Dr. Bruce has not returned from Baghdad, but Mrs. and Miss Bruce welcomed me very kindly, and I am already forgetting my unpleasant reception. I. L. B.
LETTER XII
Julfa, April 17.
Mr. George Curzon wrote of Julfa: "The younger Julfa is a place wholly destitute of superficial attractions, consisting as it does of a labyrinth of narrow alleys closed by doors and plentifully perforated with open sewers. Life there is 'cabined, cribbed, confined' to an intolerable degree, and it is a relief to escape from its squalid precincts."
I dare not write thus if I would! It is now the early spring. The "sewers" are clear rapid streams, margined by grass and dandelions, and shaded by ash trees and pollard willows in their first flush of green. The "narrow alleys" are scrupulously clean, and there is neither mud nor dust. If I go up on the roof I see a cultivated oasis, gardens prolonged indefinitely concealing the desert which lies between them and the bold mountain ranges which surround this lofty and breezy plain. Every breeze is laden with the delicious odour of the bean blossom. A rapid river spanned by noble bridges hurries through the oasis it has helped to create, and on its other side the domes and minarets of Isfahan rise out of masses of fine trees, and bridges and mosques, minarets and mountains, are all seen through a most exquisite pink mist, for hundreds of standard peach trees are in full bloom, and look where one may everything is couleur de rose.
I quite admit that Julfa consists of a "labyrinth of alleys." I can never find my way about it. One alley with its shady central stream (or "sewer"), its roughly paved paths on either side, its mud walls pierced by low doors, is very much like another, and however lucky one may be in "happening on" the right road, it is always a weary time before one escapes from between mud walls into the gardens and wheatfields, to the blossoming beans, and the exquisite wild-flowers among the wheat.
As to the "cabined, cribbed, confined" life, I can give no testimony from personal knowledge. All life in European settlements in the East appears to me "cabined, cribbed, confined," and greatly devoid of external interests. Perhaps Julfa is deficient in the latter in an eminent degree, and in a very small foreign community people are interested chiefly in each other's affairs, sayings, and doings. Lawn tennis, picnics, and dinner parties are prevalent, the ordinary etiquette of European society prevails, and in all cases of need the residents are kind to each other both in life and death.
The European society is divided into three circles—the missionaries, the mercantile community, and the telegraph staff. The British agent, Mr. Aganoor, is an Armenian.[33] No Christians, Armenian or European, live in Isfahan, and it is practically défendu to European women. This transpontine restriction undoubtedly narrows the life and interests of Julfa. It is aggravating and tantalising to be for ever looking at a city of 60,000 or 70,000 people, the fallen capital of the Sufari dynasty, and never be able to enter it.
This Christian town of Julfa has a certain accessible historic interest. Shah Abbas, justly surnamed the Great, conceived the sagacious project of introducing among his Persian subjects at Isfahan—then, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, a magnificent capital—the Christian habits of trading, sagacity, and thrift, for then as now the Armenians had commercial dealings with China, India, and Europe, and had imported several arts into Persia.