Love divine, all love excelling.
Tabreez was at this time the centre of diplomatic activity. While the Shah and his camp were not far off, the Turkish Ambassador was in the city, and Sir Gore Ouseley was busily mediating between the Turkish and Persian Governments after their hostilities on the Baghdad frontier. Turkey, moreover, had just before concluded a treaty with Russia, with consequences most offensive to the Shah. Only the personal influence and active interference of the British Ambassador prevented the renewal of hostilities. Mr. Morier, the Secretary of Embassy, gives us this contemporary picture of Martyn’s arrival:[81] ‘We had not long been at Tabreez before our party was joined by the Rev. William Canning and the Rev. Henry Martyn. The former was attached to our Embassy as chaplain; the latter, whom we had left at Shiraz employed in the translation of the New Testament into the Persian language, having completed that object, was on his way to Constantinople. Both these gentlemen had suffered greatly in health during their journey from Shiraz. Mr. Martyn had scarcely time to recover his strength before he departed again.’
Had Henry Martyn been induced by his hospitable friends to rest here for a time, had the physician constrained him to wait for a better season and more strength, he might have himself presented his sacred work to the Shah—might have repeated in the north what he had been permitted to do in one brief year in the south of Persia, and might have again seen the beloved Lydia and his Cambridge friends. For Tabreez, ‘the fever-dispeller,’ is said to have been so named by Zobeidah, the wife of the Kaliph Haroon’r Rashheed, who, at the close of the eighth century, beautified the ancient Tauris, capital of Tiridates III., King of Armenia in 297, because of its healthy climate. In spite of repeated earthquakes the city has been always rebuilt, low and mean, covering an area like that of Vienna, but the principal emporium from which Persia used to receive its European goods till the coasting steamers of India opened up the Persian Gulf and, of late, the Euphrates, Tigris, and Karoon rivers. Only the ark, or citadel of Ali Shah, a noble building of burnt brick, and the fine ruin of the Kabood Masjeed, or mosque of beautifully arabesqued blue tiles, redeemed the city in Martyn’s time from meanness. The Ambassador, his host, was then lodged in the house of its wealthiest citizen, Hajji Khan Muhammed, whom the Prince had turned out to make room for Sir Gore Ouseley. Now the British Consulate of Tabreez is a spacious residence, with a fine garden, and the city has become flourishing again. Henry Martyn left Tabreez on his fatal journey at the very time when the climate began to be at its best. All around, too, and especially in the hills of Sahand to the south, with the air of Scotland and of Wales, or on the natural pastures of Chaman, where the finest brood mares are kept, sloping down to the waters of Lake Ooroomia, he would have found in the hot season the loveliest land in Asia.[82]
Before we hasten on with the modern apostle of the Persians to the bitter but bright end, we must trace the history of the influence of his translation of the New Testament. The 20th August, 1812, he joyfully entered in his Journal as a day much to be remembered for the remarkable recovery of strength. He learned from Mirza Aga Meer that his ‘work,’ that is, his reply to Mirza Ibrahim, had been read to the Shah by Mirza Abdoolwahab, and that the king had observed to Mirza Boozong, his son’s vizier, that the Feringhis’ (Franks’) Government and army, and now one of their moollas, was come into the East. The Shah then directed Mirza Boozong to prepare an answer. In consequence of this information Sir Gore Ouseley, who doubtless desired to spare the little strength of his guest, directed that a certain moolla, who greatly wished to be introduced to the man of God, should not be brought to him. Nevertheless, ‘one day a moolla came and disputed a while for Muhammedan, but finished with professing Soofi sentiments.’
The great Shah, Fateh Ali Khan himself, and his son, were thus prepared for the Divine gift of Henry Martyn in due form through the British Ambassador. How it reached His Persian Majesty from Sir Gore Ouseley, and how the Shah-in-Shah received it, these letters tell, so honourable to the writers, even after all allowance is made for the diplomatic courtliness of the correspondence.[83] The Soofi controversialists and friends of the translator, who by that time had entered on his rest, must have, moreover, predisposed the eclectic mind of the always liberal Shah to treat with reverence the Injil, or Gospel.
From His Excellency Sir Gore Ouseley, Bart., Ambassador Extraordinary from His Britannic Majesty to the Court of Persia. Addressed to the Right Hon. Lord Teignmouth, President of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
St. Petersburg: September 20, 1814.
My dear Lord,—Finding that I am likely to be detained here some six or seven weeks, and apprehensive that my letters from Persia may not have reached your Lordship, I conceive it my duty to acquaint you, for the information of the society of Christians formed for the purpose of propagating the Sacred Writings, that, agreeably to the wishes of our poor friend, the late Rev. Henry Martyn, I presented in the name of the Society (as he particularly desired) a copy of his translation of the New Testament into the Persian language to His Persian Majesty, Fateh Ali Shah Kajar, having first made conditions that His Majesty was to peruse the whole, and favour me with his opinion of the style, etc.
Previous to delivering the book to the Shah, I employed transcribers to make some copies of it, which I distributed to Hajji Mahomed Hussein Khan, Prince of Maru, Mirza Abdulwahab, and other men of learning and rank immediately about the person of the king, who, being chiefly converts to the Soofi philosophy, would, I felt certain, give it a fair judgment, and, if called upon by the Shah for their opinion, report of it according to its intrinsic merits.
The enclosed translation of a letter from His Persian Majesty to me will show your Lordship that he thinks the complete work a great acquisition, and that he approves of the simple style adopted by my lamented friend Martyn and his able coadjutor, Mirza Sayyed Ali, so appropriate to the just and ready conception of the sublime morality of the Sacred Writings. Should the Society express a wish to possess the original letter from the Shah, or a copy of it in Persian, I shall be most happy to present either through your Lordship.