
left Baghdad long enough to build. None of the books
I have read about Kazvin, however, give me much en-
58
KAZVIN
couragement for thinking so or even that it was the
masjid-i-shab begun by Ismail Shah, finished by Tah-
masp, and restored by Agha Mohammed and Fat'h AH
Shah, founders of the reigning Kajar dynasty. These
books of travel are all very well; but their writers rarely
stay long enough in one place, or know enough of the
language, to be satisfactory !
The other blue dome I finally found fronting a great
space of sun on the south side of the town. It belonged,
the dome, to a structure which I do not too confidently
name; for so recent and magnificently published an au-
thority as M. Henri Rene d'Allemagne identifies it, as I
make out, with the masjid-i-skal). Whereas a passerby
of whom I stammered inquiry in the matter made some
reply about Prince Hosein. And in fact there is in Kazvin
an Imamzadeh Hosein, the tomb of a two-year-old son
of the Imam Riza whose mausoleum in Meshed is the
most sacred place in Persia. That this building was a
tomb rather than a mosque seemed further to be indicated
by the circumstance that the open space in front of it
was a cemetery. The ground was all strewn with flat
and faintly sculptured stones, like that, with no rail or
tree to guard them. On the side facing the great mauso-
leum were two lesser ones, as I judged low, flat-roofed
structures with pointed brick domes too small for them,
their facades brilliantly tiled and containing ogival win-
dows darkly screened by grilles in a wheel design of
weathered wood. And besides the mausoleum, in the
crenellated mud wall of the city, was another tiled gate-
way, like the one by which we had entered the night
before. I went out of it for a glance at the rear of the
mausoleum. It was broken, I found, by five deep white
59
PERSIAN MINIATURES
pointed recesses of stalactites, each looking at a different
angle across the plain.
But I have not spoken of the facade, which consisted of
three great tiled arches, the ogival recess in the centre
being higher than the other two, surmounted by six tiled
pinnacles. And behind them rose the pointed dome, of
that form made familiar to all the world by the pictures of
the Taj Mahal, blue as a turquoise and lightly decorated
like the dome of my nameless mosque with waving spirals
of green. What lay between I do not know. I had been
warned not to pass the portal. The Persians, while less
strict than the Turks in many respects, are more strict
in not allowing Christians to defile their holy places. So
I stood outside in the sun and thought I had never seen
anything quite so jewel-like. If I had known the splen-
dours of Cairo and Isfahan I might have been less moved.
I remembered, too, that Pisa has something to show in the
way of a sunlit place by a city wall. But in their dusty
place without trees, in their tawny setting, in their un-
tempered light, those tiles were like some fabulous and
forbidden efflorescence of that lion-coloured land.
The Sah'b and the Khanum may their shadows never
grow less! chided me not for my long absence. They
even allowed me to loiter in that inviting street by which
we had entered Kazvin while they acquired pistachio
nuts, which are one of the specialties of the town, together
with other things good to munch out of a bag while one
sits in a berline and post-houses are far away. In the
daytime, it is true, that street took on a semi-European-
ized aspect from its Russian and Armenian signs. The
Sah'b, being a man of tongues, even encountered a cast-
away Greek, who first nearly died of joy at the unaccus-
60
KAZVIN
tomed sound of his own language and then was ready
to die of despair because the Sah'b had no time to gossip
over a glass of mastic. There were also big Cossacks
doing police duty, armed with bayonet and sabre. How-
ever, Kazvin will still take a deal of Russianising, as I
saw for myself in the pot-shops I looked into, the sweet
shops of unimaginable dainties, the glittering copper
shops, the smithies full of the acrid smell of a forge. I
poked my inquisitive nose, too, into more than one arch-
way, coming once upon a circle of camels chewing the
cud of bitterness in a galleried court, and again upon a
novel process of rope-making, carried on between two
wheeled contraptions in a bigger court of trees. What I
liked best about that discovery, though, was the great
tiled doorway at the farther end, and the ultimate pointed
window whose grille let a little dusty light into the inter-
mediate darkness.
I was not the one to complain when, in the berline again,
we locked wheels with a gharry and had to be extricated
by a Cossack as polite as he was tall. However, there is
an end to all things. All too soon the Cossack, who was
a little less polite to the driver of the gharry than he was
to us, took away our last excuse for remaining in Kazvin,"
and we clattered out of the porcelain city gate.
61
IV
THE COUNTRY OF THE SKY
A journey is a portion of hell.
ARABIC PROVERB
Hey diddle, diddle, my son Join !
One shoe off and one shoe on !
MOTHER GOOSE
FROM the Resht road we branched off through a
suburb of adobe walls and fruit trees not yet
bare, across a dry gully like a Sicilian fiumara,
past the scalloped mud battlements that looked
as if Kazvin lay in no great fear of enemies, away from
the two turquoise domes glittering behind them, into
the empty plain. It slanted up a little toward a company
of hillocks that huddled under a far white semicircle of
mountains to the southwest. As we made for them a
shrewish wind that is a specialty of this plateau caught
us in the back, nipping the Indian Summer softness out
of the air and reminding us, like those sharp snowpeaks,
that winter was at hand. The mule trains we met were
another reminder, for every pack animal carried a snow
shovel or two.
For the rest, there was much less to see than during
the first half of our journey. The traffic of the Russian
road divides after it gets through the Elburz passes, and
the caravans bound for Hamadan or Baghdad often find
62
THE COUNTRY OF THE SKY
the open plains easier going, or a shorter cut, besides
being free of tolls. So we had the country pretty much
to ourselves. Once or twice we passed a flat mud village
crouching like Kazvin behind buttressed and crenellated
adobe walls, but with no porcelain gates, alas, and no
blue domes to catch an expectant eye. Otherwise the
solitude was unbroken save by the paler streak of the
road scarring the tawny wastes. Our chief distraction
consisted in watching the camel-thorn small, prickly
brown balls of bushes that the Elburz wind would uproot
and send spinning off across the table of the plain, one
after another, as if in some mysterious game.
The post-houses, too, were farther apart than they had
been. They were also more uniform and a little more
ornate, being solidly built of yellow brick. The name of
each one was posted over the door in Persian, Russian,
and French. The sight of those Arabic, Slavic, and
Latin letters keeping each other company in this Persian
loneliness let loose in one's head all manner of rumina-
tions, that went spinning even farther than the camel-
thorn, though I fear to no more definite end. The ber-
line, for its part, lumbered on to the end of the plateau,
where huddled the bald brown hills for which we had been
steering throughout an entire watch. We threaded a
corner of this archipelago without much perceptible
climbing, and came out into another solitary space of
sun. Upon the white western wall thereof I gazed, like a
true tourist, with the more respect when I heard that it
was the outer rampart of Kurdistan. As for us we bore
southward, changing horses the second time toward dusk,
at Nehavend. No trouble about asps now, on this less-
frequented road, with the post safely out of the way!
63
PERSIAN MINIATURES
But the sun made us no ceremonies to-night. He did not
retire slowly, graciously, with the lingering farewell smile
of yesterday. He abruptly disappeared, from one mo-
ment to another, as if slamming the door of the west be-
hind him upon a land as bleak and barren as the dark o'
the moon. And in the cheerless twilight we seesawed up
and down toward a ghostlike barrier that towered between
us and the south.
About nine o'clock we reached a chilly place of the com-
forting name of Ab-i-Germ, or Hot Water from cer-
tain mineral springs that are a place of resort for rheumatic
Persians. The post-house looked very cosy, too, with its
lights and gay rugs. But the naib, deceitful man, had
no hot water at all. Which was so reprehensible in a
naib living at Ab-i-Germ that we refused to wait till he
lighted a fire and put his kettle on, telling him to tele-
phone ahead to the next station to have a samovar ready
for us. So it was midnight before we tumbled out at
Aveh, very cold and sleepy, for a belated tea. After that
we seriously began to climb again, up and up between
spectral heights, in the hearing of invisible water, to-
ward snapping stars. There even began to be a pallor
of snow beside us, so that my companions speculated a
little as to what might happen at the top of Sultan Bulagh
pass. They knew it of old, having once or twice stuck
there in a drift. And they told me that the post is some-
times held up there for weeks at a time. For the top of
that pass is not far from 10,000 feet above the Caspian.
But what happened was that I, who had never soared so
near the other world, and who might not have been in
the best condition after three days of almost continuous
jouncing in an antique berime, disgraced myself by falling
THE COUNTRY OF THE SKY
faint and having to be laid out in the snow beside the
road with the Sah'b's pocket flask. And the rest of the
night 1 filled the berline with ignoble snores, all uncon-
scious of the wild shapes and astounding stars of that
country of the sky.
It was upon a new heaven and a new earth that I opened
my eyes next morning, when we drew up at the second
station south of the pass. Sirab was the name of that
post-house, which 1 believe means Mirage. Being some-
what subject to mirages myself, it may have been my
imagination that added a purity to the air, deepened the
blue of the fleckless sky, warmed the long-broken slope
in front of us with a secret gold. But this land was
certainly much nearer heaven than the one we had left,
and considerably farther south about as far as Gibraltar
or Cape Hatteras. And it is not every day that one sees
for the first time the sun of the Fire Worshippers rise
over the rim of the Persian desert. However, as I took
in this not altogether objective phenomenon 1 could make
out that it was related to the brusque sunset of the even-
ing before. The sky brightened, palpitated; the edge of
the desert suddenly flashed into incandescence; the in-
candescence boiled and grew tumid till a bubble of intol-
erable gold surged clear of the plain : no moods, no glam-
ours, none of that self-conscious inflammation of nature
which attends the breaking or the fading of the light in
more temperamental climates. It was like the solution
of a problem by an intellectual mind, rather than any
inspiration of romance or despair. And the look of the
country contributed to this effect, with its long, simple,
abstract lines, of a beauty entirely different from that of a
land of trees.
65
PERSIAN MINIATURES
When I set about assisting at this spectacle more fully
than was possible inside a closed landau, and to that end
hunted for my shoes, I could find no more than one of
them. Nor could anybody else. Whereat the dread
truth burst upon me that the other must have fallen out
by the wayside, who knew how many parasangs back,
during my humiliating performances on top of the pass.
"Look here," I asked the Sah'b; "When shall I see
my trunks again?"
"Oh, in about two months," answered the Sah'b
pleasantly "if they don't get stuck in the snow."
"Can one buy shoes in Hamadan?" pursued I darkly.
"Very nice ones," he replied "red, yellow, purple,
even bright green, and curly about the toes."
"The devil!" I burst out, very inappropriately for the
holy Sabbath. "I've got nothing with me but a pair of
patent leather pumps!"
"Never mind," the Khanum consoled me. "I'll lend
you those new arctics I bought in Baku."
Such is Persia ! However, I soon forgot my sorrows in
another aspect of Persia that presented itself to our view
as we rattled merrily southward under the mounting
sun. This was a succession of block-houses, square mud
towers with loop-holed roofs, each one standing in sight
of the next and somehow giving, in spite of the telephone
wires sagging between them, the distinctest of impres-
sions that we had contrived to drop back from the twen-
tieth century into the thirteenth. Out of a loop-hole
would be sticking a rifle or a Russian-looking lamb's-
wool cap belonging, nevertheless, to a Persian gendarme
who does his best to discredit Morier's famous quotation:
"O Allah, Allah, if there was no dying in the case, how
66
THE COUNTRY OF THE SKY
the Persians would fight!" It was to assist in this worthy
endeavour that my monocled Swedish friend had travelled
down the Black Sea in my steamer chair. I ought to
have been the more willing to lend it to him because my
fellow-countryman Mr. Shuster had been the occasion of
his going out to Persia. And that he might find some-
thing to do the Sah'b made the clearer to me by pointing
out a line of low hills at our right and telling me about a
Robin Hood of the region, named after the uncle of the
Prophet, Abbas, who not so many months before had
pounced out of those hills upon a messenger of the Im-
perial Bank of Persia, relieving him of the tidy sum of
17,000 tomans.
After that I regarded block-houses, loop-holes, and the
trim blue gendarmes we met patrolling the road, with
more interest than ever, to say nothing of the barren
landscape around them. But nothing more startling
did we see than certain great patches of blinding white
in the ruddy dun colour of the plains, which gave one an
excellent idea of what a salt desert must look like. Indeed
the greater part of the country was no better than a des-
ert, without a house, a tree, or a stream to see. What
began to grow more and more visible in front of us was a
tall, toothed silver mountain. And that, I learned, was
Mt. Elvend, guardian of Hamadan and neighbour of
that new house toward which we had been hurrying.
Of Hamadan itself, however, there was as yet no sign.
Nor was there any till after we had passed, at noon, the
last post station of Ag Bulagh. Then I discovered a
peasant or two driving across the desert on a log of wood,
harnessed to a minute ox. Although I was not a little
astonished to find out that the peasant was harrowing a
PERSIAN MINIATURES
field, I was still more astonished to note that the ox had
no hump. Those Indian-looking cattle all belong to
the north side of Elburz unless there be more of them in
the extreme east and south of Persia. We also began to
encounter tea houses once more, cubical ones of pinky-
yellow mud, whose clients seemed not so busy sipping
the glass that cheers as pursuing that more intimate occu-
pation which the Khanum dignified with the title of
The Chase. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear! I
have witnessed The Chase in the land where the citron
blooms, but never have I seen it so popular, so passion-
ate, or followed with so little false modesty, as in Persia.
A village or two from which these huntsmen came were
visible in the distance, too much the colour of the country
to be very conspicuous, but marked by prickly planta-
tions of poplars. And two huntsmen of a more pictur-
esque sort kept us company for part of the way into
town. One of them was a swarthy young man on a
fiery stallion, who looked as if he might very well be a
native of that village the Sah'b told me about, not far
away, the inhabitants whereof, until discouraged by the
gendarmes, used to make a handsome living by standing
on a certain bridge of the Russian road and turning out
the pockets of travellers. Every now and then he would
dart off across the fields, standing in his stirrups and
aiming his gun behind him as if to prove that the tradition
of the Parthian shot is not yet dead in Persia. Upon the
Sah'b asking him what he would take for his horse, he
replied magnificently: "It is yours" and galloped off
again. His older companion rode a sorrier steed, his
legs thrust into a couple of saddlebags. But such saddle-
bags, woven in the manner of fine rugs !
68
THE COUNTRY OF THE SKY
This part of the tilted plateau was much broken by
hillocks, some of them so small and so regular in shape
that they had rather the air of the tumuli of Thrace.
They rather tempted one, too, to remember that Persians
had passed through that corner of the world, and Greeks
through this until they suddenly parted, to let us down
into a wide dip beyond. But what they really did was
to treat me, for one, to that rare enough experience, a
sensation. For the farther slope of the broad hollow into
which we began to coast ended in the snow of Elvend,
seven thousand feet above our heads, though nearly
thirteen thousand feet in the Persian blue. The toothed
range that wore the snow was of a ruddy purple in the
brilliant afternoon light, curving nobly south and east in
a great amphitheatre about more of a forest than I had
seen since turning the corner of Jamshidabad. The trees
of this forest were prevalently poplars, slim and bare as
masts. And between them looked out tier on tier of
flat adobe roofs, honey-coloured in the St. Martin's
sun, not unsuggestive indeed of a wild honeycomb. Or
it might be a wasps' nest, plastered on the lower but-
tresses of Elvend. Who knew? I had heard many
savage things spoken of Hamadan. Nor was there any
sign of turquoise domes. But if a town is capable of
perching itself in such an amphitheatre as that, thought
I, it can very well do without turquoise domes.
Traffic multiplied as we trotted on. Mud walls and
orchards, nakeder than those of Kazvin, began to border
the road. Presently four demure young men in long black
coats and short black caps waylaid the loerline and prof-
ferred the Sah'b and the Khanum an eloquent Oriental
welcome in a French of surprising fluency. Then a
69
PERSIAN MINIATURES
cavalcade of three nice-looking young Europeans, an
Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Swiss, followed by three
Persian grooms, cantered up to meet us. No: I made up
my mind then and there that Hamadan was not a wasps'
nest! Thus attended we splashed through a shallow
stream, lurched uphill into tipsy alleys of mud hovels
where I noticed one or two built-in bits of Saracenic-
looking sculpture. At last, having mounted a half moon
to the top of the town, we drove down a lane between a
high adobe wall and a willow-bordered field, passed a
few tall brick gateways, and stopped at one more.
And so, with one foot in my own American shoe and
one in a Russian snow-boot of the Khanum's, did I make
my entrance into the hospitable Swiss bungalow where
I spent my first night in Hamadan.
70
V
THE BAZAAR
Hamadan is my native place: and I will say to its honour that
for ugliness it surpasses every other city of the world;
That its children have as many vices as its old men, and that
its old men have the judgment of children.
BEDI-AL-ZAMAN AL HAMADANI
THEY tell me there is nothing to see in Hamadan.
I wonder! I can see for myself that there
are neither blue domes nor porcelain gates. I
have also made another discovery. It is the
more disconcerting because I have read in Prof. A. V.
Williams Jackson's "Persia Past and Present" a poem
by Mr. Clinton Scollard, of which every stanza returns in
the last line to the walls of Hamadan. It therefore be-
comes my painful duty, as a spinner of literal prose, to
point out that Hamadan has no walls at least on our
side of the town. Yet of private walls it has so many,
hiding houses, courts, and gardens from the indiscreet
curiosity of the passerby, that I ask myself if they can
be right when they say there is nothing to see in Ham-
adan.
Nevertheless, it amuses me to go down town with the
Sah'b. It is truly going down town, for we live on the
lower edge of a suburb of gardens that slants from the
PERSIAN MINIATURES
mountains to the city. It amuses me the more because
the rite of going down town is associated in my mind with
boats, trains, trams, tunnels, and other devices of the
West for cheating time. Whereas in Hamadan time
claims his full due. To go down town, or to go to the
Bazaar, as we say here, you may if you choose mount a
horse. You may not, however, call a carriage. The
streets are too narrow to drive in. The Sah'b and I,
accordingly, walk. And so do most of the fifty or sixty
thousand other Hamadanis. If the results of this whole-
some exercise be not very favourable to the shine of our
shoes or the crease of our trousers, it at least gives us a
better chance to see how little there is to see.
The road outside our gate is at first a muddy country
lane, enlivened by trees and a miniature brook that can
never make up their minds which side to run. Presently
the trees give it up, yielding their place to two blank mud
walls. As for the brook, it decides to take the middle of
the street, ferrying dead leaves, onion peels, and more
equivocal relics to the unknown destination to which it
finally vanishes under a wall. And it does not take me
long to make out that the charms of Hamadan are not
for the nostril. Was that what the more initiated poet
whose distich I have put at the head of this chapter was
thinking about? Mr. Clinton Scollard might think so,
or my Belgian lady. Yet it occurs to me that such a per-
son as the late M. Cezanne, for example, might note with-
out disfavour the none too geometric line in which that
dirty water flashes down the street, the inequalities of
tone and surface in the irregular mud walls on either side,
the contrast of their tawniness with the brilliant strip
of blue overhead. I can also imagine a celebrated citi-
72
RAMADAN STREET
73
PERSIAN MINIATURES
i
zen of Lowell, Massachusetts, finding subjects to etch in
these crooked perspectives, in the shops that occasionally
break them with broad, overshadowing canopies of dried
mud, propped up on leaning poplar poles; in the rough
black arches through which an alley will suddenly plunge
out of sight; in the flimsy balconies that give an accent
all their own to a blind mud wall, or the rare windows
that pierce it, high above the ground, filled with an infinity
of little panes. But who, without glossing or vilifying,
could evoke the true mud and cobblestones underfoot,
the exact key of clear colour overhead, the complicated
variation of smells about one strong acrid theme of burn-
ing camel dung?
The most architectural feature of these twisting cracks
of sun and shade are the doorways. Some of them, in-
deed, bar the street itself, shutting off quarter from
quarter at night or in times of disturbance. None of
them can compare with the Sublime Porte of Kazvin,
but all of them make a welcome break in the monotony
of the endless mud walls and most of them are more im-
posing than the common run of street doors' in Europe or
America. A gateway, the Sah'b tells me, is the index
of a man's importance in the world. And the humility
of his own, together with the lack of any yawning under-
ling especially deputed to guard it, is what Hamadan
finds not least astonishing about our new house.
Beside one low, heavy door, open upon darkness, quaint
life-sized figures are frescoed: the sign of a public bath.
Other signs are the striped towels hanging out to dry in
the little square where three streets come together, the
bulls' eyes of greenish glass in the mud domes of the roof,
and a new smell. At any rate, it seems that Persian baths,
74
THE BAZAAR
unlike Turkish ones, contain a central pool, appropriately
named the treasury, and that the water of this treasury is
changed as seldom as may be! This news enables me to
bear with better equanimity the further news that I
shall never be allowed here, as I have been in Stambul,
to pollute the interior of a bath with my presence.
The people we meet all look more alike than the peo-
ple of any place I have seen for a long time. There is
little of the colour I had expected save when a company
of mosstroopers clatters by on horseback, led by a fan-
tastic individual in a tunic of peacock green velvet. His
saddle is covered with a lattice-work of magenta bro-
cade on white, and all of them rattle with weapons out of
a museum. Otherwise everybody dresses very soberly,
the men oftener than not in a loose brown cloak called
an aba and a brown felt auk's egg, the women swathed
from top to toe in a black or dark blue clader. It is im-
possible to tell one from another when their thick white
veils are down. These have an odd triangular effect,
being fastened around the crown of their heads, with a
jewelled clasp at the back, and disappearing in front
under the dark domino. But I notice that they like to
throw their veils back when none of their own men are
near. The consequent revelation of long black eyes and
high, pink cheek-bones is not too upsetting! In fact, the
men strike me as handsomer than the women. There
are many bare legs and feet too many to be comfortable,
I am afraid, at 6,000 feet above the sea around Thanks-
giving time. Yet one youngster patters after us stark
naked, apparently less sorry for himself than he would
have us believe. He belongs to the great army of beggars
that lie in wait at strategic corners or follow one with
75
PERSIAN MINIATURES
hand outstretched, making piteous outcries which are
full of the word khoda, God. They are a distressing spec-
tacle, with their thin rags, their hideous deformities, their
emaciated babies. However, you learn the more will-
ingly how to put them off with a pharisaic "God be your
keeper!" when you catch one laughing gaily with her
neighbour and then bursting into dolorous sobs at sight
of you.
Finally we reach the true boundary of the Bazaar,
which is {he river. I am willing to take Prof. Wil-
liams Jackson's word for it that this river is the Alusjird,
though I never came across any one else who had so
definite a name for it. I would be less willing to accept
the picture of it which Prof. Williams Jackson and Col-
onel Sykes have borrowed from an old French traveller
by the name of Eugene Flandin if I did not happen to
remember the Envoi of "The Seven Seas," how Kipling
says:
"each in his seperate star
Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of
things as they are."
For myself, I see that pointed bridge of brick and cobble-
stones less romantically than did M. Flandin, in the year
of grace 1841. I even have to confess that I do not
see the white peak of Elvend quite so acute or so aptly
placed with respect to the bridge below it. But I do see
that the river and its bridges are a notable feature of
Hamadan, falling away between boulders and poplars
into a winding cleft through the clay-coloured town. And
I see what M. Flandin did not, what perhaps in 1841
THE BAZAAR
was not there to see, a quaint low mosque at one end of
the bridge, with windows of heavy wooden lattice-work in
which panes of white paper are pasted against the cold.
ii
Not far beyond the bridge lies the Office. I, being
used to reach offices by way of a lift, find this Office a
highly characteristic place. The gateway giving en-
trance thereto is by no means so august as some others in
Hamadan. Still, it is a handsome enough brick arch,
leading into a dark vaulted vestibule. From the vesti-
bule an inner door opens at right angles into a court
which no one would ever have expected. It is laid out
like a garden with trees, flower beds, and brick walks.
And at the farther end of it lies the Office proper. This
is a long, low, flat-roofed house, faced with light buff brick,
whose most engaging feature is the lalar in the centre.
77
PERSIAN MINIATURES
The talar is a great loggia, raised four or five feet above
the ground but rising itself through the second story to
the roof, the outer edge of which it helps to hold up by
means of two tall and extremely slim pillars with slender
carved capitals. The two inner corners of the talar are
decorated at the top with pendentives of stalactites and
painted flowers in pale yellow, while a good part of the
rear wall is one immense window. The square lower part
of the window is cut up into innumerable tiny panes,
the upper part being an ogival lattice of weathered wood
like those I saw in Kazvin. And on either side of the
talar is one more such cusped lattice, not quite so large,
their intricate dark brown wheels relieving the yellowish
facade in the pleasantest possible way.
The Office itself is entered not through the talar but
through a vestibule on either side of it, from which doors
open both into the loggia and into the adjoining rooms.
After such an approach, however, it is surprising to dis-
cover how like other offices is this one. The chief dif-
ference is in the black-capped mir^as who sit at many of
the desks. A mir^a, I might add, is either a prince or a
scribe, according as the title follows or precedes his given
name. These mir^as are not princes. They are, as a
matter of fact, nearly all Jews, though they dress like
Persians and speak French much better than I. But the
true touch of the country is a woolly brown lamb which at
the psychological moment a villager known to the Sah'b
produces from the folds of an aba and presents to him for
pishkesh: which means that the Sah'b is expected in
return to gratify the donor with a gift of money rather
more than equal to the value of the lamb.
Next the Office, all but, is the Bank. Theoretically,
78
THE BAZAAR
you know, banks do not exist in the Near East, since the
taking of interest is forbidden by the Koran. Practically,
however, there is no part of the world where such ex-
orbitant rates of interest are extorted from the wretch
who needs money. And there are two foreign institu-
tions which have branches in all the chief Persian towns :
the Imperial Bank of Persia, a British corporation, and
the Russian Banque d'Escompte et de Prets de la Perse.
For us, however, the Bank is the English one. Its gate is
rather more imposing than that of the Office. As for the
court inside the gate, it is smaller and paved with stone,
albeit watered by the most unbanklike of little rivers,
flowing symmetrically in shallow stone channels which
you cross by miniature arched bridges. There is also a
talar. And beyond the ialar I find occasion to be con-
firmed anew in my idea that Hamadan is not a wasps'
nest.
They tell me that the Persian is quick as a Westerner
to learn those secrets of commercial paper which to a
Turk, as to myself, are dark as the ways of Providence.
The game of exchange is one that Persians pick up in no
time, and the consequence is that the Hamadan branch
of the Imperial Bank of Persia is rather more important,
commercially, than its central office in Tehran. They
also tell me amusing stories of the amenities which under
the old regime used to be exchanged between this British
institution and its Russian rival. The English, who were
first in the field, describe the latter as a pawnshop, since
it is not run like their own bank on a strictly commercial
basis, being a dependency of the Russian Ministry of
Finance. The Russians, on the other hand, do not look
kindly upon the fact that the English have a monopoly
79
PERSIAN MINIATURES
of banknotes in Persia for 99 years or until 1988. The
trouble with these notes is that they are good only for
the town where they are issued, being elsewhere subject
to discount. Which is the reason why travellers in Persia
are obliged to load themselves down with sacks of krans.
But if any branch were at any time unable to redeem its
notes, the Bank would forfeit its monopoly. So the Rus-
sians used to collect as many of the English notes as
they could lay hands on, suddenly presenting them for
payment at a moment when they had reason to believe
that the branch they chose was short of cash. But they
never quite caught the English out. And on one occasion
the Hamadan branch redeemed so large a number of its
own notes in so huge a quantity of the minutest coins of
the realm that the Russians never repeated the experi-
ment. New light on the workings of the Anglo-Russian
Agreement of 1907!
Quite as amusing, to my simple mind, is it to watch
the people who come and go through the court. I am
still too green to tell whether they be Persians or not,
unless they show a certain type of lean, distinguished
face. Portly Hebrews enter with bags of shekels such as
we carried up-country. Natives of Baghdad, known by
their tight silk robes and their drooping fezzes, bring in
the news of the Tigris. Semi-European Armenians stick
long noses between the bars of the cashier's cage. And
one customer would make his fortune at a costume ball.
His loose clothes are of so pale a blue that I can't imagine
how he keeps them so immaculate. He wears top boots
with a curious design cut into the upper edge of them.
Around his waist is a bulging figured silk girdle, out of
which protrude suggestive handles of ivory, silver, and
80
THE BAZAAR
steel damascened with gold. A replica of that girdle,
on a reduced scale, binds about his forehead a black kola,
taller and more pontifical than I have yet seen. What is
more, he has features to go with these striking accoutre-
ments proud, aquiline, so spare that deep hollows under-
lie his cheek-bones, yet of an enviable swarthy ruddiness,
with one broad, black, unbroken bar of eyebrow above
two profound eyes that seem to meditate anything but
finance.
"Who on earth is that magnificent creature? " I de-
mand of the Sah'b.
"That? Oh, only a Kurd," he replies. "Come on."
in
The Bazaar proper lies a short distance down hill from
the Bank and the Office, on the same side of the river.
Kmifia guides me there, walking in front of me to clear
the way. He makes nothing of shoving people aside,
and they, like Prussians on the same sidewalk with an
officer, make nothing of being shoved. That is how the
steps of greatness are smoothed in Persia. For the rest,
no great smoothness is perceptible to my steps. What
pleases me most about the streets is their narrowness,
and the manner in which they swerve this way or that,
and the gay chatter of which they are full. There is
something Neapolitan about it, something at all events
not Turkish. And what do I catch sight of through a
gateway but a dome, the dome of the Masjid-i-Juma, the
mir^a tells me which is to say the dome of the Friday
mosque and around the base of that dome a few tur-j
quoise tiles? After all !
We turn into a small square, which is dark and damp
81
PERSIAN MINIATURES
by reason of the matting roofing it over, stretched on
wooden beams. Here is a vegetable and meat market,
whose stalls leave but a narrow aisle around the edges.
Dried fruits, fresh apples, quinces, oranges, pile the
stands. Bunches of big white grapes, looking none too
fresh, hang from rafters. Beyond are butcher shops
with live sheep and dead sheep in them, sheep with their
fleeces and sheep without their fleeces, sheep in every
stage of dismemberment, hanging from hooks or laid out
on stained slabs of wood for the admiration of the public.
Even at this late season flies not a few buzz around them,
which no one would ever think of keeping away by means
of any kind of screen. In one corner an old man squats
in the mud with a quantity of goats' heads lying on the
ground in front of him. Every now and then a customer
picks one up by a horn, examines it attentively, and
lays it back in the mud. Out of another stall comes an-
other old man carrying a chicken. He wears a leather
skull cap, and his beard is dyed scarlet with henna.
He catches the squawking fowl by the wings, which he
folds back and lays in the mud under his right foot.
Under his left he sets the creature's legs; and then, very
deliberately, in the manner prescribed by the canon, he
cuts the chicken's throat, the blood spurting out over the
muddy cobblestones.
We pass on into a crooked alley, lined on both sides by
little shops. They are open in front, and some of them
have counters flush with the street. Others have no
counter at all. In all of them the proprietor sits on a rug
amid his wares. Among wares that catch my eye are
hanging metal pots which look like pewter, though they
are probably tinned copper. The biggest and best ones
82
THE BAZAAR
have Arabic inscriptions on them in relief, together with
other decorations of arabesques and flowers. I also
notice shops that would contain enlightenment for the
textile curator of a certain American museum, who once
showed me a piece of homespun striped in soft colours,
with the interesting information that the people of "the
Orient " used it for portieres and sofa pillows. I held my
tongue: but in this alley are just such stuffs for saddle-
cloths and saddlebags of the humbler sort, carried by
mules and donkeys in pack trains. There are also white
saddlebags elaborately embroidered in colours. And what
would you say to a flour bag, a plain white canvas sack
of the sort we throw away, decorated with blue flowers
and I don't know what?
At last the alley narrows in front of us into a dark arch-
ray, Here is the heart of the Bazaar, a place of twilight
roofed in from sun, rain, or snow. I have seen something
like it in Stambul and other cities; but I have never hap-
pened to see horses, donkeys, mules, camels even, so
much at home between shops and men. They jingle to
and fro through the dusky maze, shoving pedestrians
aside more unceremoniously than does the mir^a in front
of me. My confused picture of the Bazaar, however,
only profits thereby. Rugs are what I see first, hanging
on walls, spread out on counters, piled in corners. There
are saddlebags, too, of the kind that belonged to the cava-
lier on the Russian road, and felts galore. These are a
great specialty of Hamadan. One common use of them
is under a saddle, which is likely to have more wood about
it than is comfortable for the toughest hide. They are
also popular to sit on or sleep on, or to carpet a humble
floor. It is therefore an art to decorate them with sim-
83
PERSIAN MINIATURES
pie designs in dull red, blue, or green, with the happiest
results for the eye.
In general the various trades tend to stick together,
though their boundaries are. not very clear. Every now
and then I come across a new department of cutlery,
where are queer curved knives such as might be most at
home in the girdle of my magnificent Kurd, marquetried
with gold, perhaps, and having strangely watered blades.
Then there is any number of jewellers' shops, with
bowls of seed pearls, big filigree gold earrings, and
bigger pendants, often crescent-shaped and engraved
with fine lines or set with uneven stones. You see
gold beads, too, and odds and ends of coins such as
are always being dug up in the fields of the East,
piled helter skelter with cartridges and all manner of
European abominations.
No two streets of the Bazaar are of the same length or
roofed quite alike. Here one dark corridor ends sud-
denly in a blaze of sun. There another reaches a long
tentacle down hill, the dim perspective being cut at inter-
vals by cross bars of light. I am treated, too, to sudden
glimpses of courts, with camels in them, or a confusion of
bales, or tall-capped people drinking tea in the sun. But
long before I have seen all I want to the mir%a leads me
around to a part of the Bazaar handsomer than any other.
This is where the leather merchants foregather. Leather,
you must know, is another great specialty of Hamadan;
and the leather men ply their trade not under rafters or
matting but high brick domes. The way in which some
obscure architect handled their groined vaulting is a
thing to see, as are the pointed lunettes of dark wooden
latticework which he set in the upper gloom of the octa-
84
THE BAZAAR
gons where two streets meet. And there a pointed arch
is more than likely to open into a quadrangle with a pool
in the centre, or a trellised brick platform where it must
be very pleasant for a sojourner in a caravanserai to
smoke his water-pipe and
admire the deep cusped
porches of the close and
their interior stalactites.
I find here such footwear
as the Sah'b promised me,
of the most wonderful shapes
and colours. The ones I
admire most are of an
emerald green, having no
more than an inch or two
of hummingbird splendour
wherein to slip a humming-
bird's toes. Mine, alas, are not of the gender worthy
of such shoon. I also admire an instrument of brass,
shaped like a hand, with which a workman beats a
strip of vivid morocco. Other workmen, however, run
American sewing machines as nonchalantly as if they
had invented them. The saddlers and the harness
makers are the natural allies of this gentry. Their
85
PERSIAN MINIATURES
craft is the more interesting to watch because of
the deft things they do in the way of decorating. They
inlay leather of one colour into leather of another colour,
and devise out of polished metal and slivers of mirror
glass quaint ornaments that are meant to glitter and
jingle about a horse. Nor must I forget those leather
cradles with a piece of wood set into each end for stiffen-
ing. No one dreams, of course, of leaving that wood as
it comes to him. It can be carved with little arabesques,
or covered, if you prefer, with a bit of brocade or old
embroidery.
What the mir^a saves for the last is a quarter of open
streets where prosperous Russian and Armenian shops
do their wickedest to introduce a false air of modernity
into ancient Ecbatana. He points out to me with pride
the glass show-windows, the bilious calicoes, the can I
believe my eyes? cheap American shoes. Yet, quite
accidentally, he shows me something after all. For on
our way back to the Office we pass the crowded booths
where the potters of Lalein display their wares. They
are not forgers or sentimentalists, you understand, those
potters of Lalein. They supply an honest, every-day de-
mand for pipkins to cook in, for bowls of every imagin-
able size, having plain edges or fluted, for flowerpots
whose two or three handles give them an inimitable
finish, for jars to hold water though they rarely do!
Then there are all kinds of other jars, slim ones, pot-
bellied ones, tall enough ones to hold a man, true AH
Baba jars, which are used for the storing of wheat and
other provisions. The biggest jars are double-deckers,
whose upper storey is conveniently provided like the flower-
pots with handles. Most of this earthenware is yellower
86
87
PERSIAN MINIATURES
than we usually see, glazed or unglazed as the case may
be. But a good deal of it is unevenly enamelled in pea-
cock colour, turquoise colour, the blue-green of the domes
of Kazvin.
And they tell me there is nothing to see in Hamadan!
VI
LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF SER MARCO POLO
At the straits leading into the Great Sea, on the west side, there
is a hill called the Faro. But since beginning on this matter I
have changed my mind, because so many people know all about
it; so we will not put it in our description, but go on to something
else. And so I will tell you about the Tartars of the Ponent and
the lords who have reigned over them.
Colonel Henry Yule: THE BOOK OF SER MARCO POLO
A A MATTER of fact, there is something to
see in Hamadan. I regret to confess, however,
that I never saw it, or more than the outside
of it which was one of the things I glanced
at the first day I visited the Bazaar. Yet, reader,
I shall further confess that some time afterward, sitting
in a window above New York harbour, I went to the
pains to write out by hand and to copy on the typewriter
a long chapter about that tall-domed mausoleum, whose
squat porch and solid stone door open upon a species
of lumberyard neighbourly to the potters of Lalein. To
that end I turned, very diligently, the pages of Holy
Writ and of the Apocrypha, not to mention those of
secular volumes not a few. I then set about sugaring
for you such pills as the history of Media, of Persia, of
Assyria, of Judaea. I treated of the Babylonish Captivity
and adventured so far afield as Lydia and Greece, bringing
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
you back to the campaigns of Sir Archibald Murray
and Sir Stanley Maude. I even made an excursion into
the Higher Criticism, steering in a subtle manner be-
tween the sensibilities of the godly and of the profane.
But the outcome of the Higher Criticism, reader, has been
to cut that chapter out of your book. For when I began
to turn over the tales of earlier travellers I found that
every one of them had something to say about Esther
and Mordecai, and their tomb in Hamadan. And most
of those conscientious men had been into that tomb.
Whereas I, who passed it so much oftener, never set foot
there.
Why, do you suppose, was that? Certainly not be-
cause Hamadan, or Ecbatana, the summer capital of
King Ahasuerus, seems to me too unlikely a place for
Queen Esther to have died in, or because I find no interest
in the origin of the Hebrew Feast of Purim, or because the
tradition of the tomb is too recent. As early as the
twelfth century, at any rate, the famous Jewish traveller
Benjamin of Tudela saw our mausoleum. The personage
around whom Kit Marlowe wrote his "Tragedy of Tam-
burlaine the Great" destroyed it two or three hundred
years later. The Turk Khosrev Pasha, general of Sultan
Murad IV, destroyed it again in 1630. And the his-
torian Von Hammer says it then lay within the precincts
of a mosque of a thousand and one columns; while the
French father Sanson, who visited Hamadan about 1683,
mentions our high dome as being a remnant of a magni-
ficent temple, ornamented with tiles. The existing monu-
ment, however, seems to be the work of two pious Jews
of Kashan, who restored it in 1713. But nothing about
its present appearance is so picturesque as a piece of
90
LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF SER MARCO POLO
gossip I heard in Hamadan, to the effect that the comfort-
able fortune of a certain Hebrew doctor of the town was
founded upon a jar of gold he accidentally unearthed in
the tomb.
The fact is, I fear, that I judged the unseen interior
of that whited sepulchre by its rather gaunt exterior. I
fear, too, that I am not of those who find it essential to
read the Bible literally. Whether Queen Esther actu-
ally existed or not is to me less interesting than the circum-
stance that some one, a longtime ago, made her the heroine
of an uncommonly good story : not quite so short as mod-
ern editors like, but well enough put together to be true.
But why, I wonder, did no Sunday School teacher of my
youth ever think of telling me that King Ahasuerus was
really Xerxes the Great? And that between his divorce
from Queen Vashti and his marriage with Queen Esther
he made an irrelevant journey which the author of the
Book of Esther was far too perfect an artist to say any-
thing about to Thermopylae and Salamis and Plataea?
VII
PERSIAN APPARATUS
Persicos odi, puer, apparatus. . . .
Quintus Horatius Flaccusc CARMINA
TO SUCH vague and illusory purposes does one
go to school! One scans incomprehensible
lines, one desperately thumbs the dog-eared
lexicon of youth, and one promptly drops the
whole affair into a sieve of a memory in order to pick
up, years later, out of some clogged corner of that same
sieve, a title to one's hand! It came to me, with an
amused grin, when I beheld that new house for which
we had foregone the unseen enchantments of Resht and
had fallen into conflict with the paramount Power in
north Persia. But if I steal the phrase it is not because
I agree with the poet. The poet I agree with is our own,
who says something does he not? about doing in Persia
as the Persians do. At any rate, I share with pacifists,
optimists, and other dangerous classes of citizens a dis-
position to be too easily pleased by things as I find them.
And I can never too positively declare that I passed in
that house one of the most agreeable winters of a misspent
life. Yet I could not help thinking, the first time my
eye fell upon it, that Horace had something in common
92
PERSIAN APPARATUS
with my Belgian lady, and that the poet of white Roman
villas might have sung a different song if he had had a
little actual experience of Persian pomp.
These reflections were inspired by the simple but per-
fectly obvious fact that the mansion toward which we
had been hastening day and night, as fast as asps could
carry us, was made of nothing more splendid than mud.
Adobe is perhaps the more graceful name. And, unlike
the beaver, you pour it into little rectangular moulds
which you afterward set out to dry in the never-failing
Persian sun. You may even, if so you be minded, bake
some of it in quicker furnaces and produce yellowish
bricks for the enrichment of a gateway or a facade. But
elemental earth and water are the foundation of all Per-
sian architecture. The Persian architect therefore need
waste no time in hesitating between timber, brick, stone,
hollow tile, reinforced concrete, and what not. He has
only one possible building material; and the lot on which
he builds, however humble, contains as much of it as he
needs. The very roofs are of mud, spread thick on camel-
thorn and poplar trunks.
