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

by C. J. Wills

Rooms at the side, open to the air, show mirzas in long cloaks, busily writing official letters or making out accounts. Close to the door, which is covered with a curtain, on which is painted a colossal sentry on guard, stands a sentinel, and here lounges the big moustached doorkeeper with his huge silver mace.

The farrash-bashi here, too, is waiting a summons, with two villagers in shirt and drawers of blue cotton, and felt hats: they are chained, probably on a charge of highway robbery, or a still more heinous crime in Persia, backwardness with their taxes. They don’t seem comfortable, for they know that a gesture from his Royal Highness will consign them either to the tender mercies of the executioners, or the bastinado of the farrashes, or even perhaps immediate liberty.

Many servants, with their masters’ pipes of gold or silver, and dressed sumptuously, if domestics of the wealthy, smoke or chatter. A knot of thin and forbidding-looking priests, of sourest looks, some wearing the blue turban (marking the supposed descendant of the prophet, or Syud), take as a right, hardly acknowledging it, the salute of each passer-by, and favour me, an unbeliever, with ferocious sneers, drawing back their flowing garments to avoid contact, an action which I resent by doing likewise. Here the curtain is raised, and the greatest man in Ispahan (I speak of some years ago), whose word to the priests and mob can give endless trouble to the king—the “Imām-i-Jūma,” or high priest, and head of the law, for he was both—appears, followed by two other priests of high rank. His turban is dark blue, almost black; all bend and salaam to him. I stop to give him a military salute. He is an old patient of mine; he smiles and speaks in a stage whisper, saying to the other priests what a very superior unbeliever I am. I hurry on, and, passing through many passages, come to my dispensary over the jail.

Three hours are occupied in seeing patients, then back through the ruined bazaar, “Bazaarcha baland,” a lofty but empty arcade of shops, having a second story above them, the whole roofed in and beautifully finished as to the brickwork. Cool and dim, this silent bazaar opens into the Char Bagh, and I return as I came, in the hot sun, to breakfast; then siesta, tea, afternoon ride, dinner at eight, perhaps a rubber, and so the days go on.

Or I have a day in the town, and lunch at my dispensary on bazaar food—slices of mutton off a sheep roasted whole; brilliān, i. e. chopped and seasoned meat; pillaws of rice, with various meats; kabobs, or chopped and seasoned meat roasted on skewers, and served hot with herbs between two flaps of bread, also hot; a bowl of sherbet, i. e. syrup and water, with blocks of ice in it; grapes or apricots as dessert; then my water-pipe is handed to me; the whole—and the plentiful leavings give my servant and the groom a substantial breakfast—costing a shilling.

Then, mounting, I visit the calico-printers, and see the elaborate printing by means of blocks—some of them over three centuries old—of the curtains for which Ispahan is celebrated, covered with strange pictures of peacocks, elephants, soldiers, lions, etc., in all the colours of the rainbow, and fast, too, on a white ground.

Or I sit and chat with the artists on the upper story of the caravanserai Gulshan, who each in his little room is hard at work on some bookcover or pencase, or possibly is illustrating a manuscript copy of Hafiz or Saadi, and chatting with whom I learn a good deal of the inner side of Persian life. I look over the work of my artist friends, who do not press me to buy, but who do descant on the falling off in art in Persia.

Or I take a look at Houssein Khari, who has a factory for false antiquities. Here I see, among heaps of sham, at times something real and good; but Houssein Khari does not sell the good things, only the rubbish. As I go he ironically holds out to me a jade teapot, requesting me to buy it for one hundred pounds. I see that the age of bargains is over, and retire.

Or I make a visit to my friends the Baabis. Here, however, I have to eat such a tremendous breakfast that a siesta is needed, and I only am allowed to start homewards at six, after pipes and tea have been taken, and much information extracted from me.

Or a professional visit is made, and I come across bits of Eastern life in out-of-the-way quarters of the huge and ruined town.