"_In the territory of Istakhar is a great building, with statues carved
in stone; and there, also, are inscriptions and paintings. It was said
that this was a temple of Solomon, to whom be peace! and that it was
built by the Dives, or Demons: similar edifices are in Syria, and
Baalbeck, and in Egypt._"--EBN HAWKEL; OUSELEY.
The origin of Isfahan is not to be traced with any certainty. It is,
however, for the most part, supposed to have arisen from the ruins of
Hecatompylos,[285] the capital of Parthia. This city was the royal
residence of Arsaces, and it was situated at the springs of the Araxes.
Whatever may have been the origin of this city, it is universally
admitted that the situation of it, topographically, and centrically with
regard to the empire, is admirably adapted for a royal residence and
capital[286]. It stands on the river Zeinderood; and has been celebrated
as a city of consequence from the time in which it was first noted in
history[287]; and that is, we believe, at the period in which it was
taken possession of by Ardisheer, who, soon after, was proclaimed king
of Persia; and was considered by his countrymen as the restorer of that
great empire, which had been created by Cyrus and lost by Darius.
This prince was so great a sovereign, that it gives pleasure to note
some of his sayings:--"When a king is just, his subjects must love him,
and continue obedient: but the worst of all sovereigns is he whom the
wealthy, and not the wicked, fear." "There can be no power without an
army; no army without money; no money without agriculture; no
agriculture without justice." "A furious lion is better than an unjust
king: but an unjust king is not so bad as a long and unjust war."
"Never forget," said he, on his death-bed, to his son, "that, as a king,
you are at once the protector of religion and of your country. Consider
the altar and throne as inseparable; they must always sustain each
other. A sovereign without religion is a tyrant; and a people who have
none may be deemed the most monstrous of all societies. Religion may
exist without a state; but a state cannot exist without religion; and it
is by holy laws that a political association can alone be bound. You
should be to your people an example of piety and of virtue, but without
pride or ostentation." After a few similar lessons, he concluded in the
following manner:--"Remember, my son, that it is the prosperity or
adversity of the ruler, which forms the happiness or misery of his
subjects; and that the fate of the nation depends upon the conduct of
the individual who fills the throne. The world is exposed to constant
vicissitudes: learn, therefore, to meet the frowns of Fortune with
courage and fortitude, and to receive her smiles with moderation and
wisdom. To sum up all:--May your administration be such as to bring, at
a future day, the blessings of those whom God has confided to our
paternal care, upon both your memory and mine."
A.D. 1387, Isfahan surrendered to Timour. The moment he pitched his
camp before it, it yielded. Satisfied with this ready submission, Timour
commanded that the town should be spared, but that a heavy contribution
should be levied on the inhabitants. This had been almost entirely
collected, when a young blacksmith, one under age, beat a small drum for
his amusement. A number of citizens, mistaking this for an alarm,
assembled, and became so irritated from a communication to each other of
the distress they suffered, that they began an attack upon those whom
they considered the immediate cause of their misery; and, before
morning, nearly 3000 of the Tartars, who had been quartered in the city,
were slain. The rage of Timour, when he heard of this, exceeded all
bounds. He would therefore listen to no terms of capitulation. He doomed
Isfahan to be an example to all other cities. The unfortunate
inhabitants knew what they had to expect, and made all the resistance
they could; but in vain. The walls were carried by storm; and the cruel
victor did not merely permit pillage and slaughter, but commanded that
every soldier should bring him a certain number of heads. Some of those,
more humane than their master, purchased the number allotted, rather
than become the executioners of unresisting men. It was found impossible
to compute all the slain; but an account was taken of 70,000 heads,
which were heaped in pyramids that were raised in monuments of this
horrid revenge.[288]
Isfahan attained its highest pitch and magnitude in the time of Shah
Abbas. It became the great emporium of the Asiatic world; and during his
reign nearly a million of people animated its streets, and the equally
flourishing peasantry of more than 1400 villages in its neighbourhood,
supplied by their labour the markets of this abundant population.[289]
Industry, diligence, activity, and negotiations, were seen and heard
everywhere. The caravans even were crowded with merchants, and the shops
with the merchandise of Europe and Asia; while the court of the great
Shah was the resort of ambassadors from the proudest kingdoms, not only
of the East but of the West. Travellers thronged thither from every
part, not only on affairs of business, but to behold the splendour of
the place.
In fact, it owes most of the glory it now possesses to Shah Abbas, who,
after the conquest of Lar and Ormus, charmed with its situation, made it
the capital of his empire between 1620 and 1628; for the fertility of
the soil, the mildness of the seasons, and the fine temperature of the
air, conspire, it is said, to make Isfahan one of the most delightful
cities in the world. The waters of its two rivers, also, are so sweet,
pleasant, and wholesome, as to be almost beyond comparison.
The splendours of Isfahan are described by Pietro Della Velle[290] and
Chardin.[291] What they were would occupy too large a space; but we may
judge of the extent and nature of the public works by the causeway[292]
this prince formed across the whole of Mazenderen, so as to render that
difficult country passable for armies and travellers at all seasons of
the year. He threw bridges over almost all the rivers of Persia. He
studied, we are told, beyond all former sovereigns, the general welfare
and improvement of his kingdom. He fixed on the city of Ispahan as the
capital of his dominions; and its population was more than doubled
during his reign. Its principal mosque, the noble palace of
Chehel-Setoon, the beautiful avenues and porticoes called Châr Bagh, and
several of the finest palaces in the city and suburbs, were all built by
this prince.
In 1721 there was a great rebellion. A celebrated traveller, who was on
the spot, assures us, that the inhabitants of one of the suburbs (Julfa,
an Armenian colony), not many years before, amounted to thirty thousand
souls. He says, that some of the streets were broad and handsome, and
planted with trees, with canals, and fountains in the middle; others
narrow and crooked, and arched at top; others again, though extremely
narrow, as well as turning and winding many ways, were of an incredible
length, and resembled so many labyrinths; that at a small distance from
the town there were public walks adorned with plane-trees on either
hand, and ways paved with stones, fountains and cisterns: that there
were one hundred caravanserais for the use of merchants and travellers,
many of which were built by the kings and prime nobility of Persia. He
goes on to state, that there was a castle in the eastern part of the
town, which the citizens looked upon as impregnable, in which the public
money and most of the military stores were kept: but that,
notwithstanding the number of baths and caravanserais were almost
innumerable, there was not one public hospital. All this was in the
suburb of Julfa only. In what condition is that suburb now?
A.D. 1722, Mahmoud, chief of the Afghans, invaded Persia, and laid
siege to Isfahan. He was at first repulsed and compelled to fall back;
in consequence of which he made overtures. These the citizens
unfortunately rejected. Mahmoud, in consequence, determined on laying
waste the whole of the neighbouring country. Now the districts
surrounding Ispahan were, perhaps, the most fruitful in the world, and
art had done her utmost to assist nature in adorning this delightful
country. This fairest of regions was doomed by Mahmoud to complete ruin!
The task occupied his army more than a month; but the lapse of nearly a
century has not repaired what their barbarity effected in that period;
and the fragments of broken canals, sterile fields, and mounds of
ruins, still mark the road with which they laboured in the work of
destruction.
A famine ensued in consequence of this, and the inhabitants of Isfahan
were reduced to despair. The flesh of horses, camels, and mules, became
so dear[293], that none but the king, some of the nobles, and the
wealthiest citizens, could afford to purchase. Though the Persians abhor
dogs as unclean, they ate greedily of them, as well as of other
forbidden animals. When these supplies were exhausted, they fed not only
upon the leaves and bark of trees, but on leather, which they softened
by boiling; and when this was exhausted too, they began to devour human
flesh. Men, we are told, with their eyes sunk, their countenances livid,
and their bodies feeble and emaciated with hunger, were seen in crowds,
endeavouring to protract a wretched existence by cutting pieces from the
bodies of those who had just expired. In many instances the citizens
slew each other, and parents murdered their children to furnish the
horrid meal. Some, more virtuous, poisoned themselves and families, that
they might escape the guilt of preserving life by such means. The
streets, the squares, and even the royal gardens, were covered with
carcases; and the river Zainderand, which flowed through the city,
became so corrupted by dead bodies[294], that it was hardly possible to
drink of its waters[295]. Overpowered with his misfortunes, Shah Husseyn
abdicated his throne in favour of his persecutor.
These events are related in Bucke's Harmonies of Nature, thus:--During
the reign of Shah Husseyn, Isfahan was besieged by Mahmoud, chief of the
Afghans; when the besieged, having consumed their horses, mules, camels,
the leaves and bark of trees, and even cloth and leather, finished,--so
great was the famine,--with not only eating their neighbours and
fellow-citizens, but their very babes. During this siege more human
beings were devoured than was ever known in a siege before. Mahmoud
having at length listened to terms of capitulation, Husseyn clad himself
in mourning; and with the Wali of Arabia, and other officers of his
court, proceeded to the camp of his adversary, and resigned the empire.
The Afghan chief, in receiving his resignation, exclaimed, "Such is the
instability of all human grandeur! God disposes of empires, as he
pleases, and takes them from one to give to another!" This occurred in
the year 1716.
Mahmoud was now king of Persia. But, some time after, fearing a revolt
of the people of Isfahan, he invited all the nobles of the city to a
feast, and the moment they arrived, a signal was given, and they were
all massacred. Their amount was three thousand! not so many as one
escaped. Their bodies were exposed in the streets, that the inhabitants
might behold and tremble. But an equal tragedy was yet to be performed.
He had taken three thousand of the late king's guards into his pay.
These men he directed to be peculiarly well treated; and, as a mark of
favour, he commanded that a dinner should be dressed for them in one of
the squares of the palace. The men came; sat down; and the moment they
had done so, a party of the tyrant's troops fell upon them, and not a
single soul was allowed to escape!
This, however, was not the close of things, but the beginning. A
general order was now issued, to put every Persian to death, who had in
any way served the former government. The massacre lasted 15 days! Those
who survived were made to leave the city, with the sole exception of a
small number of male youths, whom the tyrant proposed to train in the
habits and usages of his own nation.
Nor does this terminate the history of his atrocities. He soon after
massacred all the males of the royal family. These victims he caused to
be assembled in one of the courts of the palace; when attended by two or
three favourites, he commenced, with his own sabre, the horrid massacre.
Thirty-nine princes of the blood were murdered on this dreadful
occasion. The day of punishment, however, was at hand. He soon after
died in a state of horrific insanity! His body was buried in a royal
sepulchre; but when Nadir Shah afterwards took Isfahan, he caused it to
be taken from the sepulchre and abandoned to the fury of the populace;
and the place where he had been interred was converted into a common
sewer to receive the filth of the city. This was in the year 1727.
Isfahan never recovered these dreadful events. Mr. Hanway tells us, that
in the time he visited it, a Persian merchant assured him, that in all
Isfahan there were not more than five thousand inhabited houses. It has
been, since, several times taken and retaken by tyrants and revolters.
It was last taken by Aga Mohamed Khan (A.D. 1785); who dismantled the
walls.
Its present condition is thus described by Sir Robert Ker Porter:--"The
streets are everywhere in ruin; the bazaars silent and abandoned; the
caravanserais are equally forsaken; its thousand villages hardly now
counting two hundred; its palaces solitary and forlorn; and the
nocturnal laugh and song, which used to echo from every part of the
gardens, succeeded by the yells of jackals and shouts of famishing
dogs."
Sir Robert afterwards gives an account of the ruins. From one end of the
city to the other, under avenues old and new, through the gardens, and
round their delightful "paradises," of shade and fountain, he hardly saw
a single creature moving. If, says he, "Isfahan continues fifty years so
totally abandoned of its sovereign's notice as it is now, Isfahan will
become a total ruin, amidst the saddest of wildernesses."
The name of this city is said to have been Sepahan, which it received
from the Persian kings, in consequence of its having been the general
place of rendezvous for their armies. "This famous city," says Mr.
Kinneir[296], "has been so minutely described, even when at the height
of its glory, by many travellers, and particularly by Chardin, that it
will only be necessary to state the changes that have taken place since
the period in which he wrote. The wall, which then surrounded the city,
was entirely destroyed by the Afghans, who have left many striking marks
of their savage and barbarous habits in every part of the kingdom. The
suburb of Julfa has been reduced from twelve thousand to six hundred
families; most of the others have shared the same fate; and a person may
ride ten miles amidst the ruins of this immense capital. The spacious
houses and palaces, which opened to the Royal Avenue, are almost all
destroyed. The first view, however," continues Mr. Kinneir, "which the
traveller has, on coming from Shirauz, of this great metropolis, is from
an eminence, about five miles from the city, when it bursts at once upon
his sight, and is, perhaps, one of the grandest prospects in the
universe. Its ruinous condition is not observable at a distance; all
defects being hid by high trees and lofty buildings; and palaces,
colleges, mosques, minarets, and shady groves, are the only objects that
meet the eye."
The bazaars, constructed by Shah Abbas, which were covered in with
vaults, and lighted by numerous domes, are of prodigious extent, and
proclaim the former magnificence of the city. They extend considerably
more than a mile.
The palaces of the king are enclosed in a fort of lofty walls, which
have a circumference of three miles. The palace of the Chehel Sitoon, or
"forty pillars," is situated in the middle of an immense square, which
is intersected by various canals, and planted in different directions
with the beautiful chenar tree. The palace was built by Shah Abbas.
Under the great room are summer apartments, excavated in the ground,
which, in their season, must be delightful retreats. They are also
wainscoted, and paved with marble slabs; and water is introduced by
cascades, which fall from the ground floor, and refresh the whole range.
The Ali Capi gate forms the entrance. This gate, once the scene of the
magnificence of the Seffi family, the threshold of which was ever
revered as sacred, is now deserted, and only now and then a solitary
individual is seen to pass negligently through. The remains of that
splendour, so minutely and exactly described by Chardin, are still to be
traced; the fine marble remains, and the grandeur and elevation of the
dome, are still undemolished.[297] At the Ala Capi gate of the old
palaces, which is described as one of the most perfect pieces of
brick-work to be found in Persia, used to sit Shah Abbas, and thence
review his cavalry, galloping and skirmishing, or witnessed the combats
of wild animals[298]. In former times this view from the spot was
undoubtedly splendid; but, at present, with the exception of the
palaces in the gardens, the whole mass below is one mouldering
succession of ruinous houses, mosques, and shapeless structures, which
had formerly been the mansions of the nobility, broken by groups or
lines of various tall trees, which once made part of the gardens of the
houses now in ruins. The freshness of all the buildings is said to be
particularly striking to an European, or the inhabitants of any
comparatively humid country, in which the atmosphere cherishes a
vegetation of mosses, lichens, and other cryptogamous plants, which we
particularly associate in our minds with the spectacle of decay.
Sir W. Ouseley says, "I explored the ruins of villages, scattered over
the plain in all directions near our camp; and some must have been
considerable in size and respectability from the handsome houses which
they contained. Although pillaged and depopulated by the Afghans almost
a century ago, many of their chambers yet remain, with vaults and
staircases but little injured; yet no human being is ever seen within
their walls, except some traveller, who wonders at finding himself alone
in places, which might be easily rendered habitable, situate not above a
mile from the walls of a great metropolis. It must be confessed, that
these ruins, composed of sun-dried brick and mud, appear, like many
edifices in Persia, to much greater advantage on paper than in reality."
Morier, in his second journey into Persia, says:--"The great city of
Isfahan, which Chardin has described, is twenty-four miles in
circumference, were it to be weeded (if the expression may be used) of
its ruins, would now dwindle to a quarter that circumference. One might
suppose that God's curse had extended over part of this city, as it did
over Babylon. Houses, bazaars, mosques, palaces, whole streets, are to
be seen in total abandonment; and I have rode for miles among its ruins
without meeting with any living creature, except, perhaps, a jackal
peeping over a wall, or a fox running to its hole.
"In a large tract of ruins," Mr. Morier goes on to observe, "where
houses, in different stages of decay, were to be seen, now and then an
inhabited house may be discovered, the owner of which may be assimilated
to Job's forlorn man, '_dwelling in desolate cities, and which no man
inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps_[299].' Such a remark as
this must have arisen from scenery similar to those which parts of
Isfahan present; and unless the particular feeling of melancholy which
they inspire has been felt, no words can convey any idea of it[300]."