Thirty years ago I had been presented to him as a Dervish who had visited Central Asia and spent many years among the Turcomans, at that time held in great fear by the Persians. I now appeared before him as representative of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and was not surprised that he did not at once recognise me. When at the head of the Academicians I welcomed him in a Persian speech in the pillared hall of the Academy palace, the good Persian monarch was quite amazed and hastily turning to his courtiers, inquired, "In kist?" ("Who is that?"). They told him my name and function, and made some comments in a low voice, whereupon the cunning Persian exclaimed, "Belli! belli!" ("Of course"), "Vambéry!" He maintained (which I take the liberty to doubt) that he remembered me; but he warmly shook hands with me, and said to the Hungarian Minister standing at his side, "Il parle bien, très bien notre langue!" I do not wonder that my speech, in the Shirazi dialect and delivered in true Oriental style, took him by surprise, for as he afterwards told me, on the whole Continent he had not met with any scholar who could speak Persian idiomatically and without foreign accent. What did seem to me somewhat odd was a remark in his Journal (p. 378) that there were, even in Persia, few orators who for elegance and force of speech could compete with me, a compliment which struck me as particularly strange from the mouth of the Persian king. I remained three days in attendance on Nasreddin Shah, and had ample opportunity to admire the marvellous progress made by this Oriental since the time when I knew him at Teheran in 1864. Nasreddin Shah was the first sovereign of the True Believers who had learned to speak French tolerably well, and if he did make a little too much show of this accomplishment, seeing that his knowledge was but very superficial, it must be admitted that his judgment in matters of art, his knowledge of geography and palæontology, and his acquaintance with the genealogical relationships of the various kingdoms of Europe was most astonishing. In any case, he surpassed in knowledge of our countries and towns, our manners and customs, all magnates and princes of the Moslem East, not excepting even the Khedive Ismail Pasha and the late Sir Salar Jung. As we saw more of one another he did not hesitate to express his opinion about many of our social and political views. So, for instance, being an Asiatic pur sang he detested Liberalism, and if it had not been for the dangerous nearness which made him turn against Russia, he would have looked upon the Czar as the model of sovereign greatness and the Russian régime as the ideal form of government. Naturally, the French republic was an abomination to him, the most woeful absurdity, and he could not understand how a society where, as he maintained, no one commands and no one obeys, a land without a ruler, i.e., a sovereign, can possibly exist.
In his political utterances he was a good deal more cautious; he always made an evasive answer to my insinuations. Once, sailing on the Danube, I remarked that the Karun is wider but not so long as the Danube, the Kadjar prince looked gravely at me and said, "Thank God, no!" ("If it had been the English would before now have taken Teheran," was my mental comment.) But in spite of his great reserve and cautiousness in political matters, I got a pretty clear insight into his political views. He had not for the future of his land the same bold confidence as his royal brother on the throne of the Osmanli, for while the latter's plans reach far into the future, and to all appearances, at least, are of a very exalted nature, especially those relating to Panislamism, the Kadjar monarch devotes all his energies to the welfare of his dynasty, or rather of his own person. "L'État c'est moi" is also Sultan Abdul Hamid's motto, but the glorious past of his dynasty and his people awakens in him great and exalted ideas, the accomplishment of which he never doubts, while Nasreddin Shah, as the offspring of a Turcoman family, only lately come into power, and, intimidated by the danger which surrounded him on all sides, hardly dared to think of the distant future. In their personalities they are also very different. Sultan Abdul Hamid, although inferior in European culture to his cher frère on the throne of Persia, is shy and timid by nature, more affable and generous than Nasreddin Shah, who, in spite of all his European manners, remained the Asiatic despot and comported himself with all the peculiar pride and strictness of the Oriental ruler. His Grand-Vizier had sometimes to stand for hours before him, and when he wanted some information or other from me, I was often kept standing for a considerable time, regardless of my great fatigue; and he used closely to scrutinise my face if I dared to express an opinion different from his. In his character he certainly was more Oriental than the Sultan, and considered this severity as indispensable to his sovereign dignity.
