In the land of the lion and sun, or, modern Persia

by C. J. Wills

Of course we were not permitted to enter the mosque, as there were many idlers about, but a good view is got from the entrances and from the windows below the dome from the roof. The only furniture is the “mambar,” or pulpit. The floor is covered with coarse matting, or borio, which is made only in Ispahan; another kind of matting, which is more expensive, is in use throughout Persia, called hassir; in the manufacture of this thread is used. The borio is of reedy grass alone, strong, clean, and inexpensive. Contrary to the hassir, which is made in strips, the borio is in one piece, and here we saw pieces twenty yards by ten.

Thus there is nothing in the Persian mosque to distract the mind from the prayers, the exhortation, or religious meditation, though the coolness and dim religious gloom of the lofty halls rather incline one to sleep; in fact, being the hot part of the day, we saw many men curled up in sleep covered with their camels’ hair abbahs, or cloaks.

The mosques are at night the casual wards of Persia; there sleep those who have absolutely no home and no business, and entrance is always free to all comers. The busy use the numerous caravanserais. There were lofty minarets, from whence is made the call to prayers, and numerous little cells windowed with the old elaborate carpentry of the East, and their beautiful tracery often papered over by the inmate to render his cell warmer in winter; a bit of matting, a box, and a few books, were the contents of most of them, in the corner being a small carpet, which formed the place of honour by day and the bed at night.

The students are all either divinity or law, aged from eighteen upwards; and an Ispahan lawyer or priest, on finishing his education, is looked on by Persians as the type of hypocrisy and finesse. Many of the mūllas (priests) are not, however, bad fellows when one can break through the crust of apparent moroseness and fanaticism; they are mostly at heart freethinkers, many Deists, more Atheists, few being good Mussulmans.

Leaving the college and still proceeding up the Char Bagh, a building on the right contains the Persian telegraph-office. The office is for the local traffic, and the Persians have possession, by convention, of one of the wires of the line; they do their own local traffic, but the line is kept up by the English staff of the Persian Telegraph Department.

At intervals in the Char Bagh are large hauz (tanks), most of them in ruins, but during winter generally full of water; all down the centre runs a watercourse a yard and a half wide—alas! dry—edged by huge blocks of hewn stone and bridged at intervals.

On either side of this watercourse is a paved stone causeway ten feet wide edged by similar hewn stones; along the edges under the walls is another paved road of less width; between these causeways are wide beds once covered with flowers and fruit-trees, now only sown with clover and barley, which in the early spring gives, with the huge plane-trees, a fine coup d’œil.

The Char Bagh ends in a gateway of more lofty pretensions, but of the same style of architecture as the buildings on either side. Here, however, are a few tiles representing scenes in the chase, probably made during the Afghan occupation.

A wide paved chaussée leads to the gate of the royal garden, now merely a meadow with trees. At the entrance is the Lion and Sun daubed in staring colours on a plastered wall, and here, unless known to the sentries, one is not allowed to pass. My professional work having made me free of the place, we pass on, and leaving the Chehel Sitūn, or hall of the forty columns, crowded with the hangers-on of the minister, who here adjudicates with local grandees on minor affairs, we come, passing a huge hauz or tank full of clear water, to a wall in which are two recesses having life-sized portraits in oil of former Ispahan magnates, evidently good likenesses and not without merit. On the right is the principal entrance to the quarters of audience of the minister and various antechambers. We dismount, pass through a small door, are saluted by the sentry, and enter a well-kept Persian garden, the paved walks of which are fenced off, with telegraph wire and painted posts, from the sunken beds.

Here, too, everything is in good repair, for we are now in the outer courtyard of his Royal Highness the Zil-es-Sultan, Governor of one-third of Persia, the eldest son of the king, a man of genius, and in high favour; in fact, at present (1883) the most powerful of his Majesty’s subjects, if we except the Valliāt, or heir-apparent, a priest-ridden ascetic of weak intellect, whom the royal policy, which points to the survival of the fittest, will probably quietly remove, in which case the Zil-es-Sultan will surely reign. Here all who are expecting an audience of his Royal Highness or his people, wait; great men and their servants, merchants, artisans, priests, veiled women, wrestlers; a few well-dressed servants of the prince swagger about, while his carpet-spreaders, or farrashes, with long sticks, are present to keep order or administer the bastinado; a few executioners, dressed in red, and shunned save by the lowest, skulk in one corner, while half-a-dozen Jews gesticulate and shake their fists in each other’s faces in another.