June 12.—Employed about Journal, writing letters, reading Gulistan, but excessively indolent. In the morning I enjoyed much comfort in prayer. What a privilege to have a God to go to, in such a place, and in such company. To read and pray at leisure seemed like coming home after being long abroad. Psalm lxxxix. was a rich repast to me. Why is it not always thus with me?
At Shiraz Henry Martyn was in the very heart of old Persia, to which the eldest son of Shem had given his name, Elam. One of the greatest of the Shahs, Kareem Khan, made Shiraz his capital, instead of the not distant Persepolis, which also Martyn visited. The founder of the present dynasty levelled its walls and desolated its gardens, but the city of the six gates still dominates the fine valley which no tyrant could destroy, and has still a pleasing appearance, though its Dewan Khana has been stripped of the royal pillars to adorn the palace of the new capital of Teheran. Even Timour respected Shiraz; when red with the blood of Ispahan, he sent for Hafiz, and asked how the poet dared to dispose of the Tartar’s richest cities, Bokhara and Samarcand, for the mole on his lady’s cheek. ‘Can the gifts of Hafiz ever impoverish Timour?’ was the answer; and Shiraz was spared. Kareem Khan long after built mausoleums over the dust of the Anacreon of Persia, and over that of Sadi, its Socrates in verse, as Sir Robert Ker Porter well describes the author of the Gulistan, which was Martyn’s daily companion at this time.
SHIRAZ
We have an account of Shiraz[50] and the people of Persia, written six years before Martyn’s visit, by Edward Scott Waring, Esq., of the Bengal Civil Establishment, who, led by ill-health and curiosity, followed the same route by Bushire and Kaziroon to the city. He is sceptical as to those splendours which formed the theme of Hafiz, and describes the city as ‘worth seeing, but not worth going to see.’ The tomb of the poet[51] the Hafizieh garden he found to be of white marble, on which two of his odes were very beautifully cut; a few durweshes daily visited the spot and chanted his verses. Mr. George N. Curzon, M.P.,[52] the latest visitor, contrasts the grave of Hafiz with that of his contemporary Dante, at Ravenna. Sadi’s grave was then quite neglected; no one had carved on it the beautiful epitaph (paraphrased by Dryden) which he wrote for himself on the Bostan: ‘O passenger! who walkest over my grave, think of the virtuous persons who have gone before me. What has Sadi to apprehend from being turned into dust? he was but earth when alive. He will not continue dust long, for the winds will scatter him over the whole universe.’ Yet as long as the garden of knowledge has blossomed not a nightingale has warbled so sweetly in it. It would be strange if such a nightingale should die, and not a rose grow upon its grave. Sir Robert Ker Porter, twelve years later, found both spots alike neglected. One poet had written of the garden where Hafiz was buried, ‘Paradise does not boast such lovely banks as those of Rocknabeel, nor such groves as the high-scented fragrance of the bowers of Mosella.’ Another now sadly writes, ‘Though the bowers of love grew on its banks, and the sweet song of Hafiz kept time with the nightingale and the rose, the summer is past and all things are changed.’
Six years after Henry Martyn’s residence in Shiraz, Sir Robert Ker Porter entered the city, which to him, as to every Christian or even English-speaking man, became thenceforth more identified with this century’s apostle to the Persians than with even Hafiz and Sadi. ‘Faint with sickness and fatigue,’ he writes,[53] ‘I felt a momentary reviving pleasure in the sight of a hospitable city, and the cheerful beauty of the view. As I drew near, the image of my exemplary countryman, Henry Martyn, rose in my thoughts, seeming to sanctify the shelter to which I was hastening. He had approached Shiraz much about the same season of the year, A.D. 1811, and like myself was gasping for life under the double pressure of an inward fire and outward burning sun. He dwelt there nearly a year, and on leaving its walls the apostle of Christianity found no cause for shaking off the dust of his feet against the Mohammedan city. The inhabitants had received, cherished and listened to him; and he departed thence amidst the blessings and tears of many a Persian friend. Through his means the Gospel had then found its way into Persia, and, as it appears to have been sown in kindly hearts, the gradual effect hereafter may be like the harvest to the seedling. But, whatever be the issue, the liberality with which his doctrines were permitted to have been discussed, and the hospitality with which their promulgation was received by the learned, the nobles, and persons of all ranks, cannot but reflect lasting honour on the Government, and command our respect for the people at large. Besides, to a person who thinks at all on these subjects, the circumstances of the first correct Persian translation of the Holy Scriptures being made at Shiraz, and thence put into the royal hands and disseminated through the empire, cannot but give an almost prophetic emphasis to the transaction, as arising from the very native country, Persia Proper, of the founder of the empire who first bade the temple of Jerusalem be rebuilt, who returned her sons from captivity, and who was called by name to the Divine commission.’
As the guest of Jaffir Ali Khan, now in his house in Shiraz, and now in his orange summer garden, Henry Martyn gave himself up to the two absorbing duties of making a new translation of the New Testament into Persian, assisted by his host’s brother-in-law, Mirza Seyd Ali Khan, and of receiving and, in the Pauline sense, disputing with the learned Mohammedans of the city and neighbourhood. But all through his inner life, sanctified by his spiritual experience and intensifying that, there continued to run the love of Lydia Grenfell.
To Lydia Grenfell
Shiraz: June 23, 1811.