SAFAR NAMEH
‘Warum bin ich vergänglich, O Zeus? so fragte die Schönheit.
Macht ich doch, sagte der Gott, nur das Vergängliche schön.
Und die Liebe, die Blumen, der Tau und die Jugend vernahmens,
Alle gingen sie weg weinend von Jupiters Thron.’
GOETHE
‘Now, a traveller is a creature not always looking at sights--he
remembers (how often!) the happy land of his birth; he has, too, his
moments of humble enthusiasm about fire and food--about shade and drink.’
KINGLAKE
SAFAR NAMEH
PERSIAN PICTURES
_A BOOK OF TRAVEL_
[Illustration: LOGO]
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1894
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS
PAGE
AN EASTERN CITY 1
THE TOWER OF SILENCE 19
IN PRAISE OF GARDENS 28
THE KING OF MERCHANTS 42
THE IMAM HUSSEIN 51
THE SHADOW OF DEATH 67
DWELLERS IN TENTS 83
THREE NOBLE LADIES 96
THE TREASURE OF THE KING 112
SHEIKH HASSAN 126
A PERSIAN HOST 143
A STAGE AND A HALF 156
A BRIDLE-PATH 168
TWO PALACES 187
THE MONTH OF FASTING 205
REQUIESCANT IN PACE 219
THE CITY OF KING PRUSIAS 236
SHOPS AND SHOPKEEPERS 247
A MURRAY OF THE FIRST CENTURY 260
TRAVELLING COMPANIONS 275
ERRATUM.
Page 138, line 2, _for_ ‘bouches de cheveux’ _read_ ‘bouches de chevaux.’
‘PERSIAN PICTURES.’
PERSIAN PICTURES
_AN EASTERN CITY_
THE modern capital of Persia lies in a plain ringed half-way round
by mountains, which on the northern side touch with frozen summits
the regions of eternal snow, and on the east sink into low ranges of
hills, stretching their naked arms into the desert. It is the chief
city of a land of dust and stones--waste and desolate, Persia unfolds
her monotonous length, broken only by ridges of hills even more barren
than the plain itself, southward from the gates of Tehran. There is
a certain fine simplicity in a landscape from which the element of
water, with all the varied life it brings in its murmuring train, is
entirely absent. The empty world looks like a great room cleared for
the reception of some splendid company; presently it will be filled by
a vast pageant of men or angels: their lance-heads will flash back the
dazzling rays of the sun, their banners will float out many-coloured
against the sombre background, the peal of their trumpets will re-echo
from mountain to mountain. But no! day after day rises upon the same
silence, the same solitude, and at length the watcher turns away
impatiently, with the conviction that he has been gazing with futile
expectation upon the changeless features of the dead. The pageant
has long since swept over the land--swept onward. Mother of human
energies, strewn with the ruins of a Titanic past, Persia has slipped
out of the vivid world, and the simplicity of her landscape is the fine
simplicity of death. ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ says Hamlet, yielding, in an
exceptionally unpremeditated moment, the natural tribute of pity from
the living to the dead. Persia in such an aspect may be pitiful enough,
but it is not admirable.
To the north of Tehran, however, the lower slopes of the Shimran
range are clothed with gardens and cornfields, as though the dense
vegetation which, by a strange freak of nature, stretches its belt of
green along the southern shore of the Caspian, between the shifting
sands of the Oxus and the black, naphtha-saturated earth of Baku, had
sent its roots through the very heart of the mountains and found a
foothold for its irrepressible luxuriance even among dust and stones.
The capital itself, as you approach it from the west, presents the
appearance of a wood rather than of a city--nor minaret, nor tower,
nor dome forms a landmark above it, the trees of its gardens conceal
its stunted buildings, and it is not until the traveller finds himself
under its very walls that he can say, ‘Here is Tehran!’ It owes its
life to the snow mountains, from whence its water flows; the ground
between them and the town is undermined by a network of passages,
vaulted over with stone, and ventilated by air-holes at intervals of
about fifty yards, each hole being protected by a mound of earth.
Within, these arteries of the city are the width of a man’s shoulders,
and scarcely high enough to allow him to walk upright; he stumbles,
knee-deep in water, along the uneven bed, bending himself double where
the vault drops lower, squeezing past narrow corners cut out of the
solid rock. On either side black apertures open into more passages,
bringing in tributary streams from right and leftward, and at intervals
the darkness is broken by the ray of sunlight which strikes through one
of the air-holes, burying itself, like an ill-directed spear, deep into
the earth. No other form of irrigation remains, no storage of water,
in a country where these arts were probably familiar to the far larger
population which dwelt in former ages at the foot of the mountains.
The present system is clumsy and laborious. Constant watchfulness is
needed to keep the Kanats from falling into disrepair and from becoming
blocked by masses of roots, and if this were to be relaxed, Tehran
would in a few years cease to exist.
To what merit it owes its position of capital remains a mystery.
It is the seat of no native industry; arid deserts and narrow
mountain-passes, traversed only by caravans of mules, cut it off from
all convenient intercourse with the west. Isfahan is invested with the
traditions of a former importance; about Shiraz linger the vestiges
of a still mightier antiquity; Casvin lies a hundred miles nearer to
the Caspian; Tehran is only a modern seat of government called to
importance by the arbitrary will of the present race of sovereigns.
