One day being in company with the Sháh he presented me with the purest wine. I said, “By God! with God! through God! and by Ali’s purest spirit, since I was born I never drank wine or any other spirituous liquor, and since our great ancestor Khoja Ahmed Yessúí, none of our family have ate or drank any thing of an intoxicating quality. I beg, therefore, to be excused by you.” The Khán said, “My beloved and darling brother, what are you afraid of; if it is of your Emperor, he is five months journey from you; if it is of your Khán (the Páshá), it is forty days distance from Erzerúm to Tabríz. The Khán of the Sháh of Irán and the dog of Alí, my Sháh, has expressly forbidden me to drink a drop of wine; what do I care for that, I drink it secretly and delight in it; follow my example.” I said, “Very well, my Khán, if your Sháh has prohibited it to you, it is prohibited to me by the express command of the Sháh of Sháhs, the Lord of Lords, who says in the Korán, ‘wine, gaming and fortune-telling are Satan’s work:’ it is of this Lord, that I am afraid.” “You are,” said the Khán, “a rigorous Methodist (Mutea-assib).” “By God!” replied I, “I am no Methodist but only a true follower of the orthodox sect of Na’amán Ben Thábet, and a true lover of the Prophet’s family.” At this reply the whole company became silent, the Khán rose up with all his youthful attendants, and sitting down close to me, he said, “My dear Evliyá Aghá, which of these my favourite servants would you like to have, I will make you a present of him if you drink a cup of wine out of his hand. Come drink a glass, if you love red Alí and the twelve Imáms; let us be warm of head and tender of heart, let us enjoy a moment of delight in this perishable world.” So saying, all the youths came to salute me, and I returned their salutes; yet did I implore at the same time Heaven’s assistance, and then said, in answer to his further pressing requests; “You drink wine to get into good humour, but the first thing is to be good-humoured in God; I beg you will let me have a half-drum to accompany my own song, in order to show you how people get good-humoured in God.” “Be it so,” said he, “for Alí’s sake bring a half-drum to Evliyá, my brother;” I took it, and sang three tetrastichs on Divine Love, in the tune Sigáh, which made all the hearers appear as though they were drunk. The Khán, being extremely pleased, invested me with his own sable pelisse, gave me a thousand praises, and a Georgian slave as a present, ten tománs of Abbássí, and a racehorse (Karajubúk). “Now,” said he, “I will not plague you any more with a request to drink wine,” and I continued to enjoy his conversation undisturbed during a whole month, feasting every night. I spent this time observing all that was worth seeing at Tabríz, the good order and government of which is worthy of all possible recommendation. The inhabitants are merry, but orderly people, and I never saw a drunkard in the streets. It is in their praise that the verse was composed, which says, “The people of Tabríz, though given to pleasure, are as pure as the glass of a mirror; and if you say they are not true to friends, you must know that the mirror only reflects the object before it as it really appears.”
General Praise of Tabríz.
The first and most agreeable properties of Tabríz is the abundance of water, by which means the streets are washed and cleansed from all dust, as though it was continually New Year’s day. The second praiseworthy circumstance is, that the Sherífs or descendants of Mohammed do not give their daughters indiscriminately to servants, but only to their equals. They proposed the following nice point to me, saying:—“You take Infidel girls as women, because you say that the man plants the seed, and that is very well; but you also give your own daughters to Moslíms, who were first Infidels and afterwards converted; now if this new Moslím relapses into his former error, what then becomes of the children, who though their mother be a true descendant of the Prophet, may become apostates and fly into the land of the Infidels?” I answered, with the tradition of the Prophet, which says, “that even the children of Christians and Jews are born true Moslims, but that they are afterwards seduced into error by their parents.” There was no reply to that. The third good thing is that all sales are transacted with Persian money coined in the country, and that no foreign coin is received. Money is coined in seven towns, viz. at Erdebíl, Hamadán, Baghdád, Isfahán, Tiflís, Nehávend, and Tabríz. The inscription on one side is, “There is no God, but God, and Mohammed is the Prophet, and Alí the friend of God;” on the reverse is the name of the Sháh, with the epithet of Alí’s dog: their small coins or pennies are called Kázikí, they bear only the place of the coinage on one side, and the date of the year on the other: on their measures and weights are also written the words, “There is no God but God,” and who dares to cheat in the name of God is blinded by a heated stone drawn over his eyes. Before their shops and markets, scales of yellow brass are suspended, which are never taken away, but always remain, and all eatables and drinkables are sold by weight according to the fixed market prices; even corn and wheat are sold by weight. The fourth good things are the cookshops, fitted-up with china and furnished with plates of the same material; they are opened with prayer as usual in the morning, and then filled with all kinds of pilaws, and stewed meat (Herisse), which are also sold by weight. The waiters, clean and smart, stand with pewter dishes under their arms, on which are inscriptions like the following: “No nobility above the Islám;” “The nobility of the place depends upon who occupies it;” “The nobility of the house depends upon its inhabitants; and the nobility of the inhabitants upon their generosity.” After dinner these waiters bring clean basins and cans for washing, but vulgar people (Tolúnkí and Tokir) wipe their right hand under their left shoulder, and their left hand under the right.
