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

by C. J. Wills

One occurred at a place called Bonaat, in the province of Fars, some five stages from Shiraz. The finder was a man of learning, who had a house and a few acres of land at this place. He had mostly lived at Baghdad, where he had been well educated, but, on his marriage, bought the little estate at Bonaat.

He found one day in the mud wall of his house, a very old one which he was rebuilding, five jars full of coin. He sent away the workmen, but not before some of them were aware of the discovery, and at once proceeded to bury the treasure (of the truth of this story there is no doubt). Two or three days after this, a messenger from the owner of the greater part of the country in the neighbourhood arrived, and he proceeded to demand the whole of the treasure-trove; he gave no good reason, simply saying that his master meant to have it. The finder tried to make terms with the man, but, unfortunately, he had no means of bribing him but with the actual coins found, which the messenger was anxious but afraid to accept. Taking possession of all the contents of one jar, which my acquaintance with many protests placed at his disposal, the great man’s retainer produced a written order for the man to accompany him to Shiraz, and, putting two men in charge of the house and the rest of the treasure, the poor fellow’s wife, child, and servant being sent off to a neighbour’s without ceremony, they started at once for the residence of the man in power at that place. The end of the matter was, that the contents of all five jars went to this grandee, while nothing remained to the unhappy finder but the suspicion of his having secreted a still greater treasure, and he went about in fear of his life, frequent demands being made for the supposed balance still hidden. In disgust he sold his house and land for a trifle, and went to Bushire, where, under the shadow of the British Residency, he was safe from further troubles. I never got other details than this, but I am in a position to vouch for their truth.

Another case was that of a villager who found a treasure of coin in the ruins of a mud village close to Ispahan. He, luckily for himself, was alone, and managed to transport the whole amount, little by little, to a place of safety. Shortly after this he set out, as a poor man, to walk the pilgrimage to Mecca. This was sufficient and valid excuse for a disappearance for two years. This time he wisely employed in the safe investment of the amount. He went in rags, he returned in comparative affluence; and though often accused of the crime of having discovered a treasure, he wisely denied it; and having secured by a handsome payment the protection of a local magnate, whom he had, doubtless, to heavily subsidise each year, he remained a wealthy man, and will probably be allowed to die in his bed.

The last case was that of a peasant of the neighbourhood of Zinjan, and occurred within the last five years. It was reported to the local governor that a peasant named Yari was in the habit of selling ingots of gold to the Jews of Zinjan at a rate considerably below the market price; the governor seized the man, searched his house, finding a considerable quantity of gold in ingots therein, and, as the matter had now become public, reported the whole affair to Teheran, with a statement that the fellow had discovered a gold-mine, or found “the treasure of King Darius,” or the way to make gold!

This “treasure of King Darius” is a legendary myth that is constantly occurring to the minds of the inflammable Persians. An order came to take the man at once to the capital, but he simply denied either the treasure or the mine, stating that he had found a few ingots, and sold them gradually. But the evidence pointed another way, for the appliances for fusing the metal, of a rough description, were found in his house, and what could an obscure villager know of fusing gold?

The man remained a long time in prison in Teheran, and it is stated on the best authority that means were employed to cause him to speak, which are common in the East, but are happily no longer in use in Europe (save, it is said, in Turkey).

At last he confided to his jailers that he had discovered a gold-mine in the hills; the excitement was intense, he received at once a dress of honour and the title of Khan, equivalent to our knighthood—i. e. it converts a nobody into a somebody. And Yari Khan, carefully guarded and treated with consideration, was taken to Zinjan that he might point out the site of the mine, for his descriptions, though very graphic, had not enabled the searchers to find it. On his arrival he endeavoured by an opportune illness to put off the evil day, but as finding the mine was of more importance to the authorities than the health of a villager, he was soon conveyed to the mountains where he had carefully indicated its situation. But he could not or would not find it. Free recourse was had to the bastinado, but no mine. The man was cast into prison, and doubtless, unless ere this he is dead, or has confessed the source of his wealth, or found means to administer a bribe, he is still in prison on the lowest diet and a frequent administration of stick, even if other and nameless horrors be not resorted to.

Pierson told me that one of the occupations of the Hamadan Jews is the manufacture of the so-called ancient coins; these are sent in large quantities to Baghdad, Teheran, Ispahan, and Constantinople, and sold there to the unsuspicious or ignorant European. He told me, too, that Hamadan has a great reputation for the finding of real antiquities, and that many of the Jews actually paid a small sum for the privilege of searching the ground in certain spots, taking the chance of a find or a blank day.

A Jew readily acceded to the proposal that he and two labourers should be paid for their time, and a few kerans should be given by us for permission to dig, and the intrinsic value of any object in the precious metals handed over to him, the objects themselves being ours.

A few days after, the Jew came to show us the place, some miles from the town where the search was taking place. Two labourers dug some foot of the surface earth away in clods and piled it in heaps. The Jew watched the labourers, and we watched the Jew. After they had uncovered the whole of the ten yards square, which it was agreed that we should dig, the labourers set to to sift it through a coarse sieve, but nothing was found; a second sifting, however, which we noticed that the Jew watched with much more curiosity than the first, produced four small cubes of gold; they were about one-third of an inch cube, and were composed of tiny beads of pure gold soldered together, a hole being left in two of the opposite sides for stringing; they were hollow, and about two pounds in value (the four). We found only these, and they were too few to form an ornament, though doubtless real relics of ancient Ecbatana. So we rewarded our Jew, and dug no more for hidden treasure, or rather antiquities.