Many gates lead into the city, breaking the level of the mud walls,
with their arches and turrets, which are decorated with tiles of
faïence set into patterns and pictures and inscriptions. The space
enclosed by the walls is a large one, but it is not by any means filled
with houses. Passing through one of the western gateways, you will
find yourself at first in desolate tracts of sand, stretching between
unfinished or ruined buildings; occasionally the open doorway in a
long mud wall will reveal to you a luxuriant garden full of tanks and
fountains and flower-beds, under whose plane-trees stands the house
of some rich man who can afford himself a weekly sufficiency of water
to turn the wilderness into fertile pleasure-grounds; further on you
will come upon wide streets, very empty and silent, fringed by low,
mud-built houses; gradually the streets narrow, the sloping counters
of shops present their wares to the passers-by: fruit and vegetables,
and the broad thin flaps of Persian bread; here and there a European
shop-window, behind which the goods are more miscellaneous than
tempting; here and there the frontage of some Government building,
with a doorway gaily patterned in coloured bricks. As the streets grow
narrower, they become more crowded. A kaleidoscopic world of unfamiliar
figures passes to and fro beneath the white mulberry-trees which spring
out between the cobble stones of the pavement: grave elders holding
their cloaks discreetly round them, dervishes with a loincloth about
their waists, and a brilliant scarf bound over their ragged locks,
women enveloped from head to foot in loose black garments, a linen
veil hanging over their faces, and making them look like the members
of some strange religious order, negro slaves and white-robed Arabs,
beggars and loiterers, and troops of children pressing in and out
between the horsemen and the carriages. Sometimes a beggar will accost
you--a woman, perhaps, drawing aside a corner of her veil and imploring
alms in a sweet high voice. If you turn a deaf ear to her prayers, she
will invoke curses on your head, but a copper coin will purchase you
every blessing known to man, including the disappearance of the lady
in question, who would otherwise have followed you with unblushing
persistence, shouting, ‘Pul! pul! pul!’--Money! money! money!--in your
ear.
At a street corner a group of soldiers are shaking the branches
of a mulberry-tree, and eagerly devouring the sickly fruit which
falls into the dust at their feet. Judging from the appearance of
the Persian army, a foreigner would be tempted to conclude that it
subsisted entirely upon white mulberries, and was reduced to a state
of starvation when the summer was over. The hands of paymasters are
adhesive in the East: but a small proportion of his earnings reaches
the common soldier, and mulberries, flavoured with dust, have at least
the merit of furnishing him with an inexpensive meal. His outward
man is not calculated to inspire much alarm in the breast of his
enemies. His gait is slouching, his uniform torn and discoloured; not
infrequently he wears his shirt outside his trousers, and the ragged
flounce of brownish-gray linen hanging below his tunic lends him an
air anything but martial. His temperament seems to be childlike and
peaceable in the extreme. He amuses himself while he is on guard with
foolish games, constructing, for instance, a water-mill of tiny wheels,
which the stream in front of the palace will set a-turning, and whose
movement will delight his eyes as he passes up and down. It is even
related (and the tale is scarcely past credence) that on a certain
occasion when a person of importance was visiting a southern fortress,
he found one of the men who guarded the gateway engaged in knitting
stockings, and the other turning an honest penny by the sale of apples.
Nevertheless, the Shah is proud of his army. He spends happy hours
devising new uniforms for his men--uniforms which are the strangest
jumble of European reminiscences and an Oriental love of bright colour.
Bearing towards the north-eastern quarter of the city, you will enter
a broad square which is looked upon as the ne plus ultra of municipal
magnificence. It is here that the Shah causes his part in the annual
Feast of Sacrifice to be performed, and here the inhabitants of Tehran
assemble in great numbers to witness the slaughter of a camel by the
mollahs, in token that his Majesty has not forgotten, amid the cares of
State, how Abraham bound Ishmael upon the altar (for the Mohammedans
assert that it was the son of Hagar who was the hero of the legend) in
obedience to the command of God. Immediately after the camel has fallen
he is cut up by the knives of the mollahs, and the nearest bystanders,
pouncing upon some portion of the victim, make off with it at full
speed to the palace, where the first comer receives a large reward.
It must be confessed that, in spite of its size, the square makes no
favourable impression upon the mind of the sophisticated European. The
gates leading into it are adorned with ugly modern tiles, the buildings
round it lack all trace of architectural merit. Their stucco face is
questionably embellished by a fresco of lions, exceedingly ill drawn,
each animal looking nervously round at the sun disc with its spiked
circle of rays, which rises from behind its shoulders. Nor does it
contain any press of human activity to atone for its lack of beauty.
About the gate which leads into the Ark, where the palace is situated,
there are indeed some signs of life--groups of soldiers are diversified
by the figures of servants of the palace, clad in brilliant scarlet
uniforms, and mounted on horses wearing bits and collars of solid
silver, and by the fantastic liveries of the Shah’s runners, whose
dress closely resembles that which is depicted on a court-card, and
whose headgear partakes equally of the nature of a beadle’s and of a
jester’s; but for the rest this square is comparatively empty, and the
wind sweeps the dust-clouds round the park of antiquated cannon which
stands in its midst.
