A Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, in the Years 1808 and 1809. James Justinian Morier
of compliments is the only knowledge displayed in their meetings; if, indeed, the visits of ceremony, which alone we witnessed, could be considered a fair specimen of national manners or the state of society.
When visited by a superior, the Persian rises hastily and meets his guest nearly at the door of the apartment: on the entrance of an equal, he just raises himself from his seat, and stands nearly erect; but to an inferior he makes the motion only of rising. When a great man is speaking, the style of respect in Persia is not quite so servile as that in India. In listening the Indians join their hands together, (as in England little children are taught to do in prayer,) place them on their breast, and making inclinations of the body sit mute. A visit is much less luxurious in Persia than in Turkey. Instead of the sophas and the easy pillows of Turkey, the visitor in Persia is seated on a carpet or mat without any soft support on either side, or any thing except his hands, or the accidental assistance of a wall, to relieve the galling posture of his legs. The misery of that posture in its politest form can scarcely be understood by description: you are required to sit upon your heels, as they are tucked up under your hams after the fashion of a camel. To us, this refinement was impossible; and we thought that we had attained much merit in sitting cross-legged as tailors. In the presence of his superiors a Persian sits upon his heels, but only cross-legged before his equals, and in any manner whatever before his inferiors. To an English frame and inexperience, the length of time during which the Persian will thus sit untired on his heels, is most extraordinary; sometimes for half a day, frequently even sleeping. They never think of changing their positions, and like other Orientals consider our locomotion to be as extraordinary as we can regard their quiescence. When they see us walking to and fro, sitting down, getting up, and moving in every direction, often have they fancied that Europeans are tormented by some evil spirit, or that such is our mode of saying our prayers.
Before the close of our visit, it was settled that the Khan should send in the course of that evening the letters with which he had been charged to the Envoy, and that on the morrow he should come to a personal conference, and open his verbal communications.
The Ramazan was now over: the new moon, which marks the termination, was seen on the preceding evening just at sun-set, when the ships at anchor fired their guns on the occasion; and on the morning of our visit, the Bairam was announced by the discharge of cannon. A large concourse of people, headed by the Peish Namaz, went down to the seaside to pray, and when they had finished their prayers, more cannon were discharged. Just before we passed through the gates of the town in returning from our visit, we rode through a crowd of men, women, and children, all in their best clothes, who, by merry-making of every kind were celebrating the feast. Among their sports, I discovered something like the round-about of an English fair, except that it appeared of a much ruder construction. It consisted of two rope-seats suspended, in the form of a pair of scales, from a large stake fixed in the ground. In these were crowded full-grown men who, like boys, enjoyed the continual twirl, in which the conductor of the sport, a poor Arab, was labouring with all his strength to keep the machine.
The feast itself of the Bairam begins of course successively in every season of the natural year, for in the formation of their civil year the Persians, like other Mahomedans, adopt lunar months. When it occurs in summer, the Ramazan, or month of fasting which precedes it, becomes extremely severe; every man of every kind of business, the labourer in the midst of the hardest work, is forbidden to take any kind of nourishment from sun-rise to sun-set, during the longest days of the year. Their full day is calculated from sun-set to sun-set, but their sub-division of time varies like that of the Hindoos and Mussulmans of India, according to the difference of the length of the natural day. In their calculation of the close of the fast, and the commencement of the Bairam, they are seldom assisted by almanacks: it frequently happens, therefore, that the same feast is celebrated two days earlier, or delayed two days later in different parts of the country, according to the state of the atmosphere: as the new moon may be obscured by clouds in one city or displayed in another by the clearness of the sky.
On the 21st of November Mahomed Hassan Khan Karaguzlou paid the appointed visit to the Envoy. A part of the body guard was sent out to meet him, and we received him as before in uniforms and hats. After the usual ceremonies were over, the Envoy and his guest retired to an inner apartment; and after a conference, which lasted four hours, the Khan departed to Bushire with the same escort, to whom on parting he gave a present of fifty Venetian sequins. The conference had been satisfactory, as at dinner the Envoy announced to us that we might now complete all our preparations for a journey to Teheran. Still with a volatility not unusual in the diplomacy of the East, the Khan two days afterwards refused to sign, in the name of the Persian Government, the note of the terms on which they had agreed at their meeting: and at ten o’clock at night the Vice-Governor, and the two Moonshees, came to us. After a long debate they departed; and, to the satisfaction of all parties the business was finally settled the next morning, when, previous to his return to Shiraz, the Khan paid his farewell visit to the Envoy.
He returned to Shiraz; and, as we learned by our next dispatches from Jaffer Ali, immediately appeared before the Prince, where he talked for “seven hours without stopping once,” on the Envoy and his merits. Jaffer Ali added, that he himself had dined with the Prince’s Prime Minister, and that they also had talked till two o’clock in the morning on the same alluring subject. After having both agreed that, by the progress of the negociation, they had already rendered themselves immortal, they retired to rest, and the next morning, the Minister, on the appointment of a Mehmandar to the mission, asked Jaffer Ali for the Moodjdéhlook, or customary present, for which accordingly he received a Cashmirian shawl. In general politics the dispatches stated, that the Russians had renewed hostilities, though General Gardanne, the French Embassador in Persia, had sent four of his officers to the Russian Commander to entreat that he would desist from any further operations; but the Russian answered, that his master had ordered him to fight on. The failure of this attempt had greatly contributed to disgrace the cause of the French; and the Court retrenched in consequence their daily allowances.
The Mehmandar, who was announced in these dispatches, was Mahomed Zeky Khan, (the chief of the Noory tribe, one of the new modeled corps) a great favourite at the Court of Teheran, and with the Prince of Shiraz, and advanced lately by the King to the dignity of Khan. It was added also, that his appointments were more magnificent than any which had ever before been annexed to the Mehmandar of an English Envoy; and, as a further proof of the estimation in which His Majesty’s mission was held, Jaffer Ali stated, that the Prince had prepared for him, as our acting Agent at Shiraz, a rich dress of honour, which, however, he had found means to decline from a fear of the jealousy which it might have excited against him. But the Prince, resolved on bestowing upon him some distinguishing mark of his favour, had given him a shawl, which belonged to one of his own head-dresses, and a young and promising Arab horse, which had been sent as a present to himself by the Governor of Chabi. So well indeed had Jaffer Ali deserved the confidence of both the negociating parties, that Sir Harford Jones, now at the close of these preliminary arrangements, sent him a patent constituting him the Agent for the British affairs at the Court of Shiraz.
It will be recollected that the Nereide, the Sapphire, and the Sylph, sailed with the mission from Bombay on the 12th of September. The Nereide arrived first; the Sapphire also reached Bushire about sun-set on the 18th October. The Arab ships too, that we passed off Cape Verdistan, had come in about noon on the same day, and had continued firing their guns at distant intervals till the evening: but the Sylph, on board which were the Persian Secretary and some of the presents, was yet missing; nor indeed had we seen her, since the second day after that on which we had left together the harbour of Bombay. On the 29th Oct. arrived the Nautilus, H. C. cruizer, which had sailed from the same port on the 22d Sept. Though she had neither seen or heard directly any thing of the Sylph, yet the circumstances of her own passage prepared us to anticipate the worst. The Nautilus had been attacked off the large Tomb, in the Gulph of Persia, by the Joasmee pirates; three only were at first in sight, but on the signal of a gun, a fourth appeared, and together they bore down, two on the quarters and two on the bows of the Nautilus; they were full of men, perhaps six