Our roof, nevertheless, was not that kind of roof, being
a low-pitched, broad-eaved timber one, overlaid by some
kind of tar paper imported from that mile lumiere of this
quarter of Asia, Baku. And that was only one reason
why our house was a worthy goal of so rapid a journey,
and an object of so great curiosity to the good people of
Hamadan. For it also had Craftsman windows wider
than they were long, provided with admirable window
seats in the four-foot wall, to say nothing of an arcaded
veranda more reminiscent of a Spanish patio than of
a Persian talar. Most contrary of all, however, to the
93
PERSIAN MINIATURES
laws of the Medes and the Persians, it contained the un-
heard-of rarity of wooden floors upon which, we lived
to learn, rugs had a fantastic habit of billowing in a gale.
We lived to learn several other unexpected things be-
fore we got through with it. For a new house has idio-
syncrasies as distinct as a new ship or a new baby and
most so when it departs from accepted traditions. As
for a new mud house, it is rather more habitable above
ground, I fancy, than below. Still, our struggles with
the primitive problems of life brought us nearer in spirit
to the inhabitants of trenches than to dwellers in onyx-
hailed apartment houses, who take no thought how they
shall wash their hands or read their evening paper, or
wherewithal shall they be warmed. But we belonged to a
race that is par excellence the picknicker and camper-out
of the earth, and between us we could scrape up humour
enough to be amused at our experience of Persian pomp.
With gas or electricity, of course, we had nothing to do.
For light we depended on the "blacke oyle, stynkeng
horryblye," of Baku, eked out by Russian candles. Of
our various stratagems to keep warm, an oil stove in the
end proved most effective. In most of the rooms, how-
ever, we had fireplaces, wherein we burned those piteous
faggots which in Persia pass for wood. We likewise
made a good start at burning the dining-room floor,
thanks to a builder who had never before set a fireplace
on anything but a mud underpinning and had taken too
few precautions. I cannot resist adding that this gentle-
man, an Armenian carpenter, was the "intelligent Per-
sian" whose topographical information Prof. Williams
Jackson takes pains to quote. We were further able to
boast nothing less recondite than a furnace, the invention
94
PERSIAN APPARATUS
and the pride of the heart of the master of the house, who
devised it out of the mud of his cellar and who caused
mud tunnels to conduct its affluvia into three or four
rooms. For the nourishment of this furnace we origi-
nally proposed to use the commonest fuel of Persia, tapeh.
That, if you insist on knowing, is dried camel dung.
And among the many and vivid smells of that treeless
land I shall always remember the odour of burning tapeh.
We found it a little too penetrating, even when so far
removed from sight. We also found the problem of the
conservation of energy more insoluble than ever, when we
tried to make some sort of equation between the un-
appeasable appetite of the furnace for poplar wood and
the infinitesimal amount of heat that rose from the
registers which were merely round holes in the floor.
We therefore closed them and the incident, lest we step
into them and break our necks.
Water, in Hamadan, is a commodity even more pre-
cious than heat or light. You very soon learn to be thank-
ful if you can get enough to make a cup of tea, forgetting
such excesses of luxury as hot and cold taps. We tremb-
lingly dug a well in our cellar and, thank God, a little
water oozed into the bottom of that well. What is more,
we were able to obtain from Baku a small hand pump,
which was generally in good enough order to send a hope-
ful drip into the kitchen. Thence to distribute it through-
out the house was a matter of fetching and carrying.
Under the circumstances it was too much to dream of
maintaining more than one bathroom. But, my brethren,
what a bathroom ! It possessed, for one thing, my favour-
ite view, looking out of two big windows across the flat
roofs and sharp poplar tops of the town to that concave
95
PERSIAN MINIATURES
plain of such inimitable chameleon changes of colour.
It further possessed a monstrous copper samovar, con-
trived by the ingenuity of the Sah'b, into two mouths of
which uncomplaining underlings fed countless gallons of
water and numberless bundles of faggots. But the glory
of the room was the bathtub. The foundation of this
structure was, of course, mud. The mud was faced, how-
ever, like the broad sills of the windows, with the square,
blue-green tiles of Lalein. Have I said that Lalein is a
village in the region of Hamadan where the lost art of
glazing earthenware is still humbly practised? Never
have I bathed in anything quite so pretty as that tank of
turquoise water. The cement that held the tiles together,
though, was home-made, lacking anything better from
Baku; and, alas, it was not a success. Not only had
it to be washed off after one had taken one's bath, but
the ceiling of the room below was observed to darken, to
drip, and most threateningly to sag. And this in spite
of the fact that the water from the bathtub was supposed
to run away into the garden! We therefore had to give
up, with bitter lamentations, our peacock tiles, substi-
tuting such receptacles of metal or rubber as could be
improvised out of the resources of the country.
ii
I may airily seem to imply that I had a personal hand
in these various arrangements. As a matter of fact I
arrived on the scene too late to admire the invention of
most of them. What I was happy enough not to miss
was the moving in. I fear the Sah'b and the Khanum
were less happy in entertaining a guest-friend who had
known them too long to feel any scruple in combating
PERSIAN APPARATUS
their views and exposing his own with regard to the fur-
nishing of their rooms. It was perhaps fortunate that
we were a family of three, and therefore sometimes able to
secure a casting vote. As often as not, however, we main-
tained three perfectly irreconcilable opinions. Never-
theless no open rupture or secret coolness resulted from
our lively arguments on interior decoration. And I, for
one, found it highly amusing to open and to dispose of
the contents of the cases which strange-looking ruffians
brought to the house on their backs.
Our two rooms of state, to the vast scandal of Hamadan,
literally had mud walls, ungarnished with plaster, sizing,
or colour of any kind, but smoothed past all resemblance
to their parental earth. For ourselves, we desired no
better background for Persian plates, for Persian minia-
tures, for Persian mirror frames, for brasses, embroideries,
rugs, and other Oriental objects of art which my wise
host and hostess spent much of their leisure in collecting.
A good many of these objects had made no great journey.
But others, intended more strictly for use, had performed
such an Odyssey that it was a wonder we had a dish to
eat out of or a chair to sit in. The sojourner in Persia is
not like his happy cousin of Italy, able to go forth wherever
he finds himself and pick up delectable furniture. For
the people of the East use almost no furniture. They
require merely a few rugs or mats to sit and sleep on and a
few plates and bowls for their cookery. So the stranger who
dwells among them has to transport from oversea every-
thing he needs for his own more complicated housekeep-
ing. In a place like Hamadan, accordingly, you must
first get your goods to Enzeli or to Baghdad, whence
they are transported 250 or 315 miles by caravan. And
97
PERSIAN MINIATURES
if you have seen the springless gharries that climb the
passes of the Russian road, or if you have noticed how
mules and camels drop their packs when they make
camp, you will not wonder that a neighbour of ours had
the unhappiness to lose an entire dinner set she had im-
ported. We were delighted to find that only about half
of our own china was smashed.
For breakage and theft we were prepared, not to say
moth and rust. What gave us something of a shock was
to discover that mice had been at our books as precious
in Persia as chairs or soup plates. Since the books were
not mine, I found it in me to smile upon noting that
Bourget's "Sensations d' Italic" had been devoured from
cover to cover. O subtle mice of Ecbatana! For the
French in general they exhibited a remarkable taste.
They had also found nourishment in Jane Austen, Joseph
Conrad, and Henry James. It surprised me more to
find traces of those hungry Persian rodents in certain
Latin authors, among them the poet of my text, who had
somehow found their way into that Parthian galere.
Hakluyt, too, had whiled away some of their hours
happily in the not irreplaceable Everyman edition. They
had passed by our rug books, however, together with
our books on Persia and such works as we possessed of the
American Red Blood school. I cannot explain this un-
accountable vagary. I merely state.
Our library was on those days when a terrific winter
wind howled out of the gorges of Elvend the one comfort-
able room in the house, being smaller than the others
and having only one big window. This was also the room
that had least in it to remind us where we were, with its
rows of Latin-lettered books, its wicker chairs, its tinted
98
PERSIAN APPARATUS
walls, and its pictures of other lands. Two of the latter
were for me an unquenchable wellspring of whimsical
philosophy. For who should gaze inscrutably at each
other from either side of the door, reminding me of Paul
Bourget and the Persian mice, but that adorable minx
Lucrezia Crivelli, with her jewelled fillet bound about
her brow, and the romantic Knight of Malta! I must
add in passing that I cannot believe him really to have
been a Knight of Malta, because I do not believe there
were any Knights of Malta when Giorgione painted him
if Giorgione did paint him. There were only Knights
of Rhodes. But if you object to that point of quibbling,
you might at least call him a Knight of St. John. How-
ever, there he hung in remote Ecbatana, looking no more
surprised than his lovely companion to find himself so
far away from Florence, and filling me with obstinate
questions about western taste and the vicissitudes of
western wandering. Did Lucrezia and the nameless
Knight, I wonder, ever in life find themselves so close
together? And what would they have thought had it
been told them that their portraits, multiplied by a trick
they did not know, should in centuries to come adorn
the house of an Englishman in Persia, who had to wife
the daughter of a world unknown, or barely discovered,
in their day?
When we sat in that room at tea time, with a wood
fire crackling behind a pair of English andirons, it always
seemed to me extraordinarily characteristic of the Anglo-
Saxon race, in which familiarity with the sea has so long
bred familiarity with lands beyond the sea, but which so
stoutly takes with it wherever it goes its own language
and customs. One of us was a true son of St. George,
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
though accidentally born outside the fold of his race.
Two of us were descended from those contemporaries of
Sir Robert Sherley who three hundred years ago sailed
out of Old England to found a New England. Yet there
we sat in Persia, the three of us, owning none but English
blood, speaking whatever Cockney or Cantabrian might
think about it ! no tongue but English, and knowing very
little more about the land in which we sat than you who
read these words. It was a symbol, that cosy little li-
brary, of the unconquerable vitality of a race, of the pride
of a man in his own house and his own acre, which has
brought forth such miracles as Athens and Venice and
Oxford, which flowered once into the painting of the
Renaissance, the literature of Elisabeth. But a better
symbol was the bare slope of poplars outside the window,
still Persia after three thousand years of conquest, glory,
and disaster. After all, I sometimes used to wonder,
what business had we there? And how about this mod-
ern fashion of borrowing our neighbour's art? If the
Florentines and Venetians had followed it as persistently
as we, had contented themselves with collecting pseudo-
Greek marbles and Byzantine mosaics, there would have
been no ghost of a Lucrezia Crivelli to smile across a
Persian doorway at the shadow of a Knight of St. John!
Where shall we end with all this transporting of one
country to another? Are we going to wipe out boun-
daries and become cosmopolites all?
There was no time to answer these long questions be-
fore our destinies drew us, one after the other, out
of that little room. And when next we met it was
seven thousand miles away, when the world was already
deep in the greatest of wars. Looking at it from a high
100
PERSIAN APPARATUS
window above New York harbour, I have sometimes
seen it as the beginning of an answer to those questions
of our Persian library. That formidable outburst against
the ambitions a-prowl in the earth, does it not touch too
the dream of the Internationale, and isolate anew the man
without a country? For the pride of a man in his own
house and his own acre is rooted very deeply nor need it
imperil another man's peace. The most permanent agree-
ment of men is to differ. The thing is to recognise and
to respect each other's differences. If one happy result
of so much unhappiness should be to let the sun shine
again on overshadowed lands, another might be to check
the standardising of mankind. And if emigrations, con-
cession huntings, even gentleman adventurings fall for a
time out of fashion, what matter? There is still adven-
turing to do in a country which has not yet achieved a
Lucrezia Crivelli of its own!
in
The most characteristic piece of Persian apparatus
in our house, and the worthiest to be considered in the
Horatian sense, was to be seen below stairs if you will
not take that technical phrase too literally. The Sah'b
used to complain that he never knew how many servants
we had, one of his favourite diversions being to ask the
Khanum how many more she had taken on. Persia
follows the rest of Asia in this regard ; though as a matter
of fact we were not so dreadfully attended as most of
our neighbours. Oriental servants work for longer hours,
with fewer outings, than occidental ones, but each one
does much less. The only one of ours who made us feel
that he earned every slaU of his somewhat sketchy
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
stipend was a laborious, quick-witted, and picturesque
godson of the great Shah Abbas, a youngster whose voice
just began to crack. None of them, for that matter,
were far out of infancy. And it surprised me to see how
fast they picked up our ways, many of which to them must
have seemed inexplicable and capricious beyond reason.
I often wished I knew what their comments were. We
sometimes caught rumours, however, through confidences
made to the masters of other servants. When we went
out to dinner our cook, our butler, or both, would occasion-
ally go, too, to help in the kitchen or the dining room. In
fact, it is not good form for a person of such consequence
as a Firengi to leave his door at all without a servant
or two at his heels; though I fear we rather scandalised
Hamadan by our backwardness in conforming to this
custom. A Firengi, I should explain in parenthesis, is a
Frank. Strange/ is it not? and subtly complimentary to a
great race, how since the time of the crusades that name
.has stuck in western Asia as descriptive of all Europeans
even Germans ! and their cousins beyond the seas. The
servants of the F.irengis in Hamadan formed a sort of
society apart, and you may be sure that among them no
news was allowed to escape. Thus it came to our ears
that the Sah'b was known to an inner few as the Chief
of the Desert because our house stood by itself outside
the town! And I was enchanted to learn that I, having
come to Persia without wives, children, valets, employ-
ments, or other visible human ties, had been decorated
with the picturesque title of Prince All Alone.
You of the effete West are lapped in the soft ministra-
tions of the Eternal Feminine. To us of sterner Ecba-
tana is permitted no such Sybarism. I may note, how-
102
^ :
PERSIAN APPARATUS
ever, the exceptional case of Firengis with young children.
A lady of the land may then risk her reputation by enter-
ing the presence of corrupt Christian
men. She does so bare-footed, in figured
red trousers of a fulness, loosely swathed
in a length of white or printed cotton,
covering her head and held for decency's
sake in front of her mouth. Custom, of
course, will make her less meticulous; but
when a stranger is present and her duties
require the use of both her hands, it is
astonishing how ingenious she is in hold-
ing her veil in her teeth and in keeping
her back on the quarter of peril.
There is another exceptional case to
be noted of a country where laundresses
are more than likely to have smallpox
in their houses. These ladies answered
to the most aesthetic names: Deer,
Sugar, Angel, Peacock, Parrot. To us,
however, they were generically known
as Sister. They always carried on their
operations in big blue-glazed bowls,
preferably set on the ground near the
clothes line, beside which they would
squat on their heels. I remember one of
them who sent us one week a substi-
tute. Inquiring into the matter the
Khanum was told "Sister makes a
petition: she will have a child. But she
will come next week." And Sister did! The milking
of a cow is one more exceptional case, since such duties
103
PERSIAN MINIATURES
are too ignoble for man. Here again a blue-glazed bowl
comes into use, being held between the knees of the
operator. I might add that for the complete success of
the operation it is considered necessary for the calf
to be tied in sight of the cow. Otherwise the sacred
fount infallibly goes dry. We had the greatest trouble
to induce our personnel even to try the experiment
of milking when no calf was in sight. This, I suppose,
is why the Persians are so unwilling to sell or to kill a
calf, and why they are so tender of the little creatures.
The first time the stork visited our stable a small animal
wrapped up against the cold in green felt was brought
blinking into the dining room for us to admire. And we
learned that the calf spent its first few nights with the
servants, in their quarters.
These, I hasten to add, were not in the house. While
there are, especially in Persia, very solid advantages in
having servants out of the house at night, there are also
disadvantages as will appear most plainly on a winter
morning after a party. We then had the choice of walking
a long way through the snow to bang on the stable door,
or of waiting for breakfast. Their own breakfast, and
all their other meals, the servants were supposed to pro-
vide for themselves: primarily because a Firengi is an
impure being, whose food and dishes are defilement to
those of the faith; secondarily, because a Firengi eats meats
too strange for the palate of a Persian. We had reason
to believe, however, that at least in our house the Per-
sians were not too fastidious about our menu or our pur-
ity! They had quarters at one end of the stable, with a
fireplace to keep them warm and a more efficacious inven-
tion of their own which they called a kursi. A kursi is
104
PERSIAN APPARATUS
the counterpart of a Turkish tandur, being a fixed or
portable brasier covered by a wooden frame, over which
a quilt or a big rug is spread; and under that asphyxiating
rug or quilt a considerable household can spend the day
or the night, tucking themselves up to the waist or the
neck as the case may be. The boys never could under-
stand why we didn't have kursis, too. The rest of their
furniture consisted of rugs, wherewith to cover the mud
floor. That is why there are so many rugs in Persia
the mud floors. And there is another good reason why so
many of them are a little more or a little less than six feet
long. For a do-^ar t a two-yard, is all your Persian needs
in the way of a bed ; and if you have such a rug that is not
brand new, you may be sure that some very picturesque-
looking customer has dreamed upon it the dreams of Asia.
I fear that the dreams of our dependents were sometimes
interrupted. For the roof over their heads was a mud
one, and being new it was leaky. After a rain or a thaw,
therefore, we would hire the youth of the neighbourhood
to play tag on it, in order to pack the mud the harder with
their bare feet!
What to my alien eye was most striking about our re-
tainers was their dress. To be served at dinner by a butler
in bare or stockinged feet, according to the season, bearing
upon his head a pontifical mitre of brown or black felt,
not unlike the tall brimless hat of Greek monks and Rus-
sian priests, was an experience which I did not live long
enough in Persia to take as a matter of course. It always
gave me the sense of assisting at a rite celebrated by the
flamen of an unknown creed. It made no difference that I
myself was perfectly capable of balancing upon my brow
an even more fantastic erection, eaved like a house, shinier
105
PERSIAN MINIATURES
than satin, and garnished with a coquettish ribbon.
What caught my eye was the extraordinary fact that any
human being could cherish a headdress different from my
own, and account himself disgraced ever to be seen with-
out it. Tall hats, however, were not all that distinguished
our serving men. Between their kola and their unshod
feet flapped a trouser not so full as that of the country
Turk but giving no hint of the leg it contained, and a suc-
cession of tailed or kilted coats. The Persians think that
Firengi men dress as indecently as Firengi women, in
permitting our clothes to follow so closely the lines of our
bodies. The fit of their own coats stops at the waist.
From there hangs to the knee, or below, a pleated skirt
which even a travelled Persian unwillingly exchanges for a
Prince Albert, while a morning or evening coat is to him
a thing of shame. Under his outer garment, with which
he usually dispenses indoors, he wears a shorter and
thinner one, less amply kilted, the tight sleeves of which
are slit to the elbow, and dangle decoratively if incon-
veniently enough, when not buttoned up or turned back.
This tunic is also more gaily hued. And the open throat
of it sometimes reveals successive layers of inner integu-
ments, of contrasting colours.
The brightest virtue of Habib, our butler, was that he
possessed a beautiful emerald undercoat in which, when
there was no company, he was sometimes good enough to
pass, and eke to break, our plates. He was the official
head of our establishment, being technically known as the
Chief of the Service. He would always receive an order
with the words "On my eye!" and when he knew not how
to answer us he would say: "What petition shall I
make?" He was a youth of twenty or thereabouts,
106
PERSIAN APPARATUS
espoused to a young person of twelve or thirteen who
stayed with his mother. The society of neither of these
ladies seemed to interest him too intensely. He preferred
to live in the stable with the other boys and the calf.
He also loved to harden the mouth of the Sah'b's horse.
And when the time came to work in the garden was he
most in his element. We finally had to hide
from him a pruning knife we had obtained from
Baku, so vastly did he prefer that toy to a
dishrag or a duster. I can't say that I blamed
him. He was much slower and
stupider than is common of his
quick-witted race; but it took a
great deal to ruffle his temper, and
the later we kept him up at night
the better pleased he apparently
was. He it was who, during a period of
interregnum of which I shall have more to
say, spread the table for the Sah'b's first
bachelor dinner party with one of the
Khanum's sheets and not one of the
best. Later in the evening, when supple-
mentary refreshments were served, I observed
that Habib had covered a tray with one of
the discarded napkins of the dinner table. It
was not really dirty, he afterward explained,
and it seemed a pity to risk spoiling a new lace doily ! I
discovered, though, that he was an excellent hand
at decorating a table. Without any orders he once
picked to pieces a lot of hyacinths and traced with the
single flowers so pretty a pattern on the tablecloth that I
hadn't the heart to affront him by disapproving of it,
107
PERSIAN MINIATURES
though it was a little more finicky than I would have
chosen for bachelors' hall. So did the genius of his race
for design come out even in his humble fingers. On the
whole, I learned more from him than he did from me
as when he would greet us in the morning with " Peace be
with you/' or politely take the Khanum's keys in both
hands, or use instead of the first personal pronoun the
phrase "your slave," or ceremoniously call one aside in
consultation, saying "Without trouble, bring your honour
here," or on state occasions serve tea on his knees. And
he gave one strange glimpses of the world he lived in by
speaking darkly of jinn, in connection with a friend's
illness, and by telling us, when a lost watch was found in
the house, that he had burned candles for its recovery.
The true head of the service was Mahmad AH, the cook
or Mehm'd Ali as the others called him. Mehm'd AH
had been brought up as a butler himself, and an excellent
one he was, though afflicted with a slight disfigurement of
the mouth and a stammering of the tongue. But a domes-
tic crisis had driven him into the kitchen, where he quickly
learned to make pancakes and cakes much more com-
plicated as well as he did sauces and curries for pilau
which really sounds more like pileu, if you will pronounce it
in the Italian way. Consequently there were times when
we were moved to call Mehm'd Ali out of his kitchen and
say to him, with due ceremony: " Mehm'd Ali, may your
hand feel no pain." Your white-capped chef or darkey
Dinah might not know how to take so cryptic a pronounce-
ment. But the mitred Mehm'd AH knew it for the highest
possible compliment. And being no more than nine-
teen, though already old enough to have been married
and divorced, he would hide his blushes in a low bow, stam-
108
PERSIAN APPARATUS
mering in reply: "May honey be to your soul." The
desire of Mehm'd All's heart was to possess a wrist watch.
And he served us with a credit that only seldom lapsed
for the sum of six tomans a month which is a little less
than six dollars.
I am bound to add that Mehm'd AH would have been
less clever than he was if he had not made out of us con-
siderably more than that. For, being cook, he did the
marketing. I was astounded to find telephones in Hama-
dan, a convenience at that time strange to imperial
Constantinople. But very few Hamadanis had one.
We did not, for instance. Neither did any butcher, baker,
or candlestick-maker with whom we dealt. So there was
no sitting comfortably at home and ordering what we
wanted from the Bazaar. Nor did people from the
Bazaar peddle their wares about the streets to any such
degree as do the people of the Mediterranean. There is
no such thing, either, as a delivery cart in Hamadan.
The thing to do was to go to the Bazaar in person every
morning after breakfast, and Mehm'd Ali was the person to
do that thing Mehm'd Ali and his slagerd, or apprentice.
This was the youngest member of our juvenile establish-
ment, a round-faced, bright-eyed, russet-coloured raga-
muffin who toted Mehm'd Ali's flexible market basket,
peeled Mehm'd Ali's potatoes, scoured Mehm'd Ali's
earthenware pots, and ate Mehm'd Ali's bread. Which
is to say that Mehm'd Ali engaged and theoretically main-
tained him, though I suspect that his face would have
been neither so round nor so rosy had it not been for the
crumbs from our table.
Going to the Bazaar was evidently the great affair of
the day. It was amazing how long it took Mehm'd
109
PERSIAN MINIATURES
AH to bargain for the toasted wafers of bread or the
scarcely thicker flaps of sangak which filled in the chinks
between Mehm'd All's own white loaves, for the eternal
mutton of the country, for the frequent hare and partridge,
or francolin, for the white mast which is the Persian ver-
sion of Dr. Mechnikov's Elixir of Youth, for the famous
melons of Isfahan that tasted to us like a flatter kind of
squash, for the dubious bunches of grapes that looked fit
only Jor the scavenger but that had merely begun to turn
into raisins and really were very good. Beef was far rarer
than game, vegetables were neither varied nor good unless
they came out of our own garden, while such rarities as
fish or strawberries were precious as pounded pearls and
nightingales' tongues. Certain minute fish, to be sure,
were indigenous to our neighbourhood; but as the Persians
catch them by the simple expedient of poisoning the water,
and sometimes die afterward, we thought twice before
indulging in them. Once in a while a runner would bring
to some member of our colony, from a river near Kerman-
shah or from the faraway Caspian, a real fish, which at
once became the foundation of a state dinner party.
Mehm'd AH was so happy as to possess in addition to
his other attainments, the art of letters. He accordingly
kept strict toll of his purchases, rendering an account of
them every day to the Khanum. There came, however, a
day of despair when the Khanum temporarily shook off
from her feet the dust of Hamadan, leaving the hapless
Chief of the Desert and the Prince All Alone to shift for
themselves. The Chief of the Desert, being a man of
affairs, therefore handed over the housekeeping to the
very incompetent hands of the Prince All Alone. The
beauty of this arrangement was that the Prince All
no
PERSIAN APPARATUS
Alone knew scarcely a word of Persian despite Habib's
flattering comment that his progress in it was so rapid as
to crack the air! Nevertheless, I gravely pretended to
take Mehm'd Ali's accounts. And when I couldn't get
it through my thick Firengi head what Mehm'd AH was
driving at, Mehm'd AH would draw little pictures in my
account book to illustrate his expenditures. Even then I
sometimes hesitated between an egg and a turnip, or a
hen and a partridge.
It was that latter fowl of calamity which at last ruffled
our relations. The Sah'b one day brought home some
partridges. It so happened that Mehm'd AH also bought
partridges that day; and lo the price of them was twice
that of the Sah'b's partridges. My vocabulary being too
limited to do justice to the occasion, the Sah'b took
Mehm'd AH over. I don't know whether he called upon
the washers of the dead to carry Mehm'd AH out, but he
named Mehm'd AH the son of a burnt father, and he
cast in Mehm'd Ali's teeth that last of all insults: "Mehm'd
AH, you have no zeal!" He also docked Mehm'd AH
a toman of his pay. The which Mehm'd AH took very
much to heart. No cook in Hamadan, he stammered in
wrath, bought more cheaply than he.
It chanced that there was to be football that afternoon
behold again the Anglo-Saxon in foreign parts and
after football the neighbouring Firengis were to come to
us for tea. Cakes, therefore, were to be made, loaves
baked, samovars lighted, china and silver set forth. When
I hurried home at the end of the game to receive the
hungry host, not a cake did I find, not a loaf, not even a
single servant. Your Anglo-Saxon, however, is not so
easily stumped. The Firengis had their tea, if a little
in
PERSIAN MINIATURES
late and not quite so plenteous as we had planned. But
the subtle Mehm'd AH, although he had not blackened
our faces to the degree he hoped, after all made his point.
He knew, and we knew, and each of us knew the other
knew, that another cook capable of making both pilau
and pancakes was not to be picked up in Hamadan
outside of some one else's kitchen. For the sake of the
greater good, therefore, we that day learned the lesson
of not insisting upon a lesser. And the next day Mehm'd
AH treated us to quite the most magnificent chocolate
cake in his repertory. When we looked at it our mouths
watered. When we tasted it we sent for Mehm'd AH.
" Mehm'd AH," said the Sah'b in all gravity, "may your
hand feel no pain."
"Sah'b," replied Mehm'd AH, "may honey be to your
soul."
And do you know? Partridges grew a little cheaper
after that !
12
VIII
JIMMY & CO.
His star is a strange one ! one that leadeib him to fortune by
the path of frowns ! to greatness by the aid of ihwackings ! Truly
the ways of Allah are wonderful /
George Meredith: THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT
C'lES and gentlemen, I have the honour to pre-
sent to you Mr. James not Henry. Jimmy,
the ladies and the gentlemen if any have suc-
ceeded in wading so far into our long-winded
book.
This introduction is necessary to sketch our household
in its true colours, not only because our dog is so im-
portant a member of our family, but because he is so
admirable a proof of the saving inconsistency of human
nature. For if there be a creature which a Persian is
more unwilling to touch than a pig or a Christian, that
creature is a dog. An orthodox Persian, especially if he
be elderly and turbaned, will do anything to avoid
shaking hands with us or drinking our impure tea. But
if Jimmy chances to touch so much as the hem of his
garment, the only remedy is to go straight to the bath,
take off his turban, and jump into the "treasury." And
about the water of that treasury I have already told you,
or insinuated to you, something. Yet mark the subtle-
ties of orthodoxy when I also tell you that Jimmy, in
PERSIAN MINIATURES
spite of the double disadvantage under which he suffers
by being in all literalness a Christian dog, finds favour in
many an Iranian eye. Although in the prime of life he
falsely passes, by reason of his diminutive stature, the
curliness of his hair, and the affability of his manners,
for a tuleh, a puppy. Now a puppy is justly exempted
in Persia from the full-grown depravity of a sag, or dog.
So our house-boys pet Jimmy outrageously. And when-
ever he goes out with us I notice that he is far more likely
to draw admiring than disgusted glances, however indis-
creetly he may sniff about the feet of the faithful.
Discretion, I fear, was never Jimmy's strong point.
Where he was born I do not know, but his character is
all of the quixotic island from which Irish terriers spring.
He is a handsome little gentleman I used the word ad-
visedly with a white coat which he finds none too easy
to keep unspotted from the world, with a black patch on
one quizzically uplifted ear, with a humorous eye. It
twinkles, does that eye, like every eye of Erin, like the
eyes of all who are irresistible to the softer sex and who
most savour the relish of adventure. Jimmy is the best
of companions, lively, affectionate, sympathetic, always
ready for the unexpected, enduring misadventure without
a whimper. He is not deficient, either, in the more home-
spun qualities of gratitude and respect for authority.
But, devoted as he is to us, he finds our house too small
and our garden too narrow a field for his inquiring and
democratic spirit. We are domestic and sedentary while
he is debonair, irresponsible, a bit of a boulevardier. To
be out o' nights is what he adores. While I will not liken
him to the ill knight in Malory, who went about dis-
tressing and destroying all ladies, I fear Jimmy is not
114
JIMMY & CO.
above forming unhallowed ties. And in the pursuit of
them he has a way of disappearing for hours, for days.
What is most affecting, however, is to see the prodigal
come home from these absences with the darkness of dis-
illusion in that normally twinkling eye, very much
chastened in spirit, knowing perfectly well what reproaches
will be heaped upon him, yet taking our hard words, per-
chance our heartless chastisements, with a comprehend-
ing and heroic resignation.
One of these mysterious disappearances lasted so long
that we suspected abduction. And the more so as two
days after Jimmy's departure the servants tried to con-
sole us by producing a greyhound somebody wanted to
sell. Wherein is exemplified anew the Persian inconsist-
ency with regard to dogs. A ta%i, a greyhound, occupies
the same privileged position as a puppy. Nothing is
commoner than for a country gentleman to maintain a
kennel of greyhounds, that he may course hare and gazelle
withal. This particular greyhound, like most of the
others I saw in Persia, was as a matter of fact a brown-
hound. He had long, silky brown hair, with a slight crimp
in it like a Russian wolfhound, and absurdly flapping
ears. The Sah'b, to the immense disapproval of the
house-boys, sardonically named him Ferda, which means
To-morrow. For that word of hope occupies as large a
place in the Persian vocabulary as it does in the Spanish.
As for me, the droop of the newcomer's ears, the colour
of his locks, and his hysterical manner, reminded me so
strongly of a well-known portrait of the authoress of
"Aurora Leigh" at the time of her marriage, that I could
only call him Mrs. Browning. In short, we all looked
coldly upon him, being too faithful to the lost dog of our
PERSIAN MINIATURES
hearts. Moreover, Mrs. Browning's excessive sensibility
disgusted us. He regarded the most indifferent gesture
as a personal menace, and was forever cringing and yelp-
ing. His one virtue was that he could run. How he
could run, though! We coursed with him once or twice,
and that crimped bundle of nerves actually caught us the
makings of a jugged hare. But when Mrs. Browning
finally made use of his unique gift to run away, all we re-
gretted about him was the toman or two we had paid for
so poor a creature.
Jimmy, in the meantime, failed to come back. So
Habib made one day a second attempt at consolation by
proudly bringing in a bird which he named a hawk.
Falconry is by no means a lost art in this part of the world,
where hunting Khans keep their hawks and their falconers
quite like any baron of the thirteenth century. But this
hawk, while he consumed chunks of raw meat with the
utmost greediness, happened to be an owl, with two im-
mense yellow eyes that blinked blindly at us as he stum-
bled about the brick floor of the veranda! And to the
infinite disappointment of Habib we refused to add him
to our already large enough list of pensioners.
Among these was an obscurer member whom I have
not yet mentioned, belonging to the pariah caste of sag.
Where he came from nobody knew. Nor did we take
very kindly to him at first, the more so as the meat bill
took a turn for the worse about that time. But as often
as we ordered him away he infallibly turned up again,
generally in the vicinity of the stable. Incidentally the
boys kept hinting that dwellers in the desert required
some sort of watchman. Many a dark word threw
they out as well about wolves that ravened down from the
116
JIMMY & CO.
mountains on winter nights, plainly giving us to under-
stand that nobody could keep the wolf from the door, or
protect our slumbers, to say nothing of their own, better
than this humble citizen of the country. So what did it
avail us to kick against the pricks? We gave in, without
admitted surrender or triumph on either side, and before
we knew it the sag was on terms of familiarity with us all.
He received, of course, none of Jimmy's honours. He
never came into the house, being nothing but a plain
yaller dog, rather bigger and redder than the ordinary,
with a pair of clipped ears that gave him a vague distinc-
tion. But I noticed that Mehm'd Ali's rosy-cheeked ap-
prentice was not too far gone in the canons of the orthodox
to take the interloper into his arms or even to treat him to
surreptitious kisses.
At last it began to be whispered that the powers of the
air were against us, for the new watch-dog proceeded to
develop a mysterious malady. He would twitch spas-
modically at inopportune moments, and most dolorously
would he howl in season and out. These symptoms, Habib
explained, were due to the fact that an enemy, probably a
thief who had set apart our house for some midnight foray,
had fed the unfortunate creature with a piece of bread or
a lump of meat containing an insidious needle. The needle,
of course, had stuck in the dog's throat, and was the cause
of his woe. Whether the needle was finally fatal to him,
or whether, as the* servants vowed, the implacable robber
shot him, we never knew. At any rate, he, too, disap-
peared, and another reigned in his stead. This was a ter-
rifying animal, bigger and yellower, without the distin-
guished ears, who at once made himself so much at home
that he at first resisted all our attempts to get into or out
117
PERSIAN MINIATURES
of the garden. We stuck to the point, however, and he
ended by grudgingly recognising our rights.
But Jimmy still stayed away as we felt convinced, in a
state of captivity. Yet when two or three months had
gone by we gave him up as gone for good. Then one of
the house-boys confided to us we suspected because his
tenure of office had become a little insecure that his
mother, while paying a call, had seen in the garden of her
hostess a white puppy. Obscure as this clew was, we could
not but follow it up. And it led to a deed of high-handed-
ness which enlightened me not a little on some of the ways
of Persia. For before we knew it we were told that the
son of the lady in whose garden a white puppy had been
seen had been captured by our retinue, and was held in the
stable at our disposal as a hostage !
There is this beauty about justice in Persia, that every-
body administers it to suit himself. There exist in Hama-
dan municipal dungeons, gendarmerie prisons, and Black
Holes of Calcutta in the Governor's palace, wherein
lie in chains the more notorious malefactors of the
province. But in general people find it simpler and
more satisfactory to attend to a private enemy them-
selves when they can catch him. No great Khan, for
instance, would dream of carrying on his aifairs without
shutting up his villagers whenever he chooses. And
sometimes he shuts up another Khan's villagers. Even
in a certain Firengi office known to me have I seen an
upper chamber reserved for the entertainment of recalci-
trant rug weavers who eat up the money advanced them
for wool and dyes. There they sit, not too uncomfortably,
nourished at the expense of the Firengi, and no doubt more
richly than they are used, until their friends produce the
118
JIMMY & CO.
money or give satisfactory bond that the rug will be com-
pleted according to contract. It is the custom of the
country, and nobody objects to it unless possibly the
weaver. And he always has the recourse of taking bast
at. one of the mosques or sacred tombs which in every
town are an asylum not to be violated even by the Shah.
So the boy whom the servants suspected of knowing too
much about Jimmy was locked up with the cow until the
Sah'b was ready for him. The Sah'b was ready for him
after dinner. Into the library the prisoner was accord-
ingly dragged, an extremely ragged and dejected looking
urchin, who was not too dejected to cast a curious eye
upon the strange contrivances whereon we perched, to say
nothing of the counterfeit presentment of Lucrezia
Crivelli. Being put through the third degree, the prisoner
first declared that he knew nothing about any puppy what-
soever. Under pressure he then admitted that he had
chanced to catch sight at Sheverin, three miles out of
town, far away from his mother's garden, a puppy. But
it was not a white puppy with black spots. It was a
yellow puppy with no spots at all. And no amount of
subtle suggestion could make him endow that puppy with
curls or give any account of its origin, history, or habits.
What the bastinado might have brought forth I do not
know. If one happens to lack the proper appliances
for beating a man on the soles of his bare feet, or if one
dislikes the commotion which that treatment usually
brings forth, one can always hire the police to do it. And
the better you tip the policeman the more stripes will he
administer. In that respect, however, we did not follow
the customs of the country. We merely threatened to,
and let our helpless victim go back to the stable with his
119
PERSIAN MINIATURES
captors. There they all spent the night sociably under
the same kursi, and the next morning the victim departed
in peace about his own unholy affairs.
We had quite given up hope of ever seeing Jimmy again
when he was brought back one day by a policeman who
flatly refused to say where he had found him. Alas, poor
Jimmy! Never have I seen a humbler little dog. Of
course he knew us. He could not have forgotten us. We
saw it in his half-averted eye. But we also saw that he
entertained no hope of forgiveness. What was most
pitiful, however, were the marks of chafing around his
neck, the wounds on his head, and the unutterable dirti-
ness of his once white coat. So we killed well, not a
fatted calf for him, since that would have transgressed the
laws of the Medes and the Persians. We let him gobble
up more chops and chicken bones than were good for him,
though, and he was nearly gobbled up in turn, out of
jealousy, by the common or garden sag who had taken the
place of his old friend the yellow cur with a needle in his
throat. And it was not long before Jimmy became as
handsome and humorous as ever, and a firm friend of
the hard-hearted watch-dog.
But did that escapade cure him of running away? Of
course not! Can Jimmy change his spots, or the Ethio-
pian his skin?
120
IX
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
The Passion Play at Ammergau, with its immense audiences,
the seriousness of its actors, the passionate emotion of its specta-
tors, brought to my mind something of which I had read an ac-
count lately; something produced, not in Bavaria or Christendom
at all, but far away in that wonderful East, from which, whatever
airs of superiority Europe may justly give itself, all our religion
has come, and where religion, of some sort or other, has still an
empire over men's feelings such as it has nowhere else.
Matthew Arnold: ESSAYS IN CRITICISM
WE HAD been in Hamadan barely a week
when, one afternoon as we went about on
a round of calls, we met a file of small
boys who did not conceal their disposition
to hoot at us. One could hardly blame them. Of all
human employments, that of disseminating pasteboards
has always seemed to me the most impossible to take
seriously. What further attracted me to the small boys,
however, was a toy flagstaff they were playing with, flying
a three-cornered green rag and tipped with a piece of tin
cut into the silhouette of an open hand. And that night
or the next as we came home from a dinner party we
passed several lighted mosque windows, wide-pointed
arches filled with white paper and crisscrossed by heavy
121
THE FLAGELLANTS
122
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
wooden bars, behind which we could hear sounds of
chanting, interrupted by curious single volleys of clapping.
"Hello!" exclaimed one of my companions. "Is it
Mobarrem already?"
It was Mobarrem already. Mohan em is the first month
of the Mohammedan year, which as everybody knows is
a lunar year and therefore walks backward through the
seasons. So don't imagine that if the first of Moharrem
fell on November 3Oth in 1913, it will continue with the
monotony of our own calendar to fall on November 3oth.
On the contrary, as it turns up eleven days or so earlier
every twelvemonth, it will not return to that part of
the year until 1946 and then will probably hit another
date.
However, even outside of Persia I had seen enough of
what Persians do in Mobarrem to look forward with vast
interest to what they might do here.
ii
The month of Mobarrem means far more to the people
of Iran than it does to their co-religionists in other coun-
tries, for reasons which I shall have to take a little time
to explain. We have heard a good deal of late of Pan-
Islamism, Holy Wars, and what not; but those who say
most about these things say very little about the fact that
the Arabs, the Turks, the Turkomans, and the Afghans
on one side, and the Persians and most of the Moham-
medan Indians, on the other, love each other about as
much as Queen Elisabeth and the Pope used to, or the
Spaniards and the Dutch. For aside from questions of
race, language, and so forth, the Mohammedan world is
divided against itself on a religious question which the
123
PERSIAN MINIATURES
Persians take much more to heart than any of their
neighbours.
When the Prophet died in 632, he left no explicit direc-
tions as to his successor in the leadership of the new
theocratic state he had founded. It had, to be sure,
been more or less vaguely understood that his mantle
would fall upon his cousin and son-in-law Ali. This
Ali, gloriously known as the Lion of God, had been after
the Prophet's first wife, Mother of the Moslems (on whom
be peace!), the Prophet's first convert. Ali had also
married the Prophet's daughter Fatma, by whom he had
two sons. These two, Hasan and Hosein, were the sole
surviving male descendants of the Prophet, who had
pronounced their father his son, his vicar, and his delegate.
And the Persians claim that during Mohammed's fare-
well pilgrimage to Mecca the archangel Gabriel appeared
to him, instructing him to proclaim Ali as his legal suc-
cessor, and that on his way back to Medina the Prophet
did so.