I was very much amused with the airs the Persian king put on, as he went about bedizened with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and other jewels. Although his dynasty had been founded by a condottiere of the lowest rank, viz., Mehemmed Aga Khan, and as grandson of Feth Ali Shah, a cousin of this Aga Khan's, he was only the fourth Kadjar on the throne of Iran, he always wanted to parade the antiquity of his race. Before me he especially prided himself on his descent from the Mongol chief, Kadjar Noyan, and when I dared to question the correctness of this genealogy, merely brought forward by Persian historians to flatter their monarch, he looked at me quite angrily and ejaculated that "the sovereigns of the West were nothing but parvenus compared to their brother monarchs of the East." Persia, in fact, is the only land in Moslem Asia which can boast of a hereditary nobility, in a miserable condition, it is true, for not only Khans and Mirzas, but even royal princes may be found as drivers, house servants, and artisans of various kinds, but this does not prevent one from being proud of one's noble blood, and when Nasreddin Shah was in a good temper he expressed his astonishment that European counts, princes, and dukes attempted to be on a familiar footing with him, who could find his equal only among crowned heads. It is curious that the Turks even, who on account of their nomadic antecedents have never had any hereditary nobility, always try to make themselves out as aristocrats. Sultan Abdul Medjid was highly pleased when the French poet Lamartine, whom he had invited to his court and afterwards presented with a country seat near Brussa, called his attention to the fact that after the Bourbons the Osmanli was the oldest dynasty in Europe. The high dignitaries of the Porte, frequently tracing their descent from simple peasants, labourers, or shepherds, had at one time serious thoughts of setting up coats-of-arms, and much regretted the religious restriction which forbids their taking some animal for their device. Human weakness is after all the same in the East and in the West, and in spite of the strongly democratic tendencies of the Arabian prophet, we may yet live to see Islam adopting hereditary nobility with many other evils of European culture. In the personality of Nasreddin Shah I have always detected this curious mixture of East and West, of the old and the new aspect of life which we find in so many neophytes of European culture in the Moslemic East. The Iranian despot held in particular favour Malcolm Khan and Jahya Khan, and the Europeans who for a time were physicians in ordinary to his Majesty.
Doctors Cloquet, Polak, and Tholozan instructed him in many things, and point for point the influence of one or the other could be detected in his manners and behaviour. That he always wanted to act the Grand Seigneur, and ostentatiously displayed his Frenchified airs, must chiefly be attributed to his Iranian boastfulness; he always wished to appear as the perfect European gentleman, and there was a time when at the court no one but his Majesty was allowed to wear a starched European shirt. Nasreddin Shah inherited many characteristics from his grandfather, Feth Ali Shah—I refer here especially to his love of show and tyrannical arbitrariness—but he lacked his grandfather's affability and kindly generosity. Nasreddin Shah was sometimes even particularly miserly, hence the story, circulated during his lifetime, of his fabulous private wealth, of which, however, after his death very little was to be found.
The European Press has delivered most unjustly severe criticisms upon the personality of this Oriental prince, and made fun of his Oriental manners. It is only natural that he should commit occasional mistakes of etiquette, for what Western sovereign or prince when visiting at an Eastern court would not be guilty of similar blunders? It is said that in Berlin, after dining at the royal table, he turned to the Emperor William and the Empress Augusta and loudly belched, which in Central Asia is an expression of gratitude for the hospitality received and always acknowledged with good grace. At dinner with the Prince of Wales at Marlborough House he is said to have thrown the asparagus stumps over his back on to the floor, and, in order not to shame his guest, the Prince, now King of England, and all the other guests immediately did the same, greatly to the disgust of the attendants. Quite a collection of similar anecdotes were at the time in circulation about him, but I think they must be grossly exaggerated, for Nasreddin Shah never neglected to make strict inquiry into the customs of the lands he visited, and more than once I have given him information upon minor details. The Persian king felt much freer in Europe than in his own land. In Teheran, when he went out for a drive, a long row of attendants marched on either side of him, who, armed with long staves, cleared every one out of the way. In Budapest it happened that a poor labourer's wife pressed up quite close to him to admire the great diamonds on his coat. I motioned to the woman to go out of the way, but the King said, "Let her come; she wants to see my jewels close to." He even stopped a minute or two to let the woman stare at him to her heart's content. In a word, the man was better than his reputation, and when in May, 1896, a day before the Jubilee of his fifty years' reign, he fell a victim to the murderous bullet of Riza Khan, I thought to myself the man deserved a better end, for as a matter of fact he had to pay with his life for the tyranny of his officials. At first it was supposed that Riza Khan belonged to the secret society of the Babis, but, as was proved later on, he took this means to revenge himself for the unheard-of injustice of the Governor of Kerman, against which he had vainly sought protection.
Eleven years after my meeting with Nasreddin I met with his son, Mozaffareddin Shah, who in 1900 on his return from Paris passed through the capital of Hungary. From my Wanderings and Experiences in Persia the reader will recall that I had made the acquaintance of the young ruler in Tabris in 1862, where, a nine year old boy and the heir-apparent to the throne, he occupied the position of Governor of Azerbaidshan. Physically weak and insignificant as he was then, I found him now sickly and quite broken down. Contrexéville and Marienbad were resorted to in vain to relieve his intense suffering, and the undeniable signs of disease impressed upon his features clearly revealed the desperate struggle that he fought within himself. The poor prince was really worthy of a better fate.