Bad and reprehensible things in Irán.
It is a bad custom in Persia that only twelve classes of the troops and as many of the Ulemás and the other ranks of society are allowed to have regular kitchens in their houses; all the rest eat from the market, therefore, although their dinner is cheap it is very bad. The army has its cooks, who cook in that way at a fixed price, so that they are not allowed to take a grain more or to furnish a grain less than the established quantity. When the army takes the field, the kitchen is established in tents made of felt.
Another bad thing in Persia is that they do not kill or hang their delinquents, but the Darogha and Mohtessíb (two officers of police), bring them to the public place, where the executioners torment them in a most cruel manner; during three days and nights, they inflict on them three hundred and sixty different kinds of torture. They first give them three hundred strokes of the whip and Korbáj, press their knees, introduce reeds under their nails, cauterize the whole body with fire, force them to swallow greasy rags with a rope attached, which if dragged out again brings the stomach and bowels with it; nail their hands and feet down, bore holes in the elbows and knees, and then pour melted lead in the holes so that the lead runs out with the marrow: they tie the four first fingers and toes tight together, suspend the delinquent and perfume him with sulphur and asses’ urine, so that the poor men’s cries pierce the skies; they cut pieces out of the back, and attach burning candles to the shoulders; they squeeze the testicles, tickle the nose with pointed thorns, put iron kettles on the head, and blind the eyes; and inflict even more horrible tortures than those already described. God forgive us our sins! They paralyse thieves by cutting the sinews. They cut off the ears, noses, and hands and feet of false witnesses, and fasten other delinquents to seven different kinds of gibbets and pales, and leave them so exposed during three days and nights. The Khán having one day glorified himself with these cruel tortures, in my presence, I asked him, “What was the object of such manifold cruelties;” he said, “That death being pronounced on these culprits, the tortures were added, in order to terrify others by the example.” I said, “That it was not lawful, because the text of the Korán states no other punishment for thieves but cutting off the hand, and retaliation in cases of murder; and that this was quite sufficient to keep the people in terror and awe.” He was obliged to acknowledge that I was right. These additional tortures have been contrived by them, because their people are all riotous and heretical, that they may be kept in order the easier. So they established it as law.
Pilgrimages and Visits in the town of Tabríz.
In the cemeteries are many places of pilgrimage of great and holy men. In the cemetery of Súrkháb are the tombs of poets, such as Enwerí, Khakání, Zahír-ud-dín Faryábí, Felekí of Shíráz, and Felekí of Shirván.
Of Saints buried in the neighbouring villages, there are, in the village of Gúchúchán the Saint Khoja Mohammed Gúchúchání; in the village of Sabádabád, no less than seven hundred learned writers. Essáma Ben Sherík, the Prophet’s companion is buried near Tabríz on the martyrs’ mount; and Sárut-ul Jebel, the brother of Hamza, who was carried wounded from the battle of Nehávend to Tabríz, died here. The Sheikh Sejid-ján Memí, a writer deeply versed in ancient and modern sciences and in mystics. On mount Súrkháb, two children of Alí are buried; in the quarter of Serde the place is shown where Efasiáb’s head is buried. Sheikh Nassr-allah, the son of Ak-Shems-ud-dín. It would be too long to describe all the monuments which exist at Tabríz, and we contented ourselves with these.