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[Illustration: YEZDI TYPES.
The numbers are from the left.
1. A _qan’at_ maker. This is the man who digs the tunnels by which the
water is brought from the base of the hills to the towns in the plain.
The leather bag on his arm is a bucket.
2. A Parsi _raiyat_, or agriculturist, with his spade.
3. A porter.
4. A _charvadar_ (muleteer) from Lāristān. These very big men often come
to Yezd with caravans.
5. A Jew, who is divining from his book for the charvadar. The Jew has
his boy with him.
6. An oil-seller. He carries the oil in gourds.
7. A _darvish_, or religious mendicant.
8. An Arab. These are sometimes seen in Yezd, but like the Lari
_charvadar_ they do not really belong to the town.]
FIVE YEARS
IN A PERSIAN TOWN
BY NAPIER MALCOLM
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1905
_Printed in Great Britain._
PREFACE
I feel that this short sketch of a Persian town needs an apology. It will
not improbably be mistaken for a book of travel. Stopping five years in
one place is not travelling, and the experience of such a stay is not
a traveller’s experience. The descriptions that will be found in this
volume refer to a very small area, and consequently a good deal of minute
work has been attempted that would have been out of place in the painting
of a larger sphere.
Then, again, this is not a book upon mission work. There is comparatively
little about the very interesting work which is being carried on in Yezd
by the Church Missionary Society, but there is a great deal about the
circumstances under which missionaries work, for the book is really
a description of a Persian town from the missionary point of view.
This will explain why certain details, such as the dress and food of
the people, are left out altogether; for, although there may be some
connection between these things and the kind of way in which missionary
work ought to be conducted, it is not at present apparent to the writer.
On the other hand, the general effects of house, street, and desert,
which meet the Yezdi’s eye at every turn, have been rather elaborately
described, for scenery and scenic surroundings have much effect on
character, and the study of character is essential in missionary work.
In most of the descriptions I have taken special care to preserve the
true proportion between good and evil, so far as I have been able to
estimate it in the thing described. I have specially done this in the
necessarily incomplete sketches which I have drawn of the Yezdi’s
character and religious beliefs. But in dealing with the Persian
Government I have consciously deviated from this practice. Consequently,
I must ask the reader to regard all references to the Government as going
no further than the actual statements. I have also, as far as possible,
avoided alluding to political problems; for, in a country like Persia,
for a man engaged in serious missionary work abstention from politics is
almost a _sine qua non_.
It will, perhaps, be felt by some that more ought to be made of the
points in common between Islam and Christianity. The fact is that when
people come to the missionary they do not want to find agreement but
disagreement, and consequently the missionary gets to think not so much
of what they know as of what they do not know. So a missionary writer is,
perhaps, inclined to pass over common points, whatever religion he is
writing about. In the case of Islam there are really not many to note,
and in support of this statement I may relate a story told by an officer
of Indian troops. One day a Mohammedan, in the course of a conversation,
said to him: “Of course, Sahib, your religion and ours are very near
together. Your Christ is one of our prophets.” My friend replied: “What
do you mean? Of course Christ is one of your prophets, but to us He is
more than a prophet; He is the Son of God and the pattern of our lives.
Besides there is hardly a single practical point where Mohammedans and
Christians are not entirely at issue.” The man looked up and said:
“Sahib, you have read the Quran, and you have read your Bible. I always
make that remark to Christians: I made it to a padre the other day: and
they almost always say, ‘Very true; Mohammedanism has a great deal in
common with Christianity.’ Well, Sahib, when they say that, I know that
they have not read the Quran and they have not read their Bibles.”
My best thanks are due to Miss MARY BIRD, whose name is well known
both in Persia and to all interested in that country, for the valuable
assistance that she has given me out of the wide and unique experience
that she possesses on the subjects handled in my book. I am also very
grateful to the Rev. G. FURNESS SMITH for several valuable suggestions.
