The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan Part 1

The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan.

by James Morier.

INTRODUCTION

In the first decade of the present century Persia was for a short time the pivot of the Oriental interest of English and Indian statesmen.

But little known and scarcely visited during the preceding century, it suddenly and simultaneously focussed the ambitions of Russia, the apprehensions of Great Britain, the Asiatic schemes of France. The envoys of great Powers flocked to its court, and vied with each other in the magnificence of the display and the prodigality of the gifts with which they sought to attract the superb graces of its sovereign, Fath Ali Shah. Among these supplicants for the Persian alliance, then appraised at much beyond its real value, the most a.s.siduous and also the most profuse were the British, agitated at one moment by the prospect of an Afghan invasion of India, at another by the fear of an overland march against Delhi of the combined armies of Napoleon and the Tsar. These apprehensions were equally illusory; but while they lasted they supplied the excuse for a constant stream of emba.s.sies, some from the British sovereign, others from the viceregal court at Calcutta, and were reproduced in a bewildering succession of Anglo-Persian Treaties. Sir John Malcolm, Sir Harford Jones, Sir Gore Ouseley, and Sir Henry Ellis were the plenipotentiaries who negotiated these several instruments; and the princ.i.p.al coadjutor of the last three diplomats was James Justinian Morier, the author of ?Hajji Baba.?

Born and nurtured in an Oriental atmosphere (though educated at Harrow), he was one of three out of four sons, whom their father, himself British Consul at Constantinople, dedicated to the Diplomatic or Consular service in Eastern Europe or in Asia. His Persian experience began when at the age of twenty-eight he accompanied Sir Harford Jones as private secretary, in 1808-1809, on that mission from the British Court direct which excited the bitter jealousy and provoked the undignified recriminations of the Indian Government. After the Treaty had been concluded, James Morier returned to England, being accompanied by the Persian envoy to the Court of St. James, who figures in this narrative as Mirza Firouz, and whose droll experiences in this country he subsequently related in the volume ent.i.tled ?Hajji Baba in England.?

While at home, Morier wrote the first of the two works upon Persia, and his journeys and experiences in and about that country, which, together with the writings of Sir John Malcolm, and the later publications of Sir W. Ouseley, Sir R. Ker Porter, and J. Baillie Frazer, familiarised the cultivated Englishman of the first quarter of this century with Persian history and habits to a degree far beyond that enjoyed by the corresponding Englishman of the present day. Returning to Persia with Sir Gore Ouseley in 1811-12 to a.s.sist the latter in the negotiation of a fresh Treaty, to meet the novel situation of a Franco-Russian alliance, Morier remained in Tehran as _charge d?affaire_ after his chief had left, and in 1814 rendered similar aid to Sir H. Ellis in the conclusion of a still further Treaty superseding that of Ouseley, which had never been ratified. After his return to England in 1815, appeared the account of his second journey. Finally, nearly ten years later, there was issued in 1824 the ripened product of his Persian experiences and reflections in the shape of the inimitable story to which is prefixed this introduction. ?Hajji Baba? at once became a favourite of the cultured reading public, and pa.s.sed speedily through several editions. That popularity has never since been exhausted; and the constant demand for a new issue is a proof not merely of the intrinsic merit of the book as a contemporary portrait of Persian manners and life, but also of the fidelity with which it continues to reflect, after the lapse of three-quarters of a century, the salient and unchanging characteristics of a singularly unchanging Oriental people. Its author, having left the Diplomatic service, died in 1849. The celebrity of the family name has, however, been revindicated in more recent diplomatic history by the services of his nephew, the late Sir Robert Morier, who died in 1893, while British Amba.s.sador at St. Petersburg.

James Morier was an artist as well as an author. The bulk of the ill.u.s.trations in his two journeys were reproduced from his own drawings; and he left upon his death a number of sc.r.a.p-books, whose unpublished contents are, I believe, not unlikely to see the light. In the Preface to the second edition of Hajji Baba he also spoke of ?numerous notes which his long residence in Persia would have enabled him to add,? but which his reluctance to increase the size of the work led him to omit.

These, if they ever existed in a separate form, are no longer in the possession of his family, and may therefore be presumed to have ceased to exist. Their place can now only be ineffectually supplied, as in the present instance, by the observations of later travellers over the familiar ground, and of inferior gleaners in the same still prolific field.

