Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/219

 On both this and the next visit to Teheran I attended a session of the Majlis, or Parliament, for the National Assembly had then been established. The courtesy of the invitation was due to one of its members, Arbab Jamshid, the well-known Zoroastrian banker of Teheran, to whose kindness and hospital- ity I had been already indebted otherwise.^

The Majlis building lies near the Sipahsalar Mosque and occupies a part of its grounds. The name Bahdristdn, ' Place of Spring,' which the precinct bears, seems to be well omened. The edifice was originally erected for quite a different purpose in 1870, but was later taken over by Nasir ad-Din Shah and ultimately appropriated for the uses of the National Assembly. On the afternoon when we saw it, who could have forecast that it would be bombarded by the Shah's Cossacks thirteen months later (June 23, 1908) ? The arrangements of the building and the details of parliamentary procedure were then still in embryo, and I noticed the most marked advance when I attended a session three years later. The building which had passed through the fire of shot and shell had risen phoenix-like into a new existence. The simple, squat pulpit of the first presiding officer had been replaced by a handsome desk for the president, while dignified seats, ranged in an amphi- theatre, gave suitable accommodations for the deputies, and a gallery extended hospitality to visitors. Admirable dignity and decorum marked the proceedings throughout, and were in keeping with such a detail as the external finish of the main committee -room and the large reception room for visitors, both of which were in excellent taste and reflected credit upon the Zoroastrian custodian, Kai Khusru, to whom the entire task of remodeling the edifice had been intrusted. He showed me traces enough of the storm of lead and steel through which it had passed ; and I was interested in learning from other sources that this entire work of reconstruction had been carried out without the slightest imputation of ' graft ' or any sugges- 1 See Persia Past and Present, pp. 426-427.

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