Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/215

 PRESENT THRONE POSSIBLY THE ORIGINAL

��Shah Muhammad Ali Mirza was standing near one of the fountains that gave a fairy touch to his garden, and was sur- rounded by his courtiers, while messengers were bringing de-

��made, could have been very accurate. In the first place, one of the clearest of the photographs shows not a trace of any inscription on the middle of the lower part of the visible back of the throne, but only a decorative design without any suggestion of lettering. I think, therefore, that the engraver, though skilful, could hardly have been justified in indicating by strokes and flourishes the presence of inscriptions in that particular place, even if he has made one of the groups of characters look like kd'dn, which is the special word used to designate the Moghul rulers. There are, indeed, inscrip- tions within the panels of the back (in fact, there are no inscriptions any- where outside of panels, it appears), but these form, in the photographs at hand, only the end and the beginning of sentences. They are in Persian j and so far as the portions visible in the photographs are concerned, the one on the right contains the end of a sentence that runs '. . . the excellence of my grace ' ; the one on the left con- tains the beginning of a sentence that reads, ' He made a paradise. in the desert. . . ' No argument for or against the Moghul origin can be de- duced from the use of Persian in this and the other inscriptions, because Persian was the official language of the court at Delhi under the Moghuls. — We may now turn to the second point. It is exceedingly difficult to reconcile the characters on the right- hand front panel in the engraving with the appearance of that panel in the photographs. It is true that the characters in the engraving might pos- sibly be thought to give 'from the

��booty of Shah Kukh ' (with which we might compare the statement in Cur- zon, 1. 322), but it is hard to substan- tiate any such record whatever from the photographs, although they are here hardly legible. So far as can be seen, there is not a proper name in a single one of the inscriptions that are visible ; so I have grave misgivings again as to the accuracy of the engrav- ing. — In the third place, doubt is thrown once more upon the accuracy of the reproduction of the letters on the left-hand front panel in the en- graving when compared with the pho- tographs. Even if the latter be not quite clear, the panel appears to give in Persian, ' The throne of my fortune and the desert. . .' ; but this could not be made out of the characters in the engraving. — In the fourth place, the four small panels over the top step show discrepancies between the engraving and the photographs. They are likewise in Persian. The upper right-hand tablet (a) is illegible in the photograph ; the upper left- hand tablet (6) on the step appears to read, ' Pulpits were erected ' ; the lower right-hand tablet (c) on the step, so far as can be deciphered, has '. . . was received ' ; the lower left-hand tablet (d) has 'Our home received rest.' Of course there is considerable uncertainty in the de- cipherment with only such material at hand ; but the apparent absence of proper names is noteworthy, for we might expect them at least on the front. In view of the pros and cons that are involved, we must leave the matter in abeyance for the present. I have written to Teheran in hopes

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