Such was the historic _mise-en-scene_ in which James Morier penned his famous satire. I next turn to the work itself. The idea of criticising, and still more of satirising, a country or a people under the guise of a fict.i.tious narrator is familiar in the literature of many lands. More commonly the device adopted is that of introducing upon the scene the denizen of some other country or clime. Here, as in the case of the immortal Gil Blas of Santillane, with whom Hajji Baba has been not inaptly compared, the infinitely more difficult plan is preferred of exposing the foibles of a people through the mouth of one of their own nationality. Hajji Baba is a Persian of the Persians, typical not merely of the life and surroundings, but of the character and instincts and manner of thought of his countrymen. And yet it is from his lips that flows the delightful stream of naive confession and mordant sarcasm that never seems either ill-natured or artificial, that lashes without vindictiveness, and excoriates without malice. In strict ratio, however, to the verisimilitude of the performance, must be esteemed the talents of the non-Oriental writer, who was responsible for so lifelike a creation. No man could, have written or could now write such a book unless he were steeped and saturated, not merely in Oriental experience, but in Oriental forms of expression and modes of thought. To these qualifications must be added great powers of insight and long observation. James Morier spent less than six years in Persia; and yet in a lifetime he could scarcely have improved upon the quality of his diagnosis. If the scenic and poetic accessories of a Persian picture are (except in the story of Yusuf and Mariam and a few other instances) somewhat wanting, their comparative neglect is more than compensated by the scrupulous exact.i.tude of the dramatic properties with which is invested each incident in the tale. The hero, a characteristic Persian adventurer, one part good fellow, and three parts knave, always the plaything of fortune--whether barber, water-carrier, pipe-seller, dervish, doctor?s servant, sub-executioner, scribe and mollah, outcast, vender of pipe-sticks, Turkish merchant, or secretary to an amba.s.sador--equally accepting her buffets and profiting by her caresses, never reluctant to lie or cheat or thieve, or get the better of anybody else in a warfare where every one was similarly engaged in the effort to get the better of him, and equipped with the ready casuistry to justify any transgression of the moral code, Hajji Baba never strikes a really false chord, or does or says anything intrinsically improbable; but, whether in success or adversity, as a victim of the roguery of others, or as a rogue himself, is faithful to a type of human character which modern times and a European surrounding are incapable of producing, but which is natural to a state of society in which men live by their wits, where the scullion of one day may be the grandee of the next, and the loftiest is not exempt from the extreme vicissitudes of fortune, and in which a despotic sovereign is the apex of a half-civilised community of jealous and struggling slaves.

Perhaps the foibles of the national character upon which the author is most severe are those of imposture in the diverse and artistic shapes in which it is practised by the modern Persian. He delights in stripping bare the sham piety of the austere Mohammedan, the gullibility of the pilgrims to the sacred shrines, the sanctimonious humbug of the lantern-jawed devotees of k.u.m. One of his best portraits is that of the wandering dervish, who befriends and instructs, and ultimately robs Hajji Baba, and who thus explains the secrets of his trade:--

?It is not great learning that is required to make a dervish; a.s.surance is the first ingredient. By impudence I have been a prophet, by impudence I have wrought miracles, by impudence I have restored the dying to health--by impudence, in short, I lead a life of great ease, and am feared and respected by those who, like you, do not know what dervishes are.?

Equally unsparing is his exposure of the reputed pillars of the Church, _mollahs_ and _mushteheds_, as ill.u.s.trated by his excellent stories of the Mollah Bas.h.i.+ of Tehran, and of the mollah Nadan. He ridicules the combined ignorance and pretensions of the native quacks, who have in nowise improved since his day. He a.s.sumes, as he still might safely do, the venality of the _kadi_ or official interpreter of the law. He places upon the lips of an old Curd a candid but unflattering estimate of the Persian character, ?whose great and national vice is lying, and whose weapons, instead of the sword and spear, are treachery, deceit, and falsehood?--an estimate which he would find no lack of more recent evidence to corroborate. And he revels in his tales of Persian cowardice, whether it be at the mere whisper of a Turcoman foray, or in conflict with the troops of a European Power, putting into the mouth of one of his characters the famous saying which it is on record that a Persian commander of that day actually employed: ?O Allah, Allah, if there was no dying in the case, how the Persians would fight!? In this general atmosphere of cheerful rascality and fraud an agreeable climax is reached when Hajji Baba is all but robbed of his patrimony by his own mother! It is the predominance in the narrative of these and other of the less attractive aspects of Persian character that has led some critics, writing from the charitable but ill-informed distance of an English arm-chair, to deprecate the apparent insensibility of the author to the more amiable characteristics of the Iranian people. Similarly, though doubtless with an additional instigation of amba.s.sadorial prudence, Sir Harford Jones-Brydges, Morier?s own chief, wrote in the Introduction to his own Report of his Mission to the Persian Court these words:--