Be that as it may, there was enough indefmiteness with
regard to his intentions for the Arabs to elect as the first
Caliph or temporal successor of Mohammed another
member of his family, his father-in-law Abu Bekr. This
Abu Bekr otherwise Father of the Full Moon, or of
Mohammed's youngest wife Aishah was succeeded in
634 by Omar, who ten years later met a violent end; and
after him came Osman or Othman, assassinated in turn
in 656. Then only did Ali, no longer a young man, who
had hitherto been accorded merely a vague spiritual
primacy, inherit the temporal power as fourth Caliph.
In the twenty-four years since the Prophet's death, how-
ever, the new Mohammedan state had grown so rapidly
124
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
that to the parent province of Arabia had already been
added Syria, Egypt, and Persia. It was a state of im-
perial size, and the Lion of God proved not to be of the
temper of an emperor. Dissensions accordingly arose
between him and the warlike governors of Egypt and
Syria, which certain fanatics undertook to settle by stab-
bing the three of them and holding a new election. But
this praiseworthy project was successful only in the case
of Ali. He was killed in 66 1 at Kufa, a town of that
Mesopotamian region known in the Near East as Irak
Arabi. The Caliphate then passed to Ali's elder son
Hasan, who soon abdicated in favour of Moavia, gover-
nor of. Syria and founder of the Ommayad dynasty of
Damascus. Hasan retired to the holy city of Medina,
where about 669 he was poisoned by one of his numerous
wives.
When Moavia died in 680, the people of Kufa sent
word to Ali's second son Hosein, who also lived in Medina,
that they would recognise him as the new Caliph instead
of Moavia's son Yezid. Yezid, however, lost no time in
taking steps to secure his own succession. When Hosein
arrived at Kufa with his family and a small retinue the
gates were closed against him, and he was surrounded by a
vastly superior force under the command of Amr ibn
Saad, the conqueror of Egypt. Seeing himself betrayed
and hopelessly outnumbered, Hosein asked permission
of Amr to return in safety to Medina, or even to proceed
to Yezid's court at Damascus. This parley was cut
short by Obeidullah ibn Ziad, the governor of Kufa just
appointed by Yezid, who sent his lieutenant Shimr to
insist that Amr demand Hosein's unconditional surrender
or resign his command. Hosein refused to surrender.
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
In spite of the odds against him, he took up his position
on the hillock of Kerbela, above the Euphrates, and pre-
pared for battle. This was on the ninth day of Mohar-
rem y in the year of the Hegira 61, or 68 1 of our era.
History and legend are so intertwined in the story
that the forces of the Arabs from Medina are variously
reported to have been from seventy to six hundred men,
horse and foot, while those of the Syrian cavalry amounted
to four or five thousand. The chief Al Hurr, who had
first intimated to Hosein that the gates of Kufa would
not open to him, now went over to the latter with his
brother, his son, and one of his slaves. So small a rein-
forcement, however, naturally had no effect on the final
outcome. After a heroic resistance of two days, during
which the beleaguered Arabs had also to fight against
sun and thirst, Hosein alone remained alive of the men
of his party. At nightfall of the loth of Molarrem he
was shot in the mouth by an arrow, while attempting to
get water from the Euphrates. His sister Zeineb, rush-
ing out from her tent, adjured the Syrians to spare the
grandson of the Prophet. But their answer was to set the
camp on fire and to strike down Hosein under thirty-three
swords and lances. His head was then cut off by Shimr
who, according to the historian Masudi, carried the bloody
trophy to his chief Obeidullah, chanting exultingly:
"Cover me with gold and with silver to my stirrups,
For I have killed the Seid of the veiled face.
I have slain the most noble of men by his father and his mother,
The most noble when they produce titles of nobility."
The governor of Kufa sent the head, together with the
women and children of Hosein's family, to Yezid at
126
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
Damascus. And Masudi adds that the cruel Caliph
further mutilated with his staff the head of his rival, until
rebuked by an old man who said: "Often have 1 seen the
lips of the Prophet joined to those lips in a kiss."
These events are what the Persians and other Shiites,
or schismatics, commemorate during the month of Mo-
harrem. It is for them a month of mourning, during
which they wear black or otherwise display signs of grief,
and neither weddings nor other festivities take place in
those thirty days. For the Persians, however, it is not
only a religious matter. Their history is longer and more
glorious than that of the Arabs, by whom they were con-
quered during the Caliphate of Omar. Mesopotamia
was a Persian province until the second Caliph captured
Ctesiphon in 637. Four years later his army swept through
the very passes which the Turks and the Russians have
lately brought back to the notice of the world, and by
the battle of Nehavend, some fifty miles south of Hama-
dan, the last of the Sasanian kings was finally defeated
and the greater part of Persia fell into their hands. This
blow to the national pride is perhaps the chief reason why
the Persians deny the validity of the Caliphate. Not
only do they refuse to recognise the first three Caliphs
or any of the others, for that matter but they execrate
them, and Omar in particular, with a zeal which to the
Arabs and the Turks is the height of blasphemy. "O
God, curse Omar! Then Abu Bekr and Omar! Then
Osman and Omar! Then Omar! Then Omar!" is an
imprecation often and solemnly repeated by the Shiites
to the horror of all true Sunnite or orthodox Moham-
medans. The Persians also celebrate the anniversary
of the assassination of Omar (may his name be cursed!)
127
PERSIAN MINIATURES
with the greater zest because he was stabbed by a Persian
slave. And one of the ways by which they still mark that
day of rejoicing is to burn the hated Caliph in effigy.
The case is the more curious because the conquest of
Omar all but put an end to Zoroastrianism. Only in
southeastern Persia and in Bombay do there remain a
few adherents of this ancient faith. But the Persians
fiercely contend that AH and his descendants alone were
the true successors of the Prophet. The tombs of AH
and Hosein at Nejef and Kerbela, in Mesopotamia, are
to them places of pilgrimage almost if not quite as sacred
as Mecca and Medina. Other members of the holy family
are buried at Kazimein and Samarra, north of Baghdad,
while in their own country the Persians venerate at Me-
shed the tomb of the eighth of the descendants of the
Prophet, Riza. In all there were twelve of these per-
sonages, who are known as the Imams. They are re-
garded as more than mortals, whose natures were without
sin and whose bodies cast no shadow. The last one
disappeared in 873; and although a tomb of him exists at
Samarra the Persians believe that he never died, but will
reappear in the great mosque of Meshed at the Judgment
Day as the Mahdi or Guide.
Another element of nationality enters into the legend
of Hosein in that the Persians devoutly believe his wife,
Harar or Omm Leila, to have been the daughter of Yez-
digird III, the last of the Sasanians. According to Per-
sian history as set forth by Firdeusi, in the Shah Nameh,
this second national dynasty was descended from the
earlier mythical dynasty which has partially been iden-
tified with the Achaemenians of the heroic period. The
story is that the Persian princess was carried away to
128
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
Medina as a prisoner of war, where Omar (may his name
be cursed !) ordered her to be sold as a slave but AH inter-
vened and gave her to his son Hosein. And, similarly,
the Persians trace the ancestry of the Safevi dynasty,
which restored the independence of Persia in 1499, to
the seventh Imam, Musa Kazim. Thus the ceremonies
of Moharrem are, it is true, a rite of the religion which
took the place of their own more ancient one. But they
are at the same time an assertion of national pride against
the Arab conqueror and against those Turkish and Afghan
neighbours who have so often encroached on Persian soil.
Time, of course, has a way of softening religious dissen-
sions. When, however, they are so intricately entangled
with others of the sentiments that lie deepest in the heart
of man, it is not safe to count too much on the unity of
the Moslem world. At any rate, the Persians still piously
chant in Moharrem:
"The black-hearted people who slew the offspring of the
Prophet with malice:
"They claim to belong to the religion, but they murder the
lord of the religion."
in
Although it had for several days been patent that some-
thing was in the air, the first positive sign of it we had in
our own house. Then the servants, who had unaccount-
ably been going about with their clothes unbuttoned at
the throat, announced that as it was the day of the Little
Slaughter, otherwise the seventh of Moharrem, they
would be obliged to do as little work as possible. This, I
must confess, seemed no new resolution in those pictur-
129
PERSIAN MINIATURES
esque underlings, no one of whom ever gave us the im-
pression that he would die of overwork. But an inquisitive
ear could not help being caught by that name of Little
Slaughter which I believe is the anniversary of the day
when the Imam Hosein and his party were turned aside
from Kufa by the chief Al Hurr.
I afterward realised that if I had known Persian, or if
I had been an older resident of Hamadan, I might have
seen a great deal more than I did. But there was some-
thing even for the most ignorant newcomer to see on the
tenth of Mobarrem. This greatest anniversary of the
Persian year is known as the Great Slaughter. And it is
commemorated throughout the country by a species of
Passion Play which has a more familiar counterpart in the
Easter celebrations of the Greek Church, as in the dramatic
representations of Oberammergau and other parts of the
Catholic world. In Tehran and elsewhere theatres exist,
or are improvised, in which the tragedy of the Family of
the Tent, as the Persians name the heroic campers at
Kerbela, is acted out with more than historical detail.
I presume some such thing might have been found in
Hamadan, though no one of our colony had ever seen it.
One of our number, indeed, was highly scandalised that
Christians should betray any interest in proceedings so
heathenish. We did, however, see something. And in its
way it was something stranger and more picturesque than
I had ever seen before.
We saw it from the roof of a building that had been
erected for a "movie" theatre! The inner workings of
that theatre remained immovable during the whole of
my sojourn in Hamadan; but no film that has since been
exhibited there can have come up to the setting and the
130
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
scene on which we, in company with not a few of the peo-
ple of the country, looked down. Immediately below us
ran ^horizontal street, opening in front of our high gallery
into an irregular square. The right side of it was bounded
by a series of broken vaults and arches which go by the
name of Masjid-i-Shah being, some one told me, all
that is left of a mosque begun there about a hundred years
ago by Fat'h AH Shah. The mud walls of the Bazaar
enclosed the rest of the uneven amphitheatre. Behind it,
bearing rather toward the left, rose a few tiers of flat adobe
roofs, while farther away toward the right, where the river
made a hollow in the clay-coloured town, we could see in
the northwest the white glitter of the plain. There was
snow, too, on every projecting bit of roof or masonry,
contrasting vividly with the dark masses of spectators
that lined all the nearer roofs and the outer edges of the
square. This note of black and white was decoratively
repeated by groups of women who stood together on two
mounds facing the square and at two points on either side
of it, the white triangles of their veils and the white fillets
encircling their crowns cut out against the black or dark
blue of their loose domino. And there were plenty of
white turbans above dark robes to carry the impression
a little farther.
I do not mean to pretend that there was any lack of
colour on this open-air stage roofed with so intense a blue.
But what was most striking about the look of the crowd
was its general soberness of tone. There were none of the
brilliant reds and yellows which the Turks love. The pre-
vailing black and brown of the men's costumes was varied
by dull blues and greens, with only an occasional touch of
russet, buff, or salmon. All the more conspicuous, there-
PERSIAN MINIATURES
fore, was a fantastic little spangled green pavillion that
stood at the rear of the rising stage. This was supposed
to represent Damascus, or Yezid's palace therein. A
less ornamental red tent downstage at the right was at
once Kufa and the camp of the villains Amr and Shimr.
In the centre and toward the left of the stage were pitched
two smaller white tents, for the camp of Kerbela.
All this made enough to look at, in the clear Persian
sunlight, till a strange object suddenly advanced into sight
behind the ruins of the mosque. It looked like a furled
standard, horizontally striped with brilliant bands of
colour, and its tall staff was surmounted by an upright
hand of brass. According to Habib this hand commemo-
rated the mutilated one of the Imam Abu Fazl, though
Masudi says in "The Meadows of Gold" that Shimr cut
off the right hand of Hosein as well as his head. And I
believe a hand is a common symbol of the Holy Family
of Islam, whose five chief members are Mohammed,
Fatma, AH, Hasan, and Hosein. At any rate, this pic-
turesque furled standard, which is not meant to be un-
furled, being merely a sort of circular gonfalon, presently
reached the end of the street below us. It was followed
by a quantity of decorative banners on shorter staves.
Some of them were black, others were fringed and in-
scribed with Arabic letters, while two triangular oriflammes
were made to stand straight out by being fastened together
at the point. Behind the banners clattered a cavalcade
of men at arms, some in scarlet, others carrying long, slen-
der lances. And after them marched a company of men
on foot. What was most unusual about the latter was
not that they wore black, but that they were bare-headed.
For to uncover the hair in public is the last thing for a
132
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
Mohammedan to do. These beat their bare breasts in
unison, as they marched. Which instantly made me
recognise, in the irregular measured thud of right hands on
left shoulder blades, the curious sound of clapping I had
heard behind the lighted paper windows of the mosques.
This procession passed under us and took its place at
Kerbela, on the left side of the square. Next there ap-
peared a band of water carriers, each with a goatskin
slung across his back and swinging in his hand a hollow
gourd or an oblong brass bowl. The patron of this guild
is the standard bearer Abbas, the Imam's uncle, who was
killed in a desperate attempt to bring to the beleaguered
women and children at Kerbela a little water from the
Euphrates. Behind the water carriers trotted a car-
avan of travellers from Medina, on mule back. The
most notable thing about them was their luggage, con-
sisting of funny little painted trunks and the most enviable
saddlebags. They took their places immediately below
us, facing the square. And after them came more banners
and flagellants. Their leader, who bore the tall furled
and banded gonfalon, jerked it up and down in a sort of
rhythm, and the flagellants hopped in time to it, beating
their breasts and chanting "Hosein ah!" This commo-
tion so alarmed one of the mules of the caravan that he
upset his unlucky rider, together with his boxes and
saddlebags, into a sea of mud.
There was quite an interval before a larger and more
picturesque procession made its appearance. It emerged
from the Bazaar at the left, as if to emphasize its distinc-
tion from the party of Hosein, and for greater pomp it was
preceded by two lines of gendarmes. This touch had a
special savour for some of us, in that those gendarmes were
133
PERSIAN MINIATURES
the creation of our own compatriot Mr. W. M. Shuster,
ex-Treasurer-General of Persia. This more magnificent
Syrian procession flaunted several furled gonfalons of the
brass hand, and many more banners and oriflammes.
They were followed by the cavaliers and lancers of Amr
ibn Saad, and by a caravan of camels. The riders of the
latter were dressed in the Syrian cloak and scarf, while the
trappings of their beasts were far more gorgeous than
anything displayed by the humble mules from Medina.
And next appeared a most mysterious ornament or emblem
that advanced glittering above the heads of the crowd.
On top of the pole that carried it was a cross bar, and at
either end of the cross bar some little domed and pin-
nacled edifice of brass, while between them stood upright,
its point nodding forward as if by its own weight, what
might have been a sword of slenderest steel. What this
signified, if anything, no one could tell me. But I forgot
to wonder about it when I saw who edged next into sight,
bare-headed like the breast-beaters, but dressed in white
smocks, commemorating the shroud worn by Hosein at
Kerbela, that were streaked scarlet with their own blood.
They marched sideways in two long lines, the left hand of
each in the belt of his neighbour, holding in his right a
sword with which he slashed his own head. A few of those
extraordinary flagellants I had seen before, in Constanti-
nople. But there it was in an enclosed courtyard, at dusk,
among an unfriendly people. Here in the brilliant sun-
light of their own country, pressed by their friends and
neighbours, chanting so hoarsely after that mysterious
thing of brass and steel that glittered above the dark
caps of the crowd, they made an effect wilder and more
frenetic than anything I have ever seen. Many of them
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
were no more than boys. And a few of them carried
babies in their arms, whose little heads they had scratched
in one or two places to expiate the blood of the martyred
Hosein. Such wounds, the Persians say, are not as other
wounds; for the Prophet miraculously heals them. I
must add that several of the men wore white skull caps,
while others seemed to take care how far they swung their
swords. Even so, however, those white smocks were
gruesomely reddened, and for days afterward bandaged
heads walked about Hamadan.
The banners gathered in a mass of colour below us at
the right, near the red tent of Kufa. The flagellants made
for Kerbela, forming a great ring in front of Hosein's tent
at the left. The camels from Damascus ranged in front
of the mules from Medina. As for the lancers of the
conqueror of Egypt, they disappointed me by curveting
out of sight behind the ruined vaults. But they soon
reappeared upstage through an arch. So the arena was
now completely set. And I fear that many things passed
upon it which escaped our eyes. One reason was that
we were, after all, rather far away as it were among the
gallery gods. Another was that in spite of policemen
armed with whips and walking barricades made up of
two men and a long pole, the spectators incessantly en-
croached upon the stage; and what looked like a friendly
conversation between two citizens of Hamadan might really
be a proud parley between Hosein and Amr of Egypt.
Presently, however, there took place an unmistakable piece
of action, when the hosts of Syria charged those of Arabia.
I must confess that my eye was not sharp enough to detect
any casualties. But when the two armies had withdrawn
to their respective sides of the field, I suddenly discovered
135
PERSIAN MINIATURES
a lifeless body lying on the ground not far from the central
tent.
An Arab hurried out of the tent of Hosein and knelt
beside the corpse, followed by a woman who burst into
loud sobs. Who could the dead man be? Was he the
standard bearer Abbas? Was he Ali Akbar, the Imam's
son, who also lost his life in an attempt to get water from
the Euphrates? Was he the young Kasim, Hosein's
nephew, whose story is one of the most affecting incidents
in the Persian legend? Kasim was, I believe, the fifth
to volunteer for the perilous adventure of bringing water
from the river, during those two burning days under
the Mesopotamian sun. He was only sixteen years old,
and both his mother and his uncle did their best to dis-
suade him. But the matter was finally settled by the dis-
covery of a letter or will of his father, the Caliph Hasan,
prophesying for him the glory of martyrdom and directing
that he was first to marry his cousin Zobeida. The wed-
ding accordingly took place on the battlefield. But if
it took place at Masjid-i-Shah I saw nothing of it unless
a second encounter between the two troops of cavaliers
was the attack which broke up the marriage festivities
and cost the life of the young bridegroom.
At the close of this melee the Syrians held the field.
Whereupon they set on fire the central tent, which was
supposed to shelter the Imam's Persian princess, his
sister Zeineb, the young widow Zobeida, the widow of
Hasan, and other women and children. This sudden
blaze in the centre of the square, made more spectacular
by a quantity of straw concealed in the burning tent,
was the signal for a passionate outburst ot weeping from
the crowd. There had been tears and sobs before, es-
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
pecially when the corpse was left on the ground at the
end of the first brush between the lancers. But now there
arose so general a sound of grief that one could not help
being impressed. Near us sat a Persian lady who had first
been extremely scandalised by the loose way in which the
men and women of our party sat together, and who then
had shown every sign of uneasiness lest her skirts be de-
filed by those of the missionary next her the more so
as a wet Christian is far more impure than a dry one.
This evidently orthodox person was one of the first to
shed tears over the perils of the Family of the Tent. They
were real tears, because I saw them splash down her
cheeks. She was not so orthodox, I must add, but what
she lifted her thick veil in order to see what was going
on. And now not only did her tears shower anew, but
she beat her breast, tore her hair, and very nearly jerked
her veil off altogether. Even so impure an unbeliever as
myself could not help feeling touched at such evidence
that a tragedy over twelve hundred years old could still
work so powerfully upon the hearts of those who beheld
it. Then the weeping lady suddenly dried her tears and
demanded of another lady in a black domino, rather
crossly, why she didn't cry. And having received what
was no doubt a satisfactory answer, the tears began to
rain again out of her own better disciplined eyes. At
that, I must admit, I, who am naturally of a suspicious
nature, began to dart sceptical glances about me. I
remembered that at the theatre of the Passion Play in
Tehran there is a functionary known as the Auxiliary of
Tears. I went so far as to ask myself if there could be
onions in any of the innumerable handkerchiefs I saw.
But it opportunely came back to me that this was at
137
PERSIAN MINIATURES
once a religious and dramatic performance, in a land where
other dramatic performances do not exist, that I myself
had more than once nearly drowned in the tears of my
own compatriots, shed over no greater a matter, for in-
stance, than "The Music Master," and that if I chose
that moment to probe the dark subject of female lamen-
tations I would miss what was going forward in the square
of Masjid-i-Shah.
The flames of the tent were put out by the water car-
riers, who drew from their goatskins the water of the
Euphrates which Hosein and his companions had so bit-
terly lacked. In the meantime the flagellants in black
made a circle about the place of the tent, beating their
breasts more vehemently than ever, striking their heads
in despair, and showering on their heads what remained
of the half-burnt straw of the tent, as well as fresh-chopped
straw from a supply they had representing the sands of
Mesopotamia.
By the time the last scene was ready to take place the
crowd had burst all bounds, filling the amphitheatre
with an uneasy mass of dark felt caps. Through it the
flagellants in black slowly made their way, led by the
mysterious brass emblem, to the standards massed near
the red tent of Amr ibn Saad. The flagellants in white
followed them, with their flying guard of pointed ori-
flammes. Then the scarlet lancers and the Syrian camels
one of them, splendidly caparisoned, mounted by a
personage in green, and others bearing aloft the captive
women and children from Medina, with wooden triangles
about their necks performed a serpentine progress
through the crowd from Kufa to Damascus. At Ober-
ammergau, of course, there never would have been such
138
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
disorder or properties so primitive. But at Oberammer-
gau, with all its precision and solemnity, there never could
be a spectacle so picturesque. Back from Damascus
to Kufa the slow pageant wound, this time with white
biers borne on men's shoulders between the horsemen and
the camels. And so, amid the sobs and outcries of the
faithful, the players made their circuitous way into the
press of the Bazaar.
IV
How many times this confused and fragmentary ver-
sion of the Passion Play was repeated, I cannot say. I
did not happen to go back to Masjid-i-Shah until Mo-
harrem was over. But the next day I saw in the street
another procession that was a thing to remember. Every
quarter of the town corresponding to the mediaeval
parishes has its own pageant of Mobarrem, got up by
public subscription, by the generosity of one well-to-do
citizen, or even by that of citizens no more of this world.
There is consequently great rivalry between the different
processions, and their routes have to be mapped out with
care lest two of them chance to meet. In that unhappy
case, since neither will yield the right of way, the blood
of the faithful is more than likely to flow anew.
Our quarter, or the quarter nearest our extramural
suburb, is named Kolapa. What that name may mean,
I don't know. Perhaps nothing. At any rate, Habib
thought it necessary for me to inspect the cortege of
Kolapa, in preference to others farther afield. I saw it,
accordingly, in surroundings perhaps not quite so theat-
rical as the square of Masjid-i-Shah, yet characteristic
enough. These surroundings were those of a cemetery,
139
PERSIAN MINIATURES
lying on uneven ground and encircled by the mud walls
and houses of the town. A Persian cemetery is always
to be recognised by its flat, haphazard stones, without
shrub or tree for beauty. They say, alas, that cemeteries
may also be recognised by other senses than that of sight.
For in Persia no regulations exist as to the depth of graves,
and your Iranian is no man to dig deeper than he need.
Which does not prevent him from collecting the frozen
snow of winter in hollows among the graves, and storing
it in some convenient dugout between them for the
sherbets of summer. I discovered no such arrange-
ments in this particular cemetery; but the waters of a
jub, an irrigation channel, out of which no one ever
hesitates to drink, ran merrily along its lower side. On
its highest point, in suggestive proximity to the graves,
stood a gallows. At that moment no highwayman hap-
pened to be swinging from it to the regret of Habib,
who coveted for me the most characteristic impressions of
his native town.
To that end he escorted me to the roof of a public bath
encroaching upon one edge of the cemetery. No house
in Hamadan is a skyscraper; but as baths like to burrow
underground, their roofs are not too difficult to reach.
This roof we found in the possession of a company of
ladies, who looked a little doubtful at my appearance in
their midst. However, those of them who occupied the
highest point of vantage at once recognised that it was
their duty to retire in my favour. And in the face of
so evident a ruling of public opinion what could I do
but scramble up in their stead, accept a basket which a
youth handed me to sit on, and endow him with the ridic-
ulously excessive tip of some two cents.
140
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
From the fact that this youth wore nothing but one
striped towel, which he seemed to find entirely adequate
protection against the eager and the nipping air of a
winter climate of Colorado or the Engadine, I took him
for an attendant of the bath beneath us. His business
among the ladies on the roof was to turn over with his
bare feet a quantity of manure spread out there in the
sun to dry, and to regulate the unfathomable operations
of a chimney covered with an Ali Baba jar of blue glaze.
Every so often he would remove this jar, by means of
the handles conveniently encircling its neck. Between
times he held impassioned conversations with his col-
leagues below, through a hole in a dome where a glass
bull's eye had once been. Out of it escaped a lazy cloud
of steam into the clear air.
Other youths appeared from time to time, offering for
sale mysterious condiments which the ladies were more
eager to taste than I. One such dainty looked like a mess
of boiled beets, wrapped in the grandfather of all filthy
rags. Another was a species of macaroon. The favourite
was a collection of poisonous looking candies, which the
ladies fed incessantly to babies in funny little round
spangled caps. As for the babies, toward whom their
mothers otherwise exhibited undisguised affection, they
did not curl up and die. On the contrary, they crowed
and waved their arms and legs, quite like the most scien-
tifically brought up babies in the world, and tried to jump
off the roof of the bath in order to join their papas on the
opposite side of the street. These gentlemen sat com-
fortably on their heels in the sun, engaged in the pleasures
of The Chase or smoking thick straight pipes, and no
doubt exchanging scandalous opinions with regard to
141
PERSIAN MINIATURES
the not too rigorously veiled beauties perched on the
roof of the bath. I had heard terrible stories of the
fanaticism of the Persians during Moharrem, and had in
fact been rather struck by their unwillingness to allow
me to see the inside of a bath or a mosque. Conse-
quently it pleased me not a little to discover these good
Hamadanis so human and friendly, and so disposed to
let both me and my camera into what had the air of being
a large family party.
The procession, when at last it appeared, was very
much like the processions of Masjid-i-Shah. This time,
however, I enjoyed the advantage of seeing it very much
nearer at hand, if in a less picturesque perspective. And
it contained several new and interesting features. The
first sign of it was one of those files of small boys carrying
a little banner and a hand, beating their breasts and
chanting shrilly the names of the martyred Imams. Be-
hind them rose a sound of deeper voices, intermingled
with a barbaric blare of brass. Then from the narrow
street debouching upon the cemetery emerged two long
lines of Mr. Shuster's gendarmes and thirty-two pairs of
horses. Some were mounted, others were led by grooms;
and the high saddles of the latter were covered with hand-
some stuffs and embroideries. One fine stallion a mare,
for that matter, is rarely seen on the streets in Persia,
and a gelding almost never was caparisoned in black,
being the charger of Hosein. Next came the three kinds
of banners we had seen the day before. The staves of a
few were tipped by the symbolic hand of the Holy Family,
those of most ending in a spherical gilt cone. There fol-
lowed the more enigmatic metal emblem at the head of
the flagellants. As borne by the men of Kolapa this dis-
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THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
played no little brass temples, but two thin steel blades
lower than the one in the centre, all three of them being
mounted on flat pear-shaped bases of steel which were
chased with Arabic lettering; and from the bar supporting
them hung a quantity of shawls and embroideries of price.
With regard to this wonderful emblem Habib gave me to
understand something about Ali's famous sword of Zul-
fikar, saying something also about Mohammed and Ho-
sein. But between my lack of tongues and Habib's lack
of letters, I do not pretend to explain the true symbolism
of those nodding swords, whose points were weighted
with tassels.
What came next was an object I had not seen before.
It was a staff swathed in white gauze and white wax
flowers, on top of which were three curved metal prongs
sustaining three small winged and crowned cherubs.
After them marched an assembly of Seids, descendants
of the Prophet, rhythmically striking their green turbans.
Then followed two companies of flagellants, chanting a
wild antiphone out of which I could distinguish only the
names of the Imams. There were no men in white this
time. All were in black, beating their breasts and throw-
ing handfuls of chopped straw over their bare heads.
Many of them, however, despite the keen December air,
were stripped to the waist. And they gave me an ex-
cellent opportunity to study the secrets of a Persian coif-
fure. I had noticed how seldom any hair was visible on
a forehead that wore a kola, and how often the wearers of
that tall felt cap affected the shaven neck which is not
unknown in our own part of the world. I now discovered
that most of them had shaved a wide strip all the way
from their foreheads to their necks, leaving only the long
PERSIAN MINIATURES
fc
side locks which are the pride of a Persian dandy. Others
exhibited a wide half moon of naked skin, sweeping
around the temples and the crown, or a great cowl that
left nothing of their hair but a fringe like a Japanese
doll's; while the heads of a few were shorn completely
bare.
The second part of the procession was led by a band of
buglers and trumpeters, whose copper trumpets were
longer than any trombone I ever saw in the triumphal
march of "Aida." And what sounds burst from them!
There followed a squadron of lancers, and a small boy in
green on a horse with black trappings. This small boy
impersonated, according to my companion, the young
Imam AH Asghar, who was taken captive to Damascus.
And behind him were borne, on two ornamental biers,
the head and the headless trunk of the martyred Hosein.
At sight of these amazingly cadaverous relics, which
seemed to be made of wax or papier mache, the spectators
fell into their wildest tears and sobs.
So many features of the rest of this part of the pageant
were new to me'that I cannot be quite sure of their order.
But I saw a white box of some kind, surmounted by an
image of the dove that flew from Kerbela to Medina to
tell the Prophet in his tomb of his grandson's tragic end.
There was also a live white dove, perched on a white
litter which was supposed to contain the young widow
Zobeida. The Imam's daughter was impersonated by a
small boy whose sobs excited the liveliest sympathy.
So did the sight of several other litters, bearing away to
slavery in Damascus the unhappy Zeineb and other
women and children of the Family of the Tent. In me,
however, the emotion they chiefly excited was the baser
144
ZOBEIDA'S LITTER
145
PERSIAN MINIATURES^
one of covetousness, at the spectacle of the shawls, rugs,
and figured stuffs that protected the travellers from the
sun.
Behind the palanquins of the Holy Family appeared a
series of quaint floats, which were generally no more than
slabs of wood carried on the heads of one or two men.
One of the first of them supported a rocking cradle, per-
haps that of the child killed in Hosein's arms. On an-
other stood a small lion, cousin, german to the friend of
Androcles, who befriended the defenders of Kerbela.
He bent over a wounded Arab and attempted in none too
leonine a manner to pull an arrow out of his breast.
The greater number of the objects thus borne past were
more gruesome, being the mutilated members of the
lesser martyrs. A pair of legs would be represented by a
pair of big Russian boots, lying heel to heel. Other
more realistic human parts would miraculously twitch
as you watched them in response, I discovered, to the
jerking of a secret string. But once in a while the move-
ment of an eyelid or of a lip betrayed the fact that the
corpse was a boy with part of his body concealed. And
in front of many of the dismembered trunks a head was
borne on a pike too small to look very lifelike, but from
the necks of which drops of some sanguine liquid dripped
on the heads and hands of those carrying the pikes.
Among the floats, one that interested me not least
though perhaps it was intended to represent an open litter
of the kind you see on Persian journeys contained, if
you please, two youths dressed as Europeans. One of
them, in a helmet and a Norfolk jacket which must once
have come out of some cupboard in our colony, held a
small spyglass with which he would intently search the
146
THE GREAT SLAUGHTER
horizon, every now and then clapping his hand to his head
in a far from European manner. The other, in whom it
required some imagination to see a woman, was spectacled
like a missionary of the old school; and he held a brass
barber's bowl, deeply nicked on one side, in which lay
one of those small bleeding heads. The legend of these
Europeans has many variations. The one I heard in
Hamadan was that the wicked Caliph Yezid ordered the
Dutch ambassador at his court a Dutch ambassador, at
Damascus, in 68 1! to cut off Hosein's head. This the
ambassador refused to do, and thereupon embraced the
true faith as professed by the Shiites. When this scene
is acted out at Masjid-i-Shah, the Europeans are dressed
after their conversion in Oriental robes and borne off in
high splendour. Another version has it that the Firengi
ambassador tried to obtain terms for the Family of
the Tent, and failing in his pious mission renounced his
own faith. Still another represents a Firengi young wo-
man as travelling, in the notorious manner of Firengi
young women, over the plains of Irak Arabi, and arriving
at Kerbela the night after the fatal battle. When she
prepares to camp on the sacred ground, blood oozes out
of the sand at every attempt of her servants to drive in a
tent peg ; and she finally goes to bed in Damascus. During
the night Christ appears to her in a dream, telling her the
tragic story of the hillock on which she tried to pitch
her tent and revealing to her a vision of the battlefield,
where a Beduin robber is prowling. The marauder is
frightened away by the voice of Hosein, declaring from
his tomb that there is no God but God. The tomb, over
which doves are fluttering, is further guarded from dese-
cration by a company consisting of Christ, Mohammed,
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
Moses, prophets, angels, and other holy persons. And
the fair infidel is so moved that on waking up she at once
announces her belief in Islam. But all these stories
agree in the essential fact that even a dog of a Christian
is more humane and accessible to the claims of the truth
than the hated Syrian Caliph. A counterpart of this
fact is the old proclamation of the conquering Sultans of
Stambul that the death of one Shiite was more agreeable
to God than that of seventy Christians. Which are
matters to remember in discussing Holy Wars and the
spread of Pan-Islamism.
I have not mentioned the grave diggers who followed
the corpses of the slain, carrying on their shoulders their
pointed spades with a crossbar for the foot of the digger.
More moving to the spectators was the train of captives
near the end of the procession. Some of them were on
mule back, and bloody knives pierced their heads and
their bodies in the most startling fashion. Several of
these wounded prisoners were urchins of no more than
eight or ten, whose pallor and faintness were so well
simulated that a louder chorus of sobs accompanied them
up the street. Others marched afoot, with wooden yokes
of slavery around their necks; and mounted lancers in
helmets and scarlet coats drove them from behind with
whips. Once in a while a flick of the lash would be too
much like the real thing, drawing from the victim a yell
of the most unfeigned. The arch-villain of the piece,
though whether Amr or Shimr I cannot say, surveyed his
bondmen haughtily from the rear, riding in gorgeous
Syrian robes between two files of liveried attendants and
greeted by the groans and derision of the populace.
And last of all, loaded with saddlebags and those funny
148
149
PERSIAN MINIATURES
little painted boxes, ambled the mules of the humbler
travellers, who were not too overcome by the prospect
of the miseries that awaited them at the hands of Yezid
(may his name be cursed!) to exchange the liveliest
salutations with their friends along the way.
For three days the pageants of the Great Slaughter
continued to fill the streets with clamour and colour and
weeping. What I saw as I strolled about the town was
too much like what I had already seen to bear retelling.
The same picture was repeated innumerable times in
every conceivable setting though always against the
same background of tawny walls, with the same strange-
ness of gonfalon and oriflamme and nodding emblematic
blades, of lances and copper trumpets, of black and scar-
let, and swaying palanquins. One such picture comes
back to me the most vividly because it was set on the
pointed stone arch of a bridge across the river. One of
the horses in the procession wore on his bridle a fantastic
rufT of white peacocks' feathers, rising above the head of
the rider. And somewhere behind him a boy kneeled
on one of the floats two men were carrying, his uplifted
hands silhouetted against the sky like the symbol of a
nation's faith and pride.
That night the servants told us that there would be no
more pageants in the streets. The Governor had for-
bidden them. Was it, I wondered, because a custom
reminiscent of Pilate and Barabbas permits these passion-
players to demand of him the release of any prisoner they
choose to name?
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OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES
Un salon de huit ou on$e personnes aimdbles, ou la conver-
sation est gate, anecdotique, et ou Von prend un punch leger a
minuit et demi, est I'endroit du monde ou je me trouve le mieux.
Henri Beyle: ARMANCE
/ said, "I am out hunting friends," and they told me, with a
kind of eager gravity, " You will find them . . "
Jean Kenyon Mackenzie: BLACK SHEEP
AO do you fancy that because we lodge in mud
houses and live four hundred, five hundred, I
don't know how many hundred miles from a
railroad, we have neither forms nor refinements?
O la! la! But I came so near making the same mistake
myself that when, from one moment to another, I packed
my trunk for Persia, the last thing it occurred to me to
put into it was a supply of visiting cards. Only by good
luck did I happen to think of a dinner jacket. What,
then, was my stupefaction in Hamadan to find myself
launched before I knew it upon a torrent of tea, nibbling
through mountains of dinners, and trotting about from
door to door with as much zeal as would have done credit
to the most sedulous man about town.
This phenomenon is perhaps to be interpreted in the
light of strange tales a member of a certain Arctic expedi-
PERSIAN MINIATURES
r-
tion used to tell me, about the relations that existed be-
tween different explorers after they had glared at each
other a year or two across the same igloo. Our igloos,
I hasten to add, are rather more commodious, and there
are enough of them to afford us an occasional change of
air. Still, for people brought up to go to the theatre,
to listen to music, to visit museums and libraries, to
lounge in clubs, and to read newspapers, Ecbatana,
agreeable as it is, is after all a little barer of resources than
some capitals. There is a post, to be sure; but it arrives
only twice a week when it doesn't happen to be held up
by storms in the Caspian or snow in the passes and our
mail is anywhere from two weeks to two months old by
the time we get it. So when we have answered our
letters, balanced our accounts, beaten our servants, and
otherwise dealt with the estate to which it hath pleased
God to call us, what else have we to do, besides exercising
our legs and our horses and playing at bowls with our
Swiss friends, but to entertain or be entertained by each
other? And how should we do it otherwise than as we
used to do it at home?
It is curious, though, how an old matter will renew it-
self in an unfamiliar setting, and how a man will never
tire of a game he has played all his life, simply because he
cannot live long enough to exhaust its possibilities. The
most hardened diner out, for instance, could hardly fail
to be amused by a dinner party whose exact time could
not be set. That is one charm of our dinner parties.
For while Hamadan recognises the existence of noon,
Hamadan sets its own watch by the variable hour of
sunset which also marks the boundary between date
and date. Our unbelieving clocks therefore go their own
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gait with the most refreshing independence, save for
rare corrections by a not too accessible missionary sun-
dial. And a guest who arrives at dinner in time for
the coffee can always invoke the slowness of his watch;
while those of the more moral sort make a practice of
comparing time-pieces beforehand, in order not to
appear on the scene of action an hour too early or too
late!
There are other ways in which going out to dinner in
Hamadan is given a flavour of its own. In front of us
marches Habib, and perhaps Mehm'd Ali, too, bearing a
lily. A lily? A lily though not the same kind as the
immortal one borne by Mr. Gilbert's pure young man in
his mediaeval hand. This lily or lately which means
the same thing guides our patent-leathered feet past the
pitfalls of Hamadan, being a candle stuck into a tin tube,
with a small glass globe at the top to protect the flame
from the winds of Elvend. By the light of it we make our
way through dark and muddy streets to a sublime porte
recessed in a semicircle of decorative plaster panels.
At one end of this recess is a Loggia del Lan^i, tenanted
not by Benvenuto Cellinis but by a dozing beggar or
two, who do not fail to profit by the time it takes that
low wooden door to open. It is studded, the door, with
spikes, bosses, knockers, locks, clamps, and hinges of
brass which answer the flicker of the lily while Habib
pounds, shouting "Mesh'di Hasan! Ker' Hasan! Hajji
Hasan!" in a climax of honorific titles that are long in
producing their effect. At last Hasan lets us into a
vaulted brick octagon, with a door or a niche in each face
of it. Whether Hasan be Meshedi or Kerbelai or Hajji,
however, we shall never know, for he suddenly disappears.
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
We, therefore, not knowing which way to turn, naturally
turn to the right and come out into a court with a pool
in the middle and a house at the farther end, where a
woman clutching her veil in one hand and a laleb in the
other waves us wildly away. Heavens! An anderun
or as you might understand better, a harem. "It is
better to dwell in a corner of the housetop than with a
brawling woman in a wide house !" We flee precipitately
in the opposite direction, blundering this time into another
court, without a pool but with two more houses at either
end of it. Wrong again, we learn, after more knocking
and shouting. By this time Hasan has found the house-
boy he went to look for, and we are led out of the octagon
by a third door, through a low brick tunnel, into a cloister
that is worth travelling five hundred miles from a railroad
to see, encircled as it is by pillars of the inimitable Per-
sian slimness, with stalactite capitals, set between a nar-
row ambulatory and a black pool. Our candles flicker
the length of it, past a swimming star or two, to another
crooked little passage of mystery that finally emerges into
the biggest court of all, with a high talar at each end and
another enormous pool between them. Up a steep flight
of brick steps we climb, across a talar, through a huge
room as cold as an iceberg, and on into a cosy little one
where faggots snap in a stucco fireplace.
"Better is a dinner of herbs, where love is, than a
stalled ox and hatred therewith." But best is a dinner
of pilau, and gossip therewith, on leaving which you
stumble in the hall over a kursi with a circle of black hats
sticking out from under it. Why this unusual ornament
in a front hall? Because a few nights ago a thief either
broke in or was let into the place, and, being discovered,
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got lost like ourselves in the maze of courts and passages
and so was caught. He turned out to be a one-handed
man, which means that he was an old offender: the penalty
of being light-fingered in Persia is to be relieved of the
unruly member. The poor wretch is now in a fair way
to lose his other hand as well. For he sits in a certain
apartment at the Governor's, designed for such as he,
where he is alternately cross-questioned and bastinadoed.
Whence the protecting black hats, asleep around a kursi
in the hall.
As for us, we are more than likely to have no protecting
black hats about us on our journey home especially
when Madam Moon is a-sail in her Persian sky. This,
alas, is a thing to cause shakings of the head. If we were
Persians, and didn't happen to know the password of the
night, it might be a thing to land us at the Governor's,
too. Being merely Firengis, and therefore irresponsible
in our acts, the watchmen we meet say nothing. The
miniature brooks in the silent streets say more, gurgling
gaily in the moonlight. Most of all say the dogs, on
whose account it is well to carry a stout stick. But one
night a watchman detached himself from his squad, tak-
ing pity on our defenceless condition, and saw us cour-
teously home. And when we reached our own gate, not a
stivver could one of us produce to tip our protector withal.
