Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/612

 REVIEWS OF BOOKS General Books and Books of Ancient History Persia Past and Present. A Book of Travel and Research with more than two hundred illustrations and a map. By A. V. Williams Jackson, Professor of Indo-Iranian Languages, and sometime Adjunct Professor of the English Language and Lit- erature in Columbia L^niversity. (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan and Company. 1906. Pp. xxxi, 471.) The book is the outcome of a journey made by Professor Jackson in 1903 through Persia. Its plan naturally follows the course of his itinerary, which may be indicated in summarizing briefly the contents of the work. The opening portion (pp. 1-32) carries the reader from New York via Moscow, Baku, Tiflis, and Erivan to the Persian frontier at Julfa, and concludes with a chapter on the land, its history, and our interest in the country, the last section dealing with the influences that Persian art, architecture, literature, and religion have exerted upon the world, and with the indebtedness of the English language to the Persian. In the next section (pp. 33-174) is the account of the journey from Julfa to Tabriz, thence around Lake Urumiah (the Chaechasta of the Avesta) to Urumiah and on past Takht-i Suleiman to Hamadan, the two rival claimants to the site of Ecbatana. As Urumiah is supposed to be the scene of the early labors of Zoroaster, the interest in the great prophet of Iran naturally comes to the front and gives occasion for a chapter (only too brief) on Zoroaster and the Avesta. At Hamadan begin the cuneiform inscriptions with the Ganj Namah inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, and during the next section of the journey (pp. 175-320) this subject is in the foreground. A special chapter is devoted to the inscriptions and the ever interesting story of their decipherment, and we have besides the account of the dangerous climb up the Behistan rock, and of the visits to Murghab (Pasargadae), the tombs of Naksh-i Rustam, and the ruined palaces of Persepolis. Inter- woven with this is the description of the Sasanian sculptures of Tak-i Bostan, Kermanshah, and Naksh-i Rustam. Zoroastrianism receives its share in the accounts of the temple of Anahita at Kangavar, and the ruined fire-temple near Isfahan, while the modern aspects of that city are not overlooked. In the remainder of the book (pp. 321-446) the interest centres successively around Shiraz, the home of Hafiz and (602)