M. de Gobineau tells us that Ispahan contains many men learned in various branches, rich and prosperous merchants, and men of property who live on their incomes. The town may be compared in size and tranquillity to Versailles.
Another chapter of M. de Gobineau’s book is worth reading, that headed “Betrothal, Divorce, and a Persian Lady’s Day.”
The betrothed are usually very young. The youth is from fifteen to sixteen years of age, and the girl from ten to eleven. It is unusual to find a woman of three-and-twenty who has not had at least a couple of husbands, and often many more, so easily are divorces obtained. The women are kept strictly secluded in one of the inner apartments or enderoun, that is to say, no outsider, no stranger to the family, is allowed to enter it. But they are quite at liberty to go out from morning till night, and often indeed from night to morning. In the first place they go to bathe. They go to the bath with an attendant who carries a box full of toilet necessaries and the requisite articles of dress, and it is at least four or five hours before they return from it. After that they pay visits which they make to one another, and which occupy a similar interval. Their last method of killing time is the pilgrimage they make to the graves of their kindred, which are at no great distance in the midst of pretty scenery.
All Persian women are so carefully veiled, and dressed so similarly, as to their out-door garments, that it is impossible for the most practised eye to distinguish one from the other. Besides paying visits, the excursion to the bath, the shopping in the bazaar, and their pilgrimages, the women go out of doors when it pleases them, and the streets are full of them. Unfortunately Persian women are rather in the habit of looking upon themselves as inferior irresponsible beings. Absolute mistresses at home, they are extremely passionate and violent, and their tiny slipper, furnished with a sharp iron point half an inch long, often leaves very disagreeable marks on their husbands’ faces.
86.—PERSIAN WOMEN.
The Persian in his turn spends half his time in the bazaar, and the remainder in paying and receiving visits. This is how they take place.