More narrow, squalid streets bring you to the bazaar, where, though
little really beautiful or precious is to be found, the thronging
Oriental life is in itself an endless source of delight. Ride through
it on a summer morning, when its vaulted coolness will offer you a
grateful shelter from the sun, and before its activity has been hushed
by the heat of mid-day. In the shadow of the entrance there stands
a small merchant, posted on the doorstep like an emblem of Oriental
commerce--a solemn, long-robed child, so little that his mother’s heart
must have ached when she trusted the dear turbaned head out of her
sight. This morsel of humanity has brought some bunches of flowers to
sell, and has spread them out on a large stone in front of him. In his
improvised shop he stands, motionless and imperturbable, watching the
comers and goers, and waiting in dignified patience till one of them
shall pause and buy. Wish him good luck under your breath (for he would
resent the blessings of unbelievers), and pass on beneath the dark
arches of the bazaar.
Here, at any rate, is bustle enough; trains of laden mules and
donkeys shoulder your horse into the gutter, paying small heed to your
cries of ‘Avardah!’--Make room!--skilful housewives block the narrow
way, driving hard bargains under the protection of their veils; groups
of hungry men cluster round the roasters of kabobs, anxiously awaiting
a breakfast. The shopkeepers alone are unmoved by the universal haste,
but sit cross-legged among their wares, smoking the morning kalyan.
On either side of the street arched doorways lead into caravanseries
and high market-places. In one of them the sellers of cotton goods
have established themselves, their counters laden with piles of cheap
printed stuffs, bearing the Manchester stamp in one corner; next door
is the booksellers’ court, and a certain air of scholastic leisure
pervades it; here are a row of fruit-shops, where the blue earthenware
bowls of curds stand among heaped-up grapes and melons; there you may
buy narrow-necked bottles of rosewater; further on you find yourself
in a street of metal-workers, where the bright mule-bells hang in
festoons over the counters; round the next corner the fires of smithies
gleam on half-naked figures, labouring with strained muscles at their
anvils. The whole bazaar resounds with talk, with the cries of the
mule-drivers, the tinkling bells of the caravans, and the blows of the
smiths’ hammers. The air is permeated with the curious smell, half
musty, half aromatic, of fruits and frying meats, merchandise and
crowded humanity. The light comes from the top through a round hole in
each of the countless tiny domes of the roof; through each hole falls
a shaft of brilliant sunshine, cutting the surrounding darkness like a
sword, and striking the hurrying multitude in successive flashes, white
turban and bright-coloured robe gleaming--fading, gleaming--fading, in
an endless sequence of sun and shadow, as their wearers pass to and fro.
So you may ride through street after narrow crooked street till your
ears are full of sound, and your eyes of colour, and your mind of
restless life, and before you have had time to recover your composure,
you will find yourself in the sunny square, filled with stacks of hay,
and tenanted by disbanded armies of mules, which lies within the Meshed
Gate. Here, too, the town is afoot. Like a swarm of bees the people
jostle one another through the archway. Peasants are driving in their
donkeys laden with roped bundles of grass from the meadows of Shah
Abdul Azim, strings of camels file through the gate, bringing in the
produce of the great cities of the south and east, busy officials are
hurrying Tehranwards in the early morning about their affairs, sellers
of salted nuts have established themselves under the trees, beggars are
lying by the roadside, pilgrims returning from Meshed hasten their step
as the homeward goal comes into sight.
With the impression of the deserted western roads still fresh in your
memory, the appearance of the bazaars and of this eastern gate will
fill you with surprise. Tehran, which from the west looked almost like
a city of the dead, cut off from intercourse with the outer world, is
alive after all and in eager relationship with a world of its own.
Here in the dust and the sunshine is an epitome of the living East,
and standing unnoticed in such a doorway, you will admit that you have
not travelled in vain. But as the wonderful procession of people files
past you, too intent upon their own affairs to give you more than a
contemptuous glance, you will realize what a gulf lies between you. The
East looks to itself; it knows nothing of the greater world, of which
you are a citizen, asks nothing of you and of your civilization.
_THE TOWER OF SILENCE_
HUNDREDS of years ago, when the Persian race first issued from unknown
Bactria and the grim Hyrcanian forests, passing through the Caspian
Gates, they came upon a fertile land lying to the north-east of the
country, which was subsequently named Media. There on the edge of the
province known to-day as Khorasan they founded a city, which with
the rolling centuries gathered greatness and riches and power; the
Greeks (for her fame had penetrated to the limits of the civilized
world) called her Rages. Key to Hyrcania and Parthia, the geographical
position of the Median city lent her considerable importance. The Jews
knew her well: in Rages dwelt that Gabelus to whom the pious Tobit
entrusted his ten talents of silver in the days of the Captivity; there
Tobias was journeying when the angel Raphael met him and instructed him
in the healing properties of fishes; there, relates the author of the
Book of Judith, reigned Phraortes whom Nebuchadnezzar smote through
with his darts and utterly destroyed.
Rages, the Ancient of Days, passed through many vicissitudes of
fortune in the course of her long-drawn life. Under her walls fled the
last Darius when Alexander’s army chased him, vanquished at Arbela,
over the wide plains of Khorasan--fled to the mountains of the Caspian
to seek a luckless fate at the hands of the cruel Bactrian satrap.
