This city has also a fine castle on the east at the foot of a hill, but which is uninhabited, and has no other rooms in it but a magnificent palace, which is built partly into the hill; it is most wonderful, as you will learn from what I am about to tell you. This palace is very lofty, and seems solid half way through. Outside there is a flight of steps eight or ten paces long, and three broad, which mounts to the royal gate of the palace; the entrance is in a very large hall, on one side of which is a solid cube, intended to be a hiding place, sustained by four large columns, five paces and about twice the grasp of my arms in girth. The capitals of these columns are wonderfully carved; the cement is of a certain mixture or stone like fine jasper, as I really believed it to be; but trying it with my knife, I found it was not hard. They were placed here not so much for use as for show, as the cube (dome) is sustained by strong thick walls. Then, further in, there is another long narrow hall, with many little chambers like rooms; and entering further, one finds a vast hall with many windows looking on to the city, since the palace is above it, as I have said, standing on a hill overlooking the city and the country round for a long way. All these rooms are beautifully decorated with layers of cement of various colours. All the ceilings of the rooms are decorated and coloured with gilding and ultramarine blue. The large hall looking on to the city has many columns round it, which seem to support the roof; still it is kept up by strong walls, and they are placed there for the sake of appearance, as they are of the most beautiful marbles, not white, but in colour like silver, so that in each one of them are reflected the city, the hall, all the columns and people there. And at each window of this hall, there are pilasters of fine marble of the same kind and appearance as the columns, which reflect in the same way but in a greater degree, as they are flat, so that one can see not only the city, but also the surrounding country, the mountains and hills more than twenty miles distant, all the gardens and the great plain.
This city has, besides, some other great advantages. The principal one is its being situated in a marvellous position at the head of a fine large plain towards the east, in a place like a small inlet at the foot of a high mountain, though this belongs to the chain ten miles further to the east. On the west there is another, but not very extensive, plain, stretching three miles from the city.
The air here is so fine and salubrious as to induce people to remain willingly and with great enjoyment; nor did I ever see anyone in bad health there. They almost all eat mutton there, which has a very delicate taste. The beef there is most vile; so that but little is eaten by the inhabitants. Their bread is of flour as white as milk; they have little wine, but still there are some red wines, and some wines white in colour, and tasting like malmsey. There are also a good many fish, which are caught in a lake,[608] a day’s journey distant from the city, which is salt like those of Vastan and Van. The fish have not a natural taste, but have a strange smell and taste of sulphur. To this place there are also brought many sturgeon,[609] smaller than those of the Mediterranean, but still excellent. There is delicious caviar also, which, as well as the sturgeon, is brought from the Caspian Sea, nine days’ journey distant from this place, from a castle named Maumutaga. There also come from this sea fresh [Transcriber’s Note: a gap was left here intentionally in the original printing; use your imagination], as large as men, and so good that they are better than the flesh of pheasants; but they only come during the spring, as their season only lasts two months.
There are also the common fruits, as over all the world, few nuts, most delicious olives, and Adam’s apples; but no oil, oranges, or lemons. These fruits, which fail in spring-time, are brought from Chilan,[610] a little province on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, extending twenty-five miles from the sea. This city is also ornamented with numerous gardens, in which there are the common herbs like cabbages, lettuces, greens, and other small vegetables, like those at Venice; rape and carrots, small radishes, marjoram, parsley, and rosemary. There is also much rice, and great abundance of corn and barley.
Besides all this, the city is thickly inhabited by Persians, Turkomans, and gipsies, who are treated as people of the Suffavean sect, and wear the red caftans like the rest of the people. There are a good number of Armenian Christians; but beyond Tauris there are no Christians of any kind to be found. There are also Jews, but not permanent inhabitants, as they are all foreigners from Bagadet, Cassan, and Jesede,[611] and come to Tauris, are Suffavean subjects, and live in alcharan saradi[612] like all foreign merchants. Of the inhabitants you will learn wonderful things. The men are ordinarily taller than in our country, are very bold, robust in appearance, and of high spirit. The women are short in proportion to the men, and as white as snow. Their dress is the same as always has been—the Persian costume—wearing it open at the breast, showing their bosoms and even their bodies, the whiteness of which resembles ivory. All the Persian women, and particularly in Tauris, are wanton, and wear men’s robes, and put them on over their heads, covering them altogether. These are robes of silk, some of crimson cloth, woollen cloth, velvet, and cloth of gold, according to the condition of the wearer. A quantity of velvet and cloth of gold is brought from Bursa and Cafà. In this city there is an order, as throughout the whole of Persia, that a revenue farmer levies all the excise and tolls as taxes and customs. There is also a vile usage, which has always existed, that every merchant who has a shop in the bazaar pays each day either two or six aspri, or even a ducat, according to their business; likewise, a payment is fixed for the masters of every art according to their condition. Also the harlots, who frequent the public places, are bound to pay according to their beauty, as the prettier they are the more they have to pay; and far worse than the others I have mentioned is this cursed, horrible, disgraceful custom, the evil odour of which ascends to heaven; and from the following instance you may learn their iniquities, as in this city there is a public place and school of Sodomy, where likewise they pay tribute according to their beauty.