I am indebted to the Rev. C. H. STILEMAN and to Mr PAUL PETER for some
of the photographs illustrating the book. The coloured prints and the
picture of the School are from drawings by a native artist, MIRZA ABU’L
QASIM.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
The Yezd district—Desert—Water supply—Villages—The town of
Yezd—Gardens—Streets—Houses—Furniture—Cleanliness—Undurability
of buildings—Built for heat—Hill villages—Effect of
surroundings on intellect and character 1-35
CHAPTER II
Isolation and insularity—The town the geographical
and political unit—Extension of citizenship to
strangers—Bigotry—Oppression and persecution of
Parsis—Improvement in their position—Position of
Jews—Fanaticism largely non-religious—Position of European
colony 36-59
CHAPTER III
Persian Mohammedanism—Mohammed—Founding of Islam—Shiahs
and Sunnis—Laxity distinguished from infidelity—Central
doctrines of Islam—The Divine Unity—The prophethood—Behāi
view of the prophethood—The Bāb—The Behāullah—Behāīism—Its
prospects—Islam—Predestination—Repentance—Savābs—Eating with
unbelievers—Charge of pantheism—Effect of Islam on character 60-114
CHAPTER IV
Results of Islam—Untruthfulness—Superstitions—Pilgrimages—
Divining—Jins and Dīvs—The evil eye—Trivial commandments—
Entertainments—Islam includes rather than controls the
life—Two purposes better than one—Ceremonial uncleanness 115-135
CHAPTER V
Character of the Yezdi—Systematised inconsistency—Loyalty
to causes and individuals—Unreliability of
evidence—Shame—Humour—Disregard of time—Language—Lack
of initiative—Courage—The Yezdi soldier—Etiquette
and manners—Triviality—Pride—Kindliness and
cruelty—Dishonesty—Difficulty in obtaining anything—Tendency
to fatalism—Latent strength of Persian character—Family
ties—The _jus paternum_—Religious liberty—Open-handedness—
Summary 136-187
CHAPTER VI
Difficulties in dealing with enquirers—Language—Argument—
Parabolic interpretations—Distrust of evidence—Ignorance—
Attachment to Islam as representing whole scheme of
life—The problem of converts—Industrial missions—Employment
by missionaries—Helpful points—Readiness for religious
discussion—Quickness in grasping single points—Yezdi
wants distinctive and systematic teaching—And a concrete
example—Difficulties in accepting converts—Tests 188-216
CHAPTER VII
Getting into touch with the natives—The missionary’s style of
life—Visiting and receiving visitors—Philanthropic work—Poor
relief—School work—Medical work 217-255
CONCLUSION 256
GLOSSARY 265
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
YEZDI TYPES _Frontispiece_
HUJJATABAD, THE FIRST STAGE FROM YEZD _To face p._ 6
SWEET EATING IN A TALAR ” 26
DEHBALA ” 34
SMALL SQUARE IN YEZD ” 76
CORPSES _EN ROUTE_ TO THE QUM CEMETERY ” 120
SANDY DESERT NEAR YEZD ” 120
CARRYING THE NAKHL IN THE BIG SQUARE IN YEZD ” 134
SQUARE OUTSIDE GOVERNOR’S RESIDENCE IN YEZD ” 184
A VIEW OF YEZD ” 216
SCENES IN YEZDI LIFE ” 226
THE SCHOOL ” 242
MAP _at the End_
FIVE YEARS IN A PERSIAN TOWN
CHAPTER I
The Yezd district—Desert—Water supply—Villages—The town of
Yezd—Gardens—Streets—Houses—Furniture—Cleanliness—Undurability
of buildings—Built for heat—Hill villages—Effect of
surroundings on intellect and character.
In the very centre of central Persia there is a town called Yezd, which
in some ways may be uninteresting, but ought for a student of Persia to
have the greatest interest, for it possesses all the regular attributes
of a Persian town to an exaggerated degree. These Persian towns can be
better understood after some consideration of the country in which they
lie. Some one, I think, has said that Persia consists of two parts, the
salt desert, and the desert which is not salt; and though this is not
true of all parts of Persia, with regard to most of the interior of
Persia it is as nearly true as a reasonable man can expect an aphorism
to be. In the vast district where Yezd lies you find an archipelago,
with sand for sea, and towns and villages for islands. If you want to
know how big that desert area is, I can only tell you that we went to
Yezd, which lies in the very centre of Persia, from the southern shore
of the Caspian, which is the northern boundary of the country, and with
the exception of a belt of land at the extreme north about thirty miles
broad, and a patch round Teheran about twenty miles across, we literally
passed through nothing but desert.
But desert in Persia is of many kinds: even the salt desert is not all
the same. There are places where the ground is absolutely bare, except
for the thick crusts of salt that lie like snowdrifts streaking the
surface in every direction. There are also places equally salt where the
proximity of a certain amount of useless water produces a larger quantity
of plant life than in most parts of the ordinary desert. The ordinary
desert is good soil, and wherever water can be brought to it, it is
extremely fertile. Generally it has a hard but rather gravelly surface.
Sometimes it is flecked with dry brownish shrubs about the size of
bedding-out plants, sometimes it is quite bare. There is in parts a good
deal of scattered growth, but two plants never touch one another. In the
more favourable places shrubs may be found at an average of not more than
two yards apart, but, with one exception, I have never seen in the desert
plains of central Persia a place away from the hills with sufficient
natural growth to modify the colour of the distance.
Then there is the sandy desert. Here also, if the sand is scraped away
and water brought, the soil is good, but in appearance the sandy desert
is the most desolate of all. Absolutely nothing grows on it. It is like
the worst kind of salt desert, without the relief of the white patches.
Yezd lies in a big stretch of sandy desert. Sometimes the sand may be
broken by a large piece of gravelly plain, but such places are generally
as bare as the sands themselves, and form no real break in the dull
monotony.
Of course there are oases; but what is called an oasis is not really
very different in character from the desert that surrounds it. It is the
same desert artificially cultivated. In the plains the water is brought
from a distance, and when it is applied the ground consents to nourish
exactly those seeds that have been sown. There are hardly any weeds,
no turf, no tangle, no hedges, and no waste green. Every blade in the
artificial wheat-field is an isolated unit, that may be pulled up without
disturbing its neighbour. Even in the fresher-looking gardens, enclosed
and concealed by high mud walls, there is the same meagre, bedded-out
appearance on every side. In spite of the possibility of three artificial
harvests in the year, one sees at a glance that the very roots will
inevitably be annihilated when the water is cut off, and of course this
happens pretty frequently. There are no wild trees at all, and those
that are reared are very small, and scanty in leafage. Such oases as
these go by different names, according to the quantity of water. Those
that can support a fairly large population are towns, those that can
support a smaller one are villages, those that can only support one or
two households are called cultivations, or _mazra’s_. But, however big or
however small, they are no interruption to the continuity of the desert.
