HAMADAN.
Tomb of Esther and Mordecai—Spurious
coins—Treasure-finding—Interest—A gunge—Oppression—A cautious
finder—Yari Khan—We become treasure seekers—We find—Our
cook—Toffee—Pole-buying—Modakel—I am nearly caught—A mad
dog—Rioters punished—Murder of the innocents.
Hamadan has no show place save the shrines of Esther and Mordecai. A
poor-looking, blue-tiled dome or “gōmbeza,” some fifty feet in height,
surmounts the shrine, and covers the tombs themselves; the rest of
the building is in red brick, in many places mudded over. It presents
the appearance of an ordinary minor shrine. In the outer chamber is
nothing remarkable. A low door leads to another apartment by a passage;
on crawling through this inner passage, which can only be done with
considerable discomfort, almost on hands and knees, one enters a vaulted
chamber, floored with common blue tiles. There is no splendour here, and
nothing to attract the cupidity of the Persians.
In one corner lay a heap of common “cherragh,” or oil lamps of burnt
clay, covered with blue glaze, such as are used by the poor. They are on
the same principle as the classic lamp, a reservoir for the oil or fat,
with a projection in which lies the wick of twisted cotton or rag; these
lamps will give a dull, smoky light for some hours without trimming.
Our guides, two evil-looking and squalid Jews, informed us that twice
a year the place was illuminated. In the centre of the apartment stood
two wooden arks, almost devoid of ornament, but of considerable age;
these were thickly sprinkled with small pieces of paper, on which were
inscriptions in the Hebrew character, the paper being stuck on as is a
label. Our guides could only tell us that pious Jewish pilgrims were in
the habit of affixing these to the arks. We could not even ascertain
which was the tomb of Esther and which that of Mordecai. The arks were
shaped like dog-kennels, and had a slightly ornamented pinnacle of
wood at either extremity of their roofs. The guides declined to allow
Pierson to make a drawing of them; but I fancy this was merely done to
extract a further gratuity. Nothing else was in the place save a poor and
much-thumbed copy of the Jewish Scriptures, quite modern and in the book
form.
When we left the tomb, after having gratified the two Jews, one produced
from his pocket a large bag of what appeared to be ancient coins,
both copper and silver. We examined these, and I was anxious to make
a purchase; but Pierson assured me that they were spurious. And the
Jew, after many protestations, acknowledged that they were so, with the
exception of a few coins of Alexander the Great, with the head in high
relief; and Sassanian coins of various monarchs, on the reverse of which
were always represented figures and an altar (of a fire temple). These
two sorts of coin are so common in Persia as to be absolutely worth
merely their weight in silver, and the coins of the Sassanian monarchs
are constantly being found in crocks.
Treasure-finding in Persia is a frequent thing, and is easily to be
accounted for in a country where the bankers are simply money-changers,
and there is a danger of being a mark for the oppressor, in being thought
a rich man. The only way to invest money is in land or houses; either
of these methods are subject to the same objection, the owner is known
to be a man of property; and unless he can buy protection is subject to
exactions and extortions innumerable. Burying or secreting remains; for
a good Mussulman will not lend his money at interest, though many who
are not strict do so, the current rate of interest among merchants being
twelve per cent. per annum, paid monthly; while, where there is risk at
all, or the loan is given without full security, twenty-five to forty per
cent. is often exacted.
Ruins of all sorts abound in every part of Persia, and these ruins
are constantly being either levelled for cultivation, the earth being
valued as a fertiliser (they are many of them of mud), or taken down and
removed in donkey-loads for the sake of the old _burnt_ bricks, which it
is found practically cheaper to obtain in this manner than to make and
burn; for an _old_ brick is more valuable to the builder, being always
a good brick, than the _new_ one, which is often small and worthless,
except for ornamental facings of decorative brickwork—an art in which the
Persians, particularly in Shiraz, have attained a great proficiency, but
which, from the poverty of the country, and the less substantial mode of
building practised on that account in the present day, is rapidly dying
out.
In these various operations the discovery of a “gunge,” or treasure, is
not infrequent, although such a find is not always a very profitable
transaction for the finder. I have known three such instances.
One occurred at a place called Bonaat, in the province of Fars, some five
stages from Shiraz. The finder was a man of learning, who had a house and
a few acres of land at this place. He had mostly lived at Baghdad, where
he had been well educated, but, on his marriage, bought the little estate
at Bonaat.