He, still courteous, stalked away without a word, though
perhaps not without his opinion of beings so strange as
to have neither dignity nor money.
Few of the dinners to which we go can boast quite this
setting of romance. One of the first to which I was
bidden, indeed, took place on Thanksgiving Day, in
such company and amid such surroundings of my own
155
PERSIAN MINIATURES
country that had it not been for the person who passed
the turkey and the cranberry sauce, a stocking-footed
individual magnificent in white trousers and a long-
tailed brass-buttoned coat which looked as if it might
have been cut out of my grandmother's "Cashmere"
shawl, I never would have known that some of my fellow
diners counted their absence from America not by years
but by decades. If they treated me the more kindly
because my grandfather, who was one of the first Amer-
icans to set foot in Persia, cleared the way for them nearly
a hundred years ago, they did not cast me off when they
discovered me to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. So do not
expect me to make copy out of them beyond saying
that they taught me how friendly and human a missionary
may be.
The house to which we go oftenest of all has least in it
to remind us where we are. It does, to be sure, remind us
of the cousinship between Persia and India, being built
on the lines of an Indian bungalow, with wide verandas
running the whole length of it in front and behind; and
black hats bring in the tea or serve the dinner. But once
they are gone the drawing room is a piece of England,
down to the very coals on the hearth and the carpet on
the floor in this country whose rugs are in demand the
world over! It is a perfect example of the steadfastness
with which the Englishman sticks to his own. And we
are sure to find there the modern descendant of that fam-
ous old British type of the gentleman adventurer, who
likes a bit of a lark and the sight of strange suns, who
rides, shoots, plays tennis and tent-pegging, and other-
wise comports himsel in a manner which no Persian
and no German can understand, any more than they
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will ever understand how such men have come to inherit
so goodly a portion of the earth.
What might cause the German in particular to throw
up his hands is the music to be heard there after dinner.
Do you sing or play? Never mind: in that hospitable
drawing room you have to, just as at Mr. Britling's every-
body had to try their hand at hockey. And not many of
us can acquit ourselves so creditably as the master of the
house, as one of the lady missionaries, or as that visitor
from afar who entranced us one night with his estudiantina
songs of Smyrna, accompanying himself on his lute. But
it is gay, it is human, it is homey. And afterward we
dance. We dance on that English carpet! And as the
society of gentleman adventurers inevitably has a strong
masculine tinge, the men can often get no better partners
than each other. Nor do we fox-trot and I don't know
what. We dance the good old-fashioned waltz not,
mind you, that hybrid two-step in waltz time which in
my generation was the thing in America. An occasional
concession to America is a true two-step; and I have seen
there a hesitating one-step and a perfectly unhesitating
Highland Fling. At any rate, we caper, on that magic
carpet flown from England to Persia, till unheard of hours
in the morning, while black hats peer in from the veranda
and ask themselves what extraordinary, if not immoral,
things the Firengis can be up to.
There is another and more essential savour of our so-
ciety, to be tasted in the houses of us all. I happen to
have seen a few foreign colonies in my day, but Hamadan is
another pair of sleeves. For we are neither people of
leisure living in Persia for the enrichment of aesthetic
souls or the easing of depleted pocket books, nor are we
'57
PERSIAN MINIATURES
hewers of wood and drawers of water for a plutocratic
ruling caste. On the contrary, we rather give ourselves
the airs of a ruling caste, albeit most of us are merchants
or missionaries. These, I take it, are the most populous
estates in Persia, though the Service and the Bank take
precedence of them at dinner. In Hamadan the Service
is very thinly represented by one consul, a Turk, and
two bachelor vice consuls, an Englishman and a Russian.
Upon the Bank, therefore, falls the social primacy among
us, the manager of it being known to all mankind as the
Reis, the Chief. That other Persian estate, the Tele-
graph, is foreign to us, since we are off the main line of
the Anglo-Indian wire. To make up for it we have
the Gendarmerie, the Customs, the Road, and the
Alliance the Alliance Israelite Universelle, of which
more anon.
Now you have here the ingredients of a sufficient diver-
sity. And this diversity is further variegated by the
number of flags we fly. Among us I take pains to follow
the alphabet! are Americans, hyphenate Armenians,
Belgians, a Bulgarian, Englishmen, Frenchmen, a Ger-
man or two, Greeks, Russians, a Swede, Swiss, and Turks.
What draws out, however, the true flavour of this peacock
pie is that no one element is large enough to suffice to
itself. So whether I will or no, I, who am in theory an
enraged enemy of cosmopolitanism, see every day some
such contrast of race or of worldly estate as delights my
secret heart better than all else in life. What, for ex-
ample, can be a more touching example of the lion lying
down with the lamb than to behold an elderly missionary
from rural America pour a cup of tea for a handsome
young Frenchman very much awake, as they say in
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his country or a Russian officer kiss the hand of a Jewess
who came to Ecbatana from Babylon by way of the
Quartier Latin ? Yet I notice that our gatherings
and some of them collect almost all of us under one roof
deficient as they incline to be on the distaff side, do not
seem to include certain fairer members of our circle.
One is a young Frenchwoman, governess in the family of
the Turkish consul, whose mots are in constant circulation
amongst us but not her visiting cards. Can it be that
we are snobbish about Mile. Celestine? I did not have
time to find out, for she deserted us in company with a
Greek rug man. Then there is the mysterious being who
keeps house for the Russian roadmaster, by some reported
to be a countess, by others a cook: why do I never meet
her at dinner? And I shall always bitterly regret that
inopportune flight of a fellow-countrywoman of my own,
whose fantastic legend made her out at once a queen of
the music hall and consort of a Persian Khan. Ventur-
ing hither to inspect his ancestral estates, she became for a
moment the bright particular star of our society and the
confidante of the missionary ladies. But, alas, she was
so cruel as to vanish no more than a few weeks before my
arrival.
Gossip, my masters? But characters, too, and situa-
tions, and settings, and ready-made plots! Some of
them are Jane Austen and Henry James. Others are
Kipling or Conrad. A few are Arabian Nights. Not
for these chaste pages are they, therefore. And, for the
rest, most of them concern people whose bread one has
eaten, and so, however they may provoke the itching
hand to clap them between covers, must be permitted to
walk their romantic ways at large.
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
ii
Where three people live within thirty-three miles of
each other, two of them are sure to form a clique. This
is the law of life, and I shall not be foolish enough to cry
out against it. I am rather sorry, though, that we see so
little of the Russians. My first impulse is to make friends
with a Russian. But Half a dozen buts. Distance
is one. None of them happen to live very near us. Lan-
guage is another That blessed Anglo-Russian Agree-
ment of 1907 is a third, by virtue of which Englishmen
and Russians in Persia are generally at swords' points
or were, under the old regime. Then mysterious coun-
tess-cooks do not fit into the Anglo-Saxon scheme of
things. And the vice-consul, who is also official head of
the bank: it is remembered of him that he was once porter
of the Russian bank in Meshed, in a muzhik's smock.
And he studies French with Mile. Celestine. That Mile.
Celestine somehow casts an unfortunate air around the
Russian vice-consulate. Nothings, nothings, which added
together contrive to make a something.
I, of course, am not frightened by Mile. Celestine, or
by a countess-cook, or even by a banker vice-consul
who has been a muzhik. On the contrary, they look to
me like uncommonly good copy to use a gross profes-
sional term and I am dying to call on them. But what
to do if I am the guest of the British half of the Agree-
ment of 1907, whose face I cannot blacken? Again
nothings, which added together make a something!
Nevertheless, accident brought it about not only that
I should meet Mile. Celestine, but that I should dine at
the Russian vice-consulate And O dear how I contrived
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to blacken my own face, if not that of my entire race!
It came about in this wise. The initiated had told me
that no matter at what hour you were invited to dine at
the Russian vice-consulate, dinner ^ was never served
before eleven. Now it happened that on the appointed
evening Hamadan produced one of her rarest miracles.
It rained. It rained so furiously, and I had so far to
walk through swimming and unfamiliar streets, that I
thought myself perfectly safe in starting about nine.
And I found my host at his dessert. I attempted lame
apologies by saying that I had lost my way. My host
was good enough to apologise in turn for his promptness,
informing me that as it was neither Wednesday nor
Saturday he was free of the courrier de Petersbourg. " I
have so much to do, my God!" he cried, clapping his
hands. "I have so much to do!" He must, poor
wretch, what with his vice-consulate and his bank and his
French lessons. But he was simple and friendly, as a
Russian knows how to be to a stranger, and he kept filling
up the glasses around my plate so fast and so indiscrimi-
nately, with vodka, beer, champagne, and liqueurs, that
I had to be careful what I did with them.
What troubled me most about this accident was that
another guest was the new commander of the Persian
Cossacks a grave and handsome officer who quite evi-
dently had never been a mu$ik. He further upset my
calculations by drinking only wine, and next to none of
that; and very quizzically did he look at the two of
us. At first he had very little to say, saying it in a French
which filled me with envy. He told me that his superiors
had not quite made up their minds whether to choose
Hamadan or Kermanshah for a post of Cossacks. He
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
hoped Hamadan, because it is higher and cooler. He
was a man of the mountains himself, from Tiflis. And
he said his wife was German. I have often thought about
them since. In the meantime, he said, he had been look-
ing for a house to live in, and had taken on trial the
roomy mansion of a Hamadani with twenty wives eight
of whom, to be sure, lived in other places than Hamadan.
It seems there is a highly popular and perfectly lawful
institution in this country whereby in addition to the
four legal consorts approved by the Koran, a man may
have temporary wives to any number!
Among other interesting things the Colonel told us
that there had been a good deal of talk in the Russian
papers of late about a certain mysterious traveller in
Persia, of whom I had already heard. I had heard about
him because he owned one of the few automobiles in the
country. What I had not heard about him was that,
having a French name and a Brazilian passport, he was
supposed to be a German and a secret agent. At any
rate, he seemed to make most of his journeys in that part
of Persia which adjoins the Baghdad trail, and the Rus-
sian papers reported that he had been buying land, or
lending money to landowners, in the region of Isfahan
presumably to establish "interests" for the Germans
against the day when the question of the Persian branch
of the Baghdad railway should come up. The Czar
and the Kaiser, the Colonel reminded me, had an inter-
view about that matter at Potsdam in 1910. In pursu-
ance of the understanding at which they arrived the Rus-
sians were to have according to one account five years,
according to another ten, in which to build a line from the
north to Khanikin. And if they didn't do it within the
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time agreed upon, the coast was to be clear for the Ger-
mans.
We afterward saw a good deal of the Colonel and his
German wife. She, at least, fitted into the Anglo-Saxon
scheme of things! So, more or less, did the wife of the
banker vice-consul's assistant. The latter has a French
name, too, he speaks excellent English, and they say he is
of German extraction. Who knows? In those simple
days one didn't pay much attention to such things. He
is at all events suave, and more worldly wise than his
chief, over whom he seems to exert a subtle authority.
Even in those simple days, however, I used to wonder if
this was another example of the case of which Mr. Shuster
had a taste, whereby under the old regime there was so
often a double authority in Russian affairs, the power be-
hind the throne sometimes being stronger than the throne
itself. But being myself nothing but a humble noter of
the appearances of this world, I took quite as much
interest in another member of the Russian colony whom
I encountered behind a samovar. I first tried him in
English and French, and nothing happened Then, if
you please, he tried me in Turkish. And through that dark
medium it came out that he was a Bulgarian, whom a
fantastic destiny had landed in a Russian bank in Persia !
Some of the visitors who help to keep life in Hamadan
from becoming monotonous are Russians, and not the
least amusing. One of them might have been the hero of
a famous Russian story. He was a son of papa from
Petersburg, who came to inspect the bank. He spent
two or three months in our midst, during which time he
put his nose into his bank for two half hours. In like
manner did he pass a year and a half in Persia, at twenty-
PERSIAN MINIATURES
five roubles a day; but he went home woefully in debt.
He was delightful, and an indefatigable bridge player.
No less delightful, though rather more responsible as an
inspector, was a dazzling young man who came to make
reports on Russian commerce. I remember hearing him
say one night after dinner that his people had decided
not to build that railway to Khanikin. Why should they?
It would only favour competition against themselves.
If the Germans chose to, let them. As for the English,
he had been astounded to find out that their famous oil
concession extended right up to the frontier of the Cau-
casus, where there is plenty of oil as yet untapped. Very
clever of them; but very disagreeable for Baku. But
those English, luckily, are so unenterprising! They were
enterprising enough, though, he added, to have suggested a
revision of the Agreement of 1907. He thought it might
be a good idea.
All this was said in an English house, with that discon-
certing frankness of which a Russian has the secret. I,
however, being of an incurable light-mindedness, was
even more enchanted by his vignettes of the characters a
traveller will encounter. He told us, in his fluent but not
perfectly idiomatic English, about a lady who had been
unfortunate in husbands. One fell out of a window,
another got himself shot in the Caucasus, something else
happened to the third. And then she had found it in her
to marry an aviator. "But what a carelessness!" he
cried. "They perish!"
in
It is a sample of those curious strata of ignorance that
darken the mind of man that I could have lived so many
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years in the same world with the Alliance Universelle
Israelite or is it the Alliance Israelite Universelle ?
without hearing anything about it. In Hamadan, how-
ever, I heard about it very soon. And I gave myself
the pleasure of going with the Sah'b and the Khanum to
call on it.
Having done so, I cannot boast that I made the most
of my opportunities. All I can say is that the late
Baron Hirsch of Vienna had something to do with found-
ing the Alliance, that its headquarters are in Paris, that
it maintains excellent schools for the Jews in many parts
of Asia and Africa, and that it has maintained one in
humble Hamadan since 1900. Whence it is that mir^as
may be picked up here who speak a very fair French. The
school is carried on entirely in that language. There are
two schools, really, one for girls and one for boys. They
stand in the same enclosure in the heart of the city, though
in a northwestern quarter of it with which I never became
very familiar. The gateway let us into a big trim court,
set about with buildings quite the most imposing and the
most European-looking in Hamadan. Over the portico
of one were emblazoned in Latin letters the names of
Baron Hirsch and other philanthropists of his race. And
the one where the resident teachers live has more of a
Latin than a Persian look, with its long pillared porch.
The director and his wife received us in a drawing
room not so different from one of ours, though rather
chillier They are evidently of the Chosen People,
longer-nosed, quicker-witted, speaking infinitely better
French than we. Monsieur was born in Constantinople,
has lived long in Paris, and enjoys more than a bowing
acquaintance with Egypt and Algiers. Madame is a
PERSIAN MINIATURES
small, plump, prolific person, disconcertingly cross-eyed,
who administers advice and rebuke to her numerous
progeny while allowing none of the conversation to escape
her. We have the more in common because the Khanum
has been good enough to help out the missionary school
during an absence of a member of the staff. Some one
puts the case upon the plane of humour by saying that
the Khanum has become a rival of the ladies of the Alli-
ance. "But no!" objects Monsieur amiably. "You do
good and we do good. In good there is no rivalry."
He confesses that Persia makes him regret northern Africa
a little. Pursuing comparisons, he tells us that in Algiers
the French have effaced the Arab, whereas in Egypt one
still feels him. The Sah'b, nevertheless, is a little dis-
illusioned to hear that for all that his fellow countrymen
are not absolutely adored by the natives of the Nile!
There are four foreign assistants in the school two
young men and two young women. The latter, who
hail from Syria, wear sunbonnets and black aprons. They
are very gay, very coy, very given to the sidelong glance
and to the confidential whisper. Why not, when upon
them devolves so much of the responsibility of representing
the sex in Hamadan? But there is no shadow of doubt
that they could show us all their heels in arithmetic,
geography, or any other branch of human science. The
young men are more Oriental in appearance, being slight,
dark, unfathomably eyed, yet of a vivacity that reminds
me of Salonica quay. One of them, who is a native of
Tangier, mourns the lost glories of Cairo. Even after
Paris, he tells us, Cairo did not disenchant him. As for
the other, he sings the praises of Baghdad. At least there
is life there, he says. There are carriages in the streets,
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there are boats on the Tigris, there are will you believe
it? cinematographs to amuse one at night. Whereas
Hamadan, with its movies that do not move, its tea
houses that are not cafes, its evening silence as of the
grave O God !
Nevertheless, they are willing to bury themselves alive
in a hole like this. And I had always been simple enough
to suppose that missionaries were a Christian invention!
Yet I seem to make out that these doers of good might not
be regarded as among the most orthodox of Israel. They
do not take Esther and Mordecai too seriously, or Tobias
and the Angel. Did you know that Hamadan is the
scene of a good part of that story, and that Tobias was
buried here, too? I did not until I heard it at the Alliance.
I also seem to make out, though, that our hosts have a
sense of and a pride in the antiquity of their race, living
here where Jews have lived since the time of Sargon, king
of Assyria, where Darius the Great discovered and put
into effect the decree of Cyrus with regard to the rebuild-
ing of the temple at Jerusalem, where in the twelfth
century the famous traveller Benjamin of Tudela found
fifty thousand of his own people. There are not many
more than a tenth of that number now, an astounding
proportion of whom speak French nearly as well as
they do Persian.
But I don't know we somehow see very little of
these intelligent and amusing members of the Alliance.
Nothings again that make a something distance, lan-
guage, work. Once or twice, though, I was on the edge of
telling one of them why we are all a little afraid of them.
For when they pay calls they do it in a solid phalanx
Monsieur, Madame, the two young ladies in sunbonnets,
167
PERSIAN MINIATURES
the two dark young gentlemen. And they all shout at
the tops of their voices.
IV
The saints and the poets lament or boast of being in
the world but not of it. I, being neither poet nor saint,
find that Hamadan gives me the same sensation. And
I know not whether to lament or to boast. In the mean-
time I speculate, admiring how East is East and West is
West and how seldom the twain do meet. In theory I
regret it. In practise I incline on the whole to approve
that instinct which makes us distrust or even dislike a
"foreigner/' A man, generally, must be one thing or
another; and the more clearly he is one thing or the other,
the more does he usually amount to in this unintelligible
world. A Richard Burton, a Lafcadio Hearn, an Armin-
ius Vambery, can contrive to be one thing and another;
but most of us degenerate into nothing better than spies
or tramps if we attempt it. Or in the end we get swal-
lowed up by what we too intimately explore. So I be-
lieve that there is something human and natural, some-
thing not altogether shameful, at the root of such delicate
matters as antisemitism, say, or the relations between
Japan and America. I do not dislike a man because he is
a Jew or a Japanese. I like or dislike Jews and Japanese
on the same grounds that I like or dislike other people;
and so, I fancy, is it with nearly everybody else. But
not many people feel their hearts drawn out toward men
who look too different from themselves, or have too dif-
ferent manners, or are steeped in too different associa-
tions. That is all there is, really, to antisemitism or to
the question of the Japanese in California. Why should
1 68
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we not recognise so simple a fact? It operates on both
sides of any given case and on both sides of many more
cases than I have named. Nor is it incompatible with
excellent relations between countries. The truth of the
matter is that two races, like two persons, appreciate
each other best from a distance! It is not a thing to
wrangle about. It is of the essence of all human ties.
Piracy and purse-cutting are of course intolerable; but
it is just as intolerable to find our neighbours perpetually
sitting in our own chairs. This is the perfectly honest
instinct which has formed so many personalities and civili-
sations and brought them to a flower of their own. A
world motley enough for the flags which now fly in it is a
richer world than any dreamed of by the flag-melters. For
my part, at any rate, nothing terrifies me so much as the
possibility that mankind may be run into one mould, and
that on all the six continents we shall one day eat and wear
and read the same things And from the papers I have
seen since August i, 1914, I gather that a similar terror
burns in worthier bosoms.
Nevertheless, being myself of those whose tendency it
is to degenerate into tramps or spies, I am rather sorry
we meet so few Persians! Yet what we do see of
them is perhaps all the more interesting to a stranger
newly come into a strange land. That Khan, for in-
stance, whom we passed in the street one snowy moonlight
night what a picture he made of customs different from
our own ! We, of course, were hurrying home unattended,
like pickpockets. And he? In front of him went a
mir%a in an aba, or so he seemed to be by his cap. Next
stalked the Khan, in a European overcoat, very slowly,
as befits one who is no slave of time. On either side
169
PERSIAN MINIATURES
of him walked a servant swinging an enormous lantern of
white linen the size of the lanterns testifying to the con-
sequence of the Khan. There followed another mirza in
another aba. And last of all marched a couple of bravoes
with rifles on their shoulders or matchlocks, most likely.
Another detail of social procedure in Persia is that a
call can never be in the nature of a surprise. Notice
must be sent beforehand and an appointment duly made.
No chance there for a hostess to be out or for a caller to
empty a cardcase in an afternoon. Your Persian is not
so destitute of manners as to rush away after fifteen or
thirty minutes, as if unable to sit still another instant.
An hour is none too long for a formal call, while two
hours, or four, or six, are not uncommon between ac-
quaintances of some standing. We have less experience
of these visitations than the missionaries, who follow
the local custom of calling on their friends, Persian, He-
brew, or Armenian, on the local holidays. And their
friends acknowledge this courtesy by calling on the mis-
sionaries on Christmas Day. At least this had always
been the case until the Christmas I was in Hamadan.
Then, after consultation among ourselves, the notice
was sent out that callers would be received instead on
New Year's Day which corresponds more exactly to the
Persian custom. But certain old stagers were so offended
by this lapse of precedent that they refused to call at all.
Yet even so, one of our missionary friends told us that she
received over three hundred New Year visitors.
Rather to their surprise, the Sah'b and the Khanum
came in for a share of this attention. I suspect the new
house may have had something to do with it. Any Ha-
madani who had seen the outside of that extraordinary
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structure was consumed by a desire to inspect the inside.
At any rate, they began ringing the bell, or knocking at the
gate, by half-past nine in the morning. As they were of
both sexes, they of course had to be received in different
parts of the house. And as the Sah'b happened to be out,
I was finally sent for in despair to go downstairs and
confront twenty-one kolas, not one of which I had ever
before set eyes on and to not one of which did I suppose I
would be able to say boo. I therefore shook twenty-one
hands, made twenty-one bows, and whispered the same
mystic number to Habib. It then transpired that several
among the owners of the kolas spoke English as well as
I, while several more thanks to that blessed Alliance
spoke French. But most of them contented themselves
with examining furtively the chairs on which they sat
in none too much ease, and the various other strange
objects about them. In the meantime the house-boys
passed innumerable cups of tea, serving them on their
knees. This exaggeration of courtesy, I imagine, must be
a tradition of houses where everybody sits on the floor.
As luck would have it, Mehm'd Ali had baked a couple
of his famous cakes, which helped to fill in the gaps be-
tween my spasmodic attempts to make small talk in
strange tongues with twenty-one unknown beings. And
we were also fortunate enough to have on hand a quantity
of shirini small, hard Persian candies which make up in
colour what they lack in taste.
The twenty-one were nearer forty-two by the time the
Sah'b returned to my aid. A little later a batch of ninety
youths appeared in a body to pay their respects to the
Sah'b as a patron of the American boys' school! Not
many of them spoke any perceptible English; for the
171
PERSIAN MINIATURES
missionaries, unlike their colleagues of the Alliance,
make it a point to carry on their affairs in the language of
the country. What surprised me more was to have one
of the ninety pointed out to me as an Englishman. Yet
he knew English no better than the rest, being attired,
furthermore, in the short black kola and long pleated coat
of a Persian Khan. I could hardly wait to hear the ex-
planation of these mysteries, which after all was simple
enough. He was merely an example, that English boy
in a Persian kola, of what happens when East meets West.
His father, although born in England, had desired like
me to know more of Persia. He had therefore turned
Mohammedan and married a Persian, with a jewel in
her nose from whom the son takes his costume, his lan-
guage, his looks. And his mind? And his future? The
mother's, too, no doubt. But life !
The Khanum in the meantime was having experiences
of her own. Her visitors, as was proper, entered by the
back door and were received in the dining room, from
which the chairs had been removed to our part of the house.
That, of course, made no difference to the ladies, who
would not have known what to do with them. They sat
on the floor, where young Abbas and the cook's infantile
apprentice handed them their share of what the older
boys were serving the men. If they objected to our im-
purity, they bravely swallowed their scruples with their
tea, and perhaps went to the bath afterward. As for us,
I know we aired the house for a good hour! But I must
add that most of our callers were of the humbler sort.
The Khanum told us she had answered innumerable
questions with regard to her etat civil. All the ladies
wanted to know how old she was, how long she had been
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married, how many children she had, etc., etc. They
were scandalised to hear that her parents had not found a
husband for her till she was twenty. It is by no means
unheard of, you know, for a Persian bride to be nine
years old, while an unmarried girl of fifteen or sixteen is
no better than an old maid. They found it unfortunate,
too, that the Khanum had married late in the year as
well as late in life. For a wedding should take place in
the spring. Otherwise children will be long in coming,
or will never come at all. And that, for a Persian woman,
is the disaster of disasters.
My own regret at having been cut off from half of so
interesting a social event was tempered for me by an acci-
dent which later befell me in a missionary house. I
chanced to open the door upon a gathering of ladies,
who were Armenians and who therefore countenanced my
ill-timed intrusion. They all wore black lace scarves
over their hair, which gave them rather a Spanish look;
but what reminded me more of the Jewesses of Salonica
was a certain outstanding black fillet bound about their
brows. The greatest lady of them all, a banker's wife,
dazzled me by the stupendous emerald she bore in the
middle of her fillet, like an elderly Lucrezia Crivelli.
Now it happens that I am consumed by an unappeasable
passion for emeralds. The person in history whom I
most envy is Abdaz, daughter of the tenth century Caliph
Al Muizz of Cairo, who left at her death no less than five
bushels of those most secret of gems. I could not keep my
eyes off that astounding old lady. She reciprocated my
interest to the degree of trying to talk to me. Her
efforts were not very successful until it transpired that
she came from Azerbaijan and spoke the Turkish dia-
173
PERSIAN MINIATURES
lect of that province. Half of this is Persian, to be sure,
and the rest is gargling. Nevertheless I, knowing a little
of the Turkish of Stambul, was able to carry on a broken
conversation with the happy proprietor of so magnificent
a jewel. She inquired without forms how old I was,
where my father lived, why I had left him, what I did for a
living, how much money I made at it, and what steps I
had taken against race-suicide. And her umbrage at
hearing that I had taken none was nothing to her outcries
over my admission that although quite old enough to
know better I had found no more respectable business
than writing stories and not godly ones. In short, she
showed me my place, did the lady of the emerald. But
if we had not been encompassed by so great a cloud of
witnesses I would have blurted out to that frank old
Lucrezia Crivelli that I was ready to reform and run
away with her and her emerald.
It was permitted me, at last, to enter more than one
true Persian house. But no true Persian house I entered
seemed to offer me quite so concentrated a flavour of
Oriental hospitality as the one occupied by the Turkish
consul. This was partly, of course, because I have more
in common with a Turk than with a Persian, and because
the speech of this Turk was music to my ears after the
accent, say, of the old lady of the emerald. But a re-
ception of this more honey-tongued old gentleman, given
long after I first met him, left in my memory quite the
most admirable among several pictures of society in
Hamadan. Two slouchy local policemen stood guard
at the gate. Inside we were met by a- fair-haired Turkish
soldier in a fez, looking very trim and European in com-
parison, who escorted us through the garden to the tent
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where His Excellency as he did not mind being called
received his guests. The tent was really two tents, the
inner one being a square red canopy without flaps, the
outer one having flaps of embroidery in panels, and
hanging rugs and Persian prints for further decoration.
In front, however, the flaps were reefed up, so as to give
us the view of the garden. And not the least ornamental
part of this setting was a long table in front of the tent,
on which stood symmetrically spaced pyramids of grapes,
cherries, apricots, and cucumbers. For in Persia a
cucumber is regarded as a fruit, and as one of the most
delicate.
The first thing was to shake His Excellency's hand and
to devise for His Excellency 's ear remarks as gracious as
may flow from an ill-trained Anglo-Saxon tongue. The
next thing was to go the round, not too perfunctorily, of
a large company of fezzed, turbaned, kolaed, and hatted
sitters about His Excellency. That done chairs were
produced. These conveniences, in fact, were the one false
note of the occasion. We were then served with tea and
with a most comforting ice of the morello cherry. By
this time there was so little snow left on Elvend that the
essential ingredient of that ice, I suppose, must have
come from the graveyard of the gallows! We were like-
wise invited to deface the beautiful pyramids on the table,
but nobody had the courage to do so. Nobody said
anything, either, unless a newcomer joined the company
under the tent. The most imposing person whose ar-
rival we witnessed was the prince commandant of the
gendarmerie a tall, slim, soldierly looking Persian who
exchanged with His Excellency salutes more magnificent
than you can conceive. There followed, however, the
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
most elegant young man in the world. He wore white
duck trousers, a black broadcloth coat, yellow shoes, a
Panama hat turned up in front, a glistening black mous-
tache, and a gold-headed cane. And when I saw that he
carried in his other hand a red red rose, he reminded me
so irresistibly of the gentleman in "Patience" is it?
with his affection a la Plato for a bashful young potato
or a not too French French bean, that I nearly burst out
before all the fezzes and turbans and kolas and hats with :
"If he's content with a vegetable love, which would certainly
not suit me,
Why, what a most particularly pure young man this pure
young man must be!"
But that no doubt was jealousy. And they told me that
he was also a clever young man, having been born in
Judaea, educated in Paris, and chosen as head of the
Behai school in Hamadan, before he came to the Turkish
consul's reception.
How long we sat, heaven knows. We tried to be as
polite as possible. At any rate, we were late to lunch.
XI
THE FACTORY
To grapple effectually with even purely material problems re-
quires more serenity of mind and more lofty courage than people
generally imagine.
Joseph Conrad: AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS
IT IS an object of vast curiosity in Hamadan
to the greatest number of eyes, no doubt, be-
cause of the windmill that pokes its bald Amer-
ican head above the wall. That is a story, too:
the Odyssey of that windmill by train, ship, and camel,
from young Chicago to New York, Port Said, Basra,
Baghdad, Kermanshah, and old Ecbatana, where an
exiled French chauffeur set it a-spinning in the Persian
air. People come from miles around to admire that
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
handiwork of the Firengi, which pumps up the unwilling
water of the East for the dyeing of rugs to be laid on
Western floors. After that far-flown bird had wagged
its tail for some months in the gusts of Elvend, it was
thought advisable to deepen the well out of which the
water a little too unwillingly rose. Well-diggers were
accordingly called, their craft being a common one in
this country of hidden streams. And there came a day
when one well-digger, in a fit of spite, kicked another
well-digger into the seventy-foot shaft. If you will be-
lieve it, nothing untoward happened to him who tumbled
seventy feet. But he who did the kicking was taken
by the police and bastinadoed on his too impulsive soles.
As for me so doth the world move by contraries!
almost anything else in the factory compound interests
me more than the windmill. The well-diggers, for in-
stance, through whose dusty rags I first learned that
khaki is a pure Persian word, meaning earth-coloured.
Shall I be pedantic enough to add that the I is there for a
reason, and that the Persians accent the last syllable?
The piling up of mud pies into the new dye fiouse chimney^
interests me, too, to say nothing of the beautiful groined
vaulting of that house, in light brick. A Persian can do
anything with earth, water, and his ten fingers, so sure in
him is the inheritance of those who first devised the secret
of the dome. The old dye house is also something to see,
where huge copper kettles bubble over fires of poplar and
tapel. Nor are the dyes aniline that bubble in those
kettles. They are alizarin, if you must know, against
which no man can complain that they run or fade. If
there be room for complaint, it is that the colours con-
cocted by the ingenious Firengi out of coaltar and heaven
THE FACTORY
knows what are not always the same as the colours which
the Persians of the old time extracted from the herbs
and barks of their own valleys. Many of them, that is,
are not simple colours, such as the Orientals instinctively
know how to put together, but complicated colours, veiled
colours, shadows and ashes of colours, subtly calculated
to soothe the neurasthenic souls of the West. But these
are matters of which I am not competent to speak. I
can only tell how the dripping hanks of wool are carried
away to dry in a sun without veil or shadow. Then they
are piled in a storehouse according to their kinds in
the care of an Armenian mir^a who has been to America,
and who has brought back a hat and a twang.
What interests me most, however, is the long low mud
building where the wool goes last, to be snipped up and
artfully knotted into patterns. The room where those
patterns are plotted out is at the lighter and more public
end of the house. Here black-capped mir^as sit around a
long table, busy over water-colours and sheets of squared
paper and samples of dyed wool and pieces wickedly cut
out of old rugs. The head of the designing room is a
man of forty, perhaps, with a singular face, both dark and
pale, distinguished and ravaged. He smokes a miskal
of opium a day. But he can take one look at a carpet
and reproduce it for you in water colour, with all the
brightness and delicacy of the old miniatures. In fact,
he paints miniatures himself, after that charming old
Persian tradition which is not yet dead, mounting them
on mats of cunningly contrasted colours, spattered with
gold. So I am the more willing to take Mr. F. R. Mar-
tin's word for it that Behzad and the other miniaturists
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries may have designed
179
PERSIAN MINIATURES
the magnificent carpets of the early Safevi period. The
other mir^as are younger, some of them no more than
twelve or fifteen. The big mir^as paint entire designs,
in the exact colours which the weavers are to use such
designs as Persians have always painted, save when some
Firengi desolates them by ordering a vast carpet which
is nothing but a border around a central desert of pink
or blue, empty and flowerless as a billiard board. The
little mir^as paint the actual working patterns, copying en-
larged sections of the design on paper of which each square
stands for a knot or a fixed number of knots. They all
have lean, dark, intelligent-looking faces, and such thin,
long, intelligent-looking fingers. After seeing the hands
which so many Persians have I can understand how it is
that so many beautiful things have come out of Persia,
and how neither time nor misfortune has been able
quite to do away with the tradition of them.
The greater part of the building is the factory proper.
They tell me that it is the first establishment of its kind
in Persia. People have always made rugs there, of course,
but they have not always made them outside of their own
homes; and least of all have women been accustomed to
do so strange a thing. The thing was so strange, for a
Firengi to think of building a great house and hiring wo-
men to weave for him, and Persians are so sensitive about
their women, that the affair had to be gone about very
diplomatically. The Slneikh ul Islam, who is the chief
religious functionary of a Persian town, had first to be
approached with all possible deference and ceremony.
He then had to call together his associates in the cult,
and deliberate whether there were anything in law or
divinity to forbid the proposed innovation. It was at
180
THE FACTORY
last decided that the ladies of Hamadan might work for
the Firengi without losing their reputations, in case the
Firengi took due steps to insure their privacy. To this
end all communication between the wool room and the
room of the looms was limited to a hole in the wall,
rather like a post-office slot. Furthermore, since the
master weaver was a man, and since it was necessary for
the Firengi or his deputies occasionally to make inspec-
tions, a chaperon was appointed from among the elders of
Hamadan. This chaperon is a man of God, of canonical
age, who receives a stipend from the Firengi and whose
duty it is to circulate among the looms for the mainte-
nance of decorum and good manners and for the safeguard-
ing of the honour of the husbands of Hamadan. For the
greater peace of mind of the latter it is known that the
master weaver is also a man of God, wearing the green
turban of the seed of the Prophet and being addressed
as Sheikh. He, as it happens, is no Hamadani, but
from Tabriz. For you may be surprised to learn that
Hamadan is not a city of weavers. It may once have
been; but if it becomes so again, thanks will be due to
the Firengi.
I am happy to report that under these conditions no
scandal has arisen to trouble the relations of East and
West. There was, to be sure, the affair of a certain Mrs.
Potiphar, who complained that an Armenian or Jewish
mir^a had insulted her while handing out wool through
the hole in the wall. This news caused an immediate
exodus from the factory, and the Governor felt it necessary
to make an investigation. The insult, however, was
evidently too deep for words. While Mrs. Potiphar was
unable to utter it, she did specify the day and the hour on
181
PERSIAN MINIATURES
which it passed through the slit of the wool room, as well
as the name of the offending mir^a. That, somehow or
other, she knew! But, as it happened, Joseph was able
to prove so good an alibi that the charge fell to the ground
and the disquieted husbands allowed their wives to re-
turn.
Having been duly advised of these matters, I, as a
friend of the manager, was permitted by the white-
turbaned chaperon to visit the sacred precinct of the
looms. I found there no whirring belts or clattering
mechanisms of steel, as certain pessimistic writers on rugs
had half led me to expect. In this factory, as in all others
of its kind in Persia, there are no other belts than those
encircling Persian waists, and only such motor power as
works most efficiently on tea and pilau. There are, to
be sure, rows of imposing looking appliances, of which
the most imposing are the pairs of big poplar posts that
contain the warp of a loom. The threads of this warp
hang perpendicularly from a fixed transverse beam at the
top to a movable transverse beam at the bottom, on
which the rug is wound up as it grows in length. There is
also a smaller transverse stick, running in and out be-
tween the threads and separating them enough for the
insertion of a hand shuttle which carries the thread of the
woof between each row of knots. Add to this a pair of
shears for cutting wool and a sort of heavy, iron-handled
comb for beating down the knots and the cross threads,
and you have all that is mechanical in the making of a
rug. There remains only the narrow wooden platform
on which the weavers squat and which if they like can
climb the uprights, by means of pegs, as their work grows
up the loom.
182
THE FACTORY
The rest is a matter of clever Persian fingers. And how
fast they can fly ! They are all plentifully reddened with
henna, I notice. So are the bare feet tucked up on the
little platforms the gay green slippers appertaining
thereto, those humming-bird slippers I saw in the Bazaar,
being neatly set out in rows on the mud floor below. The
number of weavers varies, of course, according to the size
of the rug, but each one has about a yard and a half to
attend to. Every loom is in charge of an ustad, a fore-
woman, who has the design in hand. She ties the bound-
ary knots, telling her crew how many knots of such and
such a colour to add. She is more than likely to have a
baby crowing on occasion read bawling on the platform
beside her, or on the mud floor among the slippers. Many
of the weavers are no more than babies themselves, for
that matter. I remember one pickaninny of eight or nine
who giggled as the manager went by and pointed out a
yellow chicken she had put into the blue border of a great
carpet, between two stately flowerpots of flowers. The
ustad was for making her ravel it out ; but the wise manager
let it stay. Such irregularities are one of the charms of an
Oriental rug all too rare when measurements are taken
and wool dyed evenly as it is here. And a pickaninny
capable of inventing a chicken has weaving in her blood,
even if Hamadan is not a city of weavers. These ladies
seemed not too greatly distressed at the approach of per-
sons of the designing sex. There would be a great twitch-
ing up over the head of those loose white or coloured sheets
which are the less formal shield of virtue, but there would
also be craned necks and visions of a high olive cheek-bone
or of a blistering black eye. And from the chatter shrill-
ing between loom and loom it was evident that no one
PERSIAN MINIATURES
stood in too great awe of the turbaned censor of mor-
als.
The sex is always temperamental, but in this factory
the unhappy manager is often put beside himself with the
whims of the daughters of Iran. It is a very human trait,
in all parts of the world, to take the line that the company
is rich and can afford to stretch a point. Therefore no
weaver ever takes the trouble to save wool, which is the
most serious item of rug making. The different colours
naturally have to be dyed in different hanks. To make a
knot of a required colour a bit is cut off; when the knot is
tied the two ends are cut again; and when the rug leaves
the loom the rough surface has to be clipped smooth by an
experienced hand. All this wastes a good deal of wool,
which is practically useless because it is already dyed and
too short to use again. But can you induce the women to
cut off no more than they need to tie their knot? Never!
Nor could the manager persuade them to use a pair of clip-
pers he invented, to cut the knots of uniform length. The
weavers have, too, a great way of borrowing wool from
each other, and of not being too careful to get the colour
they need, in order to save a journey to the hole in the
wall. They have also been known to borrow wool from
the factory and not to return it, carrying it off under their
loose clothes when they go home at night. There conse-
quently came a day when the decree went forth that each
loom was to be provided with a box, containing wool
enough for the carpet in hand, of which the ustad was
to keep the key and to be allowed to take home the excess
or compelled to make up any deficiency. This caused a
terrible upheaval, being not only a reflection on a lady's
honour but a reason to make her suspect that the factory
184
THE FACTORY
intended to cheat her of her due amount of wool. At the
end of that day some one wailed: "Whoever comes to-
morrow will have a bad name!" On the morrow, ac-
cordingly, out of three hundred women, twenty came to
work. And it took both time and argument to convince
them that the manager really knew how much wool went
into a carpet of a given size and would see that they got
enough.
What is less comprehensible is that they will not take
care of the carpet they are weaving. The new mud roof
of the factory leaked villainously, as a new mud roof will.
The weavers regarded it as so much a matter of course that
they would not take the trouble to report the presence of a
pool under a loom or of the mildew which would gather on
the rug above it. The consequence was that certain
carpets were almost ruined before they were finished.
Great pieces had to be cut out and knotted in again. I
don't know whether the ustad foresaw more labour and
therefore more pay for herself. The working of the fem-
inine mind is past finding out.
Another time a long slash was discovered in the middle
of a carpet that had been months on the loom. The
manager at once caused it to be announced that no one
would be paid until he found out who had cut that carpet.
At first nobody believed him; but when the painful fact
became plain that he meant what he said, information was
taken him that a certain Mrs. Angel had done the wicked
deed, a certain Mrs. Parrot having been witness thereof.
On interrogation, both Mrs. Angel and Mrs. Parrot denied
knowledge .of any carpet cutting. Tears and outcries
followed, and loud general demands for pay withheld.
The manager stood firm, however until Mrs. Angel
PERSIAN MINIATURES
went so far as to admit that she had incited Mrs. Parrot
to slash the carpet. Mrs. Parrot indignantly repudiated
the insinuation. More tears and more lamentations!