?One may allow oneself to smile at some of the pages of ?Hajji Baba?; but it would be just as wise to estimate the national character of the Persians from the adventures of that fict.i.tious person, as it would be to estimate the national character of the Spaniards from those of Don Raphael or his worthy coadjutor, Ambrose de Lamela.... Knowing the Persians as well as I do, I will boldly say the greater part of their vices originate in the vices of their Government, while such virtues as they do possess proceed from qualities of the mind.?

To this nice, but, as I think, entirely affected discrimination between the sources respectively of Persian virtues and vices, it might be sufficient answer to point out that in ?Hajji Baba? Morier takes up the pen of the professional satirist, an instrument which no satirist worthy of the name from Juvenal to Swift has ever yet dipped in honey or in treacle alone. But a more candid and certainly a more amusing reply was that which Morier himself received, after the publication of the book, from the Persian envoy whom he had escorted to England. This was how the irritated amba.s.sador wrote:

?What for you write ?Hajji Baba,? sir? King very angry, sir. I swear him you never write lies; but he say, yes--write. All people very angry with you, sir. That very bad book, sir. All lies, sir. Who tell you all these lies, sir? What for you not speak to me? Very bad business, sir.

_Persian people very bad people, perhaps, but very good to you, sir._ What for you abuse them so bad??

There is a world of unconscious admission in the sentence which I have italicised, and which may well stand in defence of Morier?s caustic, but never malicious, satire.

There is, however, to my mind, a deeper interest in the book than that which arises from its good-humoured flagellation of Persian peccadilloes. Just as no one who is unacquainted with the history and leading figures of the period can properly appreciate Sir Thomas More?s ?Utopia,? or ?Gulliver?s Travels,? so no one who has not sojourned in Persia, and devoted considerable study to contemporary events, can form any idea of the extent to which ?Hajji Baba? is a picture of actual personages, and a record of veritable facts. It is no frolic of imaginative satire only; it is a historical doc.u.ment. The figures that move across the stage are not pasteboard creations, but the living personalities, disguised only in respect of their names, with whom Morier was brought daily into contact while at Tehran. The majority of the incidents so skilfully woven into the narrative of the hero?s adventures actually occurred, and can be identified by the student who is familiar with the incidents of the time. Above all, in its delineation of national customs, the book is an invaluable contribution to sociology, and conveys a more truthful and instructive impression of Persian habits, methods, points of view, and courses of action, than any disquisition of which I am aware in the more serious volumes of statesmen, travellers, and men of affairs. I will proceed to identify some of these personages and events.

No more faithful portrait is contained in the book than that of the king, Fath Ali Shah, the second of the Kajar Dynasty, and the great-grandfather of the reigning Shah. His vanity and ostentation, his pa.s.sion for money and for women, his love of flattery, his discreet deference, to the priesthood (ill.u.s.trated by his annual pilgrimage, in the garb of penance, to the shrine of Fatima at k.u.m), his royal state, his jewels, and his ambrosial beard, form the background of every contemporary work, and are vividly reproduced in these pages. The royal processions, whether in semi-state when he visited the house of a subject, or in full state when he went abroad from the capital, and the annual departure of the royal household for the summer camp at Sultanieh, are drawn from the life. Under the present Shah they have been shorn of a good deal of their former splendour. The Grand Vizier of the narrative, ?that notorious minister, decrepit in person, and nefarious in conduct,? ?a little old man, famous for a hard and unyielding nature,? was Mirza Sheffi who was appointed by Fath Ali Shah to succeed if Ibrahim, the minister to whom his uncle had owed his throne, and whom the nephew repaid by putting to death. The Amin-ed-Dowleh, or Lord High Treasurer, ?a large, coa.r.s.e man, and the son of a greengrocer of Ispahan,? was Mohammed Hussein Khan, the second personage of Court. Only a slight verbal change is needed to transform Hajji Baba?s master, Mirza Ahmak, the king?s chief physician into Mirza Ahmed, the _Hakim Bas.h.i.+_ of Fath Ali Shah. Namerd Khan, the chief executioner, and subsequent chief of the hero, whose swaggering cowardice is so vividly depicted, was, in actual life, Feraj Ullah Khan.