In the hills and round their bases there is a trifle more plant life,
but there is no strong contrast to the barrenness below. Only high up
in the creases of the mountain sides, right above the cultivations and
villages, there are the narrowest strips of turf on either side of the
snow torrents. Here one may find small ferns nestling under the boulders,
and quantities of soft flowers, or an occasional wild barberry bush.
Away from the actual bed of the mountain streams one is again in desert
of a kind, though here, too, the scattered dry shrubs will be found
alternating with more succulent varieties of plants, and the landscape is
by no means entirely bare.
As soon as these streams reach ground that it is possible to level into
terraces, they are used for irrigation, and become the stalks of minute
_mazra’s_. Then come long hill villages with orchard trees and walnuts;
and lastly, if there is any water left at the real mountain base, there
will be a round irrigated patch of rather larger extent on the edge of
the plain.
In the middle of the plains water may be found about sixty yards
beneath the surface, a depth from which it may be drawn through wells
for drinking purposes, but not in large quantities for irrigation.
Consequently, if the snow torrents were the only source of water supply,
the centres of the Persian plains would be uninhabitable; for in
districts like that of Yezd the rainfall is so trifling that nine or
ten not over large falls of rain or snow in the twelve months constitute
a wet year. But water that is found at sixty, or even a hundred, yards
down at the base of the hills is by no means useless. From this point
to the centre of the plain there is a considerable, though very gradual
declivity. So when the original shaft has been sunk, and water has been
found, perhaps at three hundred feet below the surface, a long line of
similar shafts are sunk towards the centre of the desert, at distances
varying from twenty to forty yards, the line sometimes stretching for
more than thirty miles, until a point of desert has been reached that
lies as deep down as the original water-level. Then all the shafts are
connected at the bottom by burrows, just big enough to afford passage to
a man; the water is let in, and appears in an open ditch in the centre
of the desert. Of course conveyance of water by these _qan’āts_ as they
are called, which are often thirty or forty miles long, is by no means
inexpensive, so as a rule the water is used immediately it can be brought
to the surface. Consequently we find all through the barren Persian
plains two strange phenomena: little cultivations, fed by artificial
channels, standing all by themselves, leagues away from anywhere, in the
middle of a desolate and waterless expanse; and large towns such as Yezd,
situated far away from any natural water supply, in the barest spot to be
found in all the desert, the central hollow where the drifting sands have
collected and covered over even the faintest vestige of vegetable life.
[Illustration: HUJJATABAD, THE FIRST STAGE FROM YEZD.
Sandy desert, with qan’at pits in foreground.]
The typical Persian plain is very long, appearing to be comparatively
narrow, and certainly flat beyond conception. The plains through which
one approaches Yezd from Kashan or Kirman are probably on the average
about sixty miles broad. But the huge barren mountains, lying in long
jagged ranges to the right and left, show with such plainness of detail
from every point, that the traveller unused to the clear atmosphere of
the East can hardly credit the full size and distance. Mountains, plains,
foreground, and far perspective, everything, in the Yezd district at any
rate, is one neutral tint of brown, except for the snow lying on the
rocks of the mountain-top, the long flakes of salt scattered here and
there about the plain, or the continual moving mirage. Even at sunrise
and sunset, when the sky and distant hills put on a colouring of glorious
brilliancy, there is an utter absence of those soft tones in the
foreground which can only be given by sunlight in a humid atmosphere.
Near Yezd there rise into sight brown villages, excrescences of the same
material as that on which they stand, isolated separate objects with
sharp definite bounds. The scanty, hedgeless crops that surround them,
usually arranged in oblong patches like small allotments, seldom show
until the traveller is quite near; the few trees are wretchedly poor in
size and colour, and the walls and buildings are simply mud, of which
three parts are in ruins.
After a few of these villages we come to Yezd itself, equally isolated
from everything, and in other respects very much the same as the
villages. However, as we approach the town by most of the main roads,
there are no fields and no trees at all. Also there are sticking out
from the town a lot of high square air-shafts, looking like short
factory chimneys. Yezd, like the villages, is brown, but there are a few
patches of white. There are one or two very faintly tiled minarets and a
newer-looking green dome; but these things are not sufficiently striking
to modify the general brown effect.
Now we are among the _bāghs_.[1] A _bāgh_ is an enclosure, generally
oblong, consisting of mud walls twelve feet high, surrounding a planted
area. Very often a _bagh_ contains nothing but fields of farm crops.