He found one day in the mud wall of his house, a very old one which he
was rebuilding, five jars full of coin. He sent away the workmen, but not
before some of them were aware of the discovery, and at once proceeded to
bury the treasure (of the truth of this story there is no doubt). Two or
three days after this, a messenger from the owner of the greater part of
the country in the neighbourhood arrived, and he proceeded to demand the
whole of the treasure-trove; he gave no good reason, simply saying that
his master meant to have it. The finder tried to make terms with the man,
but, unfortunately, he had no means of bribing him but with the actual
coins found, which the messenger was anxious but afraid to accept. Taking
possession of all the contents of one jar, which my acquaintance with
many protests placed at his disposal, the great man’s retainer produced
a written order for the man to accompany him to Shiraz, and, putting
two men in charge of the house and the rest of the treasure, the poor
fellow’s wife, child, and servant being sent off to a neighbour’s without
ceremony, they started at once for the residence of the man in power at
that place. The end of the matter was, that the contents of _all five
jars_ went to this grandee, while nothing remained to the unhappy finder
but the suspicion of his having secreted a still greater treasure, and
he went about in fear of his life, frequent demands being made for the
supposed balance still hidden. In disgust he sold his house and land for
a trifle, and went to Bushire, where, under the shadow of the British
Residency, he was safe from further troubles. I never got other details
than this, but I am in a position to vouch for their truth.
Another case was that of a villager who found a treasure of coin in the
ruins of a mud village close to Ispahan. He, luckily for himself, was
alone, and managed to transport the whole amount, little by little, to
a place of safety. Shortly after this he set out, as a poor man, to
walk the pilgrimage to Mecca. This was sufficient and valid excuse for
a disappearance for two years. This time he wisely employed in the safe
investment of the amount. He went in rags, he returned in comparative
affluence; and though often accused of _the crime_ of having discovered a
treasure, he wisely denied it; and having secured by a handsome payment
the protection of a local magnate, whom he had, doubtless, to heavily
subsidise each year, he remained a wealthy man, and will probably be
allowed to die in his bed.
The last case was that of a peasant of the neighbourhood of Zinjan,
and occurred within the last five years. It was reported to the local
governor that a peasant named Yari was in the habit of selling ingots of
gold to the Jews of Zinjan at a rate considerably below the market price;
the governor seized the man, searched his house, finding a considerable
quantity of gold in ingots therein, and, _as the matter had now become
public_, reported the whole affair to Teheran, with a statement that
the fellow had discovered a gold-mine, or found “the treasure of King
Darius,” or the way to make gold!
This “treasure of King Darius” is a legendary myth that is constantly
occurring to the minds of the inflammable Persians. An order came to take
the man at once to the capital, but he simply denied either the treasure
or the mine, stating that he had found a few ingots, and sold them
gradually. But the evidence pointed another way, for the appliances for
fusing the metal, of a rough description, were found in his house, and
what could an obscure villager know of fusing gold?
The man remained a long time in prison in Teheran, and it is stated on
the best authority that means were employed to cause him to speak, which
are common in the East, but are happily no longer in use in Europe
(save, it is said, in Turkey).
At last he confided to his jailers that he had discovered a gold-mine
in the hills; the excitement was intense, he received at once a dress
of honour and the title of Khan, equivalent to our knighthood—_i. e._
it converts a nobody into a somebody. And Yari Khan, carefully guarded
and treated with consideration, was taken to Zinjan that he might point
out the site of the mine, for his descriptions, though very graphic, had
not enabled the searchers to find it. On his arrival he endeavoured by
an opportune illness to put off the evil day, but as finding the mine
was of more importance to the authorities than the health of a villager,
he was soon conveyed to the mountains where he had carefully indicated
its situation. But he could not or would not find it. Free recourse was
had to the bastinado, but no mine. The man was cast into prison, and
doubtless, unless ere this he is dead, or has confessed the source of his
wealth, or found means to administer a bribe, he is still in prison on
the lowest diet and a frequent administration of stick, even if other and
nameless horrors be not resorted to.
