Isolation and insularity—The town the geographical and political unit—Extension of citizenship to strangers—Bigotry—Oppression and persecution of Parsis[2]—Improvement in their position—Position of Jews—Fanaticism largely non-religious—Position of European colony.

The population of Yezd can only be guessed at, but probably that of the town proper is between thirty and forty thousand, and that of the town and surrounding villages between fifty and sixty thousand. This little community is insular beyond the insularity of islands. Within two hundred miles there are three sizable cities, Shīrāz, Kirmān, and Isfahān, of which Isfahan is slightly the nearest. When you send a letter to Isfahan from Yezd, if your friend writes by return of post you may get back your answer in a month;[37] although a runner, taking the slightly shorter road by the mountains, could go and return within the week. Travelling in the ordinary way the journey takes eight days there, and eight back.

It is a great pity that within the last two years they have got rid of the native telegraph line. During my journey up six years ago this contrivance was a source of never-failing interest and surprise to me. First of all there were the poles. They were rough sticks, exactly like what a washerwoman in England uses for propping up her clothes-line: I suppose, taking the good line with the bad, there was on the average about one insulator to every three poles; this is without counting the insulators which were hung midway between the poles, apparently by way of ornament. The wire itself was at different levels: in a good many places it lay on the ground, but at others it crossed the road about the level of a horseman’s chin. One day in Yezd one of the European residents wanted to send a telegram, and sent to the telegraph office to ask when the line would be up. They sent back a very polite message to say that the trouble was not that the line was down; it was always down: the difficulty was that a camel had stepped upon it.

[38]

Of course they do repair the line: we saw a man repairing it. He had a forked stick about half the length of one of the poles on which the line was hung. With this he caught the wire and hitched it on to the nearest fork of the telegraph pole, a procedure which had at any rate the advantage of economy. I think I may say that telegrams by this line never went faster than the post goes in England. The slightest fall of snow or any other similar cause cut the communications altogether, sometimes for a fortnight; and, on similar lines that were a little longer, if you sent a telegram to your destination while you yourself were on a journey, it was a quite common occurrence for the telegraph master at the next town to ask you to carry it yourself as the quickest way of hastening its arrival.

Such an apparatus as this could hardly be expected to prove a great connecting influence. As a matter of fact, the Yezdi regards the Isfahani as a foreigner. When I was leaving Yezd I remember the sensation amongst my servants when they heard that my successor, who was going to take on most of them, wanted to bring an Isfahani butler. Yezdis hardly recognise the bond of a common country at all. There are[39] three connecting links which appeal to them; the link of a common religion; the link of a common family or business, for the family tie is of a character that includes the relation between employé and employer; and lastly, the link of the common town.[3] The bond of fellow-townsmanship is perhaps not considered a very close one, but for all that it is a real link. However, if you were to suggest to a Yezdi that he ought to have something in common with a Bushīrī, irrespective of the question of religion, simply because they both paid taxes to a common king, I very much doubt whether he would understand what you meant, and, if he did, I am quite sure that he would think that you were either joking or a lunatic.

In the vocabulary of the common people it is difficult to find an intelligible word for country. There is a word for empire, but the natural equivalent in the Persian mind to our expression country, meaning fatherland, is shahr, which denotes a town, or vatan, which is the home-district, and is used in very much the same way. “What is your town?”[40] is the Persian’s way of saying, “Where do you come from?” and although he has been taught to call an Englishman Inglīs, he almost invariably calls England Landan; indeed it is this which we put as an address on all our English letters.

The Yezdi’s ideas on the regions beyond his very narrow horizon are distinctly confused. If you begin to talk to him about other places, you are met not by mere ignorance of geography, but by a conception of the surface of the earth that is ludicrously impossible. It is difficult for a European to conceive of a number of towns and villages, containing several millions of people, bedded out over an enormous desert area considerably larger than the whole of France. It is equally difficult for the Yezdi to conceive of a natural and continuous land. Even those who have travelled a little outside Yezd, and have been obliged to modify slightly the Yezdi conception of the universe, have built up their notions of the world’s surface upon what seems to us a most peculiar first idea; and they have in most cases clung to far more of their original views than we should believe possible.

