Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/661

 HISTORY.] PERSIA 631 to a blue-black tinge ; it is naturally a glossy black. Fair liair is not esteemed. Blue eyes are not uncommon, but brown ones are the rule. A full-moon face is much admired, and a dark com plexion termed &quot; namak &quot; (salt) is the highest native idea of beauty. Most Persian women are small, with tiny feet and hands. The figure is always lost after maternity, and no support of any kind is worn. A very short jacket, of gay colour, quite open in front, having tight sleeves with many metal buttons, is usually worn in summer, and a lined outer coat in cold weather. In winter a pair of very short white cotton socks are used, and tiny slippers with a high heel ; in summer in the house ladies go often barefoot. The rest of the costume is composed of the &quot;tumbun&quot; or &quot;shalwar,&quot; short skirts of great width, held by a running string, the outer one being usually of silk, velvet, or Kashmir shawl, often trimmed with gold lace, or, among the poor, of loud-patterned chintz or print. Beneath are innumerable other garments of the same shape, varying in tex ture from silk and satin to print. The whole is very short, among the women of fashion extending only to the thigh. In winter an over -mantle like the &quot;kulajah,&quot; or coat of the man, with short sleeves, lined and trimmed with furs, is worn. Leg-coverings are now being introduced. In ancient days the Persian ladies always wore them, as may be seen by the pictures in the South Kensington Museum. Then the two embroidered legs, now so fashionable as Persian embroideries (&quot;nakoh&quot;), occupied a girl from childhood to marriage in making ; they are all scioing in elaborate patterns of great beauty, worked on muslin in silk. The outdoor costume of the Persian women is quite another thing. Enveloped in a huge blue sheet, with a yard of linen as a veil perforated for two inches square with minute holes, the feet thrust into two huge bags of coloured stuff, a wife is perfectly unrecognizable, even by her hus band, when out of doors. The dress of all is the same ; and, save in quality or costliness, the effect is similar. As for the children, they are always when infants swaddled ; when they can walk they are dressed as little men and women, and with the dress they generally ape the manners. It is a strange custom with the Persian ladies to dress little girls as boys, and little boys as girls, till they reach the age of seven or eight years ; this is often done for fun, or on account of some vow, oftener, to avert the evil eye. (ogra- A summary of personal impressions of Persia may serve l ica l to convey a tolerably correct idea of the country, without the necessity of serious study or the aid of science and statistics. The reader is asked to suppose a tableland dropping to the Caspian Sea for nearly one-third of its northern frontier, and to the Persian Gulf for its southern limit. The lowlands, naturally, are the coast-tracts. In the north these are covered with forest, and the climate there is damp, feverish, relaxing ; in the south they are dry and barren, and the winds are hot and violent, yet a relief to the scorching summer atmosphere. In the central highlands (that is, Persia generally) there are feAV rivers, and the country is either composed of parallel mountain- ranges and broad intervening plains, or of irregular moun tain-masses with fertile valleys, basins, and ravines. One plain on the last is of exceptionally large extent, and is called the Salt Desert of Khurasan. The theory that this was once a sea is supported by the circumstance that at one of its extreme edges is the village of Yunsi, so called because the prophet Jonah (Yunas) is locally believed to have been cast up there by the whale. For irrigation the plains and valleys depend on the mountains, and at the base of these are &quot;kanats,&quot; or underground canals, with watercourses on the surface. Yet where rain and snow fail during the year there is scarcity of water, and where both are wanting there is always distress and sometimes famine. The valleys and ravines are more fertile than the plains, affording often bright, picturesque, and grateful prospects, while the latter are for the most part barren and sandy wastes, scored or streaked, as it were, rather than orna mented with patches of green oases. Forests are rare and, except in Gilan, not dense ; numerous gardens are com monly found in the neighbourhood of large towns, not cared for as in Europe, yet pleasant in their wildness ; and there are many beautiful trees usually also near the centres of population. Persian cities are not like cities in Europe. The passing stranger sees no street or house in any of them at all comparable to a respectable street or building, as England, France, or Germany rate structural respectability. Blank mud-walls and narrow ill-paved thoroughfares are the rule ; the windowed or terraced front of a Persian house is for the inner court or inner precincts of the abode, and not for the world without. Some mosques are handsome, some caravansards solid, some bazaars highly creditable to the designer and builder ; but everything is irregular, nothing is permanent, and architectural ruin blends with architect ural revival in the midst of dirt, discomfort, and a total disregard of municipal method. Even Constantinople and Cairo cannot bear the ordeal of close inspection. Beautiful and attractive as they may be from without and the first has a charm beyond description, while the second is always interesting in spite of her barbarous boulevard they are palpably deficient in completeness within ; and yet Tehran, Baghdad, Ispahan, Tabriz, Mashhad, Shiraz are far behind them in civilized construction and order. Sources. Independently of original sources, information has been obtained from official and parliamentary records, to which access was kindly facilitated under authority ; from Eastern Persia, 2 vols. (1876) ; and various books of travel by authors already named. The writer has also to express his thanks to General Schindler, in the service of the shah, to Jlirza Hasan AH Khan, attache to the Eusso- Afghan boundary commission; to Colonel Bateman-Champain, R.E., Mr W. T. Blanford, Mr Andrews (of the Indo-European telegraph), and others, who have more or less favoured him with special information, written or oral. SECTION II. HISTORY. Oriental history, as told by Oriental historians, is for the majority of readers in Europe a study of little attrac tion. Its genealogies and oft-repeated names are weari some ; its stories of battle, murder, and rapine are mono tonous and cast in one mould ; the mind cannot readily impart life to the dry bones of the more prominent dramatis personee, by conceiving for them any flesh-and- blood individuality. The court-chronicler of an Eastern potentate writes to order, and in accordance with a pre cedent which fetters style and expression ; and even the painter of state-portraits strives rather to turn out a con ventional and model monarch than the likeness of an original human being. In the palace of Kirich, near Tehran, is a picture of Fath All Shah and his sons. There may be a certain waxwork beauty in some of the faces, but they give no more signs of innate character or mental idio syncrasy than do the kings and knaves of a pack of cards. The Timurides in these respects were exceptionally fortu nate. Timur himself, their great progenitor, though not the distinct figure of an English king as delineated by Macaulay, has been handed down to us in some kind of personality in the history called Zafarndma, 1 in his Jfalftizdt or utterances, and in the Tuzukdt or institutes. 2 There are, moreover, portraits .of him in existence which are professed likenesses. Babar, Akbar, and Jahangir were either their own chroniclers or had comparatively competent men to write for them ; and, to illustrate the period in which they lived, we obtain in addition to records of events biography, memoirs, and something also of the current sayings, writings, and doings. But the reigns of these three monarchs rather concern the annals of India than of Persia, whereas Timur has so much to do with the latter that a brief retrospect of the career of that conqueror and his immediate descendants as it affected the countries generally south of the Caspian will be an appropriate opening to the present history. 1 Unfortunately, perhaps, there are two histories bearing this title. In the one, as Sir William Jones explains, &quot; the Tartarian conqueror is represented as a liberal, benevolent, and illustrious prince &quot; ; in the other he is &quot;as deformed as impious, of a low birth and detestable principles.&quot; The authenticity of the Malf&zat is disputed. - Both these last terms, however, are indifferently applied to the writings of Timur. Tuzuk is the passive participle of tu:.mak, &quot;to arrange,&quot; hence tuzv.kdt, &quot; arrangement.&quot;