The better class _baghs_, belonging to the richer Persians, have in the
centre a kind of summer dwelling-house with plenty of porticos, built on
a very open-air pattern. Such _baghs_ are well stocked with fruit trees
and rose bushes; there may also be a few small elms, or short poplars,
or perhaps some cypresses. There are not many flowers. Here, too, most
of the area is given up to farm crops. Everything is laid out after the
plan of a Dutch garden, but without the turf and thick foliage, and
also without the extreme trimness that we connect with such places. In
the better gardens there is always a small gutter of running water, and
generally an artificial tank with a stone border. This is the part of the
_bagh_ most highly prized by the natives. In Persia a small artificial
channel with a stream of water about two feet across seems to give that
air of distinction to a house which we expect from a well-kept lawn
with good flower-beds. From the road nothing can be seen of all this
greenery except the tops of the highest trees. In Yezd indeed only the
_baghs_ that lie some way out up the course of the _qan’ats_ show as much
as this. Just round the town nothing is to be seen but the bare walls
and the gateways of the gardens. The gateways have some brickwork about
them, and are sometimes partially whitened. They stand back from the
road. The tops of the mud walls are generally in bad repair, and here
and there we come across a jagged hole that has been made as a short cut
into the garden by the gardener. In such cases the pieces of mud and
sun-dried bricks, when they have been taken out, lie in the street. Where
the surface of the thoroughfare has not been taken up for bricks, which
by the way are left to bake in the sun in the middle of the road, it is
generally used for drying manure that has been kneaded with a modicum
of earth. The dyers also use the street for hanging up their cloths to
dry, and also for arranging their skeins of silk, which they twist round
wooden pegs stuck into the wall about forty yards apart. The road surface
is a little irregular, and occasionally it is made more interesting by
a shaft leading into a _qan’at_. As we approach the houses proper the
road narrows, for it is only the natural lane between enclosures, and
the house enclosures, which from the outside are exactly similar to the
_baghs_, lie closer together.
Occasionally, as we near the centre of the town, we come across open
squares with a small mosque on the one side. The wall of the mosque is
dirty white, and there is a little black lettering over the doorway,
but very little tile or brick. In the middle there may be a dilapidated
octagon with a flat top, about five feet high and six across, built of
mud covered with tiles rather the worse for wear. Round such squares
there are generally arched recesses, filled in at the bottom, so as to
make a ledge three feet from the ground. The bazaars are just the old
narrow lanes, covered by a succession of mud domes forming a continuous
but untidy roof. The goods are displayed on tiers of mud ledges, and
there is a mud room behind. Quantities of the wares are mud. Firepans,
barrels for grain, several kinds of toys, bread receptacles, and some
other household implements are simply clay, moulded into a rough
form, and dried in the sun. Water-bottles, various kinds of pitchers,
children’s money-boxes, and hookah-bowls are baked with fire, but
without the slightest glaze. The baker’s ovens are made of mud, down
to the very doors. Many of the Yezdis even eat mud, and develop an
unwholesome muddy complexion.
The cleverness of the Yezdi in manipulating mud is beyond belief.
Sometimes you may see men in the streets making barrels for storing
grain. First of all a smooth round slab of mud about an inch and a half
thick, is moulded on the ground. Then another piece of mud is kneaded
into a long sausage, and placed in a hoop upon the edge of the slab.
Sausage after sausage is added hoopwise, one on the top of the other,
until a height of about four feet has been reached. Each hoop, as it is
laid in position, is worked with the hand into smooth connection with
the hoop below, and when the barrel is completed there is not the least
vestige of a join. The whole is done without wheel or machinery of any
kind. A mud lid is added which is soldered on with mud when the barrel is
filled.
I have hardly yet succeeded in giving any adequate impression of the
untidiness of the streets. The central courtyard of the house is
generally a fair-sized garden. For reasons connected with the water
supply the inhabitants of the houses are continually altering the level
of these places, and large quantities of earth are emptied into the
street or carried out of it every day as occasion may arise. All along
the sides of the streets there are shallow holes for rubbish heaps; here
and there there are cesspools; and yet with all this the streets are so
well scavenged by dogs and children that, except in the Jewish quarter,
the thoroughfare is comparatively clean, while, thanks to the powerful
sun and the absolute absence of moisture in the atmosphere, almost the
only obtrusive smells from one end of the town to the other are those
that hang round the public baths and the places used by the dyers.
Let us now enter one of the doorways that leads into a better class
house. We find ourselves first of all in a round or octagonal porch,
covered by a small dome, which is generally pierced in the centre to
admit light. From this porch we go through a passage into one of the
court-yards. In a good house there are two, or even three court-yards.
The whole family live in the better compound, and the men receive their
visitors in the smaller one. Though this rule is not without exception,
the better class women in Yezd do not seem to have much to complain of
in the matter of housing.
In the court-yard there will be found an open tank and some flower-beds;
the rest is generally paved. The flower-beds are below the level of
the pavement, and are irrigated from the tank. Watering-pots are used
for watering the pavement only. Sometimes the whole garden is sunk to
the level of the cellar floor, so as to get nearer to the _qan’at_.
The house itself consists of two sets of buildings, chiefly one story,
with perhaps one or two upstairs rooms. The upper rooms, however, do
not really form a separate story, but are built over the lowest of the
ground-floor rooms, so as to bring the roof more or less to one level.
The roofs are generally paved with flat bricks of the shape of tiles, and
are surrounded by a low mud wall, so as to form a more or less secluded
and cool place, where the family may sleep in summer. Perhaps a dome may
partially project above the level of the rest of the roof. Also there is
the inevitable _bād-gīr_, or square air-shaft, running down to the back
of the big summer portico, or _tālār_, and furnished at the top with long
slits on all four sides to catch any air that may be moving. This _talar_
is the principal room on the summer side, which faces north. It is often
built in the form of a cross with very stumpy arms, or rather of an
oblong with the corners so taken off as to render it slightly cruciform.
