Persian court

“ THE ANNOUNCEMENT. In the rich audience room of the Persian palace the Shāh was seated upon the massive throne, and robed in royal raiment; he was holding a council with his high officials, when a messenger was announced who bore news of the greatest importance to the king. Then he learned that the heir of his throne had deserted his domain, and was perhaps even now beyond the reach of pursuit. The anger of the monarch was so uncontrolled that his court officials were paralyzed with fear, knowing that any one of them who spoke an unfortunate word might be hurried away to the executioner. ”

“ During this period Persia had many men of culture, and, indeed, she boasted of one literary king.
Sultān Ahmed Ilkhāni, who reigned over Bagdad, Azerbaijān, and some parts of Asia Minor, conducted his court with great pomp and splendor. He was one of the most accomplished men of the age, being an artist and illuminator as well as a musical composer. His beautiful calligraphy, in various languages, was highly celebrated, and his poetical productions, in both the Persian and Turkish tongues, were considered very meritorious. ”

“ Persia proper was a comparatively small province, but the tide of conquest gathered many nations beneath her banners, and the dominion of Cyrus extended from the Mediterranean to the Indus, and from the snowy peaks of the Caucasus, downward to the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The court of Darius was enriched by tributes from Egypt and Babylonia, from Assyria and India, from Media, Lydia, Phœnicia and many other lands. ”

“ In this respect the powers of the foreign representatives in Persia, now numbering ten (Great Britain, Russia, France, Turkey, Austria-Hungary, Germany, United States of America, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands) vary considerably, some having the power of condemning a criminal to death, while others cannot do more than fine and imprison for short periods. Suits, civil and criminal, between foreign subjects are altogether out of Persian jurisdiction, and are judged by the representatives of the foreign powers accredited to Persia. ”

“ There are but few laws in the Vendīdad, however absurd, that may not find a counterpart in the legislation of the Greeks or Latins.
Every crime, according to the Persian law, makes the guilty man [198] liable to two penalties, one here on earth and another in the next world, but in ancient Persia, as in modern legislation, there was a money value attached to many crimes, and the rich criminal escaped by paying his fine, so far as this present world was concerned. ”

“ Not but that they charge the sovereign with violence and injustice: for it is a common expression in their language, when a person has sustained an injury and complains to the judge, to say: "He has played the king with me?"—"Art thou then king?" cries the Persian to the rapacious governor who robs him of his property, and harasses him with his extortions. They murmur against the man, but they submit to the divine will of which the monarch is the organ. ”

“ No one can be forcibly removed from the tribunal which is entitled to give judgement on his case to another tribunal.
Art. 12. No punishment can be decreed or executed save in conformity with the Law.
Art. 13. Every person’s house and dwelling is protected and safeguarded, and no dwelling-place may be entered save in such case and in such way as the Law has decreed.
Art. 14. No Persian can be exiled from the country, or prevented from residing in any part thereof, or compelled to reside in any specified part thereof, save in such cases as the Law may explicitly determine. ”

“ In Persi, the distribution of justice consists chiefly in the officials ruthlessly looting the applicants of everything lootable, and the weightiest task of the officials is intriguing together against the pocket of the luckless wight who ventures upon seeking equity at their hands. A sorrowful-visaged husbandman is evidently experiencing the easy simplicity of Persian civil justice as I enter the garden ”

“ The Persians take rigid cognizance of the charge of ingratitude, a crime which renders a man extremely odious; yet not in any country but Persia is it comprehended in the animadversion of the laws. For the Persian who returns not a good office, when he has it in his power, is most severely punished. They conclude that the ungrateful man must pay no regard to his friends, to his relations, to his parents, to his country, or to the gods. Besides, they think he must immediately become impudent in consequence of his ingratitude; and impudence they deem the forerunner of all vice, and profligacy. ”

“ The honest, the well-to-do man, they reason, has nothing whatever to fear from anybody, and if a man chooses to be a criminal, he must take the consequences of it. The more severe the punishment the less crime there will be in the country. Persian law prevents crime.
In a province like Sistan, where the people are not quite up-to-date as in other parts of Persia, naturally, ways which to us may seem very cruel have to be applied by the Amir to impress the people. ”

“ In Persia, it is considered to be a point of honour to avenge the blood of a relative; and it may be well imagined that this reproach from his mother stung the young prince to the quick. Sending at once for the man he had pardoned, he demanded of him what punishment a person should receive who had behaved badly to his sovereign and benefactor. The unhappy man is said to have replied that such an one deserved to be burnt alive; and Lutf'ali Khan, forgetful of his princely word, had the barbarity to order that this sentence should be forthwith executed on him who had pronounced it. ”

“ But under all this lies the inherent rottenness of Persian administration, an abyss of official corruption and infamy without a bottom or a shore, a corruption of heredity and tradition, unchecked by public opinion or the teachings of even an elementary education in morals and the rudiments of justice. There are few men pure enough to judge their fellows or to lift clean hands to Heaven, and power and place are valued for their opportunities for plunder.
In no part of Persia did I hear any complaint of the tribute levied by the Shah. It is regarded as legitimate. ”

“ A Persian cannot form any idea of our system of procedure, and the delays attendant on it: he prefers arbiry but speedy justice, to the tediousness of a regular investigation. Still less has he any conception of the equality of all men in the sight of the law, though it is inculcated in the Koran, and though despotim and venality alone have destroyed it. The protection which the law affords to the poor against the oppression of the rich, appears to him as but a dream: because in Persia the humbler classes are always sacrificed to the opulent and the powerful ”

