They regard certain stones, trees, hill-tops, and springs as "sacred," but it is difficult to define the very vague ideas which they attach to them. I am inclined to think that they look on them as the abodes of genii, always malignant, and requiring to be propitiated. In passing such places they use a formula equivalent to "May God avert evil," and it is common, as in Nubra and Ladak, to hang pieces of rag on such trees and stones as offerings to the genius loci.
They regard certain places as possibly haunted by spirits, always evil, and never those of the departed; but this can scarcely be termed a belief, as it is lightly held, and quite uninfluential, except in preventing them from passing such places alone in the darkness.
The opinions concerning God represent Him chiefly as a personification of a fate, to which they must bow, and as a Judge, to whom, in some mysterious way, they must account after death. Earthly justice appears to them as a commodity to be bought and sold, as among the Persians, or as it is among themselves, as severity solely, without a sentiment of mercy; and I have asked them often if they think that anything will be able to affect the judgment of the Judge of all, in case it should go against them. Usually they reply in the negative, but a few say that Ali, the Lieutenant of God, will ask for mercy for them, and that he will not be refused.
Of God as a moral being I think they have little conception, and less of the Creator as an object of love. Of holiness as an attribute of God they have no idea. Their ejaculation, "God is good," has really no meaning. Charity, under the term "goodness," they attribute to God. But they have no notion of moral requirements on the part of the Creator, or of sin as the breaking of any laws which He has laid down. They concern themselves about the requirements of religion in this life and about the future of the soul as little as is possible, and they narrow salvation within the limits of the Shiah sect.
After Mohammed and Ali they speak of Moses, Abraham, and Jesus as "Prophets," but of Moses as a lawgiver, and of Jesus as aught else but a healer, they seem quite ignorant.
And so they pass away, generation after generation, ignorant of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, of the love to God and man which is alone the fulfilling of the law, and of the light which He, who is the resurrection and the life, has shed upon the destiny of the human spirit.
Generally I find them quite willing to talk on these subjects; but one man said contemptuously, "What has a Kafir to do with God?" The women know nothing, and, except among the sons of the leading Khans, there is no instruction in the Koran given to the children. If I have interpreted their views correctly they must be among the most ignorant of the races bound by the faith of Islam.
Khuramabad, August 6.—Leaving the camp on Parwez, and skirting the gravelly slopes on the north side of its ridge, a sudden dip over the crest took us among great cliffs of conglomerate, with steep gravelly slopes below, much covered with oaks growing out of scorched soil. Grooves, slides, broken ledges, and shelving faces of rock have to be descended. One part is awfully bad, and every available man and some passing Bakhtiaris (who wanted to be paid in advance for their services) went back to help the animals. The charvadars shouted and yelled, and the horses and some of the mules were taken by their heads and tails, but though nearly every man had a fall, horses, asses, mules, and a sheep which follows Hakīm got over that part safely. It was a fine sight, thirty animals coming down, what looked from below, a precipice, led by Hadji leading Cock o' the Walk, shaking his tasselled head, and as full of pride and fire as usual, and the mules looking wisely, choosing their way, and leaping dexterously upon and among the rocks. It is not a route for laden animals, but personally, as I had two men to help me, I did not find it so risky or severe as the descent of the Gokun Pass.
Below these conglomerate precipices are steep and dangerous zigzags, which I was obliged to ride down, and there we were not so fortunate, for Hadji's big saddle-mule slipped, and being unable to recover herself fell over the edge some hundred feet and was killed instantaneously.
The descent of the southern face of Parwez, abrupt and dangerous most of the way, is over 4300 feet. The track proceeds down the Holiwar valley, brightened by a river of clear green water, descending from Lake Irene. Having forded this, we camped on its left bank on a gravelly platform at the edge of the oak woods which clothe the lower spurs of the grand Kuh-i-Haft-Kuh, with a magnificent view of the gray battlemented precipices of Parwez. The valley is beautiful, and acres of withered flowers suggested what its brief spring loveliness must be, but its altitude is only 5150 feet, and the mercury in the shade was 104°, the radiation from the rock and gravel terrible, and the sand-flies made rest impossible. At midnight the mercury stood at 90°. There were no Bakhtiaris, but two or three patches of scorched-up wheat, not worth cutting, evidenced their occasional presence. Among these perished crops, revelling in blazing soil and air like the breath of a furnace, grew the blue centaurea and the scarlet poppy, the world-wide attendants upon grain; and where other things were burned, the familiar rose-coloured "sweet william," a white-fringed dianthus, and a gigantic yellow mullein audaciously braved the heat.