At Rages, perhaps, the generous Alexander mourned the untimely death
of his rival, from her palaces hurled his vengeance against Bessus,
and saw the satrap dragged a captive to execution. Twice the city
was destroyed, by earthquake and by Parthian invaders, twice to rise
up afresh under new names. At length, in the twelfth century, an
enemy more devastating than the Parthian hordes, more vindictive than
the earthquake, swept over pleasant Khorasan and turned the fertile
province into the wilderness it is to this day. Tartars from the
uttermost ends of the earth left no stone of Rages standing, and the
great Median city vanished from the history of men. A few miles to the
north-east Tehran has sprung up to be the capital of modern Persia--a
Persia to whom the glorious traditions of the past are as forgotten as
the strength of Phraortes’ walls. ‘The Lion and the Lizard keep the
courts where Jemshyd gloried and drank deep,’ but the foundations of
Rages, the mother of Persian cities, can be traced only by conjecture.
Through waste and solitary places we rode one morning to the city and
the citadel of the dead. It was still so early that the sun had not
overtopped the range of eastern mountains. We rode out of sleeping
Tehran, and took our way along the deserted track that skirts its
walls; to our left lay the wilderness, wrapped in transparent shadow,
and sloping gradually upwards to the barren foot-hills over which winds
the road to Meshed. Before we had gone far, with a flash and a sudden
glitter, the sun leapt up above the snow-peaks, and day rushed across
the plain--day, crude and garish, revealing not the bounteous plenty of
the cornfields and pastures which encircled Rages, but dust and stones
and desert scrub, and the naked, forbidding mountains, wrinkled by many
winters.
To us, with the headlong flight of Darius and the triumph of the
conqueror surging before our eyes, the broken ground round the site of
the ancient stronghold piled itself into ruined turret and rampart,
sank into half-obliterated fosse and ditch. Where we imagined the walls
to have been, we discovered a solid piece of masonry, and our minds
reeled at the thought that it was wildly possible Alexander’s eyes
might have rested on this even brickwork. Time has made gates in the
battlements, but the desert has not even yet established unquestioned
rule within them. At the foot of the wall we came upon a living pool
lying under the shadow of a plane-tree. Round such a pool the sick men
of Bethsaida gathered and waited for the stirring of the waters, but in
Rages all was solitude, ‘and the desired angel came no more.’
Towards the east two parallel lines of hills rear themselves out of
the desert, dividing it from the wider stretch of desert that reaches
southward to Isfahan. Between the hills lies a stony valley, up which
we turned our steps, and which led us to the heart of desolation and
the end of all things. Half-way up the hillside stands a tower, whose
whitewashed wall is a landmark to all the country round. Even from the
far distant peaks of the opposite mountains, the Tower of Silence is
visible, a mocking gleam reminding the living of the vanity of their
eager days. For the tower is the first stage in the weary journey of
the dead; here they come to throw off the mantle of the flesh before
their bones may rest in the earth without fear of defiling the holy
element, before their souls, passing through the seven gates of the
planets, may reach the sacred fire of the sun.
The tower is roofless; within, ten or twelve feet below the upper
surface of its wall, is a chalky platform on which the dead bodies
lie till sun and vultures have devoured them. This grim turret-room
was untenanted. Zoroaster’s religion has faded from that Media where
once it reigned, and few and humble now are the worshippers who raise
prayers to Ormuzd under the open heaven, and whose bodies are borne up
the stony valley and cast into the Tower of Silence.
We dismounted from our horses and sat down on the hillside. The plain
stretched below us like a monotonous ocean which had billowed up
against the mountain flanks and had been fixed there for ever; we could
see the feet of the mountains themselves planted firmly in the waves of
dust, and their glistening peaks towering into the cloudless sky; the
very bones of the naked earth were exposed before us, and the fashion
of its making was revealed.
With the silence of an extinct world still heavy upon us, we made
our way to the upper end of the valley, but at the gates of the plain
Life came surging to meet us. A wild hollyhock stood sentinel among
the stones; it had spread some of its yellow petals for banner, and on
its uplifted spears the buds were fat and creamy with coming bloom.
Rain had fallen in the night, and had called the wilderness itself to
life, clothing its thorns with a purple garment of tiny flowers; the
delicious sun struck upon our shoulders; a joyful little wind blew the
damp, sweet smell of the reviving earth in gusts towards us; our horses
sniffed the air and, catching the infection of the moment, tugged at
the bit and set off at racing speed across the rain-softened ground.
And we, too, passed out of the silence and remembered that we lived.
Life seized us and inspired us with a mad sense of revelry. The humming
wind and the teeming earth shouted ‘Life! life!’ as we rode. Life!
life! the bountiful, the magnificent! Age was far from us--death far;
we had left him enthroned in his barren mountains, with ghostly cities
and out-worn faiths to bear him company. For us the wide plain and the
limitless world, for us the beauty and the freshness of the morning,
for us youth and the joy of living!
_IN PRAISE OF GARDENS_
THERE is a couplet in an Elizabethan book of airs which might serve as
a motto for Eastern life: ‘Thy love is not thy love,’ says the author
of the songs in the ‘Muses’ Garden of Delights’ (and the pretty stilted
title suits the somewhat antiquated ring of the lines):
‘Thy love is not thy love if not thine own,
And so it is not, if it once be known.’
