As Mirza Tekee is now no more, and he was beyond all comparison the most interesting of those assembled at the congress of Erzeroom, I will give a short account of his history. Mirza Tekee was the son of the cook of Bahman Meerza, brother of Mohammed Shah, and governor of the province of Tabriz. The cook’s little boy was brought up with the children of his master and educated with them; being a clever boy, as soon as he was old enough he was put into the office of accounts, under the commander-in-chief, the famous Emir Nizam, who was employed in drilling the Persian army in the European style. Tekee became Vizir ul Nizam, or adjutant general, in course of time, under the old Emir Nizam, and also amassed great wealth; and as the Shah did not like the idea of paying the expenses of his plenipotentiary—“base is the slave that pays”—he sent Mirza Tekee to Erzeroom with many flattering speeches and promises, none of which he intended to fulfill. The cunning old prime minister, Hadji Meerza Agassi, who was sedulously employed in feathering his own nest, was jealous of Mirza Tekee, and very glad to get him safe out of the way. The Turks and Persians, as every body knows, hate each other religiously, which seems always to be the worst sort of hatred. The Soonis and the Shiahs are, as it were, Protestants and Papists in the Mohammedan faith; and if these two countries are ever reconciled for a time, the smouldering flame is sure to break out again at the first convenient opportunity, and it will do so to the end of time. In 1845, the Turks, who disliked Mirza Tekee with more than common aversion, from his dignified bearing and stately manners, gave out various accusations against him and some members of his household. A fanatical mob of many thousand indignant Soonis surrounded all that quarter of the town, attacked the Persian plenipotentiary’s house, which was besieged for some hours, and volleys after volleys of rifle-shots were fired at the windows, while from within Mirza Tekee only permitted his party to fire blank cartridges. Izzet Pasha, a drunken old gentleman of eighty, who had succeeded Kiamili Pasha as governor of Erzeroom through the intrigues of Enveri Effendi, sat on horseback and looked on, and took no part in the disturbance, though he had all his troops, amounting to several thousand men, under arms. For this conduct he was turned out of his government, and was succeeded by Bahri Pasha, who in 1847 was shot dead by one of his own servants, of the name of Delhi Ibrahim—accidentally or not, does not appear.
Colonel Williams did every thing in his power to assist Mirza Tekee, and risked his life in the affray; but he received no assistance from the Pasha or any of the authorities, who made no attempt to quell the riot.
The Turks swore they would have blood, and that one of the Persians must be given up to them as a sacrifice. A poor man, who had called that morning to say that he was going to Tabriz, and would be happy to carry any letters or messages there, was thrown out of the window and torn to pieces by the mob. Another Persian, a gentleman, secretary to Mirza Tekee, was killed by a butcher the same day, in another part of the town, where he was walking in ignorance of the disturbance that was going on. The Mirza’s house was pillaged, the roof and doors broken in, and every thing destroyed that the mob could get hold of. He himself was only saved by barricading a strong room in a back part of the house, where he and his servants defended themselves for many hours, till the Turks dispersed of their own accord. The Sultan afterward sent him £8000 in repayment of his losses in this disgraceful outrage.
In June, 1847, after he had signed the treaty of peace and commerce between Turkey and Persia with Enveri Effendi and the British and Russian Commissioners, he returned to Tabriz. On the death of the Emir Nizam, he succeeded to his office of commander-in-chief. During the last illness of Mohammed Shah, Bahman Meerza had been intriguing in hopes of succeeding to the throne; but being unsuccessful, and being also found out, he escaped to Teflis, where he still resides, and is protected by the Czar, who keeps him in terrorem over the present Shah, who may be dethroned any day, in which case Bahman Meerza is all ready to reign in his stead.
When Mohammed Shah, who had done nothing all his life but shoot sparrows with a pistol, departed from this world, Mirza Tekee marched the Persian army to Teheran, and seated the young Prince Noor Eddin upon the throne. Noor Eddin Shah gave him his sister in marriage: she is said to have been much attached to her husband, who also succeeded to the immense territorial possessions of Hadji Meerza Agassi, the late prime minister of Persia. The Hadji had been tutor to Mohammed Shah, and became one of the most famous of the Grand Vizirs of that most blundering of dynasties. As a matter of course, when he became rich enough he was robbed by his master, having been himself the greatest extortioner on record for many years. The Shah had allowed him to keep an enormous treasure in gold, silver, and jewels, with which he retired to Kerbela, where he died in the odor of sanctity in 1850.
Mirza Tekee was now seated on the highest pinnacle of the temple of prosperity. The extent of the possessions which the Shah had handed over to him from the plunder of the Hadji was so great as to be hardly credible, and, by a judicious squeezing, the towns, villages, and domains would have yielded the revenue of a petty king. However, all prime ministers are detested—that is, in human nature; first, there is the opposite party in politics, some of whom think differently as to the form and manner in which the taxes should be levied in Europe, the villages racked in Persia. All—whatever they may think on political subjects—feel sure they ought to be in place, rather than the party then in power; if to these are added all thieves, rogues, revolutionists, and those sorts of people, who have a natural antipathy to all government, law, or possession of wealth in the hands of any man except the one individual himself, he being more jealous of his friend than of any other person, a great mass of the population are not only opposed to the minister for the time being, but are in constant readiness to pull down whatever is above them, good, indifferent, or bad.
