EXECUTION.
This is done in different ways. A prince from the royal family has authority to behead men. Sometimes when a good friend of the king is appointed governor, the king presents him with a knife. This is a sign and carries with it authority to behead men. Every prince-mayor or other governor who has been given this authority keeps two executioners. The uniform of their office is a suit of red clothes. These two men walk before the mayor when he goes through the streets. When a condemned man is to be executed he is brought from the cell, hands chained behind, and with a chain about his neck. He is surrounded by a group of soldiers with fixed bayonets. The guilty man has been in a dungeon for several months perhaps. His clothes are in rags, and, having had no bath since first imprisoned, he is very dirty, his hair and beard are long and shaggy. A few steps before him walks the executioner, with blood-red garments and a knife in his hand. Thus they proceed to the public square, and before the assembled crowd the executioner steps behind the kneeling victim and with a single stroke of the keen knife cuts his throat, and another soul takes its flight, having completed its part in the drama of life.
A common mayor who has not the authority to behead, may kill criminals by fastening them to the mouth of a cannon and sending a ball through the body. Another method is to bury the condemned alive in a cask filled with cement, leaving only the head exposed. The cement soon hardens and the victim dies. Sometimes when their crime is not very bad the punishment is the severing of one hand from the body. If the man thus punished should commit a second crime the remaining hand would be severed. If a Mohammedan becomes drunk with wine and gets loud and abusive, he is arrested, and the executioner punctures the partition skin between the nostrils of the drunken man, and a cord of twine, several feet long, is passed through the opening. Then the executioner starts down the street leading his victim. The man soon gets sober and is very much ashamed. Shopkeepers give the executioner pennies as he passes along the street. Men who quarrel and fight are punished by tying their feet to a post, with the bare soles upward, and then whipping the feet until the flesh is bruised and bleeding and, frequently, the nails torn from the toes. The victims frequently become insensible under this punishment. One good thing in the laws of punishment is that no Christians or Jews are ever beheaded. The Mohammedans consider the Christian and Jew as being unclean, and think it would be a mean thing to behead them.
Princes, lords and counts are never beheaded. The most severe punishment for a prince is to pluck out his eyes. The method of execution for counts and lords is of two kinds. The king will send a bottle of Sharbat to the condemned man which is given him in the form of a sweet drink but it contains a deadly poison. He is compelled to drink this and soon dies. Another form is for the condemned man to be met by a servant from the governor after having taken a bath and the servant cuts blood-vessels in the arm of the condemned until death results from loss of blood.
Thus it will be seen that the contrast in modes of punishment in a Christian nation and a Mohammedan nation is very great. The kind of punishment inflicted on criminals in any country grows out of the prevailing religious belief of that country. A religion that has much cruelty in it will lead a people to torture its criminals. But a nation whose religion is based upon love will deal with its criminals effectively, but as kindly as possible. The writer has visited prisons in both Persia and America and finds that the contrast between the prisons of the two countries is like the contrast of a palace and a cellar. Prisoners in America ought to be very thankful for the humane treatment they receive under this Christian government.
CHAPTER III.
COUNTS OR LORDS.
The counts and lords live in luxury. Their title was not obtained by great service to the nation or by high education. It descends from ancestors, and many ignorant and unworthy men bear this title. Wealthy merchants sometimes purchase a title for their sons. The titled class in Persia is very numerous. In one city of 30,000 inhabitants there are more than 500 counts. They own almost all of the land in Persia. In some instances one count owns as much as one hundred villages. All inhabitants of a village are subjects of the count and they pay taxes to him and also to the king. The men pay a poll tax of one dollar a year; a tax is levied on all horses, cows, sheep, and chickens.
The count gets two thirds of all grain raised by the farmers, and he expects a portion of all fruits raised, which portion is called a present. If this 'present' is not large enough to please the count, he has an unfavorable opinion of the subject and soon finds faults in him and withholds favors. All of the count's work is done by his subjects without pay. When he builds a palace or cultivates a vineyard, he calls upon his subjects to do the work. He punishes his subjects if they rebel or are discourteous to him. Sometimes the punishment is so severe that death is the result. The count collects a large sum of money annually from his subjects in the way of fines—some of them for most trivial offences or discourtesies, and these numerous fines keep the subjects very poor.