If I may venture to hazard an opinion, after travelling over a considerable area of Western Persia, it would be that the higher estimate is nearest the mark, for the natural increase in time of peace, as accepted by statists, is three-quarters per cent per annum, and Persia has had peace and freedom from famine for very many years.[37]
The country population consists of rayats or permanent cultivators, and Ilyats or nomadic pastoral tribes. Coal-fields and lead and iron may hereafter produce commercial centres, but the industry of Persia at present may be said to be nearly altogether agricultural.
The settled peasant population, so far as I am able to judge, is well fed and fairly well clothed, and the habitations suit the climate. The people are poor, but not with the poverty of Europe—that is, except in famine years, there is no scarcity of the necessaries of life, with the single exception of fuel.
The wages of the agricultural labourer vary from 5d. a day with food to 9d. without; a skilled mason earns 1s. 6d., a carpenter 1s. 4d. Men-servants get from 17s. to £2 per month, nominally without board, but with modakel and other pickings; female servants much less. Prices are, however, low. Clothing, tea, coffee, and sugar cost about the same as in Europe. The cotton worn by the poor is very cheap. Wheat, which is sold by weight, costs at harvest-time from 7s. 6d. to 15s. per load of 320 lbs. I have been told by several cultivators that a man can live and bring up an average family on something under £6 a year.
I did not see anything like "grinding poverty" in the villages. If it existed, the old and helpless could scarcely be supported by their relatives, and the women, in spite of the seclusion of custom and faith, would be compelled to work in the fields, a "barbarism" which I never saw in Persia among Moslems.
In both town and country the working classes appeared to me to be as comfortable and, on the whole, as happy as people in the same condition in life in most other countries, with the exception, and that not a small one, of their liability to official exactions. The peasants are grossly ignorant, hardy, dirty, bigoted, domestic, industrious, avaricious, sober, and tractable, and ages of misrule have developed in them many of the faults of oppressed Oriental peoples. Of the country outside of the district in which they live they usually know nothing, they detest the local governors, but to the Shah they willingly owe, and are ready to pay, a right loyal allegiance.
My impression of the Persians of the trading and agricultural classes is that they are thoroughly unwarlike, fairly satisfied if they are let alone, unpatriotic, and apparently indifferent to the prospect of a Russian "occupation." Their bearing is independent rather than manly; their religious feelings are strong and easily offended; their sociability and love of fun come out strongly in the freedom of their bazars. Europeans do not meet with anything of the grovelling deference to which we are accustomed in India. If there be obsequiousness in stereotyped phraseology, there is none in manner. We are treated courteously as strangers, but are made to feel that we are in no wise essential to the well-being of the country, and a European traveller without introductions to the Provincial authorities finds himself a very insignificant person indeed.
Governors and the governed are one. They understand each other, and are of one creed, and there is no ruling alien race to interfere with ancient custom or freedom of action, or to wound racial susceptibilities with every touch. Even the traditional infamies of administration are expected and understood by those whom they chiefly concern.
The rich men congregate chiefly in the cities. It is very rare to find any but the poorer Khans, Aghas or proprietors of villages, men little removed from the peasants around them, living on their own properties. The wealthy Seigneur, the lord of many villages, resides in Tihran, Kirmanshah, or Isfahan; pays a nasr, who manages his estate and fleeces his tenants, and spends his revenues himself on urban pleasures. The purchase of villages and their surrounding lands is a favourite investment. This system of absenteeism not only prevents that friendly contact between landowner and peasant which is such a desirable feature of proprietorship, but it leaves the villages exposed to the exactions of the nasr, and without a semblance of protection from the rapacious demands of the provincial authorities. It is noteworthy that fortunes made in trade are seeking investment in land.