The commander of the King?s Camel Corps, who had to give up his house to the British _Elchi_, was Mohammed Khan. The Poet Laureate of the story, Asker Khan, shared the name of his sovereign, Fath Ali Khan; and the story of his mouth being filled on one occasion with gold coins, and stuffed on another with sugar-candy, as a mark of the royal approbation, is true. The serdar of Erivan, ?an abandoned sensualist, but liberal and enterprising,? was one Ha.s.san Khan; and the romantic tale of the Armenians, Yusuf and Mariam, down to the minutest details, such as the throwing of a hand-grenade into one of the subterranean dwellings of the Armenians, and the escape of the girl by leaping from a window of the serdar?s palace at Erivan, is a reproduction of incidents that actually occurred in the Russo-Persian war of that date. Finally, Mirza Firouz Khan, the Persian envoy to Great Britain, and the hero of ?Hajji Baba in England?, is a portrait of Mirza Abul Ha.s.san Khan, a nephew of the former Grand Vizier, who visited London as the Shah?s representative in 1809-10, and who was subsequently sent on a similar mission to Petersburg. This individual made a considerable sensation in England by his excellent manners and witty retorts, among which one is worthy of being quoted that does not appear in Morier?s pages. When asked by a lady in London whether they did not wors.h.i.+p the sun in Persia, he replied, ?Oh yes, madam, and so would you in England too, if you ever saw him!?

The international politics of the time are not without their serious place in the pages of ?Hajji Baba.? The French amba.s.sador who is represented in chapter lxxiv. as retiring in disgrace from Tehran, was Napoleon?s emissary, General Gardanne, who, after his master had signed the Peace of Tilsit with the Tsar, found a very different estimate of the value of the French alliance entertained by the Persian Court.

The English emba.s.sy, whose honorific reception is described in chapter lxxvii., was that of Sir Harford Jones. The disputes about hats, and chairs, and stockings, and other points of divergence between English and Persian etiquette, are historical; and a contemporary oil-painting of the first audience with the Shah, as described by Morier, still exists on the walls of the royal palace of Negaristan in the Persian capital. There may be seen the portraits of Sir Harford Jones and Sir John Malcolm, as well as of General Gardanne, grouped by a pardonable anachronism in the same picture. There is the king with his spider?s waist and his lordly beard; and there are the princes and the ministers of whom we have been reading. The philanthropic efforts of the Englishmen to force upon the reluctant Persians the triple boon of vaccination, post-mortem examinations, and potatoes, are also authentic.

Quite a number of smaller instances may be cited in which what appears only as an incident or an ill.u.s.tration in the story is in reality a historical fact. It is the case that the Turcoman freebooters did on more than one occasion push their _alamans_ or raids as far even as Ispahan. The tribe by whom Hajji Baba is taken captive in the opening chapters is seemingly rather the Yomuts beyond Atrek River than the Tekke Turcomans of Akhal Tekke. I have myself ridden over the road between Abbasabad and Shahrud, where they were in the habit of swooping down upon the defenceless and terror-stricken caravans; and the description of the panic which they created among vastly superior numbers of Persians is in nowise exaggerated. The pillar of skulls which Aga Mohammed Shah is represented as having erected in chapter vii. was actually raised by that truculent eunuch at Bam in Persian Beluchistan, and was there noticed by an English traveller, Sir Henry Pottinger, in 1810. I have seen the story of the unhappy Zeenab and her fate described a review of ?Hajji Baba? as more characteristic of the seraglio at Stamboul than of the harem at Tehran. This is an ignorant remark; for this form of execution was more than once inflicted during the reign of Fath Ali Shah. At s.h.i.+raz there still exists a deep well in the mountain above city, down which, until recently, women convicted of adultery were hurled; and when I was at Bokhara in 1888 there had, in the preceding year, been more than one case of execution by being thrown from the summit of the Minari-Kalan or Great Minaret. It is an interesting but now well-nigh forgotten fact that the Christian dervish who is represented in chapter lix. as publicly disputing with the _mollahs_ in a _medresseh_ at Ispahan, and as writing a refutation of the Mohammedan creed, was no other than the famous Henry Martyn, who created a prodigious sensation by the fearlessness of his polemics while at s.h.i.+raz, and who subsequently died at Tokat, in Asiatic Turkey, in 1812.