Pierson told me that one of the _occupations_ of the Hamadan Jews is
the manufacture of the so-called ancient coins; these are sent in large
quantities to Baghdad, Teheran, Ispahan, and Constantinople, and sold
there to the unsuspicious or ignorant European. He told me, too, that
Hamadan has a great reputation for the finding of real antiquities, and
that many of the Jews actually paid a small sum for the privilege of
searching the ground in certain spots, taking the chance of a find or a
blank day.
A Jew readily acceded to the proposal that he and two labourers should
be paid for their time, and a few kerans should be given by us for
permission to dig, and the intrinsic value of any object in the precious
metals handed over to him, the objects themselves being ours.
A few days after, the Jew came to show us the place, some miles from the
town where the search was taking place. Two labourers dug some foot of
the surface earth away in clods and piled it in heaps. The Jew watched
the labourers, and we watched the Jew. After they had uncovered the
whole of the ten yards square, which it was agreed that we should dig,
the labourers set to to sift it through a coarse sieve, but nothing was
found; a second sifting, however, which we noticed that the Jew watched
with much more curiosity than the first, produced four small cubes of
gold; they were about one-third of an inch cube, and were composed of
tiny beads of pure gold soldered together, a hole being left in two
of the opposite sides for stringing; they were hollow, and about two
pounds in value (the four). We found only these, and they were too few
to form an ornament, though doubtless real relics of ancient Ecbatana.
So we rewarded our Jew, and dug no more for hidden treasure, or rather
antiquities.
I frequently laugh at our housekeeping experiences in those early days.
We paid our cook ten kerans a day each for our messing, but every little
extra was debited to us with stern accuracy; as, one day we made a pound
of toffee, and at the month’s end were charged, “For making the Feringhi
sweetmeat, fifteen shillings!” These items and the pay of my servants
and my horse-keep made me fear that I should not be able to live on my
pay; but I soon found that the cook was simply charging us four times the
cost of our living. As Pierson was now leaving for Teheran, I was able to
manage with a humbler cook on a less extravagant scale, and live better.
An amusing instance of the inveterate habit of making modakel now
occurred prior to Pierson’s departure. In the early days of the Telegraph
Department in Persia the line was supported by _wooden_ poles, generally
poplar, and much trouble was found in buying these. It would have been
impossible for a European to buy them at all, and as the natives had
to be employed, it taxed all Pierson’s ingenuity to prevent wholesale
robbery taking place. The poles had to be paid for, and the buyer and
seller generally managed to put their heads together to make the “Dowlet
Ingleez” (English Government) pay a very fancy price.
Some poles were suddenly very urgently required, and the Sarhang or
Colonel, the chief of the officials of the Persian office of the
telegraph in Hamadan, the moonshee[12] or interpreter, a member of our
staff, a native of Baghdad, and Pierson’s head-servant or nazir, were
sent together to buy poles to the tune of kerans two thousand four
hundred, in the villages in the neighbourhood, on the principle that
each would act as a check on the other. These gentry divided their money
into two portions, half to be profit and half to buy poles.
The poles were purchased; but when they returned, the moonshee desired an
interview with Pierson.
After pointing out his own integrity and high sense of honour (this man’s
English was peculiar; it had been acquired of the sailors in Baghdad, and
was freely interlarded with oaths; but, worst of all, he had never learnt
the use of the words _very_, _more_, and _most_, substituting the more
homely expression which is used by Anglo-Saxons for sanguinary, as a word
meaning all three; his conversation was thus less choice than forcible),
he communicated to Pierson that half of the sum said to be expended
had been set aside as plunder, but that _he_ was no party to such
arrangement. When I heard of the matter I set it down to disinterested
virtue, but Pierson, whose experience of the Oriental was larger than
mine, determined to sift the matter.
Hardly had the moonshee retired than the nazir requested a private
interview, and stated that he too felt impelled by virtuous indignation
to discover to his master the wicked conspiracy of the Colonel and
the moonshee, who had agreed to divide the hundred and twenty tomans
illicitly gained into three shares, making forty for each; but that the
Colonel suggested to him that it would be better to give the moonshee
nothing, which would leave them, the sarhang and himself, sixty each.
“Of course, I report the affair to the sahib, and he will use his
discretion,” he said. The next morning Pierson sent for the Colonel, who
denied the whole matter, produced receipts duly sealed for the payment of
the whole two thousand four hundred kerans, and indignantly protested his
honesty: “Comme officier Persan—décoré par sa Majesté!” (he spoke French
fluently.) On an inquiry being instituted, it came out that the original
idea was, as the moonshee said, to divide the plunder into three shares.