And at last the force of public opinion compelled Mrs.
Angel to confess herself the culprit. Having a grudge
against Mrs. Parrot, she had thought to settle it by de-
facing the latter's carpet. "But what can the Firengi
do to me?" she boastfully demanded of her companions.
What the Firengi did to her was to dock her of ten tomans
of her pay. He then called in the elderly chaperon, who
gave her a wigging of the first class and applied twenty-
five stripes to her peccant hands, she sobbing out at each
blow: "I was at fault!" If the Firengi had wielded the
switch, there might have been a massacre in Hamadan.
As it was, Mr. Angel saw to it that Mrs. Angel worked
out her ten tomans. And after that there was no more
carpet slashing.
Wherein the weavers most fill the heart of the Firengi
with despair is their capriciousness about turning up at
the factory. He has room for seven hundred of them,
but he is happy if he can find half that number at the
looms on any given day. Not angels, powers, or princi-
palities, not even the censor of morals, can induce them
to work six days a week, rest on Friday, and then come
back for six days more. A religious anniversary falls due,
a visitor comes to call, they are invited to a picnic, or a
husband pinches their cheek, and they stay at home while
their carpet hangs idle on the loom and dealers in Firengi-
stan telegraph angrily about delays in filling contracts.
They like money as much as any one; but a toman in
hand is worth ten in the cashier's safe. Threats, bonuses,
the most glittering picture of the advantageous position
1 86
THE FACTORY
of the capitalist, are nothing to them. It is, of course, a
thing to turn the hair gray. But do you know? In
my secret heart I fear I am on the side of the weavers.
One day the compound was all agog, for His Highness
the Governor came to inspect the factory. He deigned
to admire the dye house, the store house, the designing
room, the wool room, Mrs. Potiphar's slit in the wall, Mrs.
Angel's loom, everything. Most of all, I think, he admired
the windmill from Chicago. And just as he was going
away an old forewoman burst out in front of him.
"The Firengi what God does will! gives us bread,"
she cried out inconveniently. "What are you going to
do for us? Will you make it cheaper?"
What he did for them, poor wretch, was to fly for his
life.
187
XII
THE SATRAP
Noble and mild this Persian seems to be,
If outward habit judge the inward man.
Christopher Marlowe: THE TRAGEDY OF TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT
THE Governor's palace is outwardly indistin-
guishable as such. One entrance of it, to be
sure, opens on a small square, which is generally
full of drying towels from a public bath. The
entrance we made for was at the bottom of a blind alley,
whence an inner lane bounded by high mud walls led to a
second gateway. Here lounged a company of rather
slouchy-looking individuals who regarded us with some
uncertainty. For although we had conformed to the
etiquette of the country in making an appointment for our
audience, we had been simple enough to think, being
three men sound of wind and limb, that we needed no pro-
tecting retinue at our heels. However, we indisputably
wore hats, which proved us to be persons of a certain
degree of consequence. Accordingly a gentleman in a
dirty red coat, carrying a silver-headed mace, wished us
peace and led us into a courtyard with a big oblong pool
in the centre of it, up a steep flight of stone steps at the
farther end of the court, through a high talar, and to the
door of an anteroom. More slouchy-looking persons
lounged about it, having rather the aspect of masters
1 88
THE SATRAP
of the pen than of the sword. In their hands Silverstick
abandoned us, to be divested of our hats, coats, and ga-
loshes most indispensable article of attire in Persia,
where everybody takes off his shoes before going into the
house. We were then passed by a sentry with a fixed
bayonet over his shoulder into a second anteroom. More
loungers some mir%as, some interviewing them on affairs
of state. One of the mir^as knocked softly at an inner
door, and we were admitted into the presence of the Satrap
himself.
East and West were curiously mingled in the sanctum
of His Highness. The L-shaped room was carpeted with
big rugs, the white walls of it were broken by niches suc-
ceeding each other at regular intervals, the windows that
looked out on the court and the big pool were multitudi-
nously glazed with those little Persian panes. Above them
were smaller windows of stained glass whose larger square
panes stood on their corners, diamondwise. The Satrap,
however, while younger than a Satrap should be and
dressed in a tight Persian coat with official brass buttons,
sat not on the floor but on a chair, behind nothing less
exotic than a desk of new Persia. Old Persia sat beside
him, albeit on another chair, in the person of a Seid, a
descendant of the Prophet, with a round gray beard and
a green turban. But this benevolent personage did not
disdain to follow the example of His Highness and shake
our polluting hands.
What struck me most was His Highnesses excellent Eng-
lish. I knew he was not a very distant cousin of the Shah
and a member of the same Kajar tribe that seized the
throne of Persia after the death of Nadir Shah, in the
period of our own revolution. I did not know until he
189
PERSIAN MINIATURES
told us so that this Perso-Turkoman prince had been
educated at Harrow and Sandhurst. And there, among
other sciences, he acquired that of football ! But he was
highly amused by the Sah'b's suggestion that he take part
in the matches got up by the Englishmen of Hamadan.
He said he might think about it if the games were played
behind a wall instead of in an open field. That the Reis
himself, manager of the Bank and regarded by the Per-
sians as the official chief of our colony, could so far forget
his dignity as to muddy himself in these ignoble scrim-
mages, was no doubt an inexplicable mystery to the black
hats who used to crowd the side lines.
On His Highness's table my wandering eye was not
slow to detect a copy Of the London Times. Shall I
confess that I was rude enough to wonder if, by any chance,
it might be our own which had failed to arrive by the last
post? All our telegrams, at any rate, pass under His
Highness's eye before reaching their destination. Letters
are rather too numerous and too strangely written. Be-
sides, as they come from Baku and travel up country over
the Russian road, the Russians might have something to
say about that. But it is a perpetual mystery what be-
comes of so many copies of the Times, to say nothing of so
many more copies of the Graphic and other illustrated
papers. And whenever they fail to turn up we somehow
think of the Governor though we do not forget, either,
that the Postmaster has a fair knowledge of the Roman
alphabet.
As the old gentleman in the green turban lacked the
Satrap's gift of tongues, His Highness was perfectly safe in
confiding to us that he detested Hamadan, finding it the
worst city in Persia. He suspected me of trying to pro-
190
THE SATRAP
duce some belated good manners when I told him that I
liked Hamadan very much, and that one of the things I
liked most about it was the lack of trams and carriages.
He answered that he had hopes of widening and paving
certain of the principal streets and he has since done so,
I hear to my regret. In the meantime he announced to
us one innovation he had in mind, namely an edict to the
effect that every citizen should thereafter hang a lantern
outside his house at night. But we later had occasion to
notice that the Hamadanis were not too prompt in re-
sponding to this recommendation. Indeed I blush to add
that our own lane might have been full of thieves, wolves,
and every manner of obscure deed, for all we did to illum-
inate its darkness.
Harrow and Sandhurst may be partly responsible for
these enlightened notions. I fancy, though, that the illus-
trious example of His Highnesses Papa entered into the
matter. This powerful personage is himself a Satrap, and
a greater one, who not only has widened the streets of his
own capital and embellished them with public buildings,
but who maintains one of the best brass bands in Asia,
capable of executing Bizet, Sousa, or even Irving Berlin for
all I know. I never had the pleasure of listening to it. I
have, however, had the pleasure of hearing many stories
about this musically inclined old gentleman, who is warden
of the Mesopotamian marches. I never took in before I
went there that Persia is propped up so high above the
rest of the world, or that part of the world which lies to the
west of it. To climb into this country of the sky is never
a simple matter, as they know best who have travelled from
the Persian Gulf to Shiraz. On the west there are only
two places where the thing can be done with any ease.
191
PERSIAN MINIATURES
One of them is in the north, near Lake Urumia, where the
old caravan trail went from Trebizond to Tabriz. The
other is the older and steeper caravan trail which threads
the passes of the Zagros range between Baghdad, or Khani-
kin, and Kermanshah. The trans-Caucasian railway has
taken away the glory of the Trebizond-Tabriz route,
about which Xenophon knew something, and which Marco
Polo travelled in his day. But the Baghdad- Kermanshah
route is still the one or was before the war by which
English and Indian cottons and teas, after sailing up the
Tigris to Baghdad, transship themselves to camel back and
climb the ladders of Persia. Now those passes are not
only the borderland between Mesopotamia and Persia,
but they are also the borderland between two of the most
redoubtable tribes in Persia, the Kurds and the Lurs.
These good people have a habit of pouncing down on
caravans, as they wend their toilsome way through the
stony defiles, and of either pillaging them to the quick or
extorting from them a ransom of so much a camel. The
current rate before the war ran from six to twelve krans
an animal. It is whispered, however, that the musical
warden of the marches is not altogether a stranger to
these operations, and that he is capable of taking from the
tribesmen his fifty to ninety per cent, of the proceeds of
their enterprise.
Picturesque as these operations are, they are looked at
somewhat coldly by the English, whose Persian trade in
the four years before the war fell off $ 1,000,000 notwith-
standing the fact that they are said to pay Satrap Senior
30,000 tomans a year to keep the passes open. On the
other hand, the Russians are said to pay him 60,000
tomans a year to keep the passes closed ! When things get
192
THE SATRAP
too difficult for him he resigns. And then no one gets
through the passes at all, for love or money. He is there-
upon reappointed, as he was for the eighth time while I was
in Hamadan. During the same year the English paid the
Lurs a matter of 400 to let alone a party of engineers who
wanted to survey a possible route for a railway between
the Karun, the only navigable river in Persia, and a town
in the region of Kermanshah called Khorremabad. Where-
upon some one else paid the Lurs more to keep the sur-
veyors out. At any rate, they broke their agreement with
the English. Another highly interesting example of the
working, under the old regime, of the Anglo-Russian
Agreement of 1907 and perhaps of the Potsdam Agree-
ment of 1910.
I do not pretend to know whether these things be true.
I am merely quoting current gossip which further re-
ports that Satrap Senior is an exceedingly well-to-do and
exceedingly thrifty old gentleman. He maintains, never-
theless, as becomes a prince of the blood and a warden of
marches, a standing army of his own. And whenever he
takes the field with his army at his heels it is miraculous
how quickly the passes open not to mention how gener-
ous the mountain chiefs become of their flocks and herds.
As for Satrap Junior, he suffers under the double disad-
vantage of being a much younger man than the Kara-
Gozlu grandees of Hamadan and of having no profitable
passes under his jurisdiction. At any rate, the Russians
have kindly relieved him of the responsibilities of Sultan
Bulagh. He complained bitterly to us that he had a
budget of only 500 tomans a month, out of which he could
not possibly defray his personal expenses, let alone beauti-
fying the town. It was not he, however, who told us the
193
PERSIAN MINIATURES
tale of his bodyguard of twenty horsemen. Emulous no
doubt of his celebrated parent, he sent in to the Rets-
i-Malie1o t the local representative of the Treasury Depart-
ment, a bill for the pay and upkeep of fifty cavaliers. The
Reis-i-Malieh, who is one of Mr. Shuster's old lieutenants
and an honest man, asked first to see a review of the troop.
The troop was accordingly reviewed, and among its mem-
bers the Reis-i-Malieb and his friends recognised various
rowdies and idlers of the Bazaar. These, being privately
questioned, replied without any hesitation that they had
been offered five krans apiece to appear on that place and
day, mounted, in order to swell the Satrap's train. The
Reis-i-Malieh therefore refused to honour the requisition
of His Highness who thought best not to press his claim.
So who shall say that Mr. Shuster went to Persia in vain!
As my two companions were interested in rugs, the
conversation turned to that topic. The Satrap professed
a desire to follow in the footsteps of his illustrious father,
who had so forwarded the manufacture of rugs in Kerman-
shah. He added that the weavers there are not women
but men and boys, who instead of working from a painted
pattern follow instructions that are sung to them by a
foreman, in some old technical language which is no longer
understood outside the profession. At this the Sah'b
and his friend looked so flabbergasted that I rushed in
where they feared to tread and asked His Highness if he
collected rugs. My question diverted him as much as
if I had asked the Mayor of Brockton if he collected boots.
For I had yet to learn that rugs are as much a matter of
course in Persia as kolas. Everybody has them, from the
richest to the poorest, and nobody sentimentalises over
them. And I also had yet to learn why the Sah'b looked
194
THE SATRAP
so flabbergasted when His Highness spoke of the rugs of
Kermanshah. But that you shall not learn till the next
chapter.
In the meantime we were served two rounds of tea, in
European cups, but without the European horror of
cream. Those cups, I suppose, were instituted for the
peace of mind of the old Seid, who drank his tea out
of a glass in the proper way, distracted by no doubt as
to whether his second glass had been defiled by Christian
lips. Then we took leave, without asking permission to
do so in the ceremonious Persian way and without being
assured, in consequence, that His Highnesses house had
been purified by our presence, his ills forgotten, or his
fortune increased.
There followed an awful moment in the anteroom, when
after being inducted into our hats, coats, and galoshes,
we discovered that we could scrape up between us no
more than seventeen krans for tips. These, nevertheless,
we bestowed upon the attendant underlings with an air of
immense generosity. But the worst was that we had
nothing left for Silverstick, who stalked majestically in
front of us, clearing a way with his mace through a crowd
of moss-troopers at the gate and escorting us as far as
the square. His expression, on parting from Firengis
who were too poor to be accompanied by so much as one
servant or to find in their pockets so much as one kran
for the Governor's gate-keeper, was something to re-
member.
As for the Satrap, he never returned our call. He no
doubt heard the report of Silverstick, and took the Sah'b
for one of his own clerks.
195
XIII
ABOUT RUG BOOKS
(BUT TO BE SKIPPED BY THOSE WHO NEITHER READ NOR
WRITE THEM.)
A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge
of a carpet must be a genius.
Edgar Allan Poe: PHILOSOPHY OF FURNITURE
WHENEVER we are hard up for amuse-
ment as may happen even in royal
Ecbatana, since Alexander went away
we turn over our rug books. Of these
we have quite a collection. For the Sah'b is himself a
man of rugs; and when a new book about them appears,
as is sure to happen once a twelve-month, the good people
at home send him out a copy. I don't think he ever
bought one on his own account in English. But they
ABOUT RUG BOOKS
help to console him for the fact that only one copy in three
of Life or Punch reaches us. What can we do? Our
destiny has given us to know from our youth up a quantity
of simple matters which to this day remain dark to most
writers of rug books. And man must laugh. At any rate,
I must confess that we find it impossible to take these
volumes very seriously: not even the fattest and most
expensive of them, whose authors' names are pronounced
in whispers by all ladies in America. They remind us too
much of Babu English, and of what Persians say about
our own side of the world.
There are, of course, rug books and rug books. It is
not for a light-minded nomad to mock at the famous
Austrian folios, at Bode, Martin, or Strzygowski, or even
at Mr. J. K. Mumford. Mr. Mumford is by no means
infallible. But his limitations have been those of oppor-
tunity, rather than of good faith. To him alone is due, in
our country, the credit of having made some sort of order
out of a picturesque chaos. He inquired, he studied, he
travelled; and his book remains the most informing that
has hitherto been published in America. If he pays the
penalty, so does he deserve the glory, of the pioneer. And
I hereby offer him a humble tribute of respect for having
blazed out a way which many followers have done almost
nothing to widen.
Having acquitted one's conscience of this debt of honour
one is bound to add that if we take Mr. Mumford down,
on those dark days when Life and Punch fail to
turn up, it is chiefly for certain inessential items of infor-
mation which he lets drop. As for the flock of which he
is the spiritual father, I grant that they generally give more
practical information, wherever they got it, than their
197
PERSIAN MINIATURES
cousins oversea, who love to bring forth sumptuous tomes
more enlightening with regard to the myth of the Golden
Fleece or the tomb of louiya and Touiyou than to the
knots and knottinesses of rugs. But it is hard to escape
the conviction that without Mr. Mumford the names of
few of these ladies and gentlemen would ever have seen
print. What enables them to get away with it, as the
saying so expressively goes, is the great popularity of Orien-
tal rugs in our country, and the greater ignorance of the
countries from which they come. These authors have, of
course, their own regroupings and emendations. But
either the literature to which they contribute is a new
proof of an old saying about great minds, or one recognises
again and again Mr. Mumford's general plan, Mr. Mum-
ford's facts, Mr. Mumford's textile tables, and Mr. Mum-
ford's mistakes, down to his very quotations and turns of
phrase. Or was it already an established jargon of the
trade to abound in "conceits/' and never to fail to say of
a border stripe that it "carries" such and such a design?
At all events, whenever I come across a reference to Pro-
fessor Goodyear, to Owen Jones, or to Sir George Birdwood
he who had the courage to write at the top of a learned
sheaf of paper "The Termless Antiquity of Integral
Identity of the Oriental Manufacture of Sumptuary
Carpets!" I can't help asking myself if the author knows
any more of the works in question than he gleaned from
the pages of Mr. Mumford. But it is not because any
of them ever so much as breathe the name of their ghostly
parent. "For fifteen years," says Mr. Mumford in the
preface to his fourth edition, "I have persistently 'winked
at 'Omer down the road/ and "Omer' has never once
'winked back/"
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To make a complete catalogue of the misinformation
which the rug fraternity hand on from one to another
would need "a painful man with his pen, and as much
patience as he had, who wrote the Lives and Deaths of
the Martyrs." A characteristic if mild example is the
name Yuruk,* applied to a certain class of Turkish rugs
and translated with astonishing unanimity by our authors
ties as meaning mountaineer. Whereas the real word is
Yiiriik; and while some mountaineers are Yiiriiks, all
Yiirtiks are by no means mountaineers. For the name
literally signifies a man who walks : i. e., a nomad. A more
complicated case is that of the napless carpets known in
Persia as gilim and in Turkey as kilim. None of the rug
books seem to be aware of this simple fact, and their spell-
ings suffer accordingly. They all mention, however, a
variety which they call kis kilim. I, for one, have never
heard of it outside of a rug book or a rug shop. One
reason, perhaps, is that there is no such word in Persian
or Turkish as kis. Mr. Mumford explains a kis kilim as
being a winter covering, thereby leading one to suspect
that his informant was a Smyrniote. God has gifted the
Levantine merchants of Polycarp's city with eloquent and
with ingenious tongues, but not with tongues that are
able to pronounce the Turkish language. Kish kilimi
should be the true term if it actually exits. But Mr.
Mumford's followers, taking a little further counsel,
inform us that a kis kilim is a girl rug, to which they attach
an affecting history of dowries and what not. And they
*For the spelling followed in this book, see the last two paragraphs of the
introduction.
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
are equally wrong, since the word to which they refer
should be ki%, with a vowel sound that neither a Greek nor
an American can pronounce. You pays your money and
you takes your choice.
Not so incorrect, perhaps, but more misleading, is a
whole family of words which our authors quote in classify-
ing rugs according to their uses. Thus they tell us that
the long rugs technically known as runners were originally
intended for divan covers; and they make quite a story
of the arrangement of an Oriental interior, dragging in
the classic triclinium and fixing the places of greater and
of lesser honour on rugs of different sorts. I have no
doubt that Mr. Mumford has seen Turkish rooms sur-
rounded on three sides by divans, and divans covered with
runners ; but I doubt very much whether he ever saw any-
thing of the sort in Persia or other parts of the East that
are farther from Western influences. Nor can the allu-
sion to the triclinium be otherwise than imaginative when
the habit of the Near East is to eat on the floor, squatting
about little round tables six or eight inches high. The real
origin of the runner was probably in the tradition of the
tent. In Persia particularly sets of rugs are quite com-
mon, of the same pattern and colour, consisting of one
large carpet, of one runner as long as that carpet is wide,
and of two more runners whose length is equal either to
that of the carpet or to that of the carpet plus the width
of the first runner. Such a set is called, like a team of
horses, a dastel, literally a handful; and its purpose is for
furnishing tents or rooms of different sizes with the same
rugs, piecing out the carpet when necessary with the ac-
companying runners. Mr. Mumford's name for those
runners, makatlik, has justly been discarded by his suc-
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cessors, who give them their true name of kenari. Ma-
katUk, as the word should be, may roughly be translated
as sofa covering, and kenari as bordering from kenar,
edge, which is common to Persian and Turkish alike.
As for the so-called odjalik or odjaklik, which I would
correct and simplify as ojaklik, many descant on its place
in Oriental hospitality, though no one attempts to fix its
place with relation to those doubtful divans. It means,
if you insist, a hearth rug. But I question if many of
them can have been made for that purpose, for the simple
reason that nothing is rarer in an Oriental house than a
hearth. The cooking is done when possible outside, in
the open or in a detached kitchen, while for heating, fire-
places are much less popular than a device which I have
already mentioned, called in Persian a kursi. If a rug
were used in connection with it, the last thing a guest
would be invited to do would be to take his place thereon.
At night, however, he would be given such a rug to sleep
on, and perhaps another for a quilt. So most of your
hearth rugs, good people, are nothing more or less than beds.
The various other words ending in lik which Mr. Mum-
ford was the first to introduce are not much more trust-
worthy. In the first place, they are all taken from the
Ottoman Turkish language, and therefore do not apply
to weaves from other countries. In the second place,
that lik must be accepted with discretion, being a suffix
something like our own suffix -ing. Hehbelik, for in-
stance, must be accepted with double discretion because
it should be leilelik and because heibeb alone means
saddle bag leibelik meaning, among other things, the
material out of which saddle bags are made. And, in the
third place, the vowel sound of that suffix undergoes varia-
20 1
PERSIAN MINIATURES
tions which this is not the place to explain but which the
rug books never indicate. Misleading in another way is
the so-called bammamlik, or bath rug; for while rugs may
be found in the dressing rooms of baths, they are never of
any one class, nor are they ever used, as the rug books
affirm, in any part of a Turkish bath, at any rate, where they
come in contact with soap and water. Still more mislead-
ing, however, is the term turbeblik. It does not mean a
grave rug, nor do the people of the Near East leave rugs in
cemeteries. What they very frequently do is to leave rugs
as votive offerings in mausoleums, which are much com-
moner than with us and which go in Turkish by the name
of tiirbeb. Thus the so-called grave rug is really identical
with the so-called Mecca rug, which is often a prayer
rug but which the more discerning of our authors recog-
nise as forming no distinct species.
The most serious of this family of errors is the one re-
lating to the word sedjadeb or sejjadeb, as I would prefer
to spell it. Mr. Mumford's disciples have improved upon
him in certain minor details, but no one of them has ever
yet discovered that a sejjadeb and what they unidiomatic-
ally term a namafok are both one and the same namely,
a prayer rug. This is a case where a little knowledge of
Oriental languages is good for writing about matters
Oriental. For sejjadeb is derived from the Arabic root
meaning worship, and by no means signifies a carpet of
medium size. It may, however, be a carpet of medium
size, or of the largest possible size. Many Turkish mos-
ques contain huge Ushak carpets whose design consists of
a multitude of pointed panels. Such a carpet is as much
a sejjadeb as a small rug of one panel. But to say of the
latter that every Mohammedan carries one around with
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him, or so much as owns one, is absurd. If that were
true, prayer rugs would be commoner than any other kind
of a rug. Which is far from being the case.
Of all the gibberish that has been written on this sub-
ject, it would be hard to find more crowded into one page
than may be read in Dr. G. G. Lewis's "Practical Book of
Oriental Rugs" (2d ed., p. 321). After the usual remark
about every Mohammedan possessing his own prayer rug,
the author goes on to say: " By means of a small compass
he spreads his rug so that the mihrab or niche points
toward Mecca, where Mohammed's body lies. Then
after removing all money and jewellery from his person,
in order to appear before God in the most abject humility,
he combs his beard, produces a rosary of ninety-nine
beads and a dried cake of earth which came from Mecca.
These he places just under the niche and then, resting his
head on the earth with his hands outstretched on either
side, he performs his devotions. The mihrab or niche
on which the worshipper places his head represents the
door of a mosque and reminds those who use it of the
sacred mosque at Mecca." And elsewhere Dr. Lewis
propounds the alternative theory that the mihrab "is
supposed to imitate the form of the Mihrab in the temple
at Mecca" (p. 121), and that the so-called comb designed
on some Turkish prayer rugs is "an emblem of the Moham-
medan faith to remind the devout that cleanliness is next
to godliness" (p. 108).
Now hardly one of these statements is true. Com-
passes are sometimes carried by pilgrims and travellers,
but so rarely that the different directions in which they
pray is one of the stock matters of pleasantry among
Mohammedans. Far rarer is that precious cake of dried
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
earth from Mecca; and the preparations for prayer have
more to do with running water than with a comb, which
most decidedly is not an emblem of the Mohammedan
faith. Neither are you ever likely to see a rosary of
ninety-nine beads though you might see one of sixty-six
beads. The common number is thirty-three. But the
rosary plays no part in the rite of the prayer rug; and when
used its place is in the owner's hand, which at no moment
of his devotions does he stretch out from his side. Nor
does he remove money and jewellery from his person, un-
less they happen to be gold and he happens to be extremely
orthodox. That is why so many fine Oriental stones are
set in silver. As for the procedure of prayer, the devotee
first stands, then drops to his knees, and finally prostrates
himself, repeating these three positions a different number
of times according to circumstances. And the pointed
panel of the prayer rug neither represents the door of a
mosque nor the mihrab of the temple at Mecca. The
temple at Mecca contains no mihrdb, being itself the centre
of the axes of the Mohammedan world. Moreover, Mo-
hammed, as it happens, is buried in Medina. What the
panel of a prayer rug represents, if anything, is the mibrab
of an ordinary mosque a niche roughly corresponding to
the altar of a church; and the finest of single-panelled
rugs were made to put into such a niche. Most devotees
content themselves with any kind of carpet or matting to
pray on or even their own coats, if other conveniences lack.
Do you wonder, then, that rug books are capable of
affording us a kind of pleasure that their authors never
intended? On the whole, I think Dr. Lewis is our favour-
ite. He is also the favourite of those who buy rug books,
if one may judge from the fact that he went in two years
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into two editions. And his book would have deserved its
title if he had only taken the trouble to make it accurate
and consistent. As it is, how can we keep straight faces
when he talks about Greek Mohammedans (p. 222), or
reveals to us that a talismanic triangle is of ten tattooed on a
Turk's body (p. 1 37), or says that green is a favourite colour
of Persian rug makers (p. 79), or announces that a dog is
considered in the Near East a sacred animal (p. no), or
emits such samples of Turkish as she is spoke as ubrecb
and sechmdisih for ibrik (pitcher) and siclan disbi (rat's
or mouse's tooth)? The pearl of this collection, however,
is his statement that lule, or luleh, of all words the most
mystifying to his brothers of the craft, is "a corruption of
the Persian word 'roulez/ meaning ' jewel' " (p. 349; cf.
163). Some Armenian rug dealer must have stuck a
fluent tongue in a capacious cheek when he achieved that
etymology for I would gladly entertain the hypothesis
that it did not burst from the brain of Dr. Lewis. So far
as I am able to learn, there is no word in Persian which
remotely resembles roule%. There is a word lulu, which
is a less common word for pearl; and in another place Dr.
Lewis provides the form routes with that meaning. But
luleh is no corruption of it nor, as Mr. Mumford avers,
of the French roule^, though he is on the right track.
Luleh is a word which both in Persian and in Turkish
means pipe or tube. And it is applied not only to Bijar
but to any smallish carpets which are too heavy to be
folded when out of use, and are therefore rolled.
On matters of geography and spelling I am willing to
touch the more lightly, knowing how far the East is from
205
PERSIAN MINIATURES
the West and how recalcitrant the English alphabet to
render its own sounds, let alone those of other languages.
But after all libraries do exist, containing fairly reliable
books of reference. And even in New York and Philadel-
phia, whence emanate most of these instructive works,
there dwell orientalists of repute, who might conceivably
have information to impart. Yet our authors seem to
prefer to consult, if not one another, then the Armenian
rug dealer around the corner, or haply some traveller re-
turned alive from what they invariably term "the Orient."
Thus we learn from Mr. W. D. Ellwanger of the most
accessible region of "the Orient" that "most of the rugs
of commerce in this country come from Persia, Turkey,
Asia Minor, Turkestan . . . " ("The Oriental Rug,"
p. 1 3.) Is a surprised reader wrong in drawing the infer-
ence that Turkey and Asia Minor are supposed to have
no connection with each other? Of the latter Dr. Lewis
informs us that it is bounded "on the south by Arabia,
the Mediterranean and Red Seas" (p. 342). And Ana-
tolia is usually spoken of as if it existed in some fourth
dimension entirely outside the peninsula in question.
Whereas the name is merely the Greek one for Asia Minor
from which the Turks derive their Anadol.
It is perhaps not unnatural that the rug-geographer
becomes more involved in obscurity as he penetrates
farther into "the Orient." Kurdistan, for instance, is
to him a constant stumbling block as indeed it is to
most westerners, who do not readily take in the conception
of that Asiatic Poland, with its loosely related, semi-
independent tribes living partly under Persian and partly
under Turkish suzerainty, and producing within a few
miles of each other such totally different weaves as the
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Bijar and the "Sehna." So does Dr. Lewis find it in him
to say that "the southern part of Armenia is called
Kurdistan" (p. 218). Of Persia proper I have read as-
tounding things, of which not the least astounding is that
no one but Mr. Mumford seems to recognise Iran as the
name by which the Persians at this moment designate their
own country. Whence will appear the true beauty of
giving that name, as dealers and rug books love to do,
to a certain class of rugs from the province of Irak Ajemi.
And even Mr. Mumford opens the preface of his fourth
edition with the strange information that "the past
decade has witnessed in Persia the downfall of a dynasty,
and indeed of the throne itself. The oldest of empires
has been for a space the newest of republics. . . "
While elsewhere (p. 165) he says "that the Persian of
to-day is a transplanted Turk, that the language used
over the greater part of the empire is a peculiar form of
Turkish, and that the pure Persian, the Iranian, is a rara
avis in the land whose name he bears." The pure Persian
is no doubt as rare a bird as the pure Italian, say, or the
pure Christian. But while the reigning dynasty is of Turko-
man origin, and while a Turkish dialect is spoken in
Azerbaijan and to a lesser extent in the neighbourhood
of Hamadan, the vast majority of Persians neither under-
stand it nor are transplanted Turks. Mr. Mumford's
mistakes, however, usually lie in a too broad application
of a particular fact. He would be incapable of announc-
ing like Dr. Lewis, and of twice repeating, that Laristan
and Luristan are identical (pp. 202, 349, 350).
As for Turkestan and the Caucasus, they might as
well be Mars and the moon. I cannot deny that the
Caucasus is politically a part of Russia though I would
207
PERSIAN MINIATURES
not stake my head on the certainty of its so remaining to
the end of time. But no Russian ever made a rug, or
least of all a Yiirtik rug, as Mr. Ellwanger seems to inti-
mate (p. 63). Nor, as the rug books inform us with
wonderful unanimity, is Kazak a corruption of Cossack,
the case being exactly the contrary. And if the Caucasus
be Russia, so are the trans-Caspian provinces. To call
them so, at any rate, would save the rug-scriveners from
the No Man's Land they make of that vast and little-
visited region. You would think, to read their classifica-
tions, that east of the Caspian one name is good as an-
other, and that it is all the same whether you say Bokhara,
Merv, Khiva, Samarkand, or Turkestan.
In the finer points of orthography the rug book people
are not wholly to blame for the fantastic things they do.
Englishmen and Americans have always been notorious
for the liberties they take with foreign names. But there
is more than a suspicion of unscholarliness in the unsys-
tematic spelling of these books, their general failure to
give a key to their own pronunciation, and the importance
they attribute to variant forms. Dr. Lewis perhaps ex-
presses their general state of mind when he confides to us
(p. 341, note) that "in the Turkish and Persian languages
the vowels are frequently silent and the characters do
not stand for single consonants, but represent combina-
tions of sounds as in short-hand, so that the same word
is spelled in a great variety of ways when it is translated
into English ..." Mark that "translated "! It is
true that the Arabic alphabet is short of vowels, and that
the different races who use it twist it as variously as do
the people of Europe the long-suffering Roman alphabet.
But neither in Persian nor in Turkish are there short-hand
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combinations of consonants unless the same thing may
be said of Greek and Russian, which are richer than
English in having single letters to represent such sounds
as ih or si. The bottom of the matter is that neither
Dr. Lewis nor any one else will take the trouble to find
out how a name is pronounced in its own country, and to
choose a consistent method of rendering that name in
English. Thus it is that the author of "The Practical
Book of Oriental Rugs" encumbers his pages with a
quantity of so called synonyms, which are nothing but
variant and usually very incorrect spellings he has
chanced to pick up. A case in point is the town of Elisa-
vetpol, in the Transcaucasus, whose older name of Ganja
or Genjeh has caused fountains of ink to flow. Dr. Lewis
calls the rugs of this district Genghis, which he directs us
to pronounce Jen'-gis, giving as "synonyms" Guenja,
Guendja, and Guen jes. He goes on to state that " author-
ities differ greatly as to the origin of the name. Some say
that the proper name should be Guenja, which was the
ancient name of Elizabethpol, from whence they came.
Others insist that they should be called Genghis, which
is the name of the tribe of Nomads living in the vicinity
of Elizabethpol who weave them" (p. 267). If Dr. Lewis
had thought fit to consult other authorities than his pred-
ecessors in the American literature of rugs, one or two
of whom relate "Genghis" to the conqueror Chingiz Khan,
he would very easily have found out that Ganja is a
perfectly well-known town, founded by Kobad I, Sasanian
king of Persia, in the fifth or sixth century of our era,
and famous as the birthplace of the Persian poet Nizami,
who wrote the epics of "Khosrev and Shirin" and "Majnun
and Leila". He would also have found out that the elusive
209
PERSIAN MINIATURES
vowel sounds of that Persian name which is used to this
day by thousands of Caucasians vary between a and e t
and that a final i is a Persian and Azeri Turkish suffix of
origin, equivalent to the Ottoman Turkish li by which
Mr. Mumford not too correctly designates a man of
Hamadan. A man or a thing from Hamadan is locally
termed Hamadani. And so, by a perfectly comprehensi-
ble contraction, Ganji or Genji. Which, about as nearly,
as can be arrived at in English, is the correct form.
Of Hamadan itself Dr. Lewis gives the baroque "syno-
nyms" Hamadie and Hamidieh. Where in the world
he fished up Hamadie I can't imagine; but Hamidieh is a
Turkish adjective made out of the name Hamid, having
no more to do with Hamadan then our own adjective
Augustan. Diverting as his "synonyms" are, however, it
is when we come to the glossary at the end of his book that
the rafters of Ecbatana Well, they can hardly ring,
because they are neatly encased in mud. And how should
the rug book people know any better, poor dears? Yet
why should they voluntarily, and with so little pains at
verification or proof-reading, throw themselves to the
lions? One reason is that it is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for an Anglo-Saxon to
get it into his head that the b in Bokhara and Daghestan
means something, and that practically every word in his
Oriental vocabulary must be accented on the last syllable.
To do so, at all events, would save him from such horrors
as Af-ghan'-is-tan, An-go'-ra, or Fer'-a-ghan. Of the last
I am happy to recognise that Dr. Lewis does not direct us
to sound the g. And, after all, it is useless to attempt to
reform the Anglo-Saxon world in the matter of pronounc-
ing those two gutturals gl and kh. They are disagreeable
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ABOUT RUG BOOKS
sounds, and one must use disagreeable terms in describing
them. The first is the noise you make in your throat
when you gargle, while the second is the worse noise you
make when you have a cold and set about clearing your
throat if you are ever so impolite as to hawk. But it
will do you no harm to remember that those sounds are
perfectly distinct from a simple g or k t and that letters
exist to express them in the eastern as in some western
languages.
All this, of course, has little to do with the serious part of
rug books, which is the description and classification of
rugs. And even if we in Ecbatana can't help an occasional
chuckle, we know it isn't fair to chuckle too loudly about
people who haven't been as lucky as we. One expert,
however, authoress of "Rugs in Their Native Land,"
confesses that "a residence of many years in Turkey,
part of the time in the far interior, offered ample oppor-
tunity to continue the study of Oriental rugs begun in
America." And elsewhere she alludes to her familiarity
with the language of the country (p. 130). I do not like
to seem rude to a lady; but I could hardly help asking
myself which of the various languages of the country this
lady meant when I saw how she spelled names, and when
1 read that khatchli, alias katchli and lardjlie, used in
describing the so-called Princess Bokharas, is the Armenian
name for cross. The Armenian name for a cross is klacl,
which might better be simplified for Anglo-Saxon readers
as loach. The Turks, lacking such a word of their own,
borrow it from the Armenians to say nothing here of
the Greeks and on occasion add their own suffix of origin,
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
description, or possession, li. Hacltt, therefore, is a
Turkish form, meaning crossed, or having a cross.
Truth further obliges me to confide in the reader that I
fail to find any particular evidence of Miss or Mrs. Dunn
having availed herself of the ample opportunity she men-
tions. She misses her chance of writing something really
first-hand and personal about rugs, even in that limited
part of their native land with which she is acquainted,
and she repeats many of the stock misnomers which the
rug books bid fair to make permanent. Thus she classes
the Mosul Musul, I am told, is the local pronunciation
among Turkish products, and states that more rugs are
made in and shipped from that district than from any
other except Smyrna (pp. 86, 100). As a matter of fact,
comparatively few rugs are made in the neighbourhood
of Mosul, and practically none are now shipped from
there or were before the war. The sole connection that
a Mosul rug has with Mosul is that a certain class of small
Kurdish rugs were once collected in that city by Jewish
dealers, on behalf of their principals in Baghdad. Since
1900 this trade has passed to the other side of the moun-
tains, and Hamadan is now the market for "Mosuls."
They are small, loosely woven, high-piled rugs of the poorer
qualities, partly from Turkish, oftener from Persian Kur-
distan, and from the region around Hamadan extending
even as far south as Malay ir.
There are other things about the obscure subject of
Kurdistan that a lady who has lived in the far interior of
Turkey might have told us. But she leaves us to gather
what is far from the fact that the inhabitants are all of
the one Dersim tribe she mentions (p. 102). And she
lets slip a brilliant opportunity to tell her fellow connois-
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seurs what none of them except Mr. Mumford seems to
suspect, that the town they oftenest name "Sehna" is
purely Kurdish, being as Sauj Bulagh used to be the
capital of Persian Kurdistan, and that "Sehna" rugs are
Kurdish and not Persian. With regard to her travels in
remoter regions of "the Orient" our authoress maintains a
discreet reticence. But we can hardly assume that they
included Persia when she makes a distinction between
"Kirmansha" and Kermanshah, and asserts of carpets
bearing the latter name that they are made in Tabriz.
I hasten to add, however, that she is by no means alone in
this astonishing belief. Mr. Mumford was the first to give
voice to it, and it has been followed more or less faithfully
by every one of his successors whom I have consulted
except Mary Beach Langton, in her little book on " How
to Know Oriental Rugs" (p. 78). I might add in passing
that the serious student will hardly learn from Mrs.
Langton how to know Oriental rugs, but that she shows
other evidences of having gone outside the pages of her
colleagues for her information. The truth is that Ker-
mans, Kirmans, " Kirmanshas," and " Kermanshahs " are
all one and the same. They have nothing whatever to do
with either Kermanshah or Tabriz, except that the modern
industry in Tabriz was started by weavers from Kerman,
who imported their own designs and methods of work.
The Tabrizis, in turn, have influenced the modern output
of Meshed. As for Kermanshah, which does happen to
be an important wool and trading centre, it is hardly an
exaggeration to affirm that no rugs are or ever were made
there. What the Satrap told us to the contrary was either
the exception that proves the rule or a quotation from his
reminiscences of another province. The name grew out of
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
the ignorance or perverted ingenuity of dealers, who
knew nothing about so remote a town as Kerman, who were
confused by its similarity to the name of Kermanshah, and
whose romantic eyes were attracted by the termination of
the latter. A " Kermanshah" is merely a better example
of a modern Kerman. And when the rug is unusually
big, and the dealer wishes to be unusually impressive,
he pronounces it, out of the magniloquence of his own
exuberant heart, a "royal Kermanshah." A precisely
similar case is that of the so-called royal or princess
"Bokharas" which, as it happens, do not come from
Bokhara.
Eliza Dunn makes a less pardonable confusion, and one
that I do not recollect having encountered elsewhere,
when she speaks of "Meshed or Muskabad" (pp. 103,
117). Meshed and Muskabad, or Mushkabad, are, in
Persia, very nearly as far as the East is from the West.
For Meshed is Meshed, while Mushkabad is Sultanabad
of the better classes. Mushkabad was the name of a
town between Kum and Sultanabad which the long-
bearded Fat'h Ali Shah destroyed about a hundred years
ago, and Sultanabad is its modern successor. Eliza Dunn
might be surprised to hear that most modern Saruks are
woven in the latter place, as I always am in museums
to find a certain kind of mediaeval pottery labelled Sultan-
abad.
I am delighted to give this lady the credit of recognising
that the so-called Bokhara rugs are really Turkoman.