“ I had goloshes on over my boots, and rode off with one of B⸺’s servants to the house of the Eyn-ul-Molk (eye of the state) ; such titles, not being hereditary ones, are usual among the statesmen and great officials of Persia.
“The Sword of the State,” “The Pillar of the Kingdom,” “The Shadow of the King,” are all titles in actual use; they are sufficiently high-sounding and poetical even to satisfy a Persian’s sense of dignity.
No sooner is a prince born, than the king proceeds to give him a title, which as he grows in dignity and years is often changed for a higher one ”

“ Their interests are attended to by a delegate who is appointed by the Bombay Parsis and resides at Teherān.
The non-Mussulman Persian subjects, particularly those in the provinces, were formerly much persecuted, but since 1873, when Nasru’d-Dīn Shah returned to Persia from his first journey to Europe they have been treated more liberally. In cities where many non-Mussulman subjects reside a special official is appointed to protect them, and the ministry of justice has a special section to look after them and see that they are protected against fanaticism and injustice. ”

“ Law, in the sense in which we understand it, as the avenger of wrong and the sublimely impartial protector of individual rights and liberties, has no existence at all in Persia.
The curse of the country is venal mal-administration. It meets one at every turn, and in protean shapes. There is no official conscience, and no public opinion to act as a check upon official unscrupulousness. Of Government as an institution for the good of the governed there is no conception. ”

“ It has been already observed, that the Persians have no idea of our law proceedings; they have therefore neither counsel, nor attorneys, nor that swarm of blood-suckers, who, under different denominations, intermeddle in Europe in every thing, and while they keep the oyster for themselves, leave the shell only for their clients. In Persia every man pleads his own case. ”

“ It is quite true that Christian missions in Persia do not possess the treaty right to make converts from Mohammedanism. At the same time, it must be remembered that Persians are much more inclined to regard custom than law, nor are they used to the accurate observance of a fine distinction. ”

“ Art. 33. Each of the two Assemblies has the right to investigate and examine every affair of state.
Art. 34. The deliberations of the Senate are ineffective when the National Consultative Assembly is not in session.
Rights of the Persian Throne.
Art. 35. The sovereignty is a trust confided (as a Divine gift) by the people to the person of the King.
Art. 36. The constitutional Monarchy of Persia is vested in the person of His Imperial Majesty Sulṭán Muḥammad ‘Alí Sháh Qájár (may God prolong his sovereignty!) ”

“ Would that His Majesty the Sháh of Persia—may God perpetuate his sovereignty—would inquire from the Consuls of the honored Persian Government who have been in this country, that he might become acquainted with the activities and behavior of this Wronged One. Briefly, they have incited a great many such as Akhtar and others, and are busying themselves in spreading calumnies. It is clear and evident that they will surround with their swords of hatred and their shafts of enmity the one whom they know to be an outcast among men and to have been banished from one country to another. ”

“ More serious for the future of the kingdom than any splendour or magnificence on the part of eminent Persians, was the influence, which in the composition of the court was unavoidable, of his personal servants on the king and on his resolutions—and the danger that court intrigues might override the interest of the empire ”

“ Falsehood they look upon in all cases where it facilitates their ends, not only justifiable, but highly commendable, and good faith, generosity, and gratitude are alike unknown to them. * * * * In short, to close this outline of the Persian diameter," I shall add, without the fear of confutation, that from my own observation, I feel inclined to look upon Persia at the present day to be the very fountainhead of every species of tyranny, cruelty, meanness, injustice, extortion, and infamy, that can disgrace or pollute human nature, or have ever been found in any age or nation." ”

“ The envoy tells us that, in his correspondence with the Persian Government, he artfully avoided pledging the name of the Honourable East India Company, but that he represented unofficially the ravages of the Affghans at Lahore, and mentioned that thousands of the Sheeah inhabitants of that quarter had fled from their cruelty, and had found an asylum in the East India Company's dominions; and he added that, if the King of Persia possessed the ability to check the career of such a prince as Zeman Shah, he would be serving God and man by doing so. ”

“ They are not addicted to the practice of making excursions into Persia for the purpose of plundering, but they were accused by Abbass Meerza of being in the habit of supplying arms to other tribes, to be used against the peaceful subjects of the Shah. In return for those arms, or for other commodities, they received many Persian prisoners, whom they detained as slaves, or sold to the inhabitants of Khiva and Bokhara. At this juncture there were three thousand captive Sheeahs within the city of Serrekhs. ”

“ Passing to the merchant class the opium trade affords a good instance of the most barefaced type of wholesale fraud. Indeed, the fraud of a Persian town is beyond conception. We had a neighbour in Yezd who was considered a fairly respectable man, and whose sole business was the forging of seals. But the fact is that every class, from the highest to the lowest, is thoroughly permeated by the leaven of dishonesty.
There is so little security for property in Persia that men do not consider it worth their while to amass wealth by ordinary means. ”

“ The fact that the Persian Government recognizes the "race religions," such as those of Armenians, Parsees and Jews, has led many to believe that religious liberty exists in Persia. There is a relative tolerance, but nothing more, and even the Parsees and Jews have had until quite lately—and occasionally even now have—to submit to considerable indignities on the part of the Mullahs. For new sects like the Behai, however, who abandon the Mussulman faith, there is absolutely no official protection. Great secrecy has to be maintained to avoid persecution. ”

“ Persian justice is short, sharp, and severe, and a man who commits a crime in the morning, may be minus his head before sunset. Although a Persian would indignantly deny it, some of their punishments are nearly as cruel as the Chinese. ”

“ But it is no uncommon thing in Persia, to see a family, several members of which have manifested a rebellious spirit, nay, even a rebel himself, obtain his confirmation in some high dignity. The court keeps numerous and trusty agents about such a person, and all his motions are known to the government. Kerim's death set the other sons of Mohammed Khan at liberty, and they availed themselves of it to retire to Asterabad. ”