All the money they collect is for the private advantage of the revenue-farmers, and no difference is made between Christians and Mussulmans in going to the prostitutes. Besides these taxes, they have the tariff, of which the Christians pay ten per cent. on every kind of merchandise from whatever quarter it may come. The Mussulmans only pay five per cent. on everything; and if they do not sell in Tauris, and the goods are in transit, they do not pay per cent., but weigh the whole quantity and pay a certain proportion on it. In a load worth forty or forty-five ducats, or one of fine or heavy goods, the payment is limited. Of everything one buys in this city, what one has to pay is also fixed according to the class of merchandise, and all is collected by the revenue-farmer. At the time I was in Tauris, a certain man named Capirali held this office and received an income of sixty thousand ducats from these taxes. There is much traffic in this city, and there are silks of every quality, raw and manufactured. There are rhubarb, musk, ultramarine blue, pearls of Orimes[613] of every water, coin of all sorts, lake dye of great beauty, fine indigo, woollen and other cloths from Aleppo, Bursa, and Constantinople, since crimson silks are exported from Tauris to Aleppo and Turkey, and are paid for in cloth and silver.
Chap. VIII.
Description of the royal palace built by Assambei outside the city of Tauris.
Having given full enough particulars of the different matters of this city, I do not think I ought to omit to mention a beautiful palace which the great Sultan Assambei had built; and though there are many large and beautiful palaces in the city built by the kings, his predecessors, yet this, without comparison, far excels them all; so great was the magnificence of Assambei that, up to the present time, he has never had an equal in Persia. The palace is built in the centre of a large and beautiful garden, close to the city, with only a stream dividing them to the north, and in the same circumference a fine mosque is built with a rich and useful hospital attached. The palace in the Persian language is called Astibisti,[614] which, in our tongue, signifies “eight parts”, as it has eight divisions. It is thirty paces high, and is about seventy or eighty yards round, divided into eight parts, which are subdivided into four rooms and four anterooms, each room having the anteroom towards the entrance, and the rest of the palace is a fine circular dome. This palace is under one roof, or, as one should say, with one storey, and has only one flight of steps to ascend to the dome, the rooms and anterooms, since the staircase leads to the dome, and from the dome one enters the rooms and anterooms. This building, on the ground floor, has four entrances, with many more apartments, all enamelled and gilt in various ways, and so beautiful that I can hardly find words to express it. This palace, as I have already said, is situated in the centre of the garden, and is built on a terrace, or rather the mastabé has been raised round for appearance, being a yard and a half high and five yards wide, like a piazza. By every door of the palace there is a way paved with marble leading to the mastabé. By the door of the chief palace there is a small flight of steps of the finest marble by which one mounts to the mastabé, which is all made of fine marble, while in the centre of the mastabé there is a channel of a streamlet paved and skilfully worked out in marble. This streamlet is four fingers broad and four deep, and flows all round in the form of a vine or a snake. It rises at one part, flows round, and at the same place again the water is conducted away elsewhere. For three yards above the mastabé is all of fine marble. All below is plastered in different colours, and is conspicuous far off like a mirror.
The terrace of the palace has for each angle a gutter or spout, which spurts out water, and the spout is immensely large, and made in the form of a dragon; they are of bronze, and so large that they would do for a cannon, and so well made as to be taken for live dragons. Within the palace, on the ceiling of the great hall, are represented in gold, silver, and ultramarine blue, all the battles which took place in Persia a long time since; and some embassies are to be seen which came from the Ottoman to Tauris presenting themselves before Assambei, with their demands and the answer he gave them written in the Persian character. There are also represented his hunting expeditions, on which he was accompanied by many lords, all on horseback, with dogs and falcons. There are also seen many animals like elephants and rhinoceroses, all signifying adventures which had happened to him. The ceiling of the great hall is all decorated with beautiful gilding and ultramarine. The figures are so well drawn that they appear like real living human beings.