But otherwise she does nothing to dispel the haze of
ignorance that makes possible so preposterous a misnomer
as "Khiva Bokhara." A Khiva Bokhara means just
about as much as a Boston New York one, and it is time
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ABOUT RUG BOOKS
the rug people had the courage to say so. Our authoress
runs the gauntlet of a certain proverb about a little
knowledge when she asserts that the Turkoman "prayer
rugs are called Tekke from their use in Tekkes or places of
worship" (p. 132), apparently oblivious to the fact that
there are in Transcaspia tribes of Akhal Tekkeh, Merv
Tekkeh, and heaven only knows how many other kinds of
Tekkeh Turkomans. In the matter of Beluchistan, again,
she veers a point nearer the truth than most of her fellow-
scribes, who outdo each other in moving descriptions of
the hot and arid homeland of Beluch rugs. I do not pre-
tend myself to know anything about Beluchistan, or
whether rugs are made in any part of it. I do know,
however, that most of the Beluch rugs of commerce, if not
all, come neither from Beluchistan nor, as Eliza Dunn
states, from Kerman, but from Khorasan. They are
woven by nomad Beluchis who pitch their black tents in
the lower part of that province. The two chief markets
for them are Birjand, the capital of that region and an
important centre of rug weaving, and Turbat-i-Haidari,
some ninety miles south of Meshed not to be confused
with another Turbat nearer the Afghan border. In the
Asiatic trade these rugs are rightly called Beluch. The
other two syllables are added by logical-minded westerners
jumping at conclusions.
ii
I have already intimated, and I am ready to repeat in
so many words, that it is possible to go too far in making
merry over books which never intended to say the last
word on an extremely complicated subject. If the reader
will grant me that it is one of the first impulses of man to
215
PERSIAN MINIATURES
laugh at the misnaming of things and places familiar to
him, I will grant the reader that it is something for an
inhabitant of New York or Philadelphia to have found out
where so many of the rugs on his floor came from and
that the present critic, for his own part, knows very much
less about it than the most unreliable of the writers he criti-
cises. I will also grant that rugs and words are something
alike in that they are the common property of all man-
kind, and not, like marbles or canvases or other products
of the more aristocratic arts, the guarded possession of a
chosen few. Consequently the bounds between art and
industry in these two forms of weaving are vaguer than in
certain other departments of creative activity. And the
owner of ten or twenty-five or sixty Asiatic rugs needs less
courage to make a book about them than the possessor of a
similar number of old Chinese porcelains or Italian paint-
ings. Moreover, there is not yet, as indeed more than one
writer of rug books has pointed out, an authoritative
literature on the subject. The field is still open to whom-
ever will take it.
But it will never be taken in any such way as the one
hitherto followed by American writers. It is no flattering
proof of what we know of the East and its arts, or of the
standards of criticism accepted among us, that publishers
can go on issuing these more or less expensive picture
books, improvised out of Mr. Mumford and water.
Whether we regard rugs as works of art or as household
conveniences, surely they deserve a study no less special-
ised than etchings, say, or textiles. The simplest hand-
book of any other art or industry presupposes a back-
ground of knowledge entirely foreign to these books. The
fact is that not one of their authors possesses the equip-
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ABOUT RUG BOOKS
ment to write a satisfactory rug book. If I include Mr.
Mumford in this assertion, I must repeat that he deserves
great credit for his pioneer work in an empty field. His
followers, however, have done practically nothing to
clarify and add to the data which he made available to
them. For they persist in following a method by which
it is hopeless to arrive at any solid result.
Their method, one gathers from their books, is to sit
down with Mr. Mumford in one hand and a school geog-
raphy in the other, dictating until they feel the need of
illumination on some obscure point when they seek
enlightenment from an Armenian rug pedlar or from the
buyer of a department store who has been three times to
Smyrna, Constantinople, Tiflis, and Tabriz. Their con-
ception of "the Orient," at any rate, seems not to differ
very materially from the Persian idea of Firengistan,
which for the common run of Iranians lumps America
with Europe and presupposes for us all a common history
and language. Otherwise how could Mr. Ellwanger, for
instance, declare that Arabic is the lingua franca of the
Near East (p. 122), or Dr. Lewis air his views of the Arabic
alphabet, or their colleagues one and all trot out their
"namailik," "behbelik" etc., as applicable to all prayer
rugs, saddlebags, and so forth? They are not to blame for
not knowing Arabic and all the other languages and dia-
lects of Asia. But they are scarcely to be commended
for volunteering information about matters of which they
know little or nothing. It naturally makes one distrust
everything they have to say. And I, for one, am unable
to comprehend their childlike faith in the gentlemen of
the trade.
It is true enough that our knowledge and enjoyment of
217
PERSIAN MINIATURES
Oriental rugs has been gained chiefly in the way of trade,
and that dealers were long, perhaps still are, our best
authorities. But while some dealers are educated men,
and have enjoyed wide experience in centres both of rug
selling and rug weaving, they do not appear to be the ones
to whom the rug book people apply. Is it necessary to
point out that because a man happens to buy or sell rugs,
and knows how to distinguish many varieties of them,
or even to speak one or two of the languages of their
makers, it does not follow that he is infallible with regard
to every phase of the subject? For the rest, few Armenian
rug dealers in America ever set their foot in any centre of
rug weaving, or ever troubled themselves about little
matters like geography, orthography, philology, or eth-
nology. Few of them, either, ever in their lives hesitated
for an answer. For the Oriental point of view is that
courtesy requires an answer to a question, the actual
truth of the reply being quite a secondary matter. Few
American buyers, furthermore, remain in the countries
they visit long enough to acquire much first-hand informa-
tion. And the professional rug buyer is first and foremost
a business man, not much more likely than his Armenian
colleague to ask himself or any one else questions about
the broader aspects of the commerce in which he is en-
gaged. He is, I like to think, constitutionally more willing
to utter the simple phrase " I don't know." But it is as
easy for him as for any one else to give a particular fact
a general application, or to think that " Iran" and " Ker-
manshah" and " Khiva Bokhara" are good enough names
for certain recognised kinds of rugs.
I have perhaps gone too far about to intimate what
might have been said in a sentence: that the writer of a
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ABOUT RUG BOOKS
satisfactory rug book should be a connoisseur doubled
by an Orientalist. He should possess exact and detailed
knowledge of rugs, their manufacture, the places they come
from. He should know something about the languages
of those places, to say nothing of their geography, their
history, their customs, and their art. And he should
have in him enough of a critical method to be capable of
putting his material into workmanlike form. How else
can he avoid such pitfalls as I have already pointed out,
or hope to write a book worthy of ranking with serious
studies of other arts? For this art, this industry if you
prefer, is too complex and set in too unfamiliar a back-
ground to be adequately treated by a foreigner without a
lifetime of research.
Consider, for instance, the important detail of classi-
fication, which justly fills so large a part of every rug book.
Most of our authors classify carpets on geographical lines,
enumerating the different countries of Asia where rugs are
woven and taking some account of the different provinces
of those countries especially in Persia. But they also
cling to trade names, based on however false a geography.
And besides taking these and other liberties with the map,
they further confuse the reader by jumping from their
geographical classification to other systems based on
similarities of weave or design. Thus most of them make
a distinction between a Meshed rug and a Khorasan
Meshed being, of course, the chief city of that province
while maintaining a mysterious silence with regard to
other weaves of Khorasan. Mr. Mumford, again, invents
the name Kirmanieh, under which he includes not only
Kerman but " Khorasan/' Meshed, Herat, and Shiraz.
And Dr. Lewis transfers Kashan to Azerbaijan, further
219
PERSIAN MINIATURES
making distinctions between Ardelan and Eastern Kur-
distan which do not square with the facts. As for the
great north-central Persian province of Irak Ajemi,
originally extending from the Elburzrange to Isfahan, it
now means to the Persians the country around Sultana-
bad, the Fera'han-Saruk-Serabend country, which may be
stretched to include Kum and Kashan. This compara-
tively small area produces more rugs than any other in
Persia, and it is by no means inaccessible. Yet over it
reigns in the rug books a twilight of darkest Africa. How,
then, until the writers of the books know what they are
talking about, and what perhaps no one in the American
trade is competent to tell them, can they possibly classify
with accuracy or perspective?
The problem, I admit, is far from simple. But it will
never be solved in a New York library or even in the
saloon of an excursion boat on the Great Lakes, where, I
am informed, one of the most popular of our authors, while
on a midsummer holiday, composed his magnum opus.
Dr. Lewis tells us that there are over fifty varieties of
commercial rugs (p. 161). If he had said five hundred
he would have fallen short of the truth. The fact is
that there are many more kinds of rugs than any one
seems to suspect. Which partly accounts for such absurd
trade names as "Iran" and " Kermanshah." Such trade
names as Mahal, Mushkabad, and Savalan, on the other
hand, are more legitimate, having been invented by mod-
ern manufacturers to designate different grades of their
own Sultanabads. But there are undreamt of subtleties
even behind the most straightforward name. A Hama-
dan, for example, is universally described in the books as
having a camel border, or a camel ground diapered in a
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ABOUT RUG BOOKS
lighter shade, ornamented with what our authors elegantly
name a pole medallion. Whereas the majority of Hama-
dans are of quite other types. And until 1912, or there-
abouts, not one of them came from the town of Hamadan.
The plain sbotori (camel-coloured) Hamadan is made in
the adjoining district of Mehraban, while the diapered or
sbireb-shekeri (syrupy!) is from a place called Dargezin.
Others are from Borchalu, Erzamfud, Famenin, Injelas,
Kabutraheng, etc. all as truly Hamadans as the camel
rugs, because they are woven in the region of Hamadan
and marketed here, yet each distinctly recognisable to the
expert by its own local characteristics. And every other
rug centre has similar local subdivisions, the vast majority
of which remain unknown to the books.
A primary essential, then, of a satisfactory rug book is
that it should include reliable maps. In this respect the
existing books are woefully deficient. Few of them con-
tain even approximately accurate plans of any Asiatic
country, while none of them show the whereabouts of all
the places they mention. Much less do any of them give
detailed charts of the principal centres of weaving. This
is the less excusable because the whole background of this
art whose masterpieces bear the names of tribes, provinces,
and cities is geography. Only on geographical lines can
any clear idea be gained of the different schools of rugs,
or any foundation be laid for their history and an under-
standing of their mutual relations. But it is not enough
to follow a contemporary atlas, however exact as these
are at times to teach us. For no contemporary atlas can
show how boundaries have shifted even in the lifetime of
existing rugs. This is particularly true of a country like
Persia, whose interior provinces and exterior frontiers
221
PERSIAN MINIATURES
have varied enormously throughout the long period during
which weavers have sat at looms. And small matters like
colour and design are often intimately connected with those
variations. Thus the eastern half of the Transcaucasus
was Persian far longer than it has been Russian. North-
ern Armenia and Mosul have frequently been subject to
Persia. Mesopotamia has oftener than not been a part
of that empire. As for Khorasan, it is now scarcely a
quarter of the immense Province of the Sun which for-
merly ran out to the Oxus and included much of modern
Afghanistan. Yet writers of rug books apologise for
relating Herat to Meshed when it is not a hundred years
since an imaginary line was drawn between them, and
scarcely two hundred since the Afghans made their official
entrance into history. It is extremely important, too, to
remember that Transoxiana was for centuries as much
a part of Persia as Pars: is supposed, indeed, to have been
the birthplace of the Iranian race.
The geographical background, again, is intimately asso-
ciated with the historical. The latter has hitherto been
treated in far too summary a manner, with more informa-
tion about the Jews and the Egyptians than about the
people of the colder regions which are the true habitat
of the rug. As yet we know next to nothing about the
origins and affiliations of our art. The oldest existing
samples of rug weaving are fragments of the thirteenth
or fourteenth centuries, whereas we are well aware that
the secret of knotting strands of coloured wool on a foun-
dation of taut strings is of far more antique invention.
And it would be extremely interesting to find out who
discovered this secret. The Chinese, perhaps, whose
civilisation developed so early and so widely? We know,
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ABOUT RUG BOOKS
at all events, that long before the Christian era caravans
were passing to and fro between Mongolia and Khorasan.
A pretty point waits to be established, too, as to how much
the Turks took with them into Asia Minor, and how much
they found there when they arrived. There are resem-
blances between Turkoman, Caucasian, and Anatolian
weaves which look like landmarks of an old migration.
Yet Marco Polo, who passed through Asia Minor toward
the end of the thirteenth century, found Greeks and
Armenians weaving "the finest and handsomest carpets
in the world/'
This is, of course, a subject excessively difficult to
approach, by reason of a lack of documents. Certain
documents do exist, however, in the shape of old Persian
and Arabic geographies or histories. Thus we know that
as long ago as the tenth century Bokhara, Samarkand,
and Tashkent were centres of carpet weaving, and that
this Persian manufacture was at least dabbled in by the
neighbouring Turks of inner Asia. At the same period
looms were busy in Birjand, Pars, and even Mesopotamia.
Under the Mongols of the thirteenth century a school of
rugs grew up in what is now the province of Mazanderan.
Marco Polo does not specifically mention the carpets of
Kerman, but he speaks of "hangings for the use of noble-
men," while I have noted in Howorth's "History of the
Mongols" that Ghazan, the Mongolian Khan of Persia
to whom Marco Polo brought a princess out of China,
caused carpets for his palace to be woven at Shiraz. And
not only did the Venetians who two hundred years later
visited the court of the Turkoman king Uzun Hasan, at
Tabriz, have a great deal to say in passing about his beauti-
ful carpets, but innumerable other European chroniclers
223
PERSIAN MINIATURES
and travellers of the Middle Ages mention that famous
product of Persia.
Other documents that wait to be deciphered are the
historic rugs in public and private collections. These are
the old masters of the art, which with the exception of the
Ardebil of South Kensington and a few other celebrated
carpets remain strangely unknown to most of our experts.
There are entire books to be made out of the museums.
And more to the point than quoting Scripture and the
Odyssey, or describing the enormous jewelled carpet
which the Arab conquerors found and cut up at Ctesiphon
in 637, would be a chapter there is room for a fat mono-
graph on the rugs of pictures. The old Dutch and
Italian painters could furnish between them a priceless
collection, which should shed no little light on the history
of our art. Of this Mr. W. A. Hawley, at least ("Oriental
Rugs, Antique and Modern "), is aware, if he has not found
time to go so thoroughly into the subject as Bode and
Lessing.
A detail of less importance, but one of which a scholarly
rug book would take cognisance, is one already touched on,
namely spelling. There is the more excuse, as I said a few
pages back, for the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in
which our authors abound, because the Roman alphabet
was not invented to spell the English language, and be-
cause the users of that language have not yet fully agreed
on how to convey its sounds. The case is further com-
plicated by the fact that other sharers of the Roman
alphabet have sounds and systems of their own, into
which the rug book people, as well as geographers and
writers of travel, occasionally dip. Hence that d in
"sedjadeh" and that / in "klatMi" which are necessary
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ABOUT RUG BOOKS
\
to the Frenchman but superfluous for us. More super-
fluous is the unwieldy German dsch which I have occasion-
ally come across in place of a simple English ;. Another
complication is that Oriental languages contain sounds for
which we have no exact equivalent. Then the same name
may be pronounced or written differently by an Arab, a
Persian, or a Turk, or even by dwellers in different parts
of the same country. A case in point is the habit of the
Arabs of using a / where the Persians use a g. Nor, again,
is it easy to settle on the form of a name. To the people
of Persian Kurdistan the name of their capital, known to
us as Sehna or Senna, is Senenduch, while Persians and
Turks speak of it as Sineh. The ancient city of Gordium,
equally well known in carpet literature, enjoys a no less
wonderful variety of titles, of which the Turkish is Gyor-
dez and the modern Greek Yorthes with the ih hard.
But even when we agree on a form, we seldom agree how
to convey the sound of that form to the Anglo-Saxon eye
and tongue. I think it quite hopeless to attempt to do
so by means of any phonetic system relying on the more
purely English combinations, like ee t 00, final ie, and all
the rest. There are too many phonetic systems, and too
few people understand each others/ Moreover they are
rarely consistent or complete. Mr. Mumford and his
family, for instance, usually refer to a well-known Persian
province as Azerbijan. This spelling takes for granted,
I suppose, that the reader will pronounce the / as in kite,
but neglects to consider the fact that the other vowels
must be uttered in a way which does not come natural to
Anglo-Saxons. Our only hope is to adopt some system
like that of the Royal Geographical Society, happily
coming into vogue among our own editors and map-
225
PERSIAN MINIATURES
makers. If you have to learn its conventions in order to
be able to use it, so do you with any other system Eng-
lish being the patchwork language it is. And this system
has the great merit of being both simple and logical.
A lesser but by no means negligible detail in which
the existing rug books fall short is that of illustration.
And it is the less negligible because so many of them bid
for favour on the score of their coloured plates. As a
youthful reader of romance I was always deeply offended
when a heroine expressly described by the author as blonde
was portrayed by the illustrator as a brunette, or when
the death of the villain was depicted a dozen pages be-
fore or after the event. In the course of years my
destiny led me into the retreats where these crimes are
committed, and I have come to understand how they take
place. But with me, I fear, to comprehend is not to
pardon. As a mature reader of rug books I continue
to be offended by pictures that seem to be chosen for
airy reasons of decoration or availability, that put the
student to the greatest possible inconvenience in compar-
ing them with the text, or that fail to do all they can for
him in the thorny matter of classification. Mr. Hawley
does more for his reader than any one else, and Dr. Lewis
is in this respect more satisfactory than Mr. Mumford
though I have reason to suspect that if Mr. Mumford had
been allowed to make his later editions more than re-
prints he would have improved them in this as in other
particulars. But no rug book that I have come across
illustrates all the stock designs, or inserts the illustrations
at the right place. A small black-and-white, setting
forth an essential point at the psychological moment, is
worth more than the most elaborate coloured plate stuck
226
ABOUT RUG BOOKS
in where it is most convenient for the folder of the sheets
and most economical for the publisher of the book.
Among other matters worth consideration, that of
the technical processes of rug weaving will bear more
study than has yet been given them. I am told by those
who know more about such things than I do that the
variety of knots and their spacing between strands of
the foundation is greater than the rug books would
lead us to believe, and that the last word has not been
said about the materials used. Although the high, dry
climate of the Asiatic plateaux is commonly averred to
be responsible for the sheen and softness of the best
rugs, none have a greater softness or sheen than the old
Anatolians, whose wool was produced not far from sea
level. And it is a fact that perhaps the most perfect
rugs made in Persia to-day are woven at Kashan out of
Australian wool, which is finer and silkier than any
grown in "the Orient."
As for dyes, ancient and modern, the rug book people
beat their breasts a little more vehemently than they
need. They mourn the growing rarity of the old vege-
table dyes, and they do well. They omit to add, however,
that as garish horrors have been perpetrated with vege-
table dyes as with mineral. Nor are the former so fast
as the rug books contend. On the contrary, the beauty
of vegetable dyes is that they will fade. The point is
that they fade evenly, one shade toning into another.
Whereas aniline dyes fade unevenly. The reds have a
tendency to retain their vigour, while certain other
colours eventually disappear. A greater fault is that
they tend to harden the wool, thereby dulling the sheen
which is the honour of old age. But in Persia and Tur-
227
PERSIAN MINIATURES
key, at all events, aniline dyes are employed by no means
so generally as the rug book people imagine. Not only
are there in Persia penalties against their importation,
and against the exportation of rugs in which they are
used, but it is quite incorrect to say as Dr. Lewis does
(pp. 78, 218) that two-thirds or three-quarters of mod-
ern Turkish rugs are aniline dyed. What neither he nor
any one else mentions is the growing employment of
alizarin dyes. These also tend to harden the wool,
though it remains for a later century to determine the
ultimate effect of this process. But their greatest fault
is the mythic virtue ascribed to the vegetable dyes: they
will neither fade nor wash out. Whence is it that those
who use them incline to soft shades unknown to the old
weavers, in an attempt to anticipate the tone of age so
prized by western buyers.
There is more to be learned than we yet know about
the colour scale of different weaves, and their schemes of
colour combination. A point in this connection which
has never been taken up is that of outline. If you look
into a Persian rug you will discover that each figure is
bounded by a line of another colour, sometimes so fine as
to be almost imperceptible. Yet this inconspicuous
outline has an extraordinary effect on the field of colour
it encloses. The same tint will have an entirely dif-
ferent look, or shade into different directions of the spec-
trum, according to the colour of its outline. Some
schools of rugs, like the Bijar, have been found to follow
invariable rules for outlining. A wider knowledge of such
laws, therefore, would of course be a help in identification.
A subject of the utmost complexity, and one which
awaits a profounder scholarship than has yet dealt with it,
228
ABOUT RUG BOOKS
is that of design. There is much easy talk in the rug books
about tribal marks and symbols, about Greece, Egypt,
further Asia, and Central America, about palms, lotuses,
and Trees of Life, to say nothing of knots of destiny,
stars of the Medes, shields of David and Solomon, and
S's of the Fire Worshippers. It all tends, however, to
excite rather than to satisfy our curiosity. When Dr.
Lewis announces (p. 147) that he has devoted more con-
sideration to this topic than any of his predecessors, he
forces the critic to add that if one removed from Dr.
Lewis's chapter on design everything relating to China
and India there would be little left besides hearsay or
guesswork. And the value of his claim may be judged
from the fact that in the rest of his book he omits any men-
tion whatever of Indian rugs, while to the subject of China
he devotes a grand total of six pages.
As our authors study the map and read perhaps in
Mr. Mumford, whose treatment of this vast subject,
however inadequate, is again more worthy than that
of his followers of the caravans, the conquests, the mi-
grations, which have swept back and forth across Asia,
it no doubt seems highly plausible to them that a motive
originating in Egypt or India should find lodgment in a
Persian or Caucasian rug. Nor can any one deny that
the transfusion of decorative ideas is as old as the swastika.
How else should Persian miniatures and portraits of
Lucrezia Crivelli be hanging in an English house in Hama-
dan? The period of cbinoiserie in European ornament is
one fanciful chapter of this tendency. I myself might
write another on the unexpected places where I have found
familiar details of rugs. I have seen on an old Resht
embroidery, and above a dado of very Chinese-looking
229
PERSIAN MINIATURES
tiles in a fifteenth century mosque at Adrianople, as
in the marble arch of more than one Turkish door, the
identical pattern of reciprocal trefoils so characteristic
of Caucasian borders. I have also seen Bulgarian towels
decorated after the fashion of Anatolian rugs, to say
nothing of Kurdish and Persian ones. Then many of
the so-called Rhodian plates, as of the Turkish tiles of the
sixteenth century, bear the bent and serrated lance-leaf
of the mabi (fish) or Herat design. And as for that lozenge
or spindle which the rug books call a pole medallion, there
is no end to the repetitions of it I have come across in
rugs, in textiles, in embroideries, in the painted panels
of rooms, on the tiled walls of tombs and palaces in Con-
stantinople, wrought in iron for the enrichment of an
Egyptian door, illuminated in miniatures or in manu-
scripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, tooled
on the covers of innumerable Arabic, Persian, and Turkish
books, the oldest of which I have noted was bound in
Baghdad in the eleventh century. And in New York,
in the twentieth century, an American publisher repro-
duced it again for the cover of this book from the back
of a Persian mirror.
At the same time, no one who has not been in the East
can realise the immense conservatism of Oriental peoples,
their instinctive suspicion of anything foreign, or the
extreme difficulty they still have in communicating with
one another, And although some mystic law of associa-
tion invariably causes that ample phrase "the Orient"
to call up in western minds a picture of the tropics, the
fact remains that wool rugs are primarily the product of
cold climates. One should think twice, therefore, before
adopting the theory that so characteristic a Persian design
230
ABOUT RUG BOOKS
as the spindle is derived from so exotic a plant as the lotus
especially when so competent an authority as Mr.
Stanley Lane-Poole attributes the medallion as a system
of ornament to the Sasanians. Neither is it likely that
a palm could suggest very much to a man who never set
eyes on one. Even the cypress is too much a friend of
the sun to be very familiar to the highlanders of western
Asia. I doubt, moreover, whether it is safe to identify
the cypress with the Tree of Life, the "sacred Cocos tree,"
and other mythic vegetables. The Mohammedan Tree
of Life, or the tuba as Mr. Mumford correctly names it in
a note, is of course an authentic specimen of the botany
of design. But I question whether the weavers of Kerman
ever thought about the tuba of the other world when they
drew their delightful pots of flowers. And I am still more
sceptical of Mr. Hawley's naturalisation in Persia of
Chinese symbols of connubial happiness. His pair of
ducks on a famous rug in the Metropolitan Museum
might perfectly be hens, pigeons, or poppinjays or a
heraldic device of the Mamelukes of Egypt.
As for the so-called pear pattern, that leaf-shaped or
flame-shaped figure for which the rug books evolve so
many fanciful origins, I know no more about it than they.
But I do know that the Persians call it a louteh, meaning
twig or bush, by which name they further designate the
camel-thorn of their bare plains. And I have seen the
same design on old Indian silks, as in photographs of a
foliated Egyptian damask of the thirteenth or fourteenth
century, of a Rhages jar of the thirteenth century, and
of the tiles of the mosque of Sidi Okba in Kairuan, which
were imported from Baghdad in the ninth century;
while the Turks used to employ a similar motive in the
231
PERSIAN MINIATURES
guise of a cypress with a bent top. Only under the most
serious reserves, therefore, should one countenance any
legend of crown jewels, Hindu rivers, and what not. If
the buteb represents anything at all on which there is no
reason to insist it is probably a conventionalisation of
some plant form, and far more ancient than the regalia
of so modern a dynasty as that of the Kajars. In any
case, these are questions not to be answered by rug pedlars
or by gentlemen who have been three times to Tiflis.
Having been there, myself, only twice, and then having
pursued my investigations no farther than the railway
station, I say no more !
I will say one word more, nevertheless, with regard to
the future of Oriental rugs. This is a topic on which the
rug books make most lugubrious prophecies, justly anathe-
matising the use of aniline dyes and a suspicious tendency
of this Asiatic craft to take on a European colour. For
myself, I am less agitated about the aniline peril than
about the other. But I recognise one or two points which
the ladies and gentlemen of the rug books apparently
ignore. The first of those points is one about which I
have already said a little. Strong as is the instinct of
Oriental weavers to goon repeating themselves indefinitely,
there have always been individuals among them who were
not averse to a novelty. Thus the so-called Isfahan car-
pets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to
betray that European influence which was so strong at the
court of Abbas Shah. The same thing sporadically occurs
in places so far away from each other as Karabagh and
Kerman, whose weavers appear to have found an irresisti-
ble attraction in the European treatment of the rose, so
different from the usual Persian conventionalisation of
232
ABOUT RUG BOOKS
that flower. The Mongol and Turkoman kings of Persia
may have had something to do with the former case,
since Karabagh was for them a favourite summer resort,
visited by many a European who brought presents from
his own land. And freaks of design turn up every now
and then from the most unexpected source no doubt the
whim of some Persian seigneur who happened to take a
fancy to a European gimcrack.
One of the most unusual examples I ever saw was a
rug which hung in our own house, considered by the
Sah'b to be a Hamadan. This Hamadan, although prop-
erly knotted, and bearing a name and a date in Arabic
letters, had the effect of a bit of French tapestry. Yet it
looked as if it might have been designed after a picture
by Francesco Guardi. It represented, distinguishably
enough, St. Mark's basin and San Giorgio Maggiore, with
gondolas and figures and suggestions of rococo drapery!
The beauty of it, however, was the lovely Aubusson red
of the ground, into which amazingly managed to dissolve
a symphony of delicate blues. Such a piece, of course, is
an extreme type. But it is a type of a thing which has
happened in every art and every time.
Now the reason why this thing is happening in Persia
to-day, happily on a far less subversive scale, is the very
reason why so many interesting and successful rug books
are being written. For the seigneurs who keep busy the
looms of the East now live chiefly in the West. And that
is why the simple old colours, which any Persian or Turkish
child had an inimitable secret of combining, tend to refine
themselves into the pastel shades of the Smyrna, Hamadan,
and Sultanabad factories ; why the complicated old designs
run more and more to open grounds of a single tint ; why
233
PERSIAN MINIATURES
we see fewer of those irregularities, both in colour and
execution, which add charm to many a nomad rug; why
dealers are driven to so many doubtful expedients for
bleaching and toning. The truth is that most Americans
do not like the rugs which most Persians prefer to weave.
They are afraid of primary colours, and they are more
afraid of their interior decorator, who tells them that no
high-minded person puts into his house anything which
does not match or complement everything else. They
are afflicted, furthermore, with an incurable mania for
what they are pleased to call antiques. Is it surprising,
then, that they get what they want? Yet it is only fair
to acknowledge what the West has done for this Oriental
art, at a time when in the Near East taste and patronage
are at their lowest ebb in keeping up standards of de-
sign, colour, material, and craftsmanship. If it were not
for us, everybody in Persia and Turkey would now be using
aniline dyes and imitating staring European patterns.
The true danger lies in quite another quarter. While
Persia has for centuries exported her carpets, the narrow-
ing of the modern world has made it easy to exploit this
commerce on so large a scale that the weavers can no
longer sit for months and years over such carpets as they
wove a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years ago.
As it is, work requiring so much time and labour could
not possibly be produced in western countries, save in
excessively small quantities. Our standards of life are so
different that an American workman of the skill required
to weave a fine rug would require twenty or thirty times
the wage with which a Persian is satisfied. It therefore
pays to make rugs in Persia and export them to Europe
and America and will pay so long as the standards of
234
ABOUT RUG BOOKS
life remain in Persia what they are. But what if the
standardising of the world should continue until the
Persian no longer remained content with his mud house,
his empty rooms, his simple pleasures? Then very few
of us could afford to buy his rugs.
It may be, however, that the war of mankind will
check the standardising of the world, will encourage inde-
pendence and individuality and simple habits. So this
most firmly rooted of Oriental habits may for a long time
yet run no great danger of being changed. To prophesy
with Dr. Lewis, at any rate, that "the Orient" is being
"robbed of its fabrics and the Persian rug will have be-
come a thing of the past" is pure nonsense. There
is no more danger of the Persian rug becoming a thing of
the past than the oil painting. The old masters will
disappear, yes save for connoisseurs of the largest
means. But the secret of the Persian rug is by no means
lost. It still lives, thank heaven, in millions of Persian
fingers, to say nothing of Kurdish, Tartar, Turkish, and I
don't know how many other ones. It lives so energetically
that we can venture to wait for questions of taste, for
questions of chemistry, even I hope for questions of
economics, to settle themselves. And, here and there,
under leisurely mud roofs, in spite of the craze for "an-
tiques," in spite of the jeremiads of the rug books, there
are being woven carpets quite as good as came from the
looms of Abbas the Great. Nor do many of them get
into the hands of buyers for department stores. In a
hundred years, though, what prices people will pay for
them crying out on the degeneracy of their day, and the
exquisite art of ours!
235
XIV
THE GRAMOPHONE
I have not made one complaint against Fortune, since I know she
acts under compulsion.
The one thing which from time to time troubles me is my longing
for Lahore.
Masud-i-Sad-i-Salman
A GRAMOPHONE, God wot, is a thing of hor-
ror. The scrape of its needle would be detest-
able enough to the ear, without its cheapness
of imitation. And the seriousness with which
millions of honest citizens listen to that screeching echo
of an echo, calling it music, is a thing to stagger one's
faith in mankind. For absolute music, that creative
interlinking of sound and silence which the hand of genius
can charm out of dead wood and metal, is what the
wretched engine evokes least successfully.
And yet ! And yet what a thing it is that a living
voice or an immortal violin can count on even so poor an
immortality! And as the camera, whose unaided mir-
acles are in themselves too literal to be engaging, has done
so much for the study of art and for a dozen different
kinds of comparative research, so the gramophone, or the
phonograph, might be an invaluable note-book. I re-
member a spring day long ago on which I rowed from one
to another of the gray monasteries which look out from
~*
236
THE GRAMOPHONE
Mt. Athos to the /Egean Sea. To be strictly accurate, I
myself did not row. A monkish-looking person did that,
in a rusty black robe and a -rusty black felt cap for all the
world like a Persian kola, telling most unmonastic stories
as he rowed. I lolled in the stern, enchanted now by
him and now by a young Greek who sang in the bottom
of the boat. The latter was a stone-cutter from Salonica
who had been carving the marble gate of a monastery for
his uncle the abbot. And having pocketed a pound or
two for his handiwork, he lay on his back in the sun,
between the boatman's feet and mine, singing a love-song
of his people so long, so quaint, so new to me and wild,
that I thought I never should forget it. But I did, as I
have forgotten the strange march I heard in the night at
Kazvin, and the mad music of the Great Slaughter, and
many a melancholy air that has made me walk more
slowly past a tea garden. Whereas if I had only pos-
sessed one of those horns of mystery into which favourite
opera singers bellow their favourite airs, I might have
decorated this page with an outlandish enough array of
minor notes.
Having pretended, however, that I would like to see
myself a collector of folk songs, I must make one or two
confessions. A symphony, it is true, is the form of art
which upsets me more than any other unless it be a
string quartette. The kind couple who once took me to
hear Strauss's "Tod und Erklarung" would have smiled
to know what a new heaven and a new earth they opened
for the most youthful of their guests. Nevertheless, I
cannot deny it: I like an opera! It isn't because I prefer
a living voice to a violin. For me an Amati rather than
an Amato, except when it is too dark for any distracting
237
PERSIAN MINIATURES
image of a costume or of a self-consciousness or of a thirst
for applause. The singers, though, are not the opera.
That is something more complex, interwoven of music,
colour, and drama. Not that the latter counts for any-
thing by itself. Otherwise who could keep from snick-
ering at the absurdity of an overfed tenor bawling "I
love you!" at the top of his voice, or ordering a super in
liquid roulades to shut the door? I may have heard
" Aida," say, forty times, and to this day I haven't an idea
what on earth it is about. A mere poetic flash of the
human is all an opera should suggest, a pretty face, a
gesture of despair, to warm the intertwining of sound
and colour. It is a shameless polygamy of arts at best,
but one dare I admit it? which in my time has been
more potent than black coffee to keep me awake o'
nights.
But the worst is that no man has thrown away more
gramophone needles or used up more records than I!
Why, do you suppose, is that? Well, it need not be be-
cause I like the scratch or the screech. It might be be-
cause any strong rhythm a cook beating eggs, a train
bumping over rail-ends, a Persian pounding a drum-
makes something in me twitch. It might be because I
can read both Dostoievsky and Jack London or John
Kendrick Bangs, if you prefer. It might be because I
sometimes find quite as much profit in the artistic works
of Messrs. Goldberg, Maurice Ketten, and Fontaine
Fox as in the exhibitions of the Academy. In Ham-
adan it might be because we have precious few ways of
amusing ourselves. And what did Kipling say about
rafting a Broad wood up the Nile? Somebody rafted a
Steinway up the Tigris safely enough for a missionary
238
THE GRAMOPHONE
friend of ours; but the last lap over the mountains from
Khanikin landed at the unhappy recipient's door nothing
but a wreck of matchwood and twisted wire.
A gramophone, however, if less portable than a banjo,
might have made the poet sing a different song if he had
been born a decade or two later. For it waits on no
skilled plucker of strings to provide first aid for the caller,
time for the dancer, and lightness for the leaden hour.
Then a pile of records containing Caruso, Harry Lauder,
and "Nearer my God to thee," is potent with ironic pos-
sibilities. And are they Memory and Torment? Are
they Town? Are they all that ever went with evening
dress? As to that I am no poet, alas, and I have a dinner
jacket in my cupboard. I can only say that that abomin-
able needle will scratch me away a wall and renew me a
youth as uncannily as any sudden scent.
That poor old tottering sawhorse, now, the "Barcarolle" :
to opera goers and gramophone fiends there is only one
"Barcarolle"! But why should it always make so much
more vivid to me than flat-roofed Hamadan and white
Elvend the gables of Dresden and the half-frozen Elbe?
Do they still call the Cafe de Paris the Cafe de Paris, I
wonder where, in that winter after the resurrection of
the "Tales of Hoffmann" from the archives of the burned
Opera House at Vienna, an admirable little orchestra used
to play the "Barcarolle"? Though it give comfort to the
enemy I must swear that never have I eaten such cakes
or drunk such coffee as in the Cafe de Paris in Dresden.
Perhaps they tasted so because I was then living on let-
tuce and sour milk at a mad-house a little way up the
river. Each Tuesday night we used to have a concert in
that most enlivening of mad-houses, followed by a dance
239
PERSIAN MINIATURES
that ended at ten o'clock sharp or was it nine? Im-
possible to find out now, even from a Konversa^ionsdame.
There were two Konversa^ionsdamen one blonde, who
sat at the Korpulententisch, and one brunette, who sat at
the Magerntiscb. Their business was to converse with
the maniacs and to introduce them one to another.
There subsisted, of course, a bitter enmity between these
ladies, so that if you danced with one you would be refused
by the other. And you should have seen how beauti-
fully the brunette Konver salons dame waltzed with the
Count from the Korpulententisch, when the orchestra
played "Night of stars! O night of love!" As for me,
I waltzed with the widow from Lodz. Poor dears! I
wonder what has become of them all now.
"Mignon" also has hostile affiliations, of course; but a
Frenchman wrote the score, and it never fails to take me
back to that dirty old Teatro Rossini where I first heard
it. I was very young then, and extremely poor, and
didn't mind it a bit. So I used to go to the opera as
often as I could afford ten or twelve cents for the top
gallery, where the seats were not reserved and where
if you arrived late you saw nothing. The night I first
heard "Mignon" I arrived late. I therefore saw noth-
ing. Nothing, that is, but one glimpse of somebody's
long white hand, with a ruffle falling over it and a magni-
ficent stage jewel sparkling on one finger. It was a
man's hand, too, I fear. But when the gramophone
scratches out " Kennst Du das Land," with an extra
scratch every second because the record is cracked, it
only sounds more like those Italian fiddles. It even
smells like that stuffy Italian gallery, full of broad-brimmed
black hats and fringed black shawls folded cornerwise.
240
THE GRAMOPHONE
Then Caruso: I am of such an antiquity that I hap-
pened to be on hand during his first American season,
when he came to, saw, and conquered New York. I don't
think I went to his first night. But I did go to his last
one, when he sang " Lucia" if I remember correctly, and
when in almost his final solo his voice cracked worse than
any record, as I never heard his or anybody else's voice
crack on the stage. And how we clapped him after it!
And how in Hamadan we can listen to those thread-bare
old Italian songs, hearing not them but all manner of
queer things behind them from which time and distance
shut us away!
Of all Italian songs none can be more threadbare
than the Miserere, from "II Trovatore." Yet the most
ignoble confession I have to make is that I hide in the
bottom of my heart a guilty love for it, compounded out
of amusement at the senseless plot of the opera, which I
have never fathomed and never want to, out of the killing
way in which the tenor rushes out of prison to kiss his
hand to the audience when the pack-thread duet is done,
and out of some theory I used to have about its being more
typically Italian than anything else; but chiefly out of
the fact that it was the first opera I ever heard. I heard
it in English, too, in Boston, and it ravished my innocent
soul to the seventh heaven. However, there came a day,
or rather a long succession of nights, when I used to lie
in bed and hear the Grand Canal lap under my window.
The sound of it, and of oars dipping between the dark
palaces, was better than any opera. And so was the disem-
bodied voice that sang one night, to the strum of a distant
guitar, with a passion no tenor could pump out of a canvas
dungeon, " Non ti scordar! Non ti scordar di me!"
241
PERSIAN MINIATURES
No, caro mio; I never shall, to my dying day. And if the
day after that I find myself in a place half so heavenly as
Venice on a summer night, and the golden harps sound
in the least like a guitar on the lagoon, and the angels sing
anything that begins to be so perfect a pattern of a lyric,
I shall count myself not so badly off after all. And what
has all this to do with Persia, or gramophones either? Very
little, reader; very little. It is odd, though, how unex-
pectedly a leaden hour may be lightened, and how much
of the quality of things lies outside themselves.
242
XV
THE SEA OF SCIENCES
Whomever ihou seest in tine saintly garb,
Suppose Mm tole a wise man and a saint.
PERSIAN PROVERB
IN PERSIA there are, with certain exceptions that
prove the rule, no family names and no hered-
itary titles. Every gentleman is a Khan, that
is, a landowner. Some of them, in truth, own
very little land. Our cook had pretensions to being
a Khan; and having divorced his first wife while both of
them were in their teens, he took to his bosom an elderly
descendant of the Prophet. His sons will wear green
turbans and be called Seid. These people form, to be
sure, a species of nobility. They are so numerous, how-
ever, and the pedigrees of most of them are so much more
obscure than in Turkey or Arabia, that their credit is
chiefly with the common people.
But no great personage and few small ones are without
a title of a sort. Such titles carry no distinctions of degree
243
PERSIAN MINIATURES
and they are not hereditary. In a few princely houses
they have a hereditary colour from the fact that the son is
granted the title worn by his father. These resonant
titles are glorified nicknames, really, bestowed by the
Shah in reward for personal merit or services, and they
thereafter take the place of the bearer's true name. The
majority of them have in their flowery way a governmental
flavour as Sabre of the Dynasty, or Stability of the
Realm. I have read of a small boy, son of a provincial
chieftain, who was decorated with a patent as Tiger of the
Sovereignty. A certain Captain Massakroff of Tehran
is announced at court as Unique One of the Kingdom.
A great lady may be Chastity of the State, Full Moon of
the Dominion, Gaiety of the Dynasty, or simply Solace
of the Eyes. A palace eunuch signs himself Magnificence
of the Royal Intimacy! A professional man may earn
the right to be known as Illustrious among the Physicians,
or Sun of the Learned, or Adorner of the Monarchy.
The last, if you please, is a painter of miniatures. Two
famous artists of the Timurid period were the Pillar of the
Painters and the Choicest of the Penmen. The name of
the poet Bedi-al-Zaman of Hamadan, whose panegyric
of his native town I quoted at the top of an earlier chapter,
means Miracle of the Age. A citizen who made an
address of welcome to the Shah was instantly dubbed
Tongue of the Presence. And I have heard of a character
in a comedy who was satirically honoured with the style
of Uncleanness of Commerce. This is the tradition out
of which sprang the nicknames Chief of the Desert and
Prince All Alone, by which the Sah'b and I are known
below stairs.
I have the honour to take lessons in Persian from the
244
THE SEA OF SCIENCES
Sea of Sciences. The Sea of Sciences is not, as you may
suppose, a man in years. He might be thirty. He might
be forty. At any rate, the taste of life is still sharp on
his tongue. Nothing astonishes him more than that I
do not take his advice and let a skilled barber of his race
treat my hair, first with red henna and then with blue
indigo, in order to hide the all too evident ravages im-
printed upon me by the cares of this world and the deceit-
fulness of riches; and I notice that he relishes a risque story.