Being by nature timid and reticent, the very strict education which his father had deemed it necessary to give him had robbed him of all energy. He liked best to lose himself in quiet contemplation, and in his childish simplicity was hardly a fit ruler for a land so miserably desolate as Persia, nor was he likely to carry out his good intentions of leading his people into the way of modern culture. He was very pleasant with me, more so than his father had been. He hardly remembered our meeting at Tabris, but he had carefully read the memoirs of his father's travels, in which my small personality had received most laudatory mention, and so he was prepared to meet me long before he arrived at Budapest. On the journey from Vienna to Budapest he had asked several times if I was still alive, and if he would be sure to see me at Budapest. Arrived at the station, where he was received by the son of the Archduke Joseph and the Hungarian State Ministers, he looked round inquiringly and said, "Vambéry kudjast?" ("Where is Vambéry?"). I was called; he pressed my hand in the friendliest manner, and straightway invited me to come with him to the hotel. I did as he asked me, and during his stay in the Hungarian capital was frequently with him. These visits led to a more intimate intercourse, and I found out (1) that the much-to-be-pitied-king was very ill, and that the throne of Iran was not at all the right place for him; (2) that he had the best intentions in the world, was quite alive to the superior advantages of modern culture, and had a great desire to reform his country if only he had the necessary energy, money, and men. But all three unfortunately failed him, as well as all other means, and when I gave him a picture of Persia's future in its regenerate condition, with railways, streets, manufactories, and similar advantages of modern culture, he looked straight before him and said, "Belli, belli! leikin wakit mikhahed" ("Very well, very well, but that will take time"). Also in discussing political questions I found him less close than his father, who loved to give himself the appearance of a Persian Bismarck. Mozaffareddin expressed himself quite freely and frankly about the political condition of his land, and when I remarked jokingly that in Europe he was looked upon as a partisan of Russia, because in Tabris as heir to the throne he had complied with all Russia's demands, he laughed out loud and said, "Am I the only one who in default of counter-arms has feigned friendship for this mighty, ambitious opponent?" He had not much to say in favour of England, although he agreed with me that this country would never do any harm to Persia. "But," said he, "Britain's friendship is cold as ice, and has always expressed itself in empty words." And perhaps he was not altogether wrong. He was very much down on the politics of Lord Salisbury, who had declined his support to a contemplated Persian loan in London, Persia thus being compelled to borrow money from Russia. Referring to the riskiness of this step, the king remarked, "What were we to do? When my father died it was said that he had left private means to the amount of about four million pounds, and that these moneys were packed away in chests in the cellar. There was not a word of truth in all this. Instead of money my father left debts, and when I came to the throne I was unable to pay not merely the State officials, but even the court expenses and the servants. I was forced to get a loan from somewhere, and England drove me into the arms of Russia."
Taking it altogether, Mozaffareddin Shah earnestly desired to reform his land thoroughly, and in its internal arrangements to introduce many of the modernisations which had particularly struck him in his European travels. Unfortunately the good man did not know where to begin and what means to use to attain his object. Discouraged and embittered by the everlasting wrangling and quarrelling in his immediate entourage, he seemed to stand in mortal dread of his Grand-Vizier, Ali Asghar Khan. This man, the son of a Georgian renegade from the Caucasus, had practically made the Shah the unwilling tool of his intriguing and rare abilities. He comported himself as a servant, but was in reality the master of his master and the ruler of Persia. I was often an eye-witness when the two were together. The Shah, apathetically seated in his easy chair, would speak with as much authority as the words of his first minister were servile and submissive; but scarcely had he felt the piercing glance of the latter than he would suddenly stop short and sink back in his armchair. Behind the door listened his secretary and faithful servant, who occasionally made his presence known by a low cough, upon which the Vizier would angrily turn towards the door, and strongly accentuating the submissive words continue his harangue. Master of the situation and with an insatiable desire for power and gain, the Grand-Vizier might possibly have been useful to the country if the violent opposition of his many rivals had not occupied all his energy, and the secret hostility of high dignitaries and the rivalry of European ambassadors at court had not effectually frustrated all attempts at any healthy reform. Even as Nasreddin's various journeys to Europe remained fruitless for Persia, so it was with the efforts made by his son. After his return from Europe the Shah hastened to change the cut and the colour of the uniform of certain court officials. High-flown orders were issued, but not followed up; the money borrowed from the Russians soon came to an end; anarchy, misery, and confusion were bound to increase apace.