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

by C. J. Wills

The bamiah (lady’s finger) and aubergine are additions to the usual English list of vegetables, and the nohl-kohl is in common use, while radishes the size of a fist are a common food of villagers.

Cheese and butter are cheap, being about twopence a pound, while flour in the great cities seldom exceeds a penny a pound (bread is the same price), and in villages is much cheaper.

With all these things to be got, Persia is really the poor man’s paradise; in fact, to live in, the cheapest country in the world.

Tea and coffee are much drunk; the prices are those of Europe for tea, but the best Mocha coffee is only a shilling a pound. The only dear necessaries are lump-sugar and European candles. Good wine may be got for from threepence to one shilling a quart, and native arrack is from one-and-threepence to one-and-ninepence a bottle.

In the bazaar are cook-shops where the labouring people resort; here are sold bowls of soup, pillaws, kabobs (a separate trade), and a cut off a sheep roasted whole may be had in Ispahan. The trade of kalleh-puz, or cooker of sheep’s heads and feet, is a common one; the head and feet of sheep are slowly simmered for some twelve hours, and the liquor sold as soup; the feet, tongues, and heads being retailed to peripatetic vendors. The butchers sell by weight, and have no idea of joints; the buyer is allowed to hack off a large or small portion, and price is the same, irrespective of part. The liver, lights, and kidneys, with the heart, are only eaten by the poor, while the suet is carefully removed for the candle-maker, and can only be had at a higher price than the meat. The huge tail of the Persian sheep is looked on as a delicacy, and a portion is allotted to each buyer.

The sheep are well slaughtered at the public slaughter-houses outside the town, and nowhere else; a tax of ninepence is levied on each carcase. When hung outside the shops of the butchers, the carcases are decorated with strips of Dutch foil and bunches of grass.

The oxen, being used as beasts of draught in the fields, are only slaughtered when worn out, and beef is consequently only eaten by the poor, being as a rule half the price of mutton. It is hard and indigestible, and as the Persians never hang their meat it is deservedly despised. Lamb is twice the price of mutton. Among the Christians of Julfa, however, good beef is at times to be obtained, but the animals are seldom larger than Alderneys, save when buffalo-meat is had, and this is hard and dark.

Game is frequently sold alive, being netted by the villagers, quails and partridges being thus disposed of; the usual price is four for ninepence. Wild ducks and geese are sold for a few pence; also sand-grouse. Sparrows, too, are particularly valued for soup for invalids, and are sold alive by the hundred. There are no rabbits; hares being what is termed machrore, or uneatable, in contradistinction to nejis, or unclean, are only eaten by the irreligious; the price is usually fourpence to sixpence.

Of course pork is not seen, pigs not being kept, and the flesh of the wild pig is black and indigestible. Pork, however, is looked on as an aphrodisiac, and the Europeans are constantly asked for small pieces of it.

Tame ducks, save in Teheran, are unknown, and turkeys are also very scarce.