The incidental mention of the great diamond or ?Mountain of Light? that was worn by Fath Ali Shah in one of his _bazubands_ or armlets, though historically inaccurate, is also of interest to English readers; since the jewel alluded to is the Daria-i-Nur or Sea of Light, the sister-stone to the Koh-i-Nur or Mountain of Light, which, in the previous century, had been carried from Persia to Afghanistan, and in this century pa.s.sed through the hands of Runjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, into the regalia of the British crown. The ?Sea of Light? is still at Tehran.

In two respects the Persia of ?Hajji Baba? differs notably from the Persia of to-day. The national, and still more the court dress, as depicted by him, have been considerably modified. The Kashmir shawls and turbans, and the red-cloth gaiters, which were _de rigueur_ at the court of Fath Ali Shah, are now only seen at the _salams_ or official levees of Nasr-ed-Din Shah. Nor does the young dandy of modern Tehran wear the lofty black sheepskin _kolah_ or hat, indented at the top and stuck on sideways, as described by Morier. A lower and less pretentious variety of the same head-gear adorns the brow of the _fin de siecle_ Iranian gallant. Secondly, the Tehran of ?Hajji Baba? has been transmogrified almost out of existence; and, in particular, the fortified Ark or Palace of the earlier Kajars, with its watch-towers and the open porch over the gates in which the king sat to see reviews, and the lofty octagonal tower from which Zeenab was thrown, have been entirely obliterated in the more s.p.a.cious architectural reconstruction of the reigning Shah.

Unchanged, however, are those customs by which now, as then, the royal coffers require to be replenished or the royal purse relieved by the application of a judicious spur to the backward generosity of the subjects of the King of Kings. Still, as described in ?Hajji Baba,?

is the visit of the Sovereign to any of his officials the recognised intimation that a large money equivalent is expected for the unsolicited honour. Still must the presents of the king be repaid by gifts of more than corresponding value to the bearers of the royal favour. Still is the sending of the royal _khalat_ or dress of office adopted as an ingenious method of discharging the arrears of wages due to the royal ministers or servants. In chapter x.x.xiii. the sub-lieutenant to the chief executioner gives an admirable account, as true now as when penned, of the methods by which salaries are capable of being recruited in Persia; and the speech of the grand vizier in chapter lxxviii., on political morality as interpreted in that country, would, I am confident, have been enthusiastically re-echoed by every subsequent inc.u.mbent of that high office.

The art, however, in which Morier especially excels is of introducing, so to speak by a side wind, as a subordinate incident in the narrative, or as a spontaneous comment on the lips of the various _dramatis personae_, informing and luminous knowledge upon the local charactistics of places, or the social customs of peoples. For instance, he takes advantage of being at Meshed to bring in the pa.s.sion-play of Hussein, as annually enacted by the s.h.i.+ah Mohammedans in the month of Moharrem; of mentioning Herat to introduce the _bad-i-sad-o-bist-ruz_ or famous ?wind of 120 days?; of conducting his hero to k.u.m, to describe the curious prescription of _bast_ or sanctuary that still adheres to that sacred spot; and of his arrival at Bagdad, to inflict upon him the familiar pest of the Bagdad pimple. His description of camp-life among the Turcomans is only surpa.s.sed in fidelity by his corresponding picture of the vagrant existence of the border Curds; nor is there anywhere to be found a more dramatic realisation of the incidents of a nomad encampment, the arrangement and meals and etiquette, the striking of the tents, and the straggling march of the tribes with their flocks and herds, than in the narrative of the child-hood of the Curdish slave Zeenab.

It is to be noted that Morier represents her as a Yezeedi or devil-wors.h.i.+pper (though it is more than doubtful whether the Yezeedis could ever with justice be so described), and attributes her origin to one of the incestuous nocturnal orgies that were said to be practised by that people, and that gave rise to the epithet Chiragh Sunderun, or Lamp Extinguishers. It is to be observed, however, that in such a case Zeenab would have known her parentage on the maternal rather than on the paternal side; whereas Morier, by a curious error, represents her as knowing her father, but being in ignorance of the ident.i.ty of her mother.