It is said that the great enemy of Mirza Tekee at court was the Shah’s mother, a lady who in Persia and Turkey enjoys an extraordinary degree of power, wealth, and dignity. In Turkey, the Sultana Validé has the right to build a royal mosque, and to use a caique like that of her son; she is above the law, and can do any thing she likes. If she likes to do good, she can do much good; if she likes to do evil, she can do much evil. Between those who were jealous of the power and who hated the strong government of Mirza Tekee, a powerful party was created, who got hold of the weak mind of the young Shah, who owed every thing in this world to his minister; his destruction was agreed upon, and he was given leave to go to Koom, where he had an estate. So secretly were affairs managed that his suspicions do not seem to have been aroused; his young wife followed him, with all her train, looking forward to the pleasure of living with her husband for a while in the quiet and retirement of a beautiful country; but when she arrived within sight of the town of Koom, a messenger came out to meet her, and the news that he brought was that Mirza Tekee had been killed by the order of her brother the Shah, whose emissaries had seized him unexpectedly in the bath. He made a desperate resistance, but he was overpowered; they opened his veins and held him down till the Grand Vizir had bled to death. No crime whatever was alleged against him: he was murdered foully by the Shah, who thus destroyed one of his best and most honest subjects at the instigation of some of the most infamous and worst. This happened in the year 1851.
There is nothing, however, very unusual in this termination of the life and fortunes of the prime minister of Persia, only it is usually done under more extenuating circumstances. The singular ideas which they entertain of the principles of government are summed up in the notion that it is better to be in the hands of one furious ogre than at the mercy of a hundred tyrants. For this reason the tribes of the Kuzzulbash admire a truculent Shah, such as Aga Mohammed Shah, and they like a Grand Vizir who lets nobody rob and plunder except himself. When he is fat and fit for killing, the blood-drinker on the throne cuts off his head, or strangles him, as the case may be, and then takes possession of his property, throwing a sop to the mob occasionally by allowing them to sack the great man’s house. I do not use the above-mentioned epithet as a term of reprehension or abuse, for Hunkiar is one of the recognized titles of the Sultan of Turkey and of other Eastern sovereigns. The treaty of Hunkiar Skellessi, which made so great a sensation in its day, was so called from the name of a place on the Asiatic shores of the Bosporus. The name means the “Blood-drinker’s Stairs”—an appellation at this time equally suited to either of the “high contracting powers.”
The plenipotentiaries and commissioners being assembled, every thing was in the greatest danger of falling to pieces on the outset, by the very first dispatches which we received, as these related to a frightful massacre which had just taken place at Kerbela, where 22,000 Persians were reported to have been killed by the Turks. Kerbela, in the pashalik of Bagdad, is a Turkish fortified place, containing the tomb of Hossein, the brother of Hassan, and son of Ali, the great saint of the Shiah, or Persian form of the Mohammedan religion. Not only do an immense number of Persians habitually reside there, but every one who has the power strives to retire there in his latter days, that he may lay his bones in the neighborhood of the golden dome which covers the ashes of Hossein. Those who die at a distance are so anxious at least to be buried at Kerbela, that the great article of commerce in that direction consists of the dead bodies of Persian men and women, which are brought by thousands every year, from all parts of the dominions of the Shah, by endless caravans of horses, mules, and camels, many hundreds of which unlucky animals pass their whole lives from year to year in carrying these horrid burdens, which infect the air in all the villages through which they pass.
So great is the sanctity of Kerbela, that, in the estimation of the sect of Ali, it even may be said to surpass that of Mecca, for they, among Mohammedans, are those who “by their traditions have made the law of none effect.” The history of the death of Hossein is so interesting an episode in the history of this country, that I am tempted to give a short account of it, for the benefit of those who may not be well acquainted with the history of the successors of Mohammed, and upon whose fortunes so much of the welfare and also the policy of the various nations of the East, from the seventh century to the present time, depends—premising that the principal cause of the rancorous hatred which always has existed, and still exists in full force, between the Sooni Turks and the Shiah Persians, is principally founded upon events connected with the death of the Imaum Hossein, and the feeling is kept up in full vigor in Persia by a sort of drama, representing the following history, which is enacted before the Shah, and in every town in Persia, every year, at the annual feast of Noo Rooz, which continues for ten days. In one of the acts of this most curious ceremony, a Frank embassador is brought before the audience, who intercedes for the life of Hossein and his followers with the general of the army of Yezid. Who he can have been there is no means of knowing, but he may possibly represent an embassador from the Greek Emperor of Constantinople, who may have been passing on his way to the court of the Caliph. However this may be, his presence produces a kindly feeling toward Europeans in the minds of the Persian populace.