[123] The King and the great Lords have a sort of cellar for magnificence, where they sometimes drink with persons whom they wish to regale. These cellars are square rooms, to which you descend by only two or three steps. In the middle is a small cistern of water, and a rich carpet covers the ground from the walls to the cistern. At the four corners of the cistern are four large glass bottles, each containing about twenty quarts of wine, one white, another red. From one to the other of these, smaller bottles are ranged of the same material and form, that is, round with a long neck, holding about four or five quarts, white and red alternately. Round the cellar are several rows of niches in the wall, and in each nich is a bottle also of red and white alternately.—Some niches are made to hold two. Some windows give light to the apartment, and all these bottles so well ranged with their various colours have a very fine effect to the eye. They are always kept full, the wine preserving better, and therefore are replenished as fast as they are emptied.
Tavernier.
[124] The Cuptzi, or King of Persia’s merchant, treated us with a collation, which was served in, in plate vermilion-gilt.
The Persians having left us, the Ambassadors sent to the Chief Weywode a present, which was a large drinking cup, vermilion-gilt.
Ambassador’s Travels.
At Ispahan the King’s horses were watered with silver pails thus coloured.
The Turks and Persians seem wonderfully fond of gilding, we read of their gilt stirrups, gilt bridles, gilt maces, gilt scymetars, &c. &c.
[125] Mohammedes vinum appellabat Matrem peccatorum; cui sententiæ Hafez, Anacreon ille Persarum, minime ascribit suam; dicit autem
“Acre illud (vinum) quod vir religiosus matrem peccatorum vocitat,
Optabilius nobis ac dulcius videtur, quam virginis suavium.”
Poeseos Asiat. Com.