If it once be known! Ah yes! the whole charm of possession vanishes
before the gaze of curious eyes, and for them, too, charm is driven
away by familiarity. It takes the mystery of a Sphinx to keep the
world gazing for thirty centuries. The East is full of secrets--no one
understands their value better than the Oriental; and because she is
full of secrets she is full of entrancing surprises. Many fine things
there are upon the surface: brilliance of colour, splendour of light,
solemn loneliness, clamorous activity; these are only the patterns upon
the curtain which floats for ever before the recesses of Eastern life,
its essential charm is of more subtle quality. As it listeth, it comes
and goes; it flashes upon you through the open doorway of some blank,
windowless house you pass in the street, from under the lifted veil
of the beggar woman who lays her hand on your bridle, from the dark,
contemptuous eyes of a child; then the East sweeps aside her curtains,
flashes a facet of her jewels into your dazzled eyes, and disappears
again with a mocking little laugh at your bewilderment; then for a
moment it seems to you that you are looking her in the face, but while
you are wondering whether she be angel or devil, she is gone.
She will not stay--she prefers the unexpected; she will keep her
secrets and her tantalizing charm with them, and when you think you
have caught at last some of her illusive grace, she will send you back
to shrouded figures and blank house-fronts.
You must be content to wait, and perhaps some day, when you find her
walking in her gardens in the cool of the evening, she will take a
whim to stop and speak to you, and you will go away fascinated by her
courteous words and her exquisite hospitality.
For it is in her gardens that she is most herself--they share her
charm, they are as unexpected as she. Conceive on every side such a
landscape as the dead world will exhibit when it whirls naked and
deserted through the starry interspace--a gray and featureless plain,
over which the dust-clouds rise and fall, build themselves into mighty
columns, and sink back again among the stones at the bidding of hot and
fitful winds; prickly low-growing plants for all vegetation, leafless,
with a foliage of thorns; white patches of salt, on which the sunlight
glitters; a fringe of barren mountains on the horizon.... Yet in this
desolation lurks the mocking beauty of the East. A little water and the
desert breaks into flower, bowers of cool shade spring up in the midst
of dust and glare, radiant stretches of soft colour gleam in that gray
expanse. Your heart leaps as you pass through the gateway in the mud
wall; so sharp is the contrast, that you may stand with one foot in an
arid wilderness and the other in a shadowy, flowery paradise. Under the
broad thick leaves of the plane-trees tiny streams murmur, fountains
splash with a sweet fresh sound, white-rose bushes drop their fragrant
petals into tanks, lying deep and still like patches of concentrated
shadow. The indescribable charm of a Persian garden is keenly present
to the Persians themselves--the ‘strip of herbage strown, which just
divides the desert from the sown,’ an endlessly beautiful parable.
Their poets sing the praise of gardens in exquisite verses, and call
their books by their names. I fear the Muses have wandered more
often in Sa’di’s Garden of Roses than in the somewhat pretentious
pleasure-ground which our Elizabethan writer prepared for them.
The desert about Tehran is renowned for the beauty of its gardens. The
Shah possesses several, others belong to his sons, others to powerful
ministers and wealthy merchants. Sometimes across the gateways a chain
is drawn, denoting that the garden is Bast--sanctuary--and into these
the European may not go; but places of refuge for the hunted criminal
are, fortunately, few, and generally the garden is open to all comers.
Perhaps the most beautiful of all is one which belongs to the Shah,
and which lies under a rocky hillock crowned with the walls and
towers of a palace. We found ourselves at its gate one evening, after
an aimless canter across the desert, and determined to enter. The
loiterers in the gateway let us pass through unchallenged. We crossed
the little entrance-court and came into a long dark avenue, fountains
down the middle of it, and flower-beds, in which the plants were pale
and meagre for want of light; roses, the pink flowers which scent the
rosewater, and briars, a froth of white and yellow bloom, growing along
its edges in spite of the deep shade of the plane-trees. Every tiny
rill of water was fringed with violet leaves--you can imagine how in
the spring the scent of the violets greets you out in the desert when
you are still far away, like a hospitable friend coming open-armed
down his steps to welcome you. We wandered along intersecting avenues,
until we came to one broader than the rest, at the end of which stood a
little house. Tiny streams flowed round and about it, flowed under its
walls and into its rooms; fountains splashed ceaselessly in front of
it, a soft light wind swayed the heavy folds of the patterned curtains
hanging half-way down across its deep balconies. The little dwelling
looked like a fairy palace, jewelled with coloured tiles, unreal and
fantastic, built half out of the ripple of water, and half out of
the shadowy floating of its great curtains. Two or three steps and a
narrow passage, and we were in the central room--such a room to lie and
dream in through the hot summer days!--tiled with blue, in the middle
an overflowing fountain, windows on either side opening down to the
ground, the vaulted ceiling and the alcoved walls set with a mosaic of
looking-glass, in whose diamonds and crescents the blue of the tiles
and the spray of the tossing waters were reflected.