The long side of the oblong faces the court-yard, and has no wall at all,
but there is a curtain of tent-cloth that moves up and down on pulleys.
To the right and left of this sun-blind are short walled-off passages,
which are used as entrances. Corresponding to the projecting front part
between the passages there is at the back a recess under the _bad-gir_,
completing the cruciform design. The roof is arched into a high dome.
The whole _talar_ is raised three feet above the level of the garden, so
as to give room for a two-foot upright grating, which is the window of
the cellar room underneath. For five months in the year these are the
only habitable rooms in a Persian house; and they are both furnished as
living-rooms. The rooms on either side of the _talar_ are so like the
winter rooms that it is unnecessary to describe them separately.
The whole structure of the place is quite different from that of an
English building. Except for enclosing a rough garden the Persian builder
hardly ever makes a blank wall. Sometimes the walls of the compound,
generally the walls of stables and outhouses, but always the sides of
rooms, passages, and porticos consist of a series of arches more or less
carefully moulded. In the house, unless they are intended for doors,
windows, or cupboards, these arched recesses are filled in to a height of
three feet; so that round every Persian room there is a series of ledges,
called _tāqchas_, about the size of a small mantelpiece, generally a span
deep, but sometimes very much deeper, and running in instead of running
out. If the height of the room will allow it, there is a line of straight
moulding above these arches, and above that a second row, usually much
shorter than the lower ones. Above that comes a second series of lines of
straight moulding, shelving into the arch of the roof, for the ceilings
are always constructed on the arch principle, although they are sometimes
flattened on the top when it is intended to build an upper room. These
arches are built of brick and mud only, without any wood or wooden
foundation; and indeed no wood is used in a Yezd house at all, except for
doors and windows.
You will find three styles of wall in Persian houses. Sometimes the rough
mud is coated over with a smoother surface, either clay and chopped
straw, or clay and sand, and the brown colour is left unchanged. In
fairly good houses this style is often thought good enough for the summer
portico. Very often the angles of the mouldings are pointed with white
gypsum, and when ornamental designs in the same fashion are added, the
effect is exceedingly pretty. But generally the living rooms in a Persian
house are entirely whitened with gypsum, and a moulded design, about an
eighth of an inch thick, is made in the centre of the ceiling. These
complicated and accurate geometrical designs are produced by the natives
with no better tools than a chisel and a bit of string. The formation
of the arches and straight mouldings without instruments is equally
wonderful, but though the appearance is geometrical two arches never
exactly correspond with one another if one comes to measure. Still the
construction of a Persian room, perhaps with a large dome, without any
better materials than clay, gypsum, and a small modicum of baked brick,
without any scaffolding or wooden basis, and with the help of none but
the very simplest tools, is a thing that may be accounted one of the most
extraordinary marvels of the East.
As in the summer, so in the winter side, the best room is generally
in the centre. The better rooms are almost invariably approached from
the side and not from the front, being separated from one another by
passages that run to the whole depth of the buildings. This enables the
entire frontage of the room to be given up to windows. Generally some of
the rooms have a large cupboard room at the back, which is frequently
used for sleeping in. As the floor of the house is three feet above the
level of the compound, the passages between the rooms are furnished with
steps, but they have no doors. Consequently, to shift one’s quarters in
such a house necessitates going into the open air. The smaller rooms are
generally approached from the front, and in this case they sometimes have
an _aivān_, or mud verandah. The winter rooms always take up the north
end of the compound, but are often built along the east or west side as
well.
Rooms are generally named by the number of their windows, which is
usually three or five. A good five-windowed room will have a frontage of
five arches filled in with French windows. The semi-circular fanlight
consists of pieces of coloured glass fixed together in a wooden lattice.
The lattice at a distance resembles fret-work, but is really elaborately
pieced together. Some of the older windows contain exceedingly fine work,
but even when it is well done it is not very durable, and nowadays they
can only do very rough work. Some of the work that is forty or fifty
years old is marvellous, but could not be done at the present time for
love or money. The French window itself consists of two doors which
are supposed to meet in the middle. There are no hinges, but each door
has a wooden foot which turns in a mud socket. The arrangement of the
coloured glasses which forms the panes is extremely artistic. The same
sort of wooden lattice is used, but the pattern is rather larger than the
pattern of the fanlight. As may be supposed, it is extremely difficult to
keep these windows clean, for the panes, besides being very minute, are
simply caught into grooves in the wood; and, as the work is done without
any great accuracy, they very seldom fit. The doors are made after the
same design as the windows, but they have wooden panels. They are often
surmounted by a glazed fanlight. The wood of the doors and windows is
covered with a yellowish-brown paint, and warps very badly, as it is used
in an unseasoned state. Our cat could generally get in through a bolted
door.
Of course there is no form of door fastening which can be used
from both sides, and in this way as in others a Persian house is
distinctly inconvenient. Still the style of building when fresh is
very pretty. These masses of French windows with their coloured panes
artistically arranged, the lines of white arches all along the sides,
and the high-arched ceiling with its curious mouldings give the room
an ecclesiastical appearance. At the back of the room there is not
infrequently a corresponding line of door-windows, leading to one of
those cupboard-rooms which I have before mentioned. This arrangement
increases the regularity of the general design.