In different chapters of ?Hajji Baba? we are further initiated into the domestic life and habits of the Persians. We learn that it is considered a mark of respect for a man to keep his hands and feet hidden beneath the folds of his dress. In two places we have mention of the profoundly Persian device of conforming with the letter, while trifling with the spirit of the religious law, by neatly ripping open a seam as a subst.i.tute for rending the fabric of a garment in token of woe. We are reminded of the prohibition from exacting interest that is imposed upon the true believer, and of the still common custom of divination by extracting a _fall_ from the pages of Hafiz or Saadi. We may gain a good deal of information about the culinary methods of Turcomans, Persians, and Curds; the operations of the _hammam_ or bath are disclosed to us, and we are surrept.i.tously introduced along with the hero to the mysteries the Persian harem or _anderun_, and its petty existence, inane frivolity, open jealousy, and clandestine intrigue. The death and funeral of the old barber provide an opportunity for a valuable account of Persian customs upon those occasions.

Similarly the story of Yusuf and Mariam is utilised to furnish an equally interesting description of the Armenian ritual in cases of betrothal and marriage. Incidentally the return of the poet Asker from his captivity among the Turcomans acquaints us with the curious habit of bringing back a person supposed to be dead, not by the door, but through the roof; and when Hajji Baba, from the terrace of the doctor?s house, listens to ?the distant din of the king?s band, the crash of the drums, and the swell of the trumpets, announcing sunset,? he is alluding to a custom that has prevailed for centuries in all the Mohammedan courts of Central Asia and India, that is supposed to be a relic of extinct sun-wors.h.i.+p, and that is still observed in seats of royal or princely rule, alike at Tehran, Ispahan and Kabul.

Mention should not be omitted, in pa.s.sing, of the perfect familiarity of the author both with cultured and colloquial Persian and with the Persian cla.s.sics. An Oriental metaphor, however hyperbolical, slips as easily from his lips as though it had always rested there. Quotations from Hafiz and Saadi play as large and as apposite a part in his dialogue as they do to this day in the conversation of any well-educated Asiatic who has been brought up in countries where Persian is the language of literature and fas.h.i.+on. No one who has not been in the East can fully appreciate the talent for self-detachment and for successful a.s.similation of an alien mode of thought and expression which such an exercise demands.

Nor, though this is beside the main purpose of the work, should we shut our eyes to the side-lights which are thrown upon foreign nations; and which, while they lend additional testimony to the insight of the writer, are invaluable as showing the point of view from which European inst.i.tutions and customs were then and are still for the most part regarded by the Asiatic Mussulman. How amusing is the description, placed in chapter xix., in the mouth of the Chief Physician, of the main external differences between Persians and Europeans, and in the ensuing chapter, of the contemporary costume, regarded by the Persians as so improper, of the English doctor who came in the train of Sir Harford Jones. In those days the only Feringhis known to the Persians were the English, the Russians, and the French; and it no doubt was a matter of genuine surprise to the Persian amba.s.sador to find when he arrived at Constantinople that the Franks consisted of many nations with as many kings. The Persians were particularly concerned to find out the truth about ?the infidel Boonapoort,? whose career they much admired from its supposed resemblance to that of their own hero Nadir Shah. Nor is there less humour in Hajji Baba?s attempt to make progress in the study of their language by writing down the words that he heard most frequently in the conversation of the French envoys, viz. sacre, Paris, and l?Empereur. That the Persian Court was thoroughly alive to the jealous and interested struggle of the two Powers, England and France, to acquire political ascendency at Tehran, is sufficiently evident from the history of the period, but is admirably ill.u.s.trated by the diplomatic argument placed in chapter lxxvi in the mouth of Fath Ali Shah. Finally, can a pupil of Party Government, and much more a member of the House of Commons, read without a delicious emotion this description of the system under which is conducted the government of the greatest empire in the world?--

?Then they have certain houses full of madmen, who meet half the year round for the purpose of quarrelling. If one set says white, the other cries black; and they throw more words away in settling a common question than would suffice one of our _muftis_ during a whole reign.

In short, nothing can be settled in the state, be it only whether a rebellious Aga is to have his head cut off and his property confiscated, or some such trifle, until these people have wrangled.?

