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

by C. J. Wills

The causeway was generally some three feet wide, and raised a yard from the ground, and frequently ran on both sides of a path a yard wide and often two feet deep in mud or water, looking like a ditch, but it was really the road (save the mark!) for horses, mules, and camels. Many of the houses were built of burnt bricks, and the place seemed busier than Hamadan. I noticed many Arabs about wearing the gay Baghdad dress, with fez and small turban. The town was straggling, with many open spaces.

Quarters were assigned to us in the house of a man who was ejected to enable us to occupy them; they were not in themselves a bad place, but were in the worst and most disreputable part of the town; while the house I was obliged to rent was actually next door but one to that occupied by the public executioner, one Jaffer, and where dwelt the public women, the monopoly of whom was the largest source of this man’s revenue. All this is now changed, and Europeans can in most parts of Persia live where they like, the householders being only too glad to get a solvent tenant. Save in the capital, houses rarely are rented by Persians, it being usual to borrow a spare house, or, if a man has more than one, to put a relation in, rent-free.

The farce of the danger of living in the Persian towns is still kept up in Ispahan (the Ispahanis are the quietest men in Persia), where the English inhabit an unclean Armenian village, paying high rents, when houses in the town could be had much better and cheaper; the real reason probably being that the Armenians may enjoy the immunity they have from all control, caused by the presence of the European. But it has not answered, for in Ispahan the European is looked on as merely a clean and sober Armenian. Still, as an experiment of what the Armenian would be when practically unrestrained, it is valuable.

The Hamadan Armenian is hard-working and respectable, if occasionally a drunkard, looked on by his Persian fellow-subject as a friend and a good citizen. While the Ispahani looks on the Julfa Armenian as a race apart, and merely the panderer to his vice and the maker of intoxicating liquors; and the hang-dog Armenian, with his sham Turkish or European dress and the bottle of arrack in his pocket, scowls staggering along in secure insolence, confident in the moral protection given him by the presence of the Englishman, whom he robs; respecting neither his priest, whom he has been taught to despise; nor the missionary, whom he dislikes at heart (though he has educated his children gratuitously), and whom his priest openly reviles.

A curious instance of the religious stability of the Julfa Armenian is shown in the fact, that a Protestant on any dispute with the missionary becomes Catholic or Old Armenian. The Old Armenian, after a row with the priest, becomes either Protestant or Catholic. The Catholics, as a rule, do not relapse or become perverts. In fact, a common threat with the Armenian to his spiritual pastor and master, missionary, priest or padre, is to say, “Do it, and I’ll turn,” and some have many times; in fact, a very small temporal matter often is the cause of conversions as sudden as insincere.

We were glad enough to get in, and had hardly got our boots off ere a number of trays of sweetmeats were brought for Pierson, on the part of Hadji Khaleel, with compliments, and a similar present was sent from the Imād-u-dowlet, who sent his farrash-bashi (literally chief carpet-spreader, but really his minister) to represent him. This man was well bred, well meaning and obliging, and afterwards, through a singular circumstance, one of my best friends among the Persians.

I continued to stay with Pierson, not moving into my own quarters till he left Kermanshah.

CHAPTER X.
KERMANSHAH.

Kermanshah—Imād-u-dowlet—We visit him—Signs of his wealth—Man nailed to a post—Injuring the wire—Serrum-u-dowlet—Visits—We dine with the son of the Governor—His decorations and nightingales—Dancing girls—Various dances—The belly dance—Heavy dinner—Turf—Wild geese—The swamp—A ducking through obstinacy—Imādieh—Wealth of the Imād-u-dowlet—The Shah loots him—Squeezing—Rock sculptures—Astrologers—Astrolabes—Fortune-telling—Rammals—Detection of thieves—Honesty of servants—Thefts through pique—My lost pipe-head—Tragedy of two women.