Before passing on to describe the furniture I must mention that there is
one other totally different style of window, which lifts up in a sash,
without pulleys, and is supported when open by metal stays. Also it is
very common to find wooden lattices unglazed. Paper or calico is pasted
over these in the winter.
There are one or two other forms of ornamentation that are not uncommon.
Perhaps a line of painting, quaint but distinctly artistic, may run
round the room just below the _taqchas_, giving the effect of a dado.
Sometimes the roof is much more elaborately moulded, and is spangled
with little bits of looking-glass; when this is not overdone the effect
is pleasing. It is not uncommon to find very poor looking-glasses, about
twelve by six inches, let into the walls. There are in almost every room
rings attached to staples, which are intended to support the baby’s
hammock. Fireplaces are a European importation, but they are generally
to be found in at least one room of the better class houses. They are
almost always narrow, and comparatively high, so as to conform to the
arch design, and they are made in the wall without any metal. The metal
fittings of the room, such as hammock-rings, staples, and door and window
latches, are made of whitened iron curiously engraved; and nails of the
same material with very large heads, from one inch to three or four
inches across, are used freely by the Persians for ornamenting woodwork.
The movable furniture of a Persian room is very simple. Curtains are not
used very freely, and those that are used are rather scanty. Generally
they are hung up by the corners without any string. In the men’s
apartments they are used more for doors than for windows. The favourite
pattern is a very crude green or red with a large lozenge in the middle,
like the design on a watered silk.
The only really valuable things in a Persian room are the carpets. In
some cases these are laid right up to the walls, and a piece of drugget
something less than a yard wide is also laid along the walls, usually
on three sides of the room. In other cases there is a border of very
thick clumsy felts arranged round the carpet which occupies the centre
of the floor. The felts are self-coloured, with a small amount of
stamped pattern. They have not got cut edges, but are made in one piece,
consequently the shape is very inaccurate. They cost nearly as much as
good carpets, and are often protected with druggets in the same way.
In the place of honour, furthest from the door, is a mattress stuffed
with cotton, covered with some sort of chintz or cretonne, and furnished
with one or two very large round bolsters. In the winter there is also
occasionally a _kursī_ in evidence, but they are less common in Yezd than
in other Persian towns. The _kursi_ is a rough stool, about as high as a
milking-stool, and about eighteen inches square, completely covered with
cotton quilts and rugs, which trail on the ground on every side. Beneath
this an iron brazier of lighted charcoal is placed, and the family tuck
their legs underneath the wraps, and squat round the _kursi_ on the
floor. This, however, is not generally kept in the room except in the
coldest weeks. During the remaining seasons the brazier is often brought
in on a large copper tray, either for heating the room, or for keeping
the teapot warm and for opium smoking. All copper and iron utensils in
Persia, such as these trays and braziers, are carefully tinned.
Tables in Yezd are made in the roughest fashion, but the legs are nicely
turned, the Yezd carpenters being greatly inferior to the turners, who
are entirely distinct from them, and who produce very good work with
the simplest class of hand-lathe worked with a bow. The carpenter, on
the other hand, is incapable of putting up a shelf straight. He never
dovetails, and he disguises the inaccuracy of his joints with plentiful
deposits of clay.
Many of the Yezdis use little tables about three feet by two, and
standing about twelve inches high. These are used only for tea-things.
But tea is generally made by an inferior, standing at a tall table in
the corner of the room. These tables are rather larger, not less than
four feet by two. They stand as high as an English sideboard, and have a
rough border of curved or dog-tooth pattern falling down from the slab,
so that they very much suggest a rough dressing-table. They are often
brought in and out of the rooms as they are wanted. People who wish to be
thoroughly European in their manners sometimes have a larger table of the
same kind permanently in the room, surrounded by a few bentwood chairs,
which are brought up from Bombay, or folding-chairs with cane seats,
which I think they bring from Isfahān, and about which the less said
the better. Such a table is always covered by a white cloth, the most
fashionable variety being a Turkey bath-towel.
These chairs and larger tables are no real part of Persian plenishing,
while the tea-tables are being continually carried backwards and
forwards, and are not necessary to the equipment of the room.
Consequently the room does not present a very filled appearance. The few
utensils which it contains, other than those mentioned, are placed upon
the _taqchas_. On one of these _taqchas_ may be seen a pair of _lālas_.
The _lala_ is a spring candlestick with a globe, and is, I believe, made
in Europe. The candles are also imported. All lights in Persia have to
be carefully protected from the wind, as the house is not a continuous
building, but a series of outhouses. On another _taqcha_ will be found
a lamp, also of European manufacture. Persian lamps, which are simply
saucers of native vegetable oil with a floating wick, are used freely
about the house when a strong light is not required, but they have the
disadvantage of blackening the gypsum of the walls. With regard to the
imported lamps it is a curious thing that, although the lamps used are
of the cheapest variety, with stems and reservoirs of blue or white
glass, lamps with short stems, which might be brought into the country
at an infinitely less cost, do not seem to have come into fashion. On a
third _taqcha_ is sure to be found a specimen of the Persian hookah, or
_qaliān_. This is a most elaborate pipe, and is both made and bought in
sections. The large bowls, however, when they are made of glass, are, I
believe, imported; also some of the china heads.