Such are among the many merits of this admirable, and, I would fain add, immortal book. Even were the Persians be blotted out of existence as a nation, even though Tehran, and Meshed, and s.h.i.+raz were to share the fate of Persepolis and Susa, it would yet remain as a portrait of unrivalled humour and accuracy of a people who, though now in their decadence, have played an immense and still play a not wholly insignificant part in the complex drama of Asiatic politics. It is the picture of a people, light-hearted, nimble-witted, and volatile, but subtle, hypocritical, and insincere; metaphysicians and casuists, courtiers and rogues, gentlemen and liars, _hommes d?esprit_ and yet incurable cowards. To explain the history and to elucidate the character of this composite people great tomes have been written. I am conscious myself of having added no inconsiderable quota to their bulk; but if all this solid literature were to be burned by an international hangman to-morrow, and were ?Hajji Baba? and the ?Sketches? of Sir John Malcolm alone to survive, I believe that the future diplomatist or traveller who visited Persia, or the scholar who explored it from a distance, would from their pages derive more exact information about Persian manners, and acquire a surer insight into Persian character, than he would gain from years of independent study or months of local residence. Together the two works are an epitome of modern and moribund Iran.

GEORGE N. CURZON.

INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE

TO THE REV. DR. FUNDGRUBEN CHAPLAIN TO THE SWEDISH EMBa.s.sY AT THE OTTOMAN PORTE

ESTEEMED AND LEARNED SIR, You will be astonished to see yourself addressed by one, of whose existence you are, perhaps, ignorant, and whose name doubtless long since been erased from your memory. But when I put you in mind of an English traveller, who (forgive my precision) sixteen years ago was frequently admitted to enjoy the pleasure of your conversation, and who was even honoured with a peculiar share of your attention, perhaps then you may indulgently recollect him, and patiently submit to peruse the following volumes, to which he now takes the liberty of prefixing your name.

At the time to which I allude, your precious hours were employed in searching into the very depths of hieroglyphic lore, and you were then almost entirely taken up in putting together the fruits of those your researches, which have since appeared, and astonished the world in that very luminous work, ent.i.tled ?The Biography of Celebrated Mummies.? I have frequently since reflected upon the debt of grat.i.tude which you imposed by allowing me to engross so much of your time, and upon matters of comparatively trivial importance, when your mind must have been so much engaged upon those grave and weighty subjects, which you have treated with such vast learning, clearness, and perspicuity in your above-mentioned treatise. In particular I have ever borne in mind a conversation when one beautiful moonlight night, reclining upon a sofa of the Swedish palace, and looking out of those windows which command so magnificent and extensive a view of the city and harbour of Constantinople, we discussed subjects which had reference to the life and manners of the extraordinary people its inhabitants.

Excuse me for reporting back your own words; but as the subject interested me much, I recollect well the observation you made, that no traveller had ever satisfied you in his delineation of Asiatic manners; ?for,? said you, ?in in general their mode of treating the subject is by sweeping a.s.sertions, which leave no precise image on the mind, or by disjointed and insulated facts, which, for the most part, are only of consequence as they relate to the individual traveller himself.? We were both agreed, that of all the books which have ever been published on the subject, the ?Arabian Nights? Entertainments? give the truest picture of the Orientals, and that, for the best of all reasons, because it is the work of one of their own community. ?But,? said you, ?notwithstanding they have been put into an European dress, weeded of their numerous repet.i.tions, and brought as near to the level of our ideas as can be, still few would be likely to understand them thoroughly who have not lived some time in the East, and who have not had frequent opportunities of a.s.sociating with its inhabitants. For,? you added, opening a volume of that work at the same time, ?to make a random observation upon the first instance which occurs here in the history of the three Calendars, I see that Anima, after having requested the porter whom she had met to follow her with his basket, stopped at a closed door, and having rapped, a Christian with a long white beard opened it, into whose hand she put some money without saying a single word. But the Christian, who knew what she wanted, went in again, and a little while after returned, bringing a large pitcher full of excellent wine.? You observed, ?that although we who lived in Turkey might know that wine was in most cities prohibited to be sold openly, and that if it was to be found it would be in the house of a Christian, many of whom disposed of it in a mysterious manner to the Mohammedans; yet that circ.u.mstance would not immediately occur to the mere European reader, who, perhaps, would expect something to be forthcoming in the future narrative, from what is, in fact, only a trait of common life.?