As we sat on the deep step of the windowsill, a door opened softly,
and a long-robed Persian entered. He carried in his hand a twanging
stringed instrument, with which he established himself at the further
side of the fountain, and began to play weird, tuneless melodies on its
feeble strings--an endless, wailing minor. Evening fell, and the dusk
gathered in the glittering room, the fountain bubbled lower and sank
into silence, the wind blew the sweet smell of roses in to us where we
sat--and still the Persian played, while in the garden the nightingales
called to one another with soft thrilling notes.
A week or two later we came back to Doshan Tepe. This time we found it
peopled by a party of Persians. They were sitting round the edge of
one of the tanks at the end of the avenue, men and little children,
and in their green and yellow robes they looked to us as we entered
like a patch of brilliant water-plants, whose vivid colours were not to
be dimmed by the shade of the plane leaves. But the musician did not
reappear; he was too wise a magician to weave his spells ‘save to the
span of heaven and few ears.’
There was a deserted garden at the foot of the mountains which
had a curious history. It belonged to the Zil es Sultan, the Shah’s
eldest son, who had inherited it from his mother, that Schöne Müllerin
whose beauty captivated the King of Kings in the days of his youth.
The Zil (his title, being interpreted, signifies ‘The shadow of the
King’) has fallen into disgrace. The Shah casts his shadow far, and
in order that it may never grow less, the Zil is not allowed to move
from Isfahan; his Shimran garden therefore is empty, and his house is
falling into disrepair. It stands on the edge of a rushing mountain
torrent, which, we will hope, turned the mill-wheels in old days
(though some men assert that the girl was not a miller’s daughter,
after all), and it boasts some magnificent plane-trees, under which we
picnicked one evening, hanging Persian lanterns from the boughs. The
night had brought tall yellow evening primroses into flower, and their
delicious smell mingled with that of the jessamine, which covered the
decaying walls. The light of our lanterns shone on the smooth tree
trunks, between the leaves glimmered a waning moon, and behind us the
mountain-sides lay in sheets of light. We did not envy the Zil his
palaces in Isfahan.
Once in another garden we found the owner at home. It was early in
the morning; he was standing on his doorstep, judging between the
differences of two people of his village, a man and a veiled woman,
who had come to seek his arbitration. They were both talking loudly,
she with shrill exclamations and calls upon God to witness, in her
eagerness forgetting the laws of modesty, and throwing aside her
thick linen veil, that she might plead with eyes and expression, as
well as voice--or perhaps it was policy, for she had a beautiful
face, dark-eyed and pale, round which the folds of black cloak and
white linen fell like the drapery round the head of a Madonna. When
our unknown host saw us, he dismissed his clamorous petitioners, and
greeted us with the courtesy which is the heirloom of the Persian
race. Seats were brought for us, tea and coffee served to us, a blue
cotton-clothed multitude of gardeners offered us baskets of unripe
plums, dishes of lettuce, and bunches of stiffly-arranged flowers.
We sat and conversed, with no undue animation, here and there an
occasional remark, but the intervals were rendered sociable by the
bubbling of kalyans. At length we rose to go, and as we walked down the
garden-paths many compliments passed between us and our host. At the
gate he assured us that our slave had been honoured by our acceptance
of his hospitality, and with low bows we mounted our horses and rode
away.
We had not in reality trenched upon his privacy. There was, indeed, a
part of his domains where even his hospitality would not have bidden
us enter. Behind the house in which we were received lay the women’s
dwelling, a long, low, verandaed building standing round a deep tank,
on whose edge solemn children carry on their dignified games, and
veiled women flit backwards and forwards. Shaded by trees, somewhat
desolate and uncared-for in appearance, washed up at the further end of
the garden beyond the reach of flowers, the sight of the andarun and of
its inhabitants knocks at the heart with a weary sense of discontent,
of purposeless, vapid lives--a wailing, endless minor.
So in the wilderness, between high walls, the secret, mysterious
life of the East flows on--a life into which no European can
penetrate, whose standards, whose canons, are so different from his
own that the whole existence they rule seems to him misty and unreal,
incomprehensible, at any rate unfathomable; a life so monotonous,
so unvaried from age to age, that it does not present any feature
marked enough to create an impression other than that of vague
picturesqueness, of dulness inexpressible, of repose which has turned
to lethargy, and tranquillity carried beyond the point of virtue.
And these gardens, also with their tall trees and peaceful tanks, are
subject to the unexpected vicissitudes of Eastern fortune. The minister
falls into disgrace, the rich merchant is ruined by the exactions of
his sovereign; the stream is turned off, the water ceases to flow into
the tanks and to leap in the fountains, the trees die, the flowers
wither, the walls crumble into unheeded decay, and in a few years the
tiny paradise has been swept forgotten from the face of the earth, and
the conquering desert spreads its dust and ashes once more over it all.