Sometimes you will find on the _taqchas_ a pair of European vases. In
Yezd the pattern is almost always that of the hand rising up from a
stand and grasping a tapered vessel. Sometimes also you will find cheap
Continental oleographs, generally ladies’ heads. These are bought by the
pair, and you will find two copies of the same picture standing side by
side. Another European import to which the Yezdis are much attached is
a looking-glass. These are of the oblong shape, with varnished or gilt
frames. Perhaps also one will see on the _taqchas_ a covered glass vessel
with a long spout, containing rose-water.
In the women’s rooms there is occasionally a large wooden trunk for
clothes, covered with gold and silver paper, and of a very clumsy design.
The _taqchas_ may be covered with plush cloths, and this is sometimes
the case in the men’s apartments. The women are also fond of highly
ornamented trinket boxes.
[Illustration: SWEET EATING IN A _TALAR_.
This is the principal part of the summer buildings in a Persian house,
and the bottom of the picture is the level of the compound. The room
underneath is a living room, and is lighted by the grating under the
_talar_. It is only used in the heat of the day. The door to the cellar
staircase is seen on the right of the picture. The passage is the
approach to the _talar_ itself.
The three men are sitting in the ordinary Persian way round a tray of
sweets. The Yezd sweets are remarkably good and have no coarse flavour.
They eat them as we do cakes, but in rather larger quantities. This
_talar_ is a small one. The larger ones are generally cruciform in shape.
It has no _bad-gir_ (air-shaft) or front curtain.]
The better class Yezd houses are exceedingly clean, and so on the whole
are the people who live in them. In this Yezd is distinctly superior
to some other Persian towns. The houses of the rather poorer classes
in Yezd are dirtier, but they would compare favourably with those of
a corresponding class in many parts of Europe. The very poor class are
crowded together, many families to one house, and live in a condition
of filth as great as the dry atmosphere will permit. You must remember
that the native never removes his clothes for the night; indeed he only
removes his clothes or washes his body when he goes to the public bath.
The fee for admission is a mere trifle, but people do not go to the bath
unless they have an absolutely clean set of clothes to change into when
they have bathed. A few of the poor people take off their clothes on
arriving at the bath and wash them, staying in the bath until they are
dry enough to put on again. This, however, is exceptional, and generally
speaking the difference in the standard of cleanliness accepted by the
richer and poorer Yezdis is very large.
Houses that are not very new are always more or less tumble-down. The
mud ceilings crack very easily, and the white gypsum flakes off at the
slightest touch. The more essential parts of the structure are equally
undurable. But you must remember that no Yezdi wants his house to last
for ever. When the house is first of all built, a large chamber is made
below the surface to receive the drainage, and the size of this is
determined by the length of time the owner wishes his house to last,
which is generally forty to fifty years. When the chamber is full, the
rich occupants move to another house, and the house gradually falls to
pieces. To the Yezdi an old house means a bad house, and this idea is so
deeply rooted, that even in his _bagh_ he seems to prefer young trees
to those which have attained their full size. The idea of a residence
which bears the marks of natural growth, and is not simply artificial,
has never entered into the Yezdi’s mind; and the absence of this to us
familiar idea, has to be reckoned with in dealing with his character.
Also it must be remembered that two-thirds of a Persian town, and
three-quarters of a Persian village, is from various causes invariably in
ruins. I suppose that in an English climate the best-built Yezd dwelling
houses would remain standing for about a fortnight. In spite of their
palatial design they are really nothing but mud huts, and when you live
in them, or rather about them, for you are in the open air as often as
you are inside, you learn their imperfections to your cost. Nobody can
realise the immense amount of damage that can be done in a town like
Yezd by a really wet day. Some while ago we had twenty-four hours of
rain, which destroyed, I believe, about a couple of hundred roofs, and,
what is worse, caused the older _qan’at_ pits to fall in, blocking the
water supply in some parts of the town for three months. Is there any
other town in the world where a little extra rain causes a three months’
drought? There is a story in Tehran about a Dutch Ambassador, who was
so afraid of the roof falling down that in wet weather he invariably
slept under the table. However he was a very tall man, and, when the
catastrophe happened, he got his foot crushed.
Still the summer buildings in a Yezd house are really not bad. Generally
speaking, the Persian builds well for heat and badly for cold. Yet the
short Yezdi winter is a very severe one; and we, who are accustomed
to a longer cold season, are astonished to see the philosophic way in
which the Yezdi sets himself to endure the cold while it lasts, without
taking any particular precautions to defend himself from it. The long
window-front is a mass of spaces and cracks. Even when panes are not
missing, daylight is frequently to be seen between the glass and the
lattice, between the window and its frame, and sometimes between the
frame and the wall. This of course is not including the crack between the
two doors, which is often half an inch wide. Remember that every door
in the house is a front door, leading into the open air, and you will
get some idea of the provision made against the winter cold. The fact
is that the Persian only understands two kinds of winter requirements,
that of the hard living working-man who demands only the simplest shelter
against the cold, and that of the man who on cold days can devote himself
to keeping warm with a _kursi_ in an inner apartment. A man who wants to
do his work comfortably in any sort of weather is entirely beyond his
calculation. On the few days when snow falls the merchants’ offices are
practically deserted, and no one but the smaller tradesmen and artisans
goes to the bazaars.