I then suggested, that, perhaps, if an European would give a correct idea of Oriental manners, which would comprehend an account of the vicissitudes attendant upon the life of an Eastern, of his feelings about his government, of his conduct in domestic life, of his hopes and plans of advancement, of his rivalities and jealousies, in short, of everything that is connected both with the operations of the mind and those of the body, perhaps his best method would be to collect so many facts and anecdotes of actual life as would ill.u.s.trate the different stations and ranks which compose a Mussulman community, and then work them into one connected narrative, upon the plan of that excellent picture of European life, ?Gil Blas? of Le Sage.

To this you were pleased to object, because you deemed it almost impossible that an European, even supposing him to have rejected his own faith and adopted the Mohammedan, as in the case of Monsieur de Bonneval, who rose to high rank in the Turkish government, and of Messrs. C---- and B---- in more modern times (the former a _Topchi Bas.h.i.+_, or general of artillery, the latter an attendant upon the Capitan Pasha), could ever so exactly seize those nice shades and distinctions of purpose, in action and manner, which a pure Asiatic only could. To support your argument, you ill.u.s.trated it by observing, that neither education, time, nor talent, could ever give to a foreigner, in any given country, so complete a possession of its language as to make him pa.s.s for a native; and that, do what he would, some defect in idiom, or even some too great precision in grammar, would detect him. ?But,?

said you, ?if a native Oriental could ever be brought to understand so much of the taste of Europeans, in investigations of this nature, as to write a full and detailed history of his own life, beginning with his earliest education, and going through to its decline, we might then stand a chance of acquiring the desired knowledge.

This conversation, reverend sir, has remained treasured up in my mind; for having lived much in Eastern countries, I never lost sight of the possibility of either falling in with a native who might have written his own adventures, or of forming such an intimacy with one, as might induce him faithfully to recite them, and thus afford materials for the work which my imagination had fondly conceived might be usefully put together. I have always held in respect most of the customs and habits of the Orientals, many of which, to the generality of Europeans, appear so ridiculous and disgusting, because I have ever conceived them to be copies of ancient originals. For, who can think the custom of eating with one?s fingers disgusting, as now done in the East, when two or more put their hands into the same mess, and at the same time read that part of our sacred history which records, ?He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish,? etc.? I must own, every time that, dining with my Eastern friends, I performed this very natural operation (although, at the same time, let it be understood that I have a great respect for knives and forks), I could not help feeling myself to be a living ill.u.s.tration of an ancient custom, and a proof of the authenticity of those records upon which our happiness depends. Whenever I heard the exclamation so frequently used in Persia, on the occasion of little miseries, ?What ashes are fallen on my head!? instead of seeing anything ridiculous in the expression, I could not but meditate on the coincidence which so forcibly ill.u.s.trated one of the commonest expressions of grief as recorded in ancient writ.

It is an ingenious expression which I owe to you, sir, that the manners of the East are, as it were, stereotype. Although I do not conceive that they are quite so strongly marked, yet, to make my idea understood, I would say that they are like the last impressions taken from a copperplate engraving, where the whole of the subject to be represented is made out, although parts of it from much use have been obliterated.

If I may be allowed the expression, a picturesqueness pervades the whole being of Asiatics, which we do not find in our own countries, and in my eyes makes everything relating to them so attractive as to create a desire to impart to others the impressions made upon myself. Thus, in viewing a beautiful landscape, the traveller, be he a draughtsman or not, _tant bien que mal_, endeavours to make a representation of it; and thus do I apologise for venturing before the public even in the character of a humble translator.

Impressed with such feelings you may conceive the fulness of my joy, when not very long after the conversation above mentioned, having returned to England, I was fortunate enough to be appointed to fill an official situation in the suite of an amba.s.sador, which our government found itself under the necessity of sending to the Shah of Persia.

Persia, that imaginary seat of Oriental splendour! that land of poets and roses! that cradle of mankind, that uncontaminated source of Eastern manners lay before me, and I was delighted with the opportunities which would be afforded me of pursuing my favourite subject. I had an undefined feeling about the many countries I was about to visit, which filled my mind with vast ideas of travel.

?Sive per Syrtes iter aestuosas, Sive facturus per inhospitalem Caucasum, vel quae loca fabulosus Lambit Hydaspes.?

I was in some degree like a French lady of my acquaintance, who had so general a notion of the East, that upon taking leave of her, she enjoined me to get acquainted with a friend of hers, living, as she said, _quelque part dans les Indes_, and whom, to my astonishment, I found residing at the _Cape of Good Hope!_