His dark robe, however, his white turban, and his clipped
round beard, are marks of the cult. Still, I do not gather
that he belongs to the hierarchy of the church or the law.
I take it that he is the natural product of a land in which
learning has always worn the colours of divinity. His
true place is among the mir^as and not among those who
are princes. In fact, the Sea of Sciences strikes me as
being not quite a gentleman. He prefers to enter the
house by the kitchen door. I think he likes to get the
news from the cook and perhaps a cooky. He has
very much the air of being engaged in making his fortune.
He should make a good one, with his quick wit, his sense
of humour, his varied information, and the belief I seem
to divine in him of the end justifying the means. But I
must not give the impression that he has no manners.
He always comes up to my study in his stocking feet, as
an Oriental should, in order to preserve the house from
the defilements of the street. Arrived at my door, he
knocks which is more than the servants can be counted
on to do he bows, he puts his hand to his heart, and he
enters into the most complicated inquiries about my exact
state of health. I likewise bow, I make a feint of putting
an awkward hand on the place where a heart should be,
245
PERSIAN MINIATURES
I emit grotesque concatenations of plural nouns and singu-
lar verbs. The Sea of Sciences then lays off his aba, looks
doubtfully at Jimmy, pokes the fire, and sets about teach-
ing me Persian.
The beauty of this operation is that the Sea of Sciences
knows not a syllable of English or any other European
language, while I am acquainted with no word of Persian
or Arabic. Neither of us, furthermore, owns such a thing
as a grammar, a reader, or a dictionary. But the Sea of
Sciences, they say, although he does not like to admit
descent from a race considered by the Persians to be all
that is gross and stupid, is of Turkish origin; and I have
lived in Stambul or as the Sea of Sciences prefers me to
say, Islambol. There are many Turks, or Turkish-
speaking people, in and around Hamadan more than
anywhere else in Persia except Azerbaijan. They belong
to the Turkoman tribe of the Kara-Gozlu, the Black
Eyed, which has pretensions to equal rank with that of
the reigning Kajar. It surprised me not a little to find
these people in Ecbatana, though I understood it better
when I considered that the Turks had to cross Persia
before they could get into Turkey, and that they must
have begun doing so a long time ago. So long ago was it,
however, that Turki, as the Sea of Sciences calls his
dialect, and Stanibuli, as he calls mine, are about as much
alike as Spanish and Italian. Still, necessity is the mother
of comprehension. Hence we succeed, partially, painfully,
and even more darkly than is usual of human intercourse,
in communicating one with the other. And the result is that
I pick up a certain amount of Turki, if very little Persian.
For the learning of letters a book is not necessary, and
least of all Arabic letters, which are written and printed in
246
THE SEA OF SCIENCES
the same way. When it came to the point of accustom-
ing my eye to the look of letters in combination and
Arabic letters have a mystifying habit of changing their
shape according as they fall at the beginning, the middle,
or the end of a word our lack of literature was supplied
by a good missionary. She lent us a Gospel of St. John,
in Persian. Now I must confess that I am not greatly
given to searching the Scriptures. Perhaps it is because
the heart of man is naturally depraved and desperately
wicked. Perhaps because the feet of my youth were set
so firmly on the strait and narrow path as to arouse in me
a perverse latent inclination to stray among byways. At
all events, the words of Holy Writ were too early familiar
to me to wear any glamour of the unknown. But I have
also to confess to a curious psychological reaction that
took place in me when I began to spell out, haltingly as a
kindergartener, under the keen black eye of the Sea of
Sciences, the Persian sentence: "In the beginning was
the Word . . ." It was, you know, as if I had never
read that high word before. And I discovered that be-
cause the Sea of Sciences regarded the Gospel of St. John
with a good deal of irony, I somehow became, if not its
impassioned advocate, at least unwilling to take part
against it. So far did I go to learn that though a man
may be what is called a free thinker, no man can be free
of the things that make him think as he does or escape
the consequences of his birth! I saw myself, after all, a
product of the tradition that accepts the Gospel of St.
John. And for the first time in my life I began to look
with an eye of sympathy upon that Hellenised Hebrew
dreamer who was capable of writing: "In the beginning
was the Word . . ."
247
PERSIAN MINIATURES
The Sea of Sciences entertains quite different ideas as
to what was in the beginning. He was good enough to
give me some account of his own ideas, and I found them
not quite identical with those so poetically put forward in
the Book of Genesis. It seems that what really was in
the beginning was water, upon which floated the throne of
the Creator. He began the work of creation by causing a
dense vapour to rise from the water and subjecting the
liquid remainder to a process of drying. This resulted in
the formation of the seven-fold earth and its seven seas.
The earth rested on the fin of a fish, the fish and its encir-
cling element were supported by blocks of stone, those
reposed on the back of an angel, the angel stood on a rock,
and the rock was upheld by the wind.
These operations took place on Sunday and Monday,
the first and second of April in so much detail is it known
to the Sea of Sciences what happened in the beginning.
On the Tuesday mountains were added to the newly
created earth, in order to increase its stability. Whence
is it that earthquakes are rarer than they were in the
beginning, when the movements of the fish bearing our
world caused terrible commotions. The work of Wed-
nesday was the invention of trees, plants, and all vegetable
life. On the next two days did the Lord perfect his first
rude sky of vapour, dividing it into seven heavens of
which the first was green emerald I quote from the Sea
of Sciences the second silver, the third red ruby, the
fourth pearl, the fifth pure gold, the sixth topaz, the
seventh and highest a firmament of burning fire, in which
hover unscorched a myriad of angels singing the praise
of God. And this firmament is so immense that although
the angels stand with one foot enough higher than the
248
THE SEA OF SCIENCES
other for a man to need five hundred years to make the
journey between them, their heads are yet far below the
uppermost throne of the Most High. Beneath his throne
God fixed a sea containing sustenance for all living beings.
From time to time, the Sea of Sciences assures me, there
is let down from the seventh heaven to the first such a
quantity of water as is meted out to man for the irrigation
of fields. God then gives orders to the winds to carry the
water to the clouds above the earth, out of which it is
sifted in the form of rain.
This work was completed on Friday, April sixth. Fri-
day is called Junta, or union, because on that day the
creation of the skies was united to that of the earth:
whence also do the faithful make that day the one on
which they unite in mosques for particular prayer. But
what the Sea of Sciences failed to make quite clear to me
is how the creation of man fitted into this calendar. It
seems that before Adam there were jinn, created out of
the fire of the seventh heaven, who were set upon the
earth to guard it. They behaved in so unbecoming a
manner, however, that one of their number, named Iblis,
begged to be separated from the other jinn. He was
accordingly named guardian of the first or emerald
heaven, his former companions being scattered into space
by the angels of the seventh heaven. And this preemi-
nence of Iblis was the cause of his downfall, because pride
had invaded his heart, as the Sea of Sciences pointed out
to me. God in the meantime imparted to the angels his
intention of creating another guardian of the earth, who
should be his vicar there. The angels, hearing that the
descendants of this new being would in turn cover the
earth with blood and disorder, like the dispersed jinn,
249
PERSIAN MINIATURES
permitted themselves to express surprise that they should
not rather be chosen, who spent their days in praising
God and blessing him. Whereupon the Most High re-
buked them, saying: "I know what is unknown to you/'
He then sent the archangel Gabriel to bring him from the
earth a lump of clay out of which to mould the new being;
but the earth protested in such alarm that Gabriel re-
turned to the seventh heaven without fulfilling his mis-
sion. The same thing happened with the archangel
Michael, the earth crying out: "I invoke God against
thee if thou do me hurt/' So Azrael, in turn, the dark
angel of death, silenced the earth by replying: "God pre-
serve me from ascending again to heaven without carrying
out his command!" The clay which Azrael took back
to heaven was of three kinds, white, red, and black, which
God wrought with his fingers and then let lie for forty
years. This, the Sea of Sciences tells me, is why the races
of men are of different colours. For two more periods
of forty years did the Creator allow the clay of the earth
to lie inanimate, after kneading it with his hands. In
the meantime he commanded the angels and Iblis to
bow down before his new creation. The angels at once
obeyed. As for Iblis, whose heart was filled with pride
and envy, he refused, even contemptuously kicking the
clay he who was formed out of the fire of the seventh
heaven. Wherefore was he cast out of his emerald heaven
in disgrace until the Judgment Day. Then the Lord
began to blow into the clay, which became limp and
flexible as the breath of God entered every part of it.
And Adam's first act of life was to sneeze.
The Sea of Sciences did not attempt to harmonise this
account with his statement that the creation of Adam was
250
THE SEA OF SCIENCES
completed on the same day as that of the seven heavens.
He went on to tell me the story of Eve, much as I had
heard it before, adding that our first parents were put
into Paradise on the third hour of that day, and that they
stayed there no more than three hours. But those three
hours, he explained to me, were equivalent to 250 years.
The story of the Serpent was also like that of Genesis.
When, however, I desired to know if the Serpent and
Iblis were one, the Sea of Sciences was not quite certain.
Yet he was able to inform me that the Serpent was ex-
pelled like Adam and Eve from the Garden, being sent
to Isfahan, while Eve was removed to Jiddeh and Adam
to Ceylon. Upon arriving there the latter had in the
way of garments nothing but the leaves of Paradise.
These soon dried in the hot sun of Ceylon, and the wind
dispersed them in dust throughout India. Whence is it
that that country abounds in aloes, cloves, musk, and
every kind of spice and aromatic plant.
How long Adam and Eve were separated, the Sea of
Sciences did not specify. But they were presently re-
united at Arafat, the Place of Recognition, near Mecca,
where great ceremonies are celebrated during the Feast of
Sacrifice. It was after this meeting that Cain, Abel,
and Seth were born. What was new to me was to hear
that Cain and Abel had twin sisters, each of whom be-
came the wife of the other's twin and so ensured the
continuation of the race. As for Adam, he died at last
on another Friday, the sixth of April, when he was 930
years old. Which is another reason why Mohammedans
keep that day holy. And the Sea of Sciences assured me
that these facts had first come down by direct revelation,
and had then been handed on from generation to genera-
251
PERSIAN MINIATURES
tion by men of the most unimpeachable authority, so
that there could be no manner of doubt about them.
He did admit, though, that different authorities gave
different versions of several of the details, adding piously:
"God better knows the truth."
I know not whether it is the evident interest I betray
in these matters, or a desire to implant sound doctrine,
that leads the Sea of Sciences to tell me many more
things about his beliefs and customs than you would have
patience to hear. If a certain book of poetry downstairs
in the library opened my ears to what he had to say about
the seven seas, to say nothing of the seven heavens,
I did not close them when he mentioned seven planets
and the seven climates of earth subject to the same, each
having a door by which one may penetrate into life, un-
locked by mystic polygonal keys of which the first is a
triangle and the seventh a nonagon. The seven doors
are science, wealth, power, will, pity, wisdom, and
what? Experience? Common sense? I couldn't quite
make out! I did make out, however, that Hamadan
lies in the fourth climate. The Sea of Sciences further in-
formed me that that name is derived according to some
from the name of a great-grandson of Noah, and accord-
ing to others from two Arabic words meaning All Knowing.
For the rest, he flatters Hamadan no more than did old
Bedi-al-Zaman. He is frank to say that out of our
hundred thousand inhabitants foreigners put the figure
at twenty-five to seventy thousand no more than forty
or fifty are ,true Mohammedans, reading the Koran, shav-
ing their heads, making their ablutions with due regular-
ity, and then causing the water to run from the elbow to
the fingers and not from the fingers to the elbow like those
252
THE SEA OF SCIENCES
heretical Turks. Of that other arch heretic the Caliph
Yezid of Damascus, who caused the murder of the Imam
Hosein, it is enough for the Sea of Sciences to tell me that
he drank wine and habitually petted dogs. This with a
glance over the shoulder at Jimmy, snoozing in front of
the fire, who pricks up that quizzical ear!
Dim and divided as our councils are, they do not by
any means run chiefly in channels of propaganda. The
Sea of Sciences allows me to perceive that much as the
Koran and the Traditions count for in true education,
they are not enough. Nothing amuses him more than
to hear that Omar Khayyam is supposed by the Firengis
to be a poet of some consequence. Omar Khayyam, he
assures me, was a mathematician, an astronomer, a
philosopher, a lesser Avicenna. True, he wrote a few
quatrains, but not enough of them to be considered a poet.
Any one can write quatrains. Moreover, many of those
ascribed to him are really by his master Avicenna, or others.
And even Omar, he tells me, experimented in other forms.
Shall I give an example I came across not long afterward
in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society/' translated
by H. Beveridge?
" Yesterday I jested with Reason.
My heart wanted some explanations.
I said: 'O fulness of all knowledge,
I desire to ask you some questions.
What is this life in the world?'
He said: 'A sleep, or some dreams/
I said: ' What is the result of it?'
He said: 'Headache, and some griefs/
I said to him: 'What is marriage?' He said:
'Pleasure for an hour and irritation for years/
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
I said: 'What is the troop of oppressors?'
He said: 'Wolves, dogs, and some jackals/
I said: 'What will tame this sensual soul?'
He said: 'When it has got some buffets/
I said to him: 'What are Khayyam's writings?'
He said: 'Wrong calculations and some frenzies/ "
That, at any rate, should prove to a misguided world
that Fitzgerald had something to do with his poet's fame.
Why, as the Shah said anent this very matter to Sir
Mortimer Durand, I myself ! Of the greater poets
named to me by the Sea of Sciences, he evidently thinks
most highly of Sadi and Firdeusi. The sayings of the
former are forever in his mouth, to point all morals and
to adorn all tales. As for Firdeusi, I learn that he is the
true and only historian of his country. On the authority
of the Shah Namel do I hear that Jamshid, and not the
great-grandson of Noah, was the actual founder of Hama-
dan, as of Persepolis and Tus. This Jamshid seems to
have been the originator of pretty nearly everything else
in Persia, including plaster, baths, tents, seal rings, New
Year's Day, and the pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf.
He reigned seven hundred years and he had two famous
ministers, one of whom was a Jew and one a Greek. The
name of the latter, if you please, was Pythagoras. To him
do the Persians owe the sciences of music and astronomy.
When I expressed surprise that a Persian king should have
unbelieving viziers, the Sea of Sciences reminded me with
a tolerant smile that Jamshid himself was an unbeliever.
None the less did Jamshid hesitate to authorise the use
of wine, even in those irreligious days, until one of his
wives was cured of a fever by a sip of Shiraz. But what
pleased me as much as anything was a wonderful tur-
254
THE SEA OF SCIENCES
quoise cup of Jamshid's, found long ago at Persepolis,
containing a liquor capable of too many magic things for
me to name.
I am too ignorant to know how widely read the Sea of
Sciences may be in the sacred book of the Arabs and in
the classic poets of his own country. But, as I make it
out, learning with him stops there. Being myself a
persistent spoiler of paper I am the quicker to note that if
I were a Persian, and even so clever a one as Hafiz, 1
might have to wait four or five hundred years before
the Sea of Sciences would be ready to take cognisance of
me. If I were not a Persian I fear he would never
take cognisance of me at all. In that he is quite like a
fellow-citizen of Sophocles or Pindar. The only Europeans
he has heard anything about are Alexander the Great,
Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. Shall I add William 1 1 ?
The Sea of Sciences seems to be aware of the existence of
some such personage. But that vague region without
the pale of the faith means very little to him beyond the
fact that certain dwellers in it called Russians, and certain
others called Englishmen, who seem to be the Kurds and
the Lurs of Firengistan, are more redoubtable than the
rest of us. He was stupefied to learn that an ocean wider
than Persia rolled between my corner of Firengistan and
the Sah'b's, and that I disclaimed any relationship what-
soever with the mythical William. Yet the Sea of Sciences
is not without his curiosities. Several of them concern
his pupil. I neither teach nor trade, as do most Firengis.
I spend much of my time in front of a mysterious clicking
mechanism that periodically rings a bell. Nothing
pleases the Sea of Sciences more than to hear that bell ring.
But why do I ring it? Why do I take photographs?
255
PERSIAN MINIATURES
Why do I separate myself from my family? Why do I
spend long months in Stambul, and others in Hamadan?
Why do I ask so many questions? There is evidently
something queer about a man who leaves his own country
and wanders in those of other men.
Nevertheless, I found out, the Sea of Sciences is a trav-
eller himself. And what ears I pricked up when I heard it !
And how sharply I saw again the fantastic picture we
made of East and West sitting together over a Persian
Gospel of St. John! But nothing is more impossible than
to get out of the Sea of Sciences any exact details of his
voyages. Maps are to him unknown. The points of
the compass are useful only in finding the direction of
Mecca. He has been there, it seems, no less than three
times. Yet he does not wear the coveted title of Hajji;
for each one of the three pilgrimages has been performed
at the expense and on the account of another. The Sea
of Sciences is Mesledi only. Is he very discreet, I wonder,
or is he like a sailor, that he has so little to tell me about
his travels? By mere accident do I learn that the waters
of the Tigris are a powerful anaphrodisiac, cooling the
unholy desires of men and stopping the neighing of horses.
Unless used in moderation, however, they cause the skin
to shrivel up and the drinker to fall into a decline. What
seems to have made the profoundest impression upon the
Sea of Sciences are the electric lights of Bombay. For
like Sindbad the Sailor he has sailed out of Basra, and in
an English ship like Conrad's Patna has he, with other
pilgrims of an exacting faith, crossed the Indian Ocean.
He is ready to admit that the English, as well as the
Russians, are up to a trick or two beyond the Kurds and
the Lurs. But his adventures have not kindled in him
256
THE SEA OF SCIENCES
any sympathy toward those enterprising neighbours of
Persia.
The Sea of Sciences one day broke to me the news that
he would have to discontinue our lessons. An old lady
had died and left in her will a provision that her body was
to be buried in the holy soil of Kerbela. He, being known
for an experienced traveller, had been chosen to take it
there; and having done so he was to perform his fourth
pilgrimage to Mecca this time, again, in the name and
for the credit of the old lady. Before he got ready to
start, however, the war had broken out. Nothing could
have delighted him more. He solemnly warned me that
I would now see what would happen. England and
Russia would both be destroyed. But the builders of
the Baghdad railway might have been surprised to hear
him add the prophecy that a man would come out of the
East who would raise Persia to her old place as mistress of
the world. And then all the Christians, he assured me,
would be forced to turn Mohammedan or to leave the
country.
After all, can you blame him? But do you know? I
would give the eyes of my head to find out whether the
Sea of Sciences really went to Mecca or whether he
perhaps took lessons in German!
257
XVI
WILD BOAR
Valentin etait un saint pretre. L'Empereur Claude se le fit
amener, ei lui dit: " Pourquoi done, Valentin, ne t'acquiers-tu
pas noire amitie en adorant nos dieux et en renon^ant a tes values
superstitions ?"
Teodor de Wyzewa: LA LEGENDE DOREE
I lave heard it stated that "hunting is a business for the idle";
"but those who really understand are aware that hundreds of secrets
for the government of kingdoms are hidden in this art.
Colonel P. M. Sykes: THE GLORY OF THE SHIA WORLD
IF THE eye of some honest Nimrod, stranded on a
desert island or in a snoring country house, with
nothing better than this book to beguile a bore-
some hour, should brighten at sight of this chap-
ter But why should I, for my part, spoil my chapter
by telling the end at the beginning, or hint what was so
far from being the case, that we came home with an empty
bag?
The head and front of that boar hunt was the Sah'b, who
had seen a boar hanging up in the Bazaar to seduce the
eye of some corrupt Christian, who had found out that it
came from the region of Erzamfud, who made up a party
for a three-day expedition to that village, who on the
appointed morning routed two members of the squad out
258
WILD BOAR
of sick-beds, and who engaged a charvadar and his mules
to carry our kit. It is one thing, however, to engage a
cbarvadar and his mules, and it is quite another for a
cbarvadar and his mules to turn up at the promised time.
So it was that the commissariat, under the delighted com-
mand of Habib, failed to get under way before lunch.
And it was three o'clock of a short February afternoon
before the rest of us started on our twenty-five-mile ride.
Lo, how lightly I say it, reader! I say it with a dis-
engaged air, as if to make you believe your scribe a cava-
lier born. But truth compels me to whisper in your
ear that I never expected to come back alive from that
boar hunt: not because I expected to fall like Adonis
under the tusk of a boar, but because I expected to fall
off my horse and break my neck. For I had never ridden
twenty-five miles in my life or not since I was fifteen,
which is practically the same thing. However, in Persia
you either ride or you stay at home. There is no other
way to get about off the two or three highways in that
whole huge country which are fit for wheels. So, as I
would rather have broken my neck than stay at home,
I rode Bobby. In his salad days Bobby was a man-
eater. Next to running away, the best thing he did was
to catch a groom in a corner of a stable yard and squash
him against a wall. But, like many another hard
character, Bobby had reformed in his old age, hav-
ing turned into quite the most exemplary horse in the
world. And not only did his sleek sides give evidence of
what nourishment must be in man, but he was in more
than one way the most dependable of his companions.
The Sah'b's horse, for instance, was a more debonair little
beast, with a strain of Arab in him; but he was quite used
259
PERSIAN MINIATURES
up by the time we got to Erzamfud. An even handsomer
horse was the one ridden by the Beau Brummel of our
party a big black brute with a magnificent flying tail
and a nasty trick of throwing his head up where you could
least manage him. Another big horse was the gray rid-
den by the Soldier. He was not a soldier then. He was
an Irishman, being part of the time an accountant; and
nothing would have surprised him more than to be told
that a year from that day he would be hunting not boar
in Persia but Boches in France. And perhaps you will
not mind if I am simple enough to add that the Somme will
always wear for me a different colour because I knew one
out of the many soldiers who lie upon its banks. Then
there was Adonis shall I call him, the youngest of our*
crew, whose horse fell under him so many times that
afternoon but who came home ungored by any boar?
And there was also Askar, the groom, an impressive-
looking person with a purple moustache and with a brass
plaque, set in front of his black kola, of which he was
inordinately vain, who divided with Beau Brummel the
honour of knowing the way.
As it turned out, neither of them knew it too well. A
country looks very different under snow from what it
does at other times, and we veered not a little out of our
course. Yet I, for one, did not mind. A boar hunt was
an adventure entirely new to me, and I had been in
Persia too short a time for the strangeness of it to have
worn off. We started southward into the easterly foot-
hills of Elvend, which is a range as well as a single peak.
The road was first the familiar one, lined by bare poplars
and willows and well broken out, which runs from Ham-
adan to the village of Fakhireh otherwise Boast or
260
WILD BOAR
Glory! After that we found ourselves in a wilder and
more treeless region, riding up and up long slopes of snow
to another flat-roofed village, on top of a hill. I think 1
could count on my fingers the days I spent in Persia
when no sun was to be seen. This looked as if it were
going to be one of those days; and every now and then a
flurry of snow came down out of the windless gray sky.
There was something about it, in those wide white spaces,
that for no particular reason reminded me of my first
sight of the Persian highlands. There were, at any rate,
views to be looked at from the top of that white hill.
We dropped down the farther side into another valley
of bare poplars. The village sprawling among them was
of a kind I had not seen before, in that the houses were
built of gray stone. Children were playing on the flat
roofs, not so far above our heads, and around a big pool
in the centre of a small square. The trees stood so closely
around the houses, and the slim lines of them contrasted
so pleasantly with the heavier and more irregular lines
of the garden walls, and behind the walls were so many
of those snow humps which mean a vineyard, that I at
once made up my mind to go back to that village in the
spring and rent a gray stone house for a cent a day and
write the Great American Novel. There were any num-
ber of streams there, too, gurgling in and out of the ice
that sheathed their borders with that sound which is so
different from the gay splash of summer.
The largest of those streams was quite a river, which
we followed for a little time. Presently we crossed it
by a viaduct rather like the knife-edged bridge of Al Sirat,
over which the faithful pass into Paradise unless they
plunge into the Bottomless Pit. It was a single narrow
261
PERSIAN MINIATURES
plank, perilously icy, which I never would have dreamed
of trying to navigate on foot, much less on horseback, if
I had been alone. As it was I gave Bobby his rein, and
over my ex-man-eater marched as unconcernedly as if
that slippery lath had been Brooklyn Bridge. Such is
it to have had a past, and to have wormed your way out
of many a tight corner. A real tight corner was a ledge
to which we next came. From Bobby's back it looked
about three inches wide, and that strip of glare ice slanted
from the rocky wall on one side of it toward the small
precipice on the other. Nevertheless, we all got over
safely except Adonis, who dashed down the precipice
with his nag. But the drop, luckily, was not so mortal
as it sounds; and as Adonis had the quick wit to step
out of his stirrups as he went down, neither of them got
anything worse than a jolt.
We now had to climb a gully that stood up in front of
us like the side of a house. The deep snow of the trail
had been so little broken by other travellers that the
horses had double work. I can't quite say that Bobby
took it like a bird; but being a Persian horse he had been
badly brought up to gallop up hill, and being an eater of
hills as well as of men he got to the top long before his
companions. There I gave him time to get his breath,
while he gave me time to admire the magnificent view.
The most striking thing about it was that the white
valleys through which we had come were bluer than the
Mediterranean. Even the plain of Hamadan that
opened out beyond them was less silver than violet,
touched here and there by the stray gold of a sun that
was invisible to us. The dark masses of houses in the
valleys, the vertical lines of poplars, were all but lost in
262
WILD BOAR
the intensity of blue shadow. Above them, as far as
we could see and one can see very far in that clear Per-
sian air there was nothing to break the long, flowing
lines of the snowy landscape. The accent of it all, on
that gray day of snow, was very different from the warmth
of the plain of Kazvin as I first looked down on it from a
break of the Elburz mountains; but the elements were
really the same, and what I shall always remember as
most characteristic of the look of Persia, made up of pure
line and colour. Beautiful as trees are, and much as we
always missed them, the absence of them makes for an
effect of simplicity, of nobility, not to be found in the
romantic confusion of a wooded country.
From that second hill, higher, lonelier, and barer than
the first, we slid down into a second valley, containing a
gray stone village of its own, called Simin. The sudden
descent upon them of five Firengis caused an immense
commotion in Simin, whose ragged inhabitants crowded
around to stare at us in the dusk. It was now six o'clock
and nobody knew just how far we still had to go. Some
people said onefarsakh. Other people said twofarsakhs.
In our hearts we thought it might very well be five
farsakhs. So we induced one of the inhabitants of
Simin to guide our guides for the rest of the way. He
forthwith put on a sleeveless sheepskin jacket, mounted
a woolly pony, and led us down a villainous river road
that was continually crosscut by gullies of varying depth.
The unhappy Adonis came another cropper in one of
them on top of his horse, I hasten to add and as usual
neither horse nor rider broke a leg, as might well enough
have happened.
There wasn't a sign of a trail to us who didn't know it.
263
PERSIAN MINIATURES
Nevertheless, the man from Simin presently informed us
that we were not to mind the wolf tracks we saw in the
snow, as we were seven and well armed. Do you fancy I
am about to treat you to a tale of the kind that came into
my head upon the interpretation to me of this interesting
news, by some admired if anonymous author of my youth,
describing how skaters on frozen rivers, or drivers in
Russian forests, would throw back coats, hams, or haply
the least popular of their own number, to delay the pur-
suing pack? Alas, our hams, if we had any, were with
Habib and the cbarvadar, of whom we had seen no sign
and who were perhaps already eaten up themselves.
And having been bred up to tell the truth on all occasions
save when it will degrade or incriminate me, I am obliged
to confess that nothing more thrilling happened than a
sudden outburst of barking from the dogs of an all but
invisible village. We just made out its cubic shadow on a
dim hill above us. The man from Simin advised us not
to go any nearer to it, as village dogs at night are worse
than wolves. But as he felt the need of a little counsel
with regard to the route he should follow, he proposed to
engage another guide, from that same village! To that
end he began bawling at the top of his voice. Where-
upon the dogs barked more savagely than ever. Then
answering shouts faintly replied to the man from Simin,
out of the dark hill town, where not a light was to be seen.
After a long interchange of stentorian civilities which I
bitterly regretted not being able to understand, it tran-
spired that the shouter in the village had no mind to guide
the man from Simin at so late and chill an hour. But
he gave copious instructions as to the whereabouts of
Erzamfud, to which the man from Simin listened with
264
WILD BOAR
attention. Then he led us into a dark and devious valley
with the reassuring remark: "It will be a good thing if
we don't get lost/'
The rest of the way was a kind of arctic dream. It was
bitterly cold; and as we rode single file after the man from
Simin, through a country as ghostly and strange as the
North Pole, we somehow seemed to have exhausted those
founts of conversation which had been so lively earlier
in the day. Beau Brummel and Adonis, to be sure,
having been born on the shores of the Mediterranean,
gave utterance to their emotions. As for me, I was not
too numb to note anew that interesting difference between
the races of the north and of the south, which the former
are somewhat too quickly given to construe as a difference
in endurance. As a matter of fact, who can endure more,
when it comes to the point, than a vineyard tiller of the
Mediterranean? But he never loses his power of saying
what he thinks about it, whereas we perhaps embitter
the sorrows of our hearts by considering it bad form to
give them voice. What interested me more, however,
were certain strange flashes that occasionally illuminated
the gray clouds. The thing looked exactly like the period-
ical flare of Sandy Hook, before Sandy Hook itself is
visible, as you come in from the ocean at night. But as
there could not possibly have been a lighthouse or a
search light nearer than Baku or Baghdad, and as it
was not the time of year, with a thermometer somewhere
around zero, for thunder-storms, I suppose that flash
must have been from some stray Aurora Borealis in a
latitude of Biskra, Charleston, and Los Angeles.
As we stumbled on we struck into what was evidently
a better travelled road than the one we had been follow-
265
PERSIAN MINIATURES
ing. Patches of trees began, too, to darken the snow, the
sound of ice-bound water filled the white night, the
horses instinctively quickened their pace, and at last the
dogs of Erzamfud barked in front of us. To have as
little to do with them as possible, we made across a
field of deep snow for the house of a person known to the
Sah'b, on the lower edge of the village. How we found
the slit of an alley below that house I don't know, though
I do know that we had some trouble in attracting the
attention of our hosts. However, a shutter presently
opened above a black arch, a woman looked out, a man
came down with a lantern, and we discovered that we
were not too frozen to tumble off our horses. Then we
followed the lantern into the arch, through a tunnel so
low that we had to stoop to get through it, into an inner
court, and up some steep, slippery stairs to a loggia with
rooms opening out of three sides of it. And we no longer
considered it good form to keep our sorrows to ourselves
when we heard that neither Habib nor our provisions had
yet turned up. Nor can I truthfully report that the most
poignant part of our sorrow was any fear lest Habib, the
charvadar, and the mules had been eaten up by the wolves
who had been good enough to spare the impure Firengi.
In the middle of the room set apart for our entertain-
ment stood a big kursi which did not a little to console
us. I can assure you we lost no time in getting off leg-
gings and boots as fast as numbed fingers could undo
them and sticking our legs under the quilt of that blessed
kursi. And no sooner had the grateful warmth begun
to thaw us out than Habib arrived with the wherewithal
for a magnificent dinner. While he was getting it ready
we had time to look about. Our room was, I suppose,
266
WILD BOAR
the best in the house, for it was of good size and it over-
looked the slit of an alley by a shuttered door that
hadn't a sign of a rail or a bar to keep an unwarned new-
comer from stepping off into space. There were two
other doors, one leading into the loggia and one into
an inner store-room. Window there was none. There
were, however, two holes in the roof, whose rafters of
poplar trunks were black with soot. Above the rafters I
could make out smaller transverse beams, filled in with
twigs and camel-thorn; and on top of the camel-thorn,
of course, lay two or three feet of good thick mud. The
walls and the floor were also of mud, though there were
rugs for us to sit on. But besides the kursi and the fire-
place where Habib squatted at his sauce pans, there was
not a stick of furniture. Our dinner, when it was ready,
we ate off the top of the kursi. And good as that dinner
was, it had the special savour of picnic fare, in that smoky
mud room of a Persian village, which I would not have
exchanged for any Ritz restaurant in Christendom.
By the time we had finished dinner and emptied the
samovar it was ten o'clock, and we could scarcely keep
our eyes open. So some of us went to bed under the
kursi, and others of us rolled up in our blankets, expecting
to fall instantly into a stupor which nothing on earth
could break till it was time to start out on the serious busi-
ness of our expedition. But we reckoned without our
host, as the saying goes or without the cat of our host.
I suspect the kursi had something to do with it, too.
At any rate, our dormitory was the family living room,
out of which the family had turned in our favour; and how-
ever politely they concealed their feelings with regard
to our invasion, the family cat was not reconciled to the
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presence of strangers. Having affairs of her own in the
inner room, she kept going back and forth all night be-
tween that room and the loggia. The beauty of this
operation was that both doors were closed and locked.
Being Persian doors, however, they were double, though
not quite so pretty as the painted ones from a palace in
Isfahan which you may see in the Metropolitan Museum;
and they fitted so badly that by pressing against the
bottom of one leaf that wretched cat could wriggle through,
making an immense clatter as she did so. Every time
she squeezed in or out somebody woke up and threw a
boot at random, which generally hit somebody else's
head. Then poor Beau Brummel, who was one of the
two to be dragged from their beds of pain upon this
pleasure party, had a turn and required succour. At
half-past two, accordingly, we all sat up and had a general
confab, to say nothing of another round of refreshments.
And the pleasantest thing about it was to look out of the
holes in the roof and see a star or two give promise of a
pleasant day for the boar hunt.
ii
After that fantastic night I don't know whether we
would have got up at all if half the village hadn't followed
the example of the cat and broken in upon us. They
admired us while we performed a somewhat sketchy toilet
and consumed the far from sketchy breakfast improvised
by the accomplished Habib. This was the worse half
of Erzamfud, of course, and it constituted the force of
beaters with which we, or all of us but the unhappy Beau
Brummel, at last set forth, under the most brilliant of
Persian suns, to track the wild boar to his snowy lair.
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The hills were full of them, the villagers swore, and they
warned us against killing more than we should be able to
carry home.
Again, reader, do syllables fall trippingly from my
tongue, against which you are to be warned. I set forth
with the others, it is true. Like them I jibbed at crossing
a river on a succession of tree trunks coated with ice, to
the vast amazement of the beaters in preferring to hop
from boulder to icy boulder of the stream. With them I
tramped into the mouth of a ravine of unbroken snow,
whose crust was just thick enough to let you in to your
knee at the instant the ball of your foot was bent for the
next step. But I blush to confess that before we had
gone up that ravine a mile I caved. I caved because I
had not yet got acclimated to the air of those high places,
which makes the newcomer's legs lag beneath him, which
causes him to puff at the least exertion, which gives him
cracking headaches when he least wants them, and which
in Erzamfud, a thousand feet or two above Hamadan,
brought upon me the faintness that had lost me a shoe
in the pass of Sultan Bulagh. So, in order not to hold
the others up, I dropped after all out of the hunt, and
ploughed shamefacedly back like a faineant through the
snow to Erzamfud.
I found Erzamfud, such of it as had not gone boar
hunting, squatting half naked in the sun, engaged for the
most part in the more intimate pleasures of The Chase.
In Hamadan I had grown more or less used to seeing bare
legs in snow. Here, however, there were no exceptions
whatever to that simple rule of life, and everybody was
more or less decollete. But though this is supposed to
be the coldest part of Persia, it was surprising to find how
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comforting the sun could be. Under it Erzamfud sat
very picturesquely in its silver valley, beside its ice-choked
stream, with poplars pricking up darkly here and there
against the snow.
As I mooned about with my camera, still feeling a bit
shaky and more than a bit conscious of my unworthiness
as a representative of the huntsmen of Firengistan, I
ran into Beau Brummel and Askar. They were on their
way to pay the horses a visit, so I went along, too. We
found Bobby and his friends stowed away in such a stable
as they had no doubt put up in many times before. It
was a sort of cellar without a crack of a window in it, as
dark and as hot as Ethiopia and as aromatic as I don't
know what. Certainly much more so than Araby the
Blest. And I believe Askar had breathed that air all
night. At any rate, Beau Brummel and I left him there,
after patting certain warm muzzles and feeling of sundry
pairs of tired legs. Then, catching sight of a loom through
an open door on the opposite side of the street, we were
indiscreet enough to poke our heads through the door.
Whereupon some ladies who were weaving at the loom
promptly threw a pair of scissors at us.
I, who have long been imbued with a sense of the dis-
tress caused to feminine sensibilities in Mohammedan
lands by the intrusion of man, interpreted the scissors as
a hostile demonstration. Beau Brummel, however, more
adept than I in the dark politics of the sex, and an older
Persian though a much younger habitue of this curious
planet, read the omens otherwise. He informed me that
the ladies of the loom would be highly insulted if we did
not respond to so complimentary an overture by returning
the scissors and making them a present or at least pat-
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ting their cheeks. And he forthwith proceeded to con-
form to the etiquette of the country after the latter of the
two methods he had outlined to me. Incidentally he re-
minded me that it was St. Valentine's day! But I, being
no Beau Brummel, and having a little change in my
pocket, concluded that that might be more acceptable
as a tribute from an elderly intruder.
Having expressed our appreciation of the handiwork
of these coquettish weavers by several hawkings, molto
con espressione as musicians say, of the words kbaili khub,
which mean "very good," we withdrew into the arms of
the master of the house. "Now we are in for it!" thought
I to myself, seeing more vividly than ever the contrast
between our course of dalliance and that of our hardier
companions. But what we were in for was a seat under a
kursi in another part of the house, and several glasses
of not very inviting looking tea, to say nothing of those
hard, bright sweets which are an inseparable part of Per-
sian hospitality. If our host had his own view of the
episode of the scissors, he kept it to himself. One reason,
perhaps, was that Beau Brummel in days far gone by
had ordered of him and had partly paid for three rugs,
which on completing our host had sold to some one else;
and he kept asking Beau Brummel in the most affable
way in the world if Beau Brummel were angry with him.
He was a middle-aged gentleman with whom blue was
evidently the favourite colour. He wore a blue turban,
a blue beard, and blue hands into both of which he took
ours upon greeting us and upon bidding us adieu. He
was a quaint mixture of the fairy story and of the
sonnet. It filled me with despair that I had no
tongue to ask him a thousand things I wanted to know:
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
as, for instance, exactly how he dyed the wool for his
wives' rugs, and whether his hands were always blue or
whether they and his beard and his turban were sometimes
yellow or green.
When at last we succeeded in getting out from under
Blue Beard's kursi we went back to our own. But we
found it so much less tolerable than last night, thanks to
the smudge of tapeb that warmed it, and the windowless
room was so stuffy and dismal on so sunny a morning,
that Beau Brummel, out of his greater experience, sug-
gested a move to the roof. There, accordingly, we car-
ried rugs, pillows, and books, and there was revealed to me
an entirely new phase of Persian life. I had seen, of
course, that most of the roofs in Persia are flat, but I had
not taken in the fact that people live on them and even
use them as thoroughfares, passing from house to house
without the inconvenience of descending into the muddy
street. The cat who had destroyed our night dozed near
us in the sun, with one eye open for an indiscreet neigh-
bour of a watch-dog. The height of her infamy was
that she wasn't a Persian cat at all, but a plain, short-
haired tabby who might have been born anywhere. Hens
picked busily about, and occasionally were shooed squawk-
ing across the narrow chasm of the street. Ladies who
were not too particular about concealing their charms
eyed us in rows; children played tag from roof to roof; a
few men came to talk to us. One of them was Blue
Beard. Perhaps he wanted to be sure where we were.
But when it finally became apparent that no amount of
shouting could make us understand more than half a
dozen Persian words, Erzamfud left us to our own devices.
I remember it as a part of that Persian picture that
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WILD BOAR
Beau Brummel told me about a windmill belonging to an
uncle of his, not a windmill like the one at the factory,
but a stone one with arms sweeping just clear of the
ground, and how he once spent certain early spring days
on top of it, looking out on the blue strait between the
mainland of Asia Minor and the island of Mytilene, build-
ing fires of driftwood to keep himself warm, and reading
books I had never associated with a Beau Brummel.
He told me, too, about that blue strait, in which he had
often sailed and of which the Greek fishermen say the
crosswinds and crosscurrents clash so fiercely that they
strike sparks. So will even the modern Greek poetise
the phosphorescence of his native seas. And I nearly fell
off the roof for laughing over a story Beau Brummel told
me about a duel he had tried to fight with an elderly
scientist. I need not betray to you the cause of
that unsuccessful duel. Have duels ever more than one
cause? Out of the cause of this one Beau Brummel,
who had yet to see his twenty-fifth birthday, made me
copy for a three-volume novel. Who knows? I might
write it some day in that valley of stone houses and
poplars and vineyards and running water. At any rate,
Beau Brummel showed me, on our Persian roof, a gold
charm with initials on it not his own, and the mystic
words attendre pour atteindre. And he said what few
Anglo-Saxons of his years would have said, at least to so
much of a stranger as I, that there are times when one
wants to get away from one's own life, and that he liked
Persia because of its simplicity. I often thought of that
afterward. I still think of it, when I hear people rail
at the ignorance of the East and the peril of its low stan-
dard of life. After all, is it a low standard of life to be
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
content with a little, to be able to endure much, and
to know that happiness, if it exists, lies not in things?
However, I thought then how many different kinds of
pec pie there are in the world, and how good it is, though
how disgusting to be of a kind subject to fits instead of
the kind that can start out on a boar hunt seven or eight
thousand feet above the sea and go through with it.
Then the intense blue of the sky gradually paled, filmed
over with an impalpable gray, and at last snow began to
fall again, powdering us all over as we made up a little
of the sleep we had lost in the night.
It was Habib who finally got us off the roof, saying
that the boar he had expected to roast for lunch was not
yet arrived and that he had consequently made other
things ready for us. While we were eating them, not
thinking how much better they were than we deserved,
the hunting party came back more dead than alive.
