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

by C. J. Wills

So common is drunkenness here, that an old cook of mine, an English-speaking Armenian, used to say to me on Sunday night—

“Dinner finished, sir; if you no orders, I go get drunk with my priest.” Needless to add, that they both did get drunk, and that it was at the cook’s expense. Happily, there are some few exceptions among the Julfa priests, for all India, Persia, and Batavia are supplied with priests for their Armenian communities from Julfa.

Spirits are supposed to deaden pain, and a Yezdi, a guebre (fire-worshipper), who had lodged some slugs and iron in his hand, prior to my removing them, swallowed a quart of strong spirit without my knowledge. I supposed him to become suddenly delirious, but he was only suddenly drunk.

Our first care was to make a road for our little dog-cart. The gates separating the parishes were mostly too narrow to let it pass, and we finally made one six feet wide at the narrowest, having three bridges without parapets (which we widened), and one was at a sharp angle, and a deep ditch the whole way on one side, and a wall on the other. This was capital for a small two-wheel thing, as long as the horse didn’t jib or shy, or we didn’t meet any one. Happily, it did not in our time, but when we got a bigger trap, a park phaeton, with a pair of horses, the pleasure of our drive was somewhat damped by the possibility of a capsize at night in the dark! But the cherub that always keeps a watch over poor Jack must have been on duty, for we never did have an accident. It was Hobson’s choice, that road or none.

Crossing the river at Marnūn became our favourite ride, and here one could canter for miles on a good road, the greater part of which was shaded by the gardens and orchards on either side. A great deal of firewood, too, is grown in this neighbourhood, water is plentiful, and so firewood is a staple crop. Getting out beyond the gardens, on a small mountain standing by itself on the plain, was the ruin of an ancient fire-temple. It was merely built of mud bricks, but here at Ispahan these remain for centuries, and it was only on climbing up to it that one perceived that it was not all quite modern, and a small portion built of very large bricks on an ancient wall. A grand view was got from it, as it commanded the entire plain.

Several large plane-trees are to be seen in the villages, many with platforms built round them, where the villagers sit and smoke in the evenings. A sort of semi-sacred character is attached to some of them, particularly to one which is called the “plane of Mortaza Ali.”

A striking feature at Julfa is the so-called racecourse at Ferhabad. A couple of walls enclose a straight run of over a mile. These walls, which are in ruins, and of mud, have at intervals various pavilions, some of the rooms of which are still almost perfect. At the end is a large square, having many rooms round it in a still better state. The road turned at a right angle towards the village of Julfa; but as this is intersected by wells and watercourses, it is not used as a cantering ground. The place is supposed to have been the summer palace of the Afghan conquerors.

Ruins and ancient buildings, when built of burnt bricks, rapidly disappear in Persia. It is for a very simple reason. It is cheaper to demolish an old building, and carry off the good seasoned bricks by donkey-loads, than to make and burn new ones, which often crumble.

In my own time a large and handsome college near the Char Bagh of Ispahan has utterly disappeared, the prince having given an order for its demolition, and that the material be used in making the new one he has now completed. The very foundations were grubbed up. In Ispahan itself every third house is a ruin, and in Julfa the walls of gardens and orchards often contain the bare inner walls of ancient houses, which retain the brightness of their painting and gilding in the dry and pure air.

Donkeys, as beasts of burden, are much employed in a country where there are no carts or wheeled vehicles; save in the capital, the donkeys do all the ordinary work of vehicles. Earth, manure, produce, firewood, charcoal, grain, are all carried on these beasts or on mules. Each animal has his pack-saddle, in which he lives and sleeps. It is only removed when the donkey gets a rare and very occasional curry-combing from a very primitive sort of instrument, having jangling rings, which produce a music supposed to be soothing to a donkey’s soul. Every villager has his donkey; if more than one he is well-to-do. The ordinary wage of a man is one keran, a man and donkey one keran and a half, and each additional donkey half a keran. They work from sunrise to sunset, with an hour’s interval for feeding.