_THE KING OF MERCHANTS_
QUITE early in the morning we rode out to his garden. We had left
Tehran, and moved up to one of the villages lying eight miles nearer
the mountains on the edge of the belt of fertile country which
stretches along their lower slopes. Our road that morning led us still
further upwards through a green land full of wild-flowers, which seemed
to us inexpressibly lovely after the bare and arid deserts about the
town. The air was still fresh with the delicious freshness of the dawn;
dew there was none, but a light, brisk wind, the sun’s forerunner, had
shaken the leaves and grass by the roadside and swept the dust from
them, and dying, it had left some of its cool fragrance to linger till
mid-day in shadowy places. We rode along dark winding paths, under
sweet-smelling walnut-trees, between the high mud walls of gardens,
splashing through the tiny precious streams which came down to water
fields, where, although it was only June, the high corn was already
mellowing amidst a glory of purple vetch. The world was awake--it wakes
early in the East. Laden donkeys passed us on their way to the town,
veiled women riding astride on gaily-caparisoned mules, white-turbaned
priests, and cantering horsemen sitting loosely in their padded
saddles. Ragged beggars and half-naked dervishes were encamped by the
roadside, and as we passed implored alms or hurled imprecations, as
their necessity or their fanaticism indicated.
At the foot of the mountains we stopped before a long wall, less
ruinous than most--a bare mud wall, straight and uncompromising, with
an arched doorway in the midst of it. At our knock the double panels
of the door were flung open, disclosing a flight of steps. Up these we
climbed, and stood at the top amazed by the unexpected beauty which
greeted us. The garden ran straight up the hillside; so steep it was
that the parallel lines of paths were little but flights of high narrow
stairs--short flights broken by terraces on which flower-beds were
laid out, gay with roses and nasturtiums and petunias. Between the two
staircases, from the top of the hill to the bottom, ran a slope of
smooth blue tiles, over which flowed cascades, broadening out on the
terraces into tiny tanks and fountains where the water rose and fell
all day long with a cool, refreshing sound, and a soft splashing of
spray. We toiled up the stairs till we came to the topmost terrace,
wider than the rest. Here the many-coloured carpet of flowers gave
place to a noble grove of white lilies, which stood in full bloom under
the hot sunlight, and the more the sun blazed the cooler and whiter
shone the lilies, the sweeter and heavier grew their fragrance. Those
gardens round Tehran to which we were accustomed had been so thickly
planted with trees that no ray of light had reached the flower-beds,
but here in the hills, where the heat was tempered by cool winds, there
was light and air in abundance. On the further side of this radiant
bodyguard was a pleasure-house--not a house of walls, but of windows
and of shutters, which were all flung open, a house through which all
the winds of heaven might pass unchallenged. There was a splashing
fountain in the midst of it, and on all four sides deep recesses arched
away to the wide window-frames. We entered, and flinging ourselves down
on the cushions of one of these recesses, gazed out on the scene below
us. First in the landscape came the glitter of the little garden; lower
down the hillside the clustered walnuts and poplars which shaded the
villages through which we had ridden; then the brown, vacant plain,
with no atmosphere but the mist of dust, with no features but the
serpentining lines of mounds which marked the underground course of a
stream, bounded far away by a barren line of hills, verdureless and
torrent-scored, and beyond them more brown plains, fainter lines of
barren hills to the edge of the far horizon. Midway across the first
desert lay a wide patch of trees sheltering the gardens of Tehran. Down
there in the town how the sun blazed! The air was a haze of heat and
dust, and a perspiring humanity toiled, hurrying hither and thither,
under the dark arches of the bazaar; but in the garden of the King of
Merchants all day long cool winds blew from the gates of the hills,
all day long the refreshing water rippled and sparkled, all day long
the white lilies at our feet lay like a reflection of the snow-capped
mountains above us.
We sat idly gazing while we sipped our glasses of milkless tea much
sugared, nibbled sweetmeats from the heaped-up dishes on the ground
beside us, handed round the gurgling kalyans, and held out our hands
to be filled with stalkless jessamine blossoms deliciously scented.
At noon we rose, and were conducted yet deeper into the domains of
the royally hospitable merchant--up more flights of steps, past a
big tank at the further side of which stood the andarun, the women’s
lodging, where thinly-clad and shrouded forms stepped silently behind
the shutters at our approach, down long shady paths till we came to
another guest-house standing at the top of another series of cascades
and fountains. Here an excellent repast was served to us--piles of
variously flavoured rice mixed with meat and fruits and sauces, roasted
kabobs, minces wrapped in vine-leaves, ices, fruits, and the fragrant
wine of Shiraz.
Towards the cool of the evening the King of Merchants appeared on
the threshold of his breeze-swept dwelling, a man somewhat past the
prime of life, with a tall and powerful figure wrapped in the long
brown cloak, opening over the coloured under-robe and spotless linen,
which is the dress of rich and poor alike. He was of a pleasing
countenance, straight-browed, red-lipped, with a black beard and an
olive complexion, and his merry dark eyes had a somewhat unexpected
twinkle under his high, white-turbaned forehead. A hospitable friend
and a cheerful host is he, the ready quip, the apt story, the
appreciative laugh, for ever on his lips; a man on whom the world has
smiled, and who smiles back at that Persian world of his which he
has made so pleasant for himself, strewing it with soft cushions and
glowing carpets, and planting it round with flowers. Every evening the
hot summer through, he is to be found in his airy garden at the foot of
the mountains; every evening strings of guests knock at his hospitable
gates, nor do they knock in vain. At the top of his many staircases
he greets them, smiling, prosperous--those stairs of his need never
be wearisome for alien feet to climb. He takes the new-comers by the
hand, and leads them into one of his guest-houses; there, by the edge
of a fountain, he spreads carpets on which they may repose themselves;
there, as the night draws on, a banquet of rice and roasted meats and
fruits is laid before them, tall pitchers of water, curiously flavoured
sherbets, silver kalyans; and while they eat the King of Merchants
sits with them and entertains them with stories garnished with many a
cheerful jest, many a seasonable quotation from the poets. At length
he leaves them to sleep till dawn, when they arise, and, having drunk
a parting glass of weak golden tea, repair to the nearest bath, and so
away from the cool mountain valley and back to the heat and labour of
the day. He himself spends the night in his andarun, or lying wrapped
in a blanket on the roof of his gate-house, from whence he can watch
the day break over the wide plain below.