Then, as the nazir said, into two—hence the honesty of the moonshee; and
at last the Colonel resolved to keep the whole himself, which accounted
for the virtue of the nazir. The money was disgorged, and the chief of
the Persian Telegraph in Teheran fined his subordinate in Hamadan forty
pounds, or one hundred tomans. So there is not always, in Persia at
least, “Honour among thieves.”
Pierson left for Teheran, and I was alone in Hamadan with no one to speak
to but the two corporals of engineers, who were the office staff, and the
two others, who were inspectors of the line. I was then very ardent, and
pushed my dispensary work, having many and interesting cases, and finding
my patients, especially among the poor, increasing in number. Ramazan
was gayer in his attire than ever, and my knowledge of the colloquial
increased rapidly. I had, however, to freely have recourse to pantomime,
as my only interpreter, the moonshee, now Pierson was away, seldom came
near me.
But I had, without knowing it, raised up enemies among the native
doctors. I found that, if I could not get money from my better-class
patients, I could get experience; and I had commenced a system of seeing
every one gratuitously. Of course I had no lack of patients, but the
effect was, that the consulting-rooms of the native doctors were emptied,
as the Persians would always prefer gratuitous physic with the additional
“tamasha” (show) of a European doctor, to paying those who practised
medicine strictly as taught by Aflatoon (Plato), Abu Senna (Avicenna),
Galenus (Galen), and Pocrat (Hippocrates). This state of things was
naturally intolerable to the profession in Hamadan, and my pseudo-friend,
the Hakim-bashi, with the rest of his brethren, took steps to frighten
me, in order to make me cease my obnoxious system.
I had been sitting quietly in the courtyard when my servant ran in to say
that there was a mob at the door. I went on the roof and found it was so;
some two hundred ragamuffins were assembled; they hooted me, and said a
good deal evidently of an uncomplimentary nature. After a while stones
began to come. I returned with a gun, which I valiantly discharged over
their heads, shouting “Bero!” (“Be off;”) for I felt that, if I did not
get rid of the small mob, a big one would soon form, at whose hands I
should fare badly. However, the gun effectually frightened the fellows
off, and the space outside my door was cleared. I got on my horse to go
to the telegraph-office and seek advice. Off I started, accompanied by my
servants (three) and all Pierson’s dogs.
I noticed on the road that one of these dogs behaved in an eccentric
manner, attacking several people; but I was too occupied and excited by
my own affairs to take much notice. On getting to the office, I at once
sent a message to the director in Teheran, and his promptitude prevented
any further unpleasantness to me. Orders came by wire to the Governor of
Hamadan to punish the rioters the next morning; and ere I left the office
a guard of soldiers (at the instance of our British Agent in Hamadan, who
had heard of the affair) was sent to escort me to my house, four sentries
being placed to relieve guard at my door.
I felt now that all was safe, and the only result was that my friend the
Hakim-bashi, who got up the row, was severely bastinadoed by the Governor.
On my return to the house I noticed the very extraordinary behaviour of
“Jill,” a black setter, one of a pair (“Jack” and “Jill”) belonging to
Pierson; she snapped and bit, emitting a peculiar cry, and showed signs
of rabies. I shut her up and made inquiries; it appeared that she, an
unusually quiet and playful dog generally, had bitten every dog in the
house. These were a very fine Arab greyhound and two young bull-terriers
of Pierson’s, a Persian greyhound of my own, and a little white dog owned
by the cook—for Persians will often own and pet a small, long-haired dog.
Undoubtedly all had been bitten.
There was nothing for it but (Jill being now certainly rabid, for I had
watched her, and she was eating earth and uttering the special cry which,
once heard, can never be forgotten) to destroy them all; this I had done,
and the cook wept bitterly, but assented to the measure. It is sad, in
such a place as Persia, to lose all one’s four-footed friends at one fell
swoop; but so it was, and thus ended an exciting day. I have never seen,
except on this occasion, a rabid dog in Persia; and as it is a country
where water is very scarce, it shows that want of water can have little
to do with causing rabies. I never either saw or heard of a case of
hydrophobia in Persia.