Sketches of Persia

by John Malcolm

"We are Turks," he concluded, laughing, "and consequently, you may suppose, have often violent quarrels, but the necessity of our condition soon reconciles us again; and we are at present, and will I trust long continue, an united family!"

I remarked in the followers of Mihrâb Khan, as I had done in other tribes, an attachment to their chief approaching to a perfect devotion. It was a love and duty, of inheritance, strengthened by the feelings of twenty generations. Though the superior in general repaid this feeling with regard and protection, I saw many instances of its being considered as much a property as the land, and the inanimate goods and chattels, which he who received it had inherited from his father.

There are few countries which can boast of more examples of devoted allegiance of chiefs to their sovereign, as well as of followers to their chiefs, than Persia: but this will not recommend them to many of my readers. We live in a refined and artificial age, and, vain of our condition, we laugh to scorn feelings which were the pride of our ancestors, and which at this moment form the only ties that preserve order over nine-tenths of the universe.

Allegiance of any description is, according to some philosophers, a folly if not a crime, and quite beneath the dignity of human beings. Others admit that from being a cherished prejudice, it may in some cases have a salutary action; but those who view man as formed by his Creator, and who contemplate the origin of those motives by which he is actuated, will find that the feeling of dependence with which allegiance is associated, and which in the silence of reason often leads to a line of action beneficial to the community as well as the individual, is not the less valuable from being grafted on his weakness; a part of his nature, by the by, requiring much more the care and attention of philosophers than his strength, for that can take care of itself.

Allegiance is the duty a child owes to its parent, for birth, nourishment, and protection. It is that which collected families owe to a chief of their tribe, who is their point of union, and consequently of their security; and in its climax it is that which chiefs and their followers owe to a sovereign, their concentrated attachment to whom is the ground of their safety and their glory as a nation. This feeling gains strength by becoming hereditary. It is associated with the fame of individuals, of families, of tribes, and of empires; it is conservative, it is destructive; but even in its most dreadful action it has in it an ennobling principle, for it is congenial with the most natural, as well as the highest and noblest feelings of the human mind.

The wandering tribes in Persia are not more remarkable for attachment to their chiefs than for the affection relations bear to each other, and the strength of those ties by which every individual is bound to the community of which he is a part.

A Persian friend of mine related to me in illustration of this fact, an authentic and affecting anecdote of the conduct of an old man of one of those tribes during the reign of Kerreem Khan Zend.

Twelve men had been robbed and murdered under the walls of Shiraz. The perpetrators of this atrocious act could not for a long period be discovered, but Kerreem Khan deeming this occurrence so deeply injurious to that impression of security and justice which it was the labour of his life to establish, commanded the officers of justice to persevere in their search till the offenders were detected, threatening them, and others who had heard the cries of the murdered men with vengeance, unless they effected a discovery, which he considered essential to his own reputation.

After some months had elapsed, it was discovered by accident that a small branch of Kerreem Khan's own tribe of Zend, at that time encamped near Shiraz, were the murderers. Their guilt was clearly proved, and all who had been actually engaged in the murder were sentenced to death. Powerful intercession was made that some at least should be pardoned, but the prince had vowed that every man should suffer, and their being of his own favoured tribe made him more inexorable. They had, he said, brought disgrace on him as their sovereign and as their chief, and could not be forgiven.

When the prisoners were brought before him to receive sentence, there was amongst them a youth of twenty years of age, whose appearance interested every spectator; but their anxiety was increased to pain when they saw the father of this young man rush forward, and demand, before they proceeded to the execution, to speak to the prince. Permission was granted, and he addressed him as follows: