CHILDREN OF PERSIA
_Uniform with this Volume_
CHILDREN OF INDIA
By JANET HARVEY KELMAN
CHILDREN OF CHINA
By C. CAMPBELL BROWN
CHILDREN OF AFRICA
By JAMES B. BAIRD
CHILDREN OF ARABIA
By JOHN CAMERON YOUNG
CHILDREN OF JAMAICA
By ISABEL C. MACLEAN
CHILDREN OF JAPAN
By JANET HARVEY KELMAN
CHILDREN OF EGYPT
By L. CROWTHER
CHILDREN OF CEYLON
By THOMAS MOSCROP
[Illustration: PERSIAN SHEPHERD BOY]
CHILDREN OF PERSIA
BY
MRS NAPIER MALCOLM
WITH EIGHT COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
MY DEAR BOYS AND GIRLS,
This is a book about Persia, intended to be read by children; and, on
this account, much has had to be left out. Do not think, when you have
read this book, that you know how bad Muhammadanism is, for a great
deal of its sin and cruelty is too terrible to tell to young folks. But
I hope enough has been said to show you that Persian children do need
to be rescued from Muhammadanism and brought to the Lord Jesus Christ
to be His children. He needs them and they need Him. So for His sake
and theirs we must do all we can to win the Persians for Christ.
I am,
Your sincere friend,
U. MALCOLM.
BROUGHTON, MANCHESTER, 1911.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. MUHAMMAD 7
II. PERSIA 11
III. PERSIAN BABIES 18
IV. PERSIAN CLOTHES 24
V. PERSIAN GAMES AND TOYS 31
VI. PERSIAN SWEETS 36
VII. PERSIAN PRAYERS 41
VIII. FASTING AND PILGRIMAGES 47
IX. SAVĀBS 52
X. MUHAMMADAN CHARMS AND SUPERSTITIONS 58
XI. PERSIAN SCHOOLS 62
XII. CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 69
XIII. WORK 74
XIV. CHILD WIVES 79
XV. SICK CHILDREN 84
XVI. CONCLUSION 92
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
PERSIAN SHEPHERD BOY _Frontispiece_
A STREET OF SHOPS 15
A BABY IN HAMMOCK 20
LADIES’ OUT-DOOR AND IN-DOOR COSTUMES 25
PERSIANS AT PRAYER 43
READING THE QURAN TO THE SICK 58
A PERSIAN SCHOOL 64
A MISSION HOSPITAL 90
CHILDREN OF PERSIA
CHAPTER I
MUHAMMAD
Before we look at the Persian children of to-day, let us go back nearly
thirteen and a half centuries to the year of our Lord 570, and take a
look at two adjoining countries in Europe and two adjoining countries
in Asia.
In Western Scotland, St Columb is teaching the people Christianity, and
is writing out copy after copy of the Bible, until tradition tells that
he copied it out three hundred times.
In England the heathen Saxons are conquering the Midlands and crushing
out the Christianity of the Britons.
In Persia there is a Christian Church, but most of the people are
Zoroastrians, that is, they belong to the Parsee religion. They worship
God and believe in a prophet called Zoroaster, who lived long before
the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so knew nothing about Him. He
seems to have taught his people much that was very good, but their
religion has become full of superstitions.
Lastly, we must go to Arabia, where a Muhammadan legend describes a
curious scene.
A number of Arab women are riding into the town of Mecca. Their animals
are weary and very thin and weak, for it is a year of famine. Last
of all comes a woman with a crying baby, riding on the thinnest and
most miserable looking donkey of all the company. They are nurses from
the healthiest part of Arabia, come to find children to take home and
nurse, each hoping to get the child of a wealthy man, who will pay her
well, and give her handsome presents.
They are not long kept waiting. The babies are brought out, and
questioning and bargaining begin. One baby is not popular--the
whisper goes round that it is an orphan--there is no father to give
presents--the grandfather who is looking for a nurse will surely not
do much for it. And so one after another all the women refuse the
baby, and the old man begins to despair of success. All the women have
found nurslings except one, the woman who rode in last. She, too, has
refused the orphan, but now, seeing no hope of a better bargain, rather
than have taken her journey for nothing, she tells the old man she has
changed her mind, and carries the baby home. And the story runs that
the thin weak donkey that could hardly drag itself along as it entered
Mecca, ran along so nimbly on the way home that the rest could scarcely
keep up with it.
The orphan baby was Muhammad, the founder of the religion called
after him Muhammadanism. Some of the details of this story (told by
a Muhammadan writer) are probably quite untrue. Little Muhammad’s
grandfather was known to be very rich and in a very high position, and
if the baby was refused it was probably because he was a sickly child,
and would be difficult to rear. However, in due course he grew bigger,
and came home to his mother, and after her death lived with his old
grandfather, who thought all the world of him.
Mecca was an interesting town to live in, for once a year pilgrims from
all parts of Arabia came to the great idol temple, and little Muhammad
would see all there was to be seen, for his grandfather kept the keys
and superintended everything.
When his grandfather died he went to live with his uncle, who used
to take him on business journeys, going through the wide deserts to
distant towns with long strings of camels loaded with goods to sell.
So the boy grew up a good man of business and saw much of foreign
countries and something of foreign religions, Christianity, Judaism,
and Parsiism, and he grew discontented with his own country and his own
religion.
All the great peoples round worshipped one God. Surely Arabia would
be a better and greater country if it did the same. All the great
religions had a prophet and a book. The Christians had Jesus Christ
and the Gospel, the Jews had Moses and the Law, even the Parsees had
Zoroaster and his book the Zend Avesta. Surely what the Arabs needed
was a prophet and a book.
Muhammad was not the only person who thought this. There was a group
of people, several of whom were relations of him or of his wife, who
shared this view. Some of them thought that Moses and the Law would be
best for Arabia; but many of them saw that Jesus Christ and the Gospel
were what they needed, and most of these in the end became Christians.
If Muhammad had joined them, the history of the world from then to now
might have been very different. But Muhammad had set his heart on an
Arabian prophet and an Arabian book, and the more he thought of it the
more sure he felt that this was the real way to unity and greatness for
Arabia.
He himself belonged to the family which took the lead in religious
matters in Arabia, he had always been made much of, and told he would
be a great man; he used to have fits which seemed to him and to others
to mark him out as something out of the common; so it is not surprising
that he at last came to believe that he was to be the new Arabian
prophet who seemed to him to be so badly wanted. His fits began to take
the form of visions, and he believed that the words of the longed for
book were being revealed to him.
But it was a long time before he came forward publicly, and when he did
he was a good deal laughed at, and only a few became his followers.
Then he got an invitation to the town of Medina, where he had a number
of cousins. The people of Medina were very jealous of Mecca, and all,
whether they believed in him or not, joined in giving Muhammad a great
welcome.
It was in Medina that Muhammad really founded his religion, and there
he became a very great man. But sad to say, as his religion developed
all its bad points came out, and Muhammad became a very cruel tyrant
and very self-indulgent, excusing himself by saying that God allowed
him, because he was a prophet, to do things which were sinful when
other people did them.
The people who joined Muhammad’s religion were called Muhammadans or
Muslims, and they went everywhere making as many converts as they
could, by fair means or foul. They had learnt that there was one God,
but they knew nothing of the Bible; they only knew the Quran, the book
which Muhammad was revealing, and they knew nothing of the example of
Jesus Christ: their only example was Muhammad, who was a murderer.
You may wonder what all this has to do with Persian children. One of
the first countries conquered by the Muhammadans was Persia--and the
Persian children to-day are themselves Muhammadans.