The house, as I have said, is really built for a protection against heat.
When I first went to Yezd I was surprised to find how tremendously the
natives were affected by the hot weather. The native is certainly less
affected than the European by the direct rays of the sun; but although
something in the climate seems to tell on Europeans after two or three
years’ residence, I would back a fairly strong Englishman, furnished with
a sun-helmet, against the average town Yezdi, to get through a piece of
work on a hot day, or to keep up continuous hard work for a season or
two. Consequently every Yezdi who can afford it tries to get away from
town for at least two months of the year. The hill villages, which the
Persians call _yailāq_, or summer quarters, lie about thirty miles away
from the town. Every well-to-do Persian has a house in one or other of
these villages, and there is a fashion about them, some being resorts
chiefly patronised by the artisans, and some by the big merchants.
As most of the richer Persians have more than one house in the villages,
Europeans generally have no great difficulty in hiring a place to stay
at. The houses are left during the winter in charge of a villager, who
uses the lower rooms only, the upper ones being then uninhabitable from
the intense cold. Indeed the cold is so great that we were told that one
winter the animals had been dying of thirst, as the water was frozen
beyond the possibility of breaking the ice, and they had not fuel enough
to melt it. The whole building is much rougher than the town house,
though the roofs have to be made more carefully. The villages are very
small and isolated, and the winter population is quite trifling. There
is in these villages a little arable land, but the people depend chiefly
on root-crops, nuts, and dried fruit for their winter stores, and on
the produce of the sheep and goats. The animals are tended in summer by
the children. The little boys spend most of their time up the walnut
trees, throwing down leaves for them to eat, while the little ragged
shepherdesses carry a twelve-foot staff for whacking the walnut trees,
when they do not climb them in the same way as their brothers.
Those who go to the villages in the summer take with them everything
they need in the way of carpets, furniture, and cooking utensils, also
all groceries, and even wheat and charcoal; for the commonest things
of this kind are often absolutely unprocurable. A rich Persian has
stores frequently sent to him from Yezd during his stay. Even in Yezd
some necessary store or other is almost always running short, so that
something is generally at famine prices. This, of course, is due to the
great isolation of the town. But in the villages it is intensified.
Sometimes there will be no meat, at another time hardly any bread, and
some years ago we found it almost impossible to procure milk, and were
told by our Persian friends that they had the same difficulty. This
eighteen-hour journey, with all the paraphernalia of the home, is the
average Yezdi’s only experience of foreign travel; and for this reason I
have thought it necessary to give some account of what he sees and finds.
I have now done my best to describe in detail almost the whole of
the Yezdi’s surroundings, the furniture of his room, the pattern of
his house, the streets of his town, and the vast deserts by which he
is isolated from the world. When he gets up in the morning, he finds
himself in a room practically containing nothing but a carpet, the walls
and ceiling an expanse of white gypsum, and the _taqchas_ provided
with solitary objects upon which his eye can rest in turn without the
slightest diversion to anything else. There is no confusion, but at the
same time there is no arrangement. In such a room, with such furniture,
the necessity for arrangement never occurs to him. He goes out into his
court-yard; certainly there are flower-beds, but they are not cut like
English flower-beds in the middle of necessarily existing growth and
greenery. The shape of the beds and the nature of their contents has not
been chosen with the slightest view to their artistic surroundings; they
are simply artificial constructions in a waste of pavement which itself
conceals the desert which stands to the Persian in the place of the
natural world. Inside the beds each plant grows its own life, by itself,
untouched by its neighbour, and the eye unconsciously fixes itself upon
it as on an isolated unit. The Yezdi leaves his house and passes through
an absolutely dry and scentless atmosphere along streets which present
variety only in the matter of form. He goes for a journey across the
desert plains; to the right there is only one object to be seen, a range
of distant mountains, with a slight variety of jags along the top; to
the left there is a similar range. Every now and again he comes across a
shrub which attracts his eye by its hermit existence. Behind him is the
solitary city; every six miles, while he is in the neighbourhood of the
town, there is an equally solitary village, or perhaps a water-cistern
with a domed roof; for league after league he can see in front of him
his solitary _manzil_, where he intends to stay the night. Even when he
goes to the villages this sparseness of life and circumstance is scarcely
modified. Can you be surprised if this hourly contemplation of isolated
units produces a mind which it is impossible for the tangle-reared
European ever to fully understand? Can you be surprised if an intellect
is produced accustomed to almost unbelievable concentration upon single
and solitary ideas, but almost unreachable by minds that are accustomed
to complicated trains of thought, to careful evasions of contradictions,
and to systematic arrangements of their intellectual knowledge?
[Illustration: Diagram illustrating the use of the qan’at. Notice that
all the cultivation about the hills is irrigated from the snow torrent.
Yezd is irrigated by qan’at water, brought in some cases from a point 30
miles distant, for the qan’ats do not go straight to the centre of the
plain but make for a low part of the plain from wherever water is found.
The 300 ft. well in Yezd is useless for irrigation, there being no lower
point than Yezd.]
[Illustration: DEHBALA.
A hill village on one of the snow torrents.]