We took our share in his welcome, listened to his anecdotes, and
played backgammon with him, nor did we bid him farewell until the ring
of lighted lamps on the mosque close at hand warned us that unless we
intended to spend the night on his house-top it was time to be gone.
_THE IMAM HUSSEIN_
TOWARDS the middle of July the month of Muharram began--the month of
mourning for the Imam Hussein. Such heat must have weighed upon the
Plain of Kerbela when the grandson of the Prophet, with his sixty or
seventy followers, dug the trenches of their camp not far from the
Euphrates stream. The armies of Yezid enclosed them, cutting them off
from the river and from all retreat; hope of succour there was none;
on all sides nothing but the pitiless vengeance of the Khalif--the
light of the watch-fires flickered upon the tents of his armies, and
day revealed only the barren plain of Kerbela behind them--the Plain of
Sorrow and Vexation.
In memory of the sufferings and death of that forlorn band and of
their sainted leader, all Persia broke into lamentation. He, the
holy one, hungered and thirsted; the intercessor with God could gain
no mercy from men; he saw his children fall under the spears of his
enemies, and when he died his body was trampled into the dust, and
his head borne in triumph to the Khalif. The pitiful story has taken
hold of the imagination of half the Mohammedan world. Many centuries,
bringing with them their own dole of tragedy and sorrow, have not
dimmed it, nor lessened the feeling which its recital creates, partly,
no doubt, because of the fresh breeze of religious controversy which
has swept the dust of time perpetually from off it, but partly, too,
because of its own poignant simplicity. The splendid courage which
shines through it justifies its long existence. Even Hussein’s enemies
were moved to pity by his patient endurance, by the devotion of his
followers, and by the passionate affection of the women who were with
him. The recorded episodes of that terrible tenth of Muharram are full
of the pure human pathos which moves and which touches generation after
generation. It is not necessary to share the religious convictions of
the Shiahs to take a side in the hopeless battle under the burning sun,
or realize the tragic picture of the Imam sitting before his tent-door
with the dead child in his arms, or lifting the tiny measure of water
to lips pierced through by an arrow-shot--a draught almost as bitter as
the sponge of vinegar and hyssop. ‘Men travel by night,’ says Hussein
in the miracle play, ‘and their destinies travel towards them.’ It was
a destiny of immortal memory that he was journeying to meet on that
march by night through the wilderness, side by side with El Hurr and
the Khalifs army.
Shortly after we landed in Persia we came unexpectedly upon the story
of the martyrdom. In the main street of Kasvin, up which we were
strolling while our horses were being changed (for we were on our
way to Tehran), we found a crowd assembled under the plane-trees. We
craned over the shoulders of Persian peasants, and saw in the centre
of the circle a group of players, some in armour, some robed in long
black garments, who were acting a passion play, of which Hussein was
the hero. One was mounted on a horse which, at his entries and exits,
he was obliged to force through the lines of people which were the
only wings of his theatre; but except for the occasional scuffle he
caused among the audience, there was little action in the piece--or, at
least, in the part of it which we witnessed--for the players confined
themselves to passing silently in and out, pausing for a moment in the
empty space which represented the stage, while a mollah, mounted in
a sort of pulpit, read aloud the incidents they were supposed to be
enacting.
But with the beginning of Muharram the latent religious excitement
of the East broke loose. Every evening at dusk the wailing cries of
the mourners filled the stillness, rising and falling with melancholy
persistence all through the night, until dawn sent sorrow-stricken
believers to bed, and caused sleepless unbelievers to turn with a sigh
of relief upon their pillows. At last the tenth day of Muharram came--a
day of deep significance to all Mohammedans, since it witnessed the
creation of Adam and Eve, of heaven and hell, of life and death; but to
the Shiahs of tenfold deeper moment, for on it Hussein’s martyrdom was
accomplished.
Early in the afternoon sounds of mourning rose from the village. The
inhabitants formed themselves into procession, and passed up the shady
outlying avenues, and along the strip of desert which led back into
the principal street--a wild and savage band whose grief was a strange
tribute to the chivalrous hero whose bones have been resting for twelve
centuries in the Plain of Kerbela. But tribute of a kind it was. Many
brave men have probably suffered greater tortures than Hussein’s, and
borne them with as admirable a fortitude; but he stands among the few
to whom that earthly immortality has been awarded which is acknowledged
to be the best gift the capricious world holds in her hands. If he
shared in the passionate desire to be remembered which assails every
man on the threshold of forgetfulness, it was not in vain that he died
pierced with a hundred spears; and though his funeral obsequies were
brief twelve hundred years ago, the sound of them has echoed down the
centuries with eternal reverberation until to-day.