Solace of Lovers. Trost der Liebenden. Helena Perena
reports apocryphal. Whereas the re-habilitation of Marco Polo was a process that lasted centuries, in our fast-living age a few years and confirmation from Russian and Asian witnesses – for the mountain came to Muhammad – were enough to bring the truth to light. Vámbéry is rightly regarded as the leading authority on Central Asia – including Afghanistan and its neighbouring countries – but he also has an open eye for Iran. Should a commemorative coin be struck in his honour, I would propose the following inscription by analogy with Sassanian coins: Hekim Ilan u Anilan, i.e. researcher on Iran and Turan.
In 1860, the Tyrolean engineer Gasteiger took service in Persia as a muhendis (engineer and pioneer). As is well known, there were no paved roads in Persia; the caravans followed the tracks that had been trodden for thousands of years. The mostly dry ground, the excellent quality of the horses and the limited amount of traffic made roads more dispensable than elsewhere. “If you had such good horses in Europe as we have,” the king once said to me, “you would also have poor roads.” Shah Abbas the Great did have paved roads (Khiaban) built on more difficult terrain, such as in the marshlands, on the Caspian Sea and in the Qaflankuh Mountain Range, and he also sought to facilitate transport through the construction of monumental Caravanserais, but as they have not been maintained for more than two centuries, they can hardly serve their purpose anymore. The present king has had short stretches of road built but only to serve a country retreat or hunting ground.
I myself was once a witness to such improvised road construction. We were riding with the king on a hunt in the mountains. The ascent was rough under foot and strewn with loose stones, and the king complained about the poor state of the track; when we returned a few hours later, however, about a hundred men were busy clearing the ground. The sudden appearance of all these people in such barren countryside was a mystery, but it was soon resolved: they were petitioners from the nearby villages, whom the minister had pressganged for a useful purpose in the meantime.
Soon after his arrival, Gasteiger assembled a pioneer corps of 600 men and deployed them to construct the following important roads: 1. a road across the Alborz Mountains (11,500 feet above sea level) via Shahrestanak to Aliabad on the Caspian Sea, 18 German miles; 2. a road from Qazvin to Rasht, height of the pass at Khersun 7,500 feet; 3. on the occasion of the king’s pilgrimage to Karbala near Baghdad, a road to Hamadan over the Alvand (6,000 feet) via Kangavar to the Turkish border and on the return journey from Kangavar to Qom, a total of 120 German miles; 4. a road from Tehran via Damavand city to Amol in Mazandaran Province. Everywhere in the mountains, rock had to be blasted and tunnels excavated and parapets had to be built for protection. The abundance of box trees in Mazandaran is evidenced by the fact that the parapets were often made of this precious wood. Special attention had to be paid in the mountains to installations offering protection against snowdrifts. Gasteiger was also widely involved in the construction of the Anglo-Indian telegraph, and in his book the famous General Goldsmith lavishes impartial praise on Gasteiger’s felicitous work. The latter also enjoyed full royal recognition; he was made a general and Khan, and he had the honour of accompanying the king on his journey through Europe (1873). He now lives in otium cum dignitate in Vienna. As the study of the geology of Persia has not yet made the same progress as in the case of botany, I arranged in 1873 for Dr. Tietze from our world-famous geological institute to travel to Persia, initially on behalf of Baron Reuter, the entrepreneur behind the Persian railways. Later he took royal service. Investigations in the Alborz Mountains, the Siah-Kuh, the mountain range between Kashan, Khansar and Isfahan and the discovery of rich coal and ore deposits are the fruits of his efforts, the details of which will only be fully known to the scholarly world following study of the crystals and fossils he brought back with him.
In 1874, the Royal Persian Government asked the Austro-Hungarian Government to recommend two capable men to organise the postal system and national mint. As a result of the negotiations, Postal Councillor Riederer of Linz and Councillor Pech of the Vienna Mint entered into Persian service for three years.
According to Herodotus, Persia already had an organised postal system. From station to station, a relay of couriers was placed to carry parcels day and night. According to the Book of Esther, the distances from Hind to Kush (from India to Nubia) were enormous. Like other state institutions, this one also disappeared with the decline of the Great Persian Empire and was replaced by privately employed or freelance messengers on foot or on horseback. It was not until the present king came to the throne (1848) that post houses were established with a few government horses at approximate intervals of five German miles to transport state and diplomatic parcels. Private letters were also transported depending on the circumstances, but there was no fixed postage. Also, the letters often arrived damaged and opened, so that private persons could not place their trust in such an erratic system. The speed with which the government couriers were able to reach their destination, even though there was only a change of horses and not riders, can be illustrated by the following examples: the distance from Tehran to Trebizond is about 200 German miles and to Bandar-e Bushehr a little less, and yet the former was covered in ten days and the latter in nine.
There could hardly have been a more worthy choice for organising this essential state institution than Riederer, a man of great strength and energy, with a passion to create something new. He took advantage of his outward journey to confer in Tbilisi about the connections to be arranged and to learn about the principal commercial cities and their needs with regard to services. Shortly after his arrival in the capital, he organised post offices, recruited competent officials who knew the relevant languages, had stamps printed and set the postage at a reasonable rate.
Up to now he has succeeded in running a weekly scheduled mail service with a change of couriers over a total distance of 144 German miles on the northern lines. The service is used to carry simple correspondence, registered letters, money and small consignments of valuables. He also instituted a very practical system of telegraphic communication for sending money from one city to another, with merchants paying out the sums forwarded for a charge of half a percent, thus introducing the beneficial institution of postal money orders to Asia. The confidence of the business community in these innovations has already been demonstrated by expressions of gratitude, a testimony that is all the more eloquent as the business community maintains a certain independence and does not give thanks to order. A major obstacle to proper administration will always be the fact that in oriental cities the streets have no names, the houses no numbers and the individuals no surnames, which makes it almost impossible to reach them in their homes.
Riederer has also endeavoured to link the domestic postal system with those of other countries, especially to establish a direct connection to Russia and Turkey via Trebizond. Given the mutual benefits, the remaining difficulties should soon be overcome. From the results obtained in this short period of time, it can be expected that the new Persian service will not commence before all the post houses on the main lines and the connections with Europe, Mesopotamia and India have been established (cf. Monatsschrift für den Orient, no. 12, 1875: “Das Postwesen in Persien” by Dr. J. E. Polak).
The task of establishing a mint and defining the coinage standard was entrusted to Councillor Pechan. In Persia, the gold Toman is the coinage standard; its value is somewhat lower than that of the Austrian ducat (a thousand Tomans equals 3.3048 kilograms of fine gold, the Austrian ducat 3.4906 kilograms). The alloy for the Toman also contains silver (960 parts fine gold, 30 parts silver and 10 parts other metals). The Toman is soft, pliable, prone to wear and unedged. As a result, in view of the hereditary defect of all Orientals to remove metal from the coins, one rarely finds a full-weight coin, although they all have approximately the same weight, namely 34,425 grams, when they leave the mint. The governors of many cities, such as Qazvin, Rasht, Barfrouch, Isfahan, Shiraz, Kerman and Kermanshah, have the right to mint coins. There are many counterfeit coins in circulation, which makes it necessary to check each individual Toman for its weight and pliability or to hire the services of a money changer (Sarraf) for the purpose. The situation is not much better with the silver coin, the Qiran, which has the additional drawback of a variable fine silver content and therefore, also in view of the high price of gold, is only accepted for payment in small amounts.
These evils prompted the government to purchase minting machines in France and also to recruit a mint master there. Because of the difficulty of transporting the machinery, however, the heavy components were left unprotected on the shores of the