When I left them the snow was up to our knees. They
went on till it was up to their waists; and then, having
floundered this way and that as the villagers guided them,
those egregious villagers announced there was too much
snow this winter for hunting and they would better come
back in April or November. And it was at least some
consolation to me for having made a fool of myself twice
in three months that they had neither shot a boar nor so
much as seen the track of one, though wolf tracks they
had crossed in plenty.
As for the hunters, they were at first past consolation.
But after lunch on top of the kursi, and after changing
into dry clothes, they revived enough to make up their
minds that we would all be happier without the kursi.
Mine host was vastly surprised at this fresh manifesta-
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tion of the madness of the Firengi. However, he re-
moved the quilt and its wooden frame from over the
fire-hole in the mud floor, carted away every vestige of
tapeh smouldering therein, and was perfectly willing to
sell us all the poplar wood we wanted to burn in the fire-
place. What heat didn't go up the chimney, of course,
disappeared through the two chinks in the roof and
through the cracks of those famous doors. Still, we
all felt better for having the aroma of Persia removed
from under our noses. .
By this time the indefatigable Sah'b was ready to put
off his character of Nimrod and put on that of connoisseur
of rugs. To that end he proposed that the looms of
Erzamfud be inspected. And we began in our own house,
in another room of which, downstairs, some women were
working at a big carpet in front of another kursi. They
knotted busily away, safely facing their loom, while an old
lady came and went in a red-and-yellow-figured chader,
very careful to hold the edges of it between her teeth
but not at all solicitous about her bare legs. A poor
wretch of a man hovered in the outskirts of the com-
pany, his head tied up in a dirty white cloth. They
told us he had been kicked in the jaw by a horse. A
baby or two howled in a corner, alarmed by the visitors
who kept crowding in to stare at the strangers. We
soon retired in their favour, escorted by the master of
the house and by a mir^a of the Sah'b's who had oppor-
tunely turned up from Simin.
If you want to know what a Persian village is like, you
will see something by lying on a roof; but you will see
more by inspecting looms. There were looms in nearly
every house of this village and outrageous looms most
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
of them were, the wooden uprights being made of such
crooked tree trunks, and the cross-pieces of such crooked
branches, that we did not wonder at the crookedness of
some of the rugs. What was more surprising was to
find how much straighter certain of the rugs on such
looms were than others on the straightest looms of all.
Once or twice the Sah'b, who had more to say about it
than you might think, because he had agreed to buy all
the rugs woven in Erzamfud during a term of years,
made the weavers rip out I don't know how many square
feet of what they had woven. And in one house he
pointed out to me the difference between two kinds of
wool the women were using. The weavers were all women
and girls, I might add: never a man in this region stoops
to so soft a craft, as they do in other provinces. Some of
this wool was much duller and stiffer than the rest, and
when the Sah'b taxed them with having shorn it from a
dead sheep, they could not deny him. One reason for
these shortcomings might be that in Erzamfud they had
not long been weaving rugs of any such size as many of
those we saw, having always made what the Persians call
a do-^ar. This, as I have already said, is a two-yard
though a iar is really thirty-nine inches. A two-yard,
the Sah'b told me, costs in the Bazaar of Hamadan when
it is new and not of too good a quality perhaps sixteen
tomans, of which the wool, the dye, and the thread for
the foundation would cost not less than twelve. It would
take a woman about four months to weave, if she kept
strictly at it, and for her four months' work she would be
satisfied to get back a pittance more than what she spent
for the materials, counting her time and her maintenance
in her own house as things hardly to be paid for.
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Wherever we went we found the weavers working from
A. vagireb y a piece cut out of an old rug, and not from the
painted patterns they use in the factory at Hamadan.
This vandalism scandalised me in the highest degree;
but it taught me, after all, how common rugs are in Persia,
and how little anybody thinks it necessary to sentimental-
ise about them. I saw more of them lying on the mud
floors of hovels that afternoon than hanging on looms.
To an ignoramus like myself, too, it was quite a lesson in
design to be told of the figure on one half-finished rug
that it went by the name of the lily or of the henna flower,
and of a prettier pattern of open blossoms in a loose white
lattice that it was one of the oldest designs in Persia,
named after one Mina Khan. But who that Mina Khan
may have been nobody knows and least of all the gentle-
men who write rug books, though they confidently name
him a ruler of western Persia. The specialty of Erzamfud,
however, is the buteb, that decorative little figure with a
bent point, so common on the shawls of Kerman, which
Europeans call the pear pattern, the pine pattern, and a
thousand other things. Erzamfud is famous, too, for its
beautiful red dye, which is a sort of Aubusson red on a
lower key. I was pained to hear that the blue of the dyer
with the scissors-throwing wives is not quite so successful.
But I am happy to add that nobody threw any more
scissors at us. We were now much too formidable a
party, what with the inspectors, the husbands that went
with the looms, and odd relatives who happened in to
inspect the Firengi. What the weavers might better have
thrown at us, and what in that case would have killed us
like a shot, were the combs with which they beat down
their rows of knots. These heavy iron tools, which weavers
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
often represent on their rugs and which westerners explain
in the most fantastic ways, are much bigger and clumsier
than the ones used in Hamadan like most of the other
appliances we saw, for that matter.
All this was highly interesting if you happen to be in-
terested in rugs. If, like me, you are more interested in
people, there were things to see in the rooms containing
the looms. They all had mud floors, of course, and rugs
to sit on. Nobody could afford such a thing as a big car-
pet. Most of them were also provided with a kursi, and
were redolent of that penetrating odour of tapeh. Many
of them had no windows at all. The loom would be set
up, for the sake of the light, in front of a door so low that
you had to stoop to get through it. And once inside you
had to walk softly lest you step on a baby. The true
place for a baby, of course, is under the kursi; but babies
have a shifty way of not staying put. When they do, it
is sometimes because the poor little wretches remain lost
to sight too long under the quilt, and get smothered in the
Stench of the tapel.
One loom we inspected was in a pitch-dark back room,
reached through two others. There two women were
weaving away without seeing a sign of what they were
doing, or without missing a knot. For our benefit they
lighted a lamp and such a lamp! It was a blue earthen-
ware bowl of oil, with a nick at one end to keep the wick
in place, set in a handled tray. As the afternoon drew
on we saw many more lamps of the same kind, some of
coloured earthenware, some nothing but a tin pot. The
best of them gave out no more than a spark. So remember
it the next time your right-angled Ango-Saxon eye is
offended by some inequality of design or colour in a Per-
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WILD BOAR
sian rug. With the matter of colour, however, Blue
Beard has something to do, as he is not likely to dye all
the wool needed for one rug in one water. Tethered to
another loom we found a woolly lamb, no doubt waiting
to make his contribution to the masterpiece of the house.
I don't remember whether this house was the one where
they had taken off the top of the kursi and two women
were making barley bread over the tapeb fire, kneading
their dough by beating it against the cobblestones that
lined the fire-hole. And somewhere else a man sat in a
pit at the light end of the room where his ladies were
weaving, manufacturing himself a narrow strip of brown
homespun for an aba. His apparatus was more like what
we understand by a loom. By pressing a pedal with his
foot he worked the alternate threads of his warp back
and forth, while between them he threw from one hand
to the other the shuttle carrying the woof.
Outside the houses looked more substantial than most
village houses, because a good deal of stone was set in
their mud. Few of them were more than one storey high,
and one huddled close to the next as if land were as precious
as on Manhattan Island. Most of them had interior
open spaces, however, which were more like barnyards
than city courts. In one we saw a dovecote, made like
everything else of clay and full of the prettiest cooing
inhabitants. Almost every yard, furthermore, contained
a watch-dog. There wasn't a tuleb or a tatf among them.
They were all plain sags and all perfectly ready to tear
us limb from limb. They seemed to be as much at home
on the roofs as oa the ground, snarling down at us from
the tops of the houses in the most inhospitable manner or
barking after us for the length of a street and showing
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
every disposition to reach down and nip off somebody's
ear if they got half a chance. They got none, I am happy
to report, though in the end they began to be reconciled
to our presence among their friends. So we went home
at last, passing through a tilted square with a big pool in
it. Women and children came and went about the pool
with earthenware amphorae on their shoulders, quite in
the most approved classic manner. A less classic mosque
stood at one side of the square, which we recognised only
when a small boy mounted to one corner of the roof and
chanted the call to sunset prayer. Below us we could
just distinguish the glimmer of the river, winding away
under the afterglow between its bare poplars. They stood
out the more darkly because of the pale slope beyond,
topped by a diamond star.
in
On our second night in Erzamfud it is not necessary to
enlarge. It was a replica of the first, minus the kursi.
Even the cat did not fail us with her devilish performances.
Yet Habib, it is true, saved us from monotony by the
heights to which he rose in the way of dinner. And the
dinner, after all, was followed by a sufficiently historic
event. For be it known that on St. Valentine's Day, 1914,
Erzamfud saw what I confidently believe to have been its
first game of bridge, played by an Englishman, a French-
man, an Irishman, and an American wherein the last,
according to his wont, was ignominiously routed by the
forces of the Entente.
Nor is there much to say of our return the next morning
to Hamadan. Erzamfud gathered as one man, not to
say as one dog, to see us off down the long white valley
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WILD BOAR
of muffled water. The sky was covered again, and so
much the colour of the tops of the hills that we could
barely detect where one stopped and the other began.
From the village trail we presently struck into a well-
travelled road that led us home by the way we ought to
have taken before and alas, I never saw again the name-
less village of stone houses where I meant to write the
Great American Novel! But I was perfectly willing not
to have to pass again the bridge of Al Sirat. Other bridges
we passed in plenty, several of them brick ones with
pointed arches, though more often than not we forded the
half-frozen streams. It gave me a pang to hear that if we
had only started in the opposite direction we might have
ended in Isfahan. As it was, the highway gave me a new
comprehension of the stories I had heard about motoring
in Persia. There were boulders strewing the middle of it
and gulches gouged out of it which nothing but a " tank"
could possibly have coped with. Mere horses could no
more than follow a trail at one side until they met a
caravan. Most of the caravans were mule or donkey
trains. But several times we encountered long strings of
camels, rocking down to Isfahan by daylight in this cold
weather. Bobby pretended to be alarmed by that ex-
traordinary ophidian air of theirs, having seen a million or
more of them during his checkered career, and he jumped
about more skittishly than became his years.
After passing through one or two big mud villages, in
one of which some boys were playing on the roofs a game
of ball I had no time to look into, the country flattened
out in front of us. Below the farther edge of it we could
see the plain of Hamadan, uncannily blue under the gray
sky. You would have thought the horses recognised it
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
as well as we and very likely they did better. At any
rate, there was no keeping them together after that. Each
went his own gait in a thick snow that soon began to fall
again. Then, if ever, was my best chance to break my
neck, for we soon took to the fields. And with fields criss-
crossed by irrigation ditches, and pitted by the yawning
mouths of holes that end in subterranean streams, cross-
country riding in the land of the Sun furnishes the ele-
ments of an exciting sport. It was the more exciting
now because the flurrying snow made it impossible to see
where one was going. However, Bobby leaped brooks
like a grasshopper and by the grace of God he landed me
in no bottomless pit but at the Khanum's lunch table,
very hot, not a little out of breath after that long gallop,
and highly exhilarated by the pleasures of boar hunting.
I am sorry, Nimrod, to have told you after all not very
much about the wild boar of northwestern Iran. But
what would you? Life is like that. Who ever came home
with that in his bag which he set out to get? And if you
choose to spell my title in a different way, I shall not be the
one to complain.
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XVII
VIGNETTE OF A TIME GONE BY
You, sir, I entertain you for one of my hundred; only I do not
like the fashion of your garments: you will say, they are Persian
attire; but let them he changed.
William Shakespeare: THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR
HE WAS born in Italy: I never asked him why.
He was brought up in France: I never asked
him why either, having skeletons in my own
closet. And here he is in Hamadan, unable to
disguise his fair hair and blue eyes of the north under
any tall white lamb's wool cap, drilling gendarmes, track-
ing brigands, and otherwise bearing strange testimony
to that in man which even before Europe took to living
in trenches would revolt against delicate days and a
Christian bed. His Viking fathers might mount a beaked
galley and steer for England or Normandy or Sicily.
For him there was nothing to do, and for other young
Swedish officers who wanted trouble, but to go out to
Persia.
They generally found what they wanted. I remember
one who, spending a night in a supposedly friendly vil-
lage, fell victim to a feud between one of his own Persian
lieutenants and his host. I remember another whom,
as he set about dynamiting the door of a mud castle be-
tween Shiraz and the Gulf, a Kashgai shot from an upper
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loophole. And the Major: having served his time un-
scathed, he gave my lords of the hills one more chance to
square accounts by organising a farewell drive against
them before going home to wed. For after all he is a
human Major, subject to like passions as we. Do I
not remember a party when we started asking him in-
discreet questions? It came out, at last, that he had just
been shooting one of his precious cut-throats. This was
a gendarme of whom it had been discovered that he was
betraying information to brigands, letting imprisoned
ones go, and supplying them with rifles. He then de-
serted, but was caught and courtmartialled. And it
fell upon the unhappy Major to cast the deciding vote as
to what should be done with him. At the word, not all
the firing-squad pulled their triggers. But enough of them
did for the Major to come late to dinner, to eat next to
nothing, to refuse to dance afterward, and to stay longer
than the other guests, with a funny look in his gay blue
eyes, saying he was tired of talking Persian all the time.
Of the house where he lived by himself I knew only
that there was nothing in it but rugs and a couple of
orderlies who knew how to boil rice and grease rifles.
For the rest, the Major was generally out of it, collecting
copy for successive chapters of the tale of Abbas the High-
wayman, which ran like a continued story through my
year in Hamadan. That Abbas, you may remember,
was the individual who robbed a messenger of the Bank
of 17,000 tomans. He was a young gentleman of twenty-
four, reputed to be of most agreeable manners and ap-
pearance, who owned villages here and there and wives in
every one. His favourite residence was not unlike that
of the Old Man of the Mountain, being perched on a crag
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VIGNETTE OF A TIME GONE BY
of Sultan Bulagh, surrounded on three sides by precipices.
To get him out of it was not simple, without losing more
men than the Major liked to spare. But every now and
then the Major would pounce on one of his more acces-
sible villages, turn it inside out to see if Abbas happened
to be there, and rase every one of its mud houses to the
ground, after confiscating valuables and making a selection
of wives and confederates for prison or the firing-squad.
While the secret service of the Young Man of the
Mountain was much too good for him to get his neck
into any such sling, the Major made many a fruitful
haul on these little raids. On one of them he unearthed
1,500 of the missing tomans. On another, not having
read his "Arabian Nights" for nothing, he surprised in an
AH Baba jar of pretty blue earthenware, apparently full
of flour, a powdery person who knew something about the
remaining 15,500. A good many of them, it appeared,
were to be looked for in the pockets of certain personages
in Hamadan too lofty for me to name. The resourceful
Abbas accordingly proposed, through neutral channels,
that he be made a gendarme himself and be put in charge
of his favourite section of the Russian road! But he
failed to keep the midnight tryst which the Major agreed
upon for the discussion of this ticklish subject, and trans-
ferred his activities to another part of the country. So,
quite by accident, did that amusing villain meet his end.
For, encountering a carriage in which another Swedish
officer happened to be making a peaceful journey, fol-
lowed by no more than three gendarmes, the doughty
Abbas began to shoot. The three gendarmes replied in
kind and got killed for their pains. As for the Swede,
he drew a bullet, too. But it did not prevent him from
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
whipping out his revolver in time to lay low the Young
Man of the Mountain and two of his band. And never,
never will the Major forgive him for that undeserved piece
of luck.
Such, in those quaint old times, were the ways in
which active young men found outlet for their super-
fluous energy. Curious to look back on, eh? Yet more
curious is it to consider that out of such stuff as this
were concocted half the books we used to read in that
prehistoric age which ended in August, 1914. Being my-
self no romancer, but a sober recorder of fact, I have at-
tempted to make no copy out of the Major and his Per-
sian brigand. Can you not see, though, how somebody
else, putting in a petticoat or two and deflecting one of
those numerous bullets into the Major's hide or dogging
him to his wedding day, might have cooked up a pretty
enough novel of the Zenda school? And can you imagine
anybody reading it now? How pale and impossible
most of them have automatically become, through the
simple fact that after a long period of mere existence the
world suddenly began to live! And who but the high
lords of romance like Kipling and Conrad will be saved
from the scrap-heap of conventions, subterfuges, and
timidities piling up around us in these epic days? Even
Stevenson: how will he come off, I wonder? For adven-
ture has grown poignant since his time, and there are
new tests of courage and endurance since that popular
legend of him was put together which left so strangely
out of account the very human man behind it. At
any rate, who can read to-day the stories of sabre and
spur he fathered? Or those desolating American novels,
I believe one called them, about the office boy who made
286
VIGNETTE OF A TIME GONE BY
good, and the pure young man who went into politics,
and the naughty young man who went lassoing steers or
digging gold? Is it conceivable that those creaking inven-
tions of string and pasteboard, those hasards of wooden
swords and back-drop castles, those imitations of imita-
tions of imitations, not only found breathless readers but
piled up fortunes for their writers? Done! Finished!
Exploded ! Or if not, I weep for my race. Any daily paper,
any number of the Atlantic Monthly, contains stories ten
times more thrilling and most of them written, mind
you, by men who don't know how to write. Did those
other people? Perhaps it was not their fault, after all, if
they were born too soon, and had too little to humble them,
too little to inspire. But what things the next genera-
tion will have to write about if only it finds out how!
287
XVIII
AVICENNA
War makes a people run through its phases of existence fast.
It would have taken the Arabs many thousand years to have ad-
vanced intellectually as far as they did in a single century, had
they, as a nation, remained in profound peace. They did not
merely shake off that dead weight which clogs the movement of a
people its inert mass of common people; they converted that mass
into a living force. National progress is the sum of individual
progress; national immobility the result of individual quiescence.
J. W. Draper: HISTORY OF THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOP-
MENT OF EUROPE
, "
IT IS perhaps fitting that among the few ''sights"
of so ancient a city as Hamadan, the greater
number are tombs of famous people who have
lived there. But it is a sample of the capricious-
ness of fame that the tomb most frequently pointed out
to the traveller from afar is that of Queen Esther and her
cousin Mordecai who, if they ever existed, owe the
memory of them that lingers in a forgetful world to one
unknown pen, and to the accident of a young girl's beauty.
Whereas Avicenna Well, perhaps genius is an acci-
dent, too, if a rarer one, and one that demands more of its
possessor. And beauty is beauty, while philosophy is
288
AVICENNA
merely philosophy. So it is that Layard, the excavator
of Nineveh, inquired in vain for the grave that now adds
most honour to the name of Ecbatana. So it is that
Prof. Williams Jackson places it in quite a different
quarter of the town from the one where I was told to
look for it. And so it is that I, who warn you against
Jackson's honestly named "rough draft/* cannot say, as
he apparently can, that I ever set foot in the mausoleum
of the Prince of Sages.
This is not because I never saw that low mud dome
facing a little walled garden on the right bank of the river,
as you go from Kolapa to the Bazaar. Nor is it because
I had any reason to doubt its authenticity. It is much
more certain that a wise man named not Avicenna, to
be sure, but something like it, once breathed the thin air
of Elvend than that the beautiful Jewess Esther ever did;
and tradition seems always to have marked the place of
his burial. Another tradition, indeed, has marked his
house, in a wall of which I am told on very good authority
that some treatises of his were once uncovered. But
when they said to me "That is Avicenna's tomb/' they
had no more to say about it. Nor was I very much wiser
when I turned over the odds and ends of books at my
disposal in Hamadan. Only after I had gone away and
had turned over other books, in a world unknown to
Avicenna, did he who once filled the world with the
rumour of his name begin to become for me anything more
than a name. So I can no more than make belated
amends for my ignorance by weaving to his memory
this ragged wreath.
Know, then, that this Avicenna was a Pico della Mir-
andola of the tenth century, named Abu Ali al-Hosein
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
Abdallah ibn Sina. Although accounted the last and
the greatest of the Arab philosophers of the East a
century or two after him there were others, you remem-
ber, in the West he was really a Persian. He wrote in
Arabic because it was the learned language of the time,
just as the Europeans who first translated him wrote in
Latin. His father was a native of Balkh or Belkh, now
in Afghanistan but then one of the four chief cities of the
great province of Khorasan. Ibn Sina himself, however,
was born in 980 in a village near Bokhara where his father
is said to have been a tax collector. Bokhara, too, was
then a part of Persia, and the lad passed the greater part
of his boyhood in that city.
In our time, thanks to the invention of printing and the
ease with which we get about the world, there is an in-
finity of places where a scholar may lay the foundations
of his scholarship. At that time, on the contrary, there
were very few cities containing books and the society of
those who read or wrote them. But Bokhara, as it hap-
pened, was one of those cities, and one of the most im-
portant. Incredible as it seems to us of the self-satisfied
West, Bokhara was worthy to be compared with Baghdad
and Constantinople in that age when Berlin and Petro-
grad did not yet exist, when London, Paris, and Vienna
were humble frontier towns of which no stranger had
heard, and when Cordova was not quite at the pitch of
its preeminence. The day of Baghdad, indeed, had al-
ready begun to wane. The Caliph Mamun, under whom
and under whose father Harun al Rashid Baghdad had
rivalled Athens, Rome, Alexandria, and Constantinople
as a focus of intellectual activity, was a hundred and fifty
years dead. The centre of gravity of the Abbasid caliph-
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AVICENNA
ate had already shifted to Khorasan, and Bokhara had
become the seat of one of those local dynasties which
make Persian history from the ninth to the sixteenth
centuries a kaleidoscope impossible for any one but the
fanatic to follow. Suffice it to say that the Samanids
of Bokhara were descended from another Persian of Balkh,
whose sons had served Harun al Rashid, whose grandsons
had established a kingdom of their own under the nominal
suzerainty of the distant Caliphs, and whose power was
now threatened by the constantly increasing pressure
from the East of the Turks. They were great patrons
of letters, those Samanids, loving to have about them
not only books but those who wrote books. I have read
of a poet who lived a little earlier than Ibn Sina, that the
Emir of Bokhara treated him magnificently enough for
him never to go out of the house without a train of two
hundred servants and four hundred camels! Nuh or
Noah II, the Samanid under whom Ibn Sina was born,
was one of the last of his line and not quite so munificent
a friend of poets. Nevertheless, Bokhara was still such a
place as a boy like Ibn Sina would have chosen to be
brought up in, if he had had anything to say about it.
Of his early life the Persians tell the most fanciful
things which probably have a substratum of truth. He
belonged to a race which matures quickly, he lived in
one of those periods which quicken maturity, and he was
gifted with unusual powers of mind and memory. And,
after all, considerable as was the enlightenment of the
time, the schoolboy of his age had less to learn than the
schoolboy of ours. So it was that the future philosopher,
whose family was presumably not in the most exalted cir-
cumstances, began at the age of five to take lessons in
291
PERSIAN MINIATURES
arithmetic from a grocer of Bokhara no doubt with
the help of an abacus such as you may see in any Persian
bazaar or Chinese laundry. At ten he knew all there
was to know about the Indian calculus, as arithmetic was
then called, being thoroughly grounded as well in Persian
and Arabic literature and the Koran. He was also well
started in algebra and theology. About this time he fell
into the hands of a wandering physician, apparently a
Nestorian, who laid the foundation of Ibn Sina's medical
career, besides teaching him logic, Euclid, the Isagoge of
Porphyry, and the Almagest otherwise the astronomy of
Claudius Ptolemy. Add to this the mysticism which he
picked up from one Ismail the Sufi, and that tincture of
Aristotle without- which no man could then or for long
afterward count himself educated, and you will see that
the young Ibn Sina must have been an infant prodigy of
the most pernicious sort. At sixteen, if you please,
he had begun to practise medicine on his own account, evolv-
ing certain new methods of treatment. But luckily there
was in him a strong streak of the human. A French biog-
rapher whom I have consulted says that he was of
mceurs d'eplordbles, and lets it go at that. I suppose de-
plorable habits are deplorable habits the world over, and
it is not necessary to specify! An English biographer
lets us into a few details, dwelling more on the taste of
this remarkable young man for strong waters than on his
penchant for fair persons. The strong waters, it seems,
he first experimented with by way of keeping awake at his
work. At any rate, he was not content to investigate
books. He investigated life with equal enthusiasm.
And by the time he was seventeen there was very little
left in his world for him to learn.
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AVICENNA
At this early age Ibn Sina made the beginning of his
immense reputation. Nuh II was not the sick king in
Bokhara about whom Matthew Arnold has told us, but
Nuh II fell ill; and no one was able to cure him save
master Ibn Sina, who was thereupon given the run of the
king's famous library. And in it he discovered that there
was, after all, something left for him to learn. He had of
course read Aristotle long before that. Everybody did
in those days, except in uncivilised places like London,
Paris, or Vienna. In fact, he had read Aristotle through,
in Arabic, forty times without getting much out of
him, until in the king's library he found the Aristotelian
commentaries of another great man named Farabi. This
Farabi was a Turk of the ninth century who went to
Baghdad, learned Arabic, found a princely patron who
took him to Mosul, and before he died in Damascus
acquired such fame as a philosopher that he became known
among the Arabs as the Second Master, Aristotle being
the First and Ibn Sina himself the Third. The discovery
of this great man was accounted by Ibn Sina as the real
beginning of his intellectual life, just as the discovery of
other great men has started other browsers in libraries on
their careers. And so enchanted was Ibn Sina by his
discovery that he went at once to a mosque, performed his
ablutions, gave thanks upon his prayer rug you may be
perfectly sure that it was not a "Bokhara"! and made
an alms to the poor.
Not long after this, when he was eighteen, Ibn Sina
left Bokhara and returned to his father's village, called
by some Afshena and by others Harmaitin, where he
prepared to become a tax collector himself. Whether
it was at this time that the king's library caught fire I
293
PERSIAN MINIATURES
cannot say. Ibn Sina's enemies accused Ibn Sina of
setting it on fire in order to keep to himself the knowledge
he had gained from it. But he had barely begun to make
use of that knowledge, by starting the literary work which
filled so much of the rest of his life, when both he and his
enemies found other things to think about. In the first
place his protector, Nuh II, in spite of the famous cure,
died, neither Ibn Sina nor any one else having been able
to save him. Then life in Bokhara began to grow ex-
tremely uncomfortable by reason of certain rude neigh-
bours called Turks, who were just beginning to trouble
that polite Persian country of the Oxus which the Arabs
had first troubled three hundred years before. And about
1 002 Ibn Sina's father died. That, perhaps not unhappily,
put an end to tax collecting and threw our young Aris-
totelian upon his own resources. So, perforce, he became
a true peripatetic. His first step in the long series of
wanderings that ended nearly forty years later by the
river in Hamadan took him to a place called Urganj,
or in Arabic Urjensh, ancestor of the modern Khiva.
Here another local prince, Mamun^ of Khwarasm?
Khuarizm? Vambery, who passed there for a native,
spells it Khahrezm held a court less lordly than that of
the Samanids but one at which men of learning and
letters were equally welcome. And it is proof of the
peculiar estimation in which such men were held at that
time in that part of the world that Ibn Sina had not been
long in Urganj before his new protector received a per-
emptory demand from another and more potent sovereign
to the effect that the five most learned members of
Mamun's court be forthwith despatched to his own court
at Ghazna, in Afghanistan.
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AVICENNA
This truculent individual was one of the most notable
figures of that age. He was the first, they say, to wear
the title of Sultan, which means power or authority.
In letters he was less adept than in arms and in the use of
elephants to which much of his success in battle was
attributed by the more polished Persians of the time.
By race a Turk, named Mahmud and appropriately
nicknamed the Idol Smasher, he was at that moment
engaged in smashing more than idols, being intent on
carving a short-lived empire out of the borders of Persia
and India. In 1017 he annexed the territories of Kha-
rezm^ to which his demand for the wise men of Prince
Mamun was a preliminary. Three of the wise men,
among whom was the historian Al-Biruni, consented to
make the best of a bad business and go to Ghazna. As
for Ibn Sina and his fellow-philosopher Masihi, they took
not kindly to the notion of being driven into the service
of an Idol Smasher and a Turk. Perhaps they had heard
about their great contemporary the poet Firdeusi, who
dedicated to Mahmud of Ghazna his masterpiece the
Shah Nameh. This historical epic occupies in modern
Persian literature the place which the Divina Commedia
does in Italian, being the first serious piece of literature
composed in the spoken instead of in the learned language
of Persia under the Caliphs. Firdeusi finished his poem
about the time Ibn Sina left Bokhara. When he took it
to Mahmud at Ghazna, the Turkish Idol Smasher paid
him what might seem to many poets a fair price, namely,
20,000 dirlems, or some $2,000. We must remember,
however, that the writing of this long poem had taken the
best part of twenty-five years, that in those days one
edition of a book consisted of one copy, and that poets in
295
PERSIAN MINIATURES
general were treated very much more handsomely than
they are now. At any rate, Firdeusi was so disgusted
by the Idol Smasher's appreciation of poetry that he
divided the money between a bath-man and a sherbet-
seller and ran away to his native town of Tus. There he
dedicated his book anew to the local potentate, in a hun-
dred couplets of satire on Sultan Mahmud. The Sipab-
bud accepted the honour, at the rate of a thousand dir-
bems a couplet, and discreetly suppressed the dedication.
And several years later, as the funeral procession of
Firdeusi was passing out of one gate of Tus, there
entered by another a caravan from the Idol Smasher,
bringing the dead poet a belated recompense of 1,500,000
dirk ems.
But to return to Ibn Sina: he fled from Urganj with his
associate Masihi, who died in the desert before reaching
Merv. From there Ibn Sina proceeded to Tus and
Nishapur, whence he made his way into the low country
at the southeastern corner of the Caspian then called
Tabaristan. There he found another patron, in the town
called by the Persians Gurgan and by the Arabs Jurjan.
And there he began the Canon of Medicine on which
chiefly rested his mediaeval fame. The story goes that
his success in curing a fellow-traveller at an inn was the
means of his performing a more profitable cure for the
nephew of still another petty monarch, one Kabus,
nephew himself of the discreet Sipabbud who treated
Firdeusi so handsomely, of that Ziarid house which in
the tenth and eleventh centuries reigned over Tabaristan
and Irak Ajemi. It would appear that Ibn Sina was the
father of Janet and the Freudian family of psycho-analysts,
if there were not in this case some echo of an earlier one
296
AVICENNA
involving Erosistratus of Alexandria and one of the Se-
leucids. For by keeping his finger on the pulse of the
young prince, while talking of this and of that, Ibn Sina
discovered that the name of a certain young woman pro-
duced so marked a flutter of the patient's heart that the
physician was able to diagnose the case and prescribe a
perfect cure. His fortune, therefore, seemed to be made
in spite of the fact that the Idol Smasher had caused
Ibn Sina's portrait to be sent to the four quarters of the
East, with the order that whoever discovered the original
should arrest him and carry him to Ghazna. There is
no hope, I fear, that after a thousand years any of those
miniatures will turn up in some one's album! At any
rate Kabus, himself a poet and a former patron of Al-
Biruni, paid no attention to his rival's demand. But,
after a career very nearly as checkered as that of his young
physician, he died or was assassinated somewhere about
1012, not long after Ibn Sina had settled down under his
roof. And the rumoured approach of the terrible Turk
caused our hero to take the road again, this time in the
direction of Rei.
The name of Rei, or Rhages, whose ruins lie not far
from Tehran, is now most familiar to collectors of Per-
sian pottery, to say nothing of forgers of the same.
But in that time it was a great city, known as the birth-
place of Harun al Rashid, containing one of the most
famous hospitals of the East. The fame of that hospital
was largely due to an earlier philosopher-physician, and
by some accounts a greater, whose name the Europeans
have twisted into Rhazes. There Ibn Sina found his
next royal patient and patron in the person of Majd ed
Deuleh, the local ruler, who was of the Buyids of Irak
297
PERSIAN MINIATURES
and Pars. Ibn Sina had stayed long enough in.Rei to
write some thirty of his treatises, when a quarrel between
Majd ed Deuleh and his brother Shams ed Deuleh of
Hamadan, and more particularly the continued encroach-
ments of his old lete noir the Turk of Ghazna, caused the
unhappy philosopher to exercise his philosophy and pack
up anew. So he went on to Kazvin, where he remained
but a short time. And his next abiding place was the
one which was destined to be his last the pleasant town
of Hamadan.
Exactly in what year Ibn Sina arrived in the city where
he now sleeps I have not been able to learn. I take it to
have been somewhere between 1015 and 1020. He must
by this time have been in his thirties, or near them, yet
not too old to interest a patron whom the chronicles all
too obscurely describe as a highborn lady. The high-
born lady, however, soon passed him over to the very
Shams ed Deuleh who had been concerned in his leaving
Rei, and who at that time was the prince of Hamadan.
And under the protection of this personage Ibn Sina of
Bokhara now became Vizier of Ecbatana. We accordingly
have more copious records of this period of his life than
if he had been a mere philosopher or man of letters.
Whether it was that his talents as an administrator were
not equal to his ability as a writer and a leech, I cannot
say. But the Kurdish and Turkish soldiers of the Per-
sian prince presently made what we call in Hamadan a
slulukl, a row, in the course of which they pillaged the
house and went so far as to demand the head of the ad-
venturer from Bokhara. The latter hid for forty days in
the house of a friendly sheikh until the prince, falling ill,
caused such minute search to be made for his Vizier-
AVICENNA
physician that Ibn Sina was found and brought back to
court to cure him.
By that time, I suppose, if any heads disappeared they
were those of the soldiers. At any rate, Ibn Sina continued
to be court physician and Vizier, and enjoyed a brief season
of prosperity which ended with the death of his master in
1 02 1. During this time he completed the famous Canon
though I give the critic leave to differ from me and he
conceived if he did not finish the almost equally famous
Shi/a, known in its Latin translation as Sanatio. He also
wrote many other treatises, none of which prevented him
from leading a life much livelier than I would ever sus-
pected possible in staid Hamadan. By day he discharged
his public duties as Vizier, physician, and arch philosopher
of the eleventh century. The night he seems to have di-
vided between his writing and his pleasures. These ap-
pear to have brought him into contact with singers,
dancers, wine openers, and other persons of a sort we do
not habitually associate with philosophy. Yet who shall
say that friends of many kinds, and experiences of all sorts,
do not conduce to philosophy? For my own part, while
I do not go so far as to set up Ibn Sina as a pattern for
youth, I do not find it in my heart to cry out very bitterly
against him for finding life quite as interesting as books.
Precisely what happened when Shams ed Deuleh died
is not very clear from the accounts I have read. Ibn
Sina either fell from power or resigned, with the intention
of giving himself up to his literary work. Perhaps he had
by this time discovered that it was invariably his lot to
find a patron whose star was on the wane; and one whose
star was in the ascendant seemed to be Abu Jafar Mo-
hammed, otherwise styled as Ala ed Deuleh, chief of the
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
Buy ids reigning in Isfahan. At all events, he either made
overtures to this prince or was suspected of doing so by
the successor of Shams ed Deuleh from whom he hid in
the house of an apothecary but who found him and shut
him up in a fortress somewhere outside of Hamadan.
Ibn Sina was released, however, when Ala ed Deuleh
captured Hamadan in 1023 or 1024. And after writing
another well-known treatise he decamped, with two slaves,
his brother, and a person somewhat vaguely sketched as
"a favourite pupil," to Isfahan, in what must have been
the effective disguise of a Sufi ascetic.
Ibn Sina was now in middle life, he had written most of
the works on which his fame rests, his reputation was al-
ready spread far and wide throughout the extremely in-
telligent world in which he lived. Isfahan received him
with all the honours which in that faraway day and in
that remote country were paid to a talent like his. A
palace was put at his disposal, he was allowed a handsome
pension, and he fulfilled for Ala ed Deuleh, on a larger
scale, the functions he had performed for Shams ed Deuleh.
He now turned his mind to literature and philology, to
which he had been criticised for paying too little attention.
But he did not cease to take interest in the more exhilarat-
ing things of life; for this most successful period of his
career was if anything the most disordered. A more curi-
ous example of the constancy of fate was that his life-long
enemy, Mahmud of Ghazna, continued to throw the dust
of perturbation into the cup of his security, as Firdeusi
said of the same personage, and once very nearly succeeded
in capturing both Ibn Sina and his master. The Idol
Smasher did capture and carry off to Ghazna a quantity
of Ibn Sina's books. And when the terrible Turk died
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AVICENNA
in 1030 his son Masud zealously took up his policy of
harrying Ibn Sina and with him all western Persia until
a quietus was put upon him by those more terrible Turks,
the Seljuks.
Ibn Sina, in the meantime, advanced in years; and some
of my readers will no doubt be happy to hear that he paid
penalties. His constitution, undermined by his careless
habit of burning the candle at both ends, was all but shat-
tered by an attempt which one of his slaves made to poison
him. Nevertheless, he recovered sufficiently to accompany
his royal patron back to Hamadan. But there, in the
year 1037, he suffered a relapse into a mortal illness. It
is another trait of the human in him that he made a death-
bed repentance of his sins. He freed his slaves, he re-
stored give ear, O followers of ^Esculapius! moneys
which might have been considered dishonestly gained, he
distributed his goods among the poor, and he caused the
Koran to be read continuously aloud to him, hearing the
whole of it every three days. So he breathed his last in
the pleasant month of June, and was buried by that ca-
pricious river whose waters flow from the snows of Elvend.
Ibn Sina died just in time to escape the onrush of the
Seljuks, who overran Persia and Asia Minor in the middle
of the eleventh century. But it is one of the ironies of
life that the tomb which now covers his grave was built
by a member of that Turkish race from which he spent
the better part of his days in attempting to flee. This
was another high-born lady, the princess Nigar Khanum,
of the Turkoman house of the Kajars, and she reared or
restored that humble dome in the year of grace 1877.
Under it lies, too, I learned from Prof. Williams Jack-
son, a mystic poet by the name of Abu Said. Professor
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
Jackson says no more about him, however, nor was the
Sea of Sciences able to tell me anything very definite.
What was my pleasure then, upon reaching faraway New
York, which is now a greater magazine of books than
was ever Bokhara or Alexandria, to learn from Prof.
E. G. Browne that a certain Abu Said ibn Abul Khair,
the father of Sufi verse, was a contemporary and friend of
Ibn Sina. Professor Browne quotes a quaint story to
the effect that after the first meeting of these two great
men Ibn Sina said: "What I know, he sees/' while Abu
Said's remark was: "What I see, he knows." Browne
also translates a couple of quatrains exchanged by the
famous pair. The first, which was Ibn Sina's, runs as
follows:
" ' Tis we who on God's grace do most rely,
Who put our vices and our virtues by,
For where thy grace exists, the undone done
Is reckoned, and the done undone thereby/'
To which the Sufi made response :
"O steeped in sin and void of good, dost try
To save thyself, and thy misdeeds deny?
Can sins be cancelled, or neglect made good?
Vainly on grace divine dost thou rely!"
Professor Browne says that Abu Said was born in
Khorasan in 968 and that he died in 1049 he does not
say where. Let us have it then, till better proof be forth-
coming, that those two forgotten great men of a forgotten
great age are really the ones who lie together under the
humble dome which the Turkoman princess raised on the
river bank of Hamadan.
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ii
This is a story, after all, not too vivid or complete.
What we do not know about the Pico della Mirandola of
Persia, with his so humanly contradictory traits, piques
our curiosity more than what we do know. Yet it is a
fact that the occupant of that obscure mausoleum, who
wrote in one of the least known and most difficult of living
tongues and who never went out of Persia, left a name as
the Prince of Sages that for six hundred years after his
death filled the world with its rumour. Amid all the varied
distractions of his life he found time to write over a hun-
dred books some very short, it is true, but others very
long. They covered almost every branch of science as it
was then known : logic, metaphysics, theology, psychology,
philosophy, mysticism, medicine, chemistry, alchemy,
botany, zoology, mathematics, music. The greater num-
ber of his works are lost, but among them we know that
there was an encyclopedia of human knowledge in twenty
volumes. Another was entitled "On the Utility and
Advantage of Science," and a third "On Astronomical
Observations." He correctly described the formation of
mountains and the process of petrifaction. He found leis-
ure to catalogue the medicinal plants that grow on the
slopes of Elvend. He was familiar with the surgical pro-
cedure known as the intubation of the larynx. The fruit
of some of his philological studies is embodied in his treatise
"On the Arabic Language and Its Properties." 'He was
withal a poet, composing several of his shorter works in
rhyme. Among his imaginative writings is an allegory
called " Hai ibn Yakzan." And to him are ascribed on no
less than three contemporary authorities many of the
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PERSIAN MINIATURES
quatrains of his follower Omar Khayyam. One of them is
very familiar to us in Fitzgerald's translation:
"Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And many a knot unravelled by the road:
But not the Master-Knot of Human Fate."
Fitzgerald also translated Jami's narrative poem of
"Salaman and Absal," the story of which was first written
by Ibn Sina.
If I really were to do my duty by you, reader of mine,
and by this time either my friend or my enemy, I should
now proceed to expound to you in detail the philosophical
system of him whom you know as Avicenna, pointing out
to you exactly what he took from Hippocrates through
Galen, modified by Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists,
what from the Sufis whose tenets his friend Abu Said
first crystallised into verse, and what he added out of his
own curious desire, so characteristic of the thought of his
time and so like what Pico della Mirandola attempted four
hundred years later, to harmonise not only Plato with
Aristotle but the general body of Greek philosophy as it
came to him through the garbled translations of Baghdad
with the dogmas of Islam. Incidentally, I should warn
you against a certain pseudo-Aristotelian Theology which
the Arabs accepted as genuine but which was really a
collection of the Enneads of Plotinus, of the third or fourth
century. I should then explain the Oriental theory of
Emanation, dwelling on Ibn Sina's favourite idea that the
body is the tool of the soul. To this exposition I should
add an abstract of the Canon and the Sanatio, which were
the basis of mediaeval medicine. Nor should I fail to
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analyse Ibn Sina's division of learning into 