The Yezdi’s idea of the town as the only geographical and political unit is simply a[41] generalisation from the circumstances of his own city. Yezd is a solitary object rising abruptly out of a vast desert that is about the nearest thing to a vacuum which Nature has yet produced. Then too, the methods by which the Shah retains his half of the government of the country—I say his half, for half of the real control of the people is in the hands of the Mussulman clergy—is in some points similar to the old Roman system of provincial government. The local governor, and not the supreme sovereign, is the real ruler, and he rather than his people is responsible to the head of the State. Of course he is only appointed for a time, and is in constant expectation of recall. Still, while he remains, his power is limited more by the power of the Mohammedan mullās on the one hand, and by the strength and number of his subordinate officials and guards on the other, and much less by the orders and authority that he receives from Tehran. But it is true that the Yezdi exaggerates the separateness of his town, for he hardly recognises the actual limitations to the Governor’s power made and enforced by the Shah. Of course it is thoroughly understood that the Governor only holds his office by the Shah’s appointment; but it is very difficult for the[42] Yezdi to realise that that appointment, while it lasts, is to anything short of autocracy. So to him the local Government is the Government, and the local Governor the real ruler of his country, that is to say of the district surrounding his town; and it would puzzle him if you were to tell him that there were people in this world, living together in one sphere of government, who were not resident in one town, or in the district that belonged to it.

It may be urged that I am speaking of the uneducated and ignorant class, but there are very few in a town like Yezd who are not uneducated and ignorant, and even those who have superadded a certain degree of knowledge, have, in almost all cases, retained the majority of their preconceptions. Persians are very slow in seeing a contradiction; consequently, I believe that this conception of the universe, which is certainly accepted by the ordinary Yezdi, is with small modifications very general even among the slightly travelled or educated classes. Nor should a student of the mental attitude of a people ignore the curious ideas that are to be found amongst the women. One who had moved a great deal amongst the women of Yezd, assured me that they were almost invariably under the[43] impression that the less familiar words occurring in the Persian translation of the Scriptures were English, and that it was a common thing for a woman who was accustomed to the European pronunciation of Persian, to be referred to as knowing the language of the Ferangis. Such people would, of course, fail to comprehend the possibility of a linguistic barrier very much greater than the somewhat considerable difference of dialect which separates them from their neighbours in Isfahan. That such a state of mind would be equally possible amongst the men I do not for a moment suppose, but if this is the view of the women, one may be sure that there is a view of the Ferangi stranger, more or less approximating to it, amongst many of the ignorant hobbledehoys and young fellows, who contribute the largest share to the character of a fanatical Persian crowd.

Now the people of Yezd are quite ready after a due interval to extend the citizenship to strangers from other towns, provided that the newcomers intend to stay, and are ready to enter into the life of the community. The Kāshīs from Kāshān, the Shīrāzīs from Shīrāz, the Lārīs from Lāristān, and the Rashtīs from Rasht, are[44] all well-known Yezd families, and are not by any means regarded as foreigners. Also the Yezd community includes persons of three or four different religions. There are in the town fourteen hundred Parsi houses, the inhabitants of which are Zoroastrian. There is also a smaller colony of Jews. The remainder are Mohammedans; but a considerable number of these belong to the Behāī sect, and are considered rank heretics. The Parsis, though greatly oppressed in the past, and still liable to some disabilities, have of late years become wealthy and prosperous. The Jews are in some ways less restricted than the Parsis; but, as they are still wretchedly poor, they are really much more down-trodden. That religious bigotry still exists among the Mussulmans in Yezd has only lately been made perfectly plain by the ghastly massacre of the Behāīs in the summer of 1903; but Mohammedan bigotry in Persia is by no means without limitations. It is spasmodic in its action, nor does it entirely obliterate every other feeling.

A few years ago Yezd had the reputation of being one of the most bigoted of the towns of Persia. The presence of the Zoroastrian remnant, who were subject to the grossest persecution,[45] served only to keep alive the fire of religious hatred; and the community of Jews in a lesser degree had the same effect. The stories of the way in which the Parsis were bullied and persecuted are interesting, as showing, amongst other things, the intense childishness of the Persian Mussulman. The atmosphere of the town seems to have resembled, as indeed it still resembles, that of a preparatory school for little boys. Up to 1895 no Parsi was allowed to carry an umbrella. Even during the time that I was in Yezd they could not carry one in town. Up to 1895 there was a strong prohibition upon eye-glasses and spectacles; up to 1885 they were prevented from wearing rings; their girdles had to be made of rough canvas, but after 1885 any white material was permitted. Up to 1896 the Parsis were obliged to twist their turbans instead of folding them. Up to about 1898 only brown, grey, and yellow were allowed for the qabā or arkhālūq (body garments), but after that all colours were permitted, except blue, black, bright red, or green. There was also a prohibition against white stockings, and up to about 1880 the Parsis had to wear a special kind of peculiarly hideous shoe with a broad, turned-up toe. Up to 1885 they[46] had to wear a torn cap. Up to about 1880 they had to wear tight knickers, self-coloured, instead of trousers. Up to 1891 all Zoroastrians had to walk in town, and even in the desert they had to dismount if they met a Mussulman of any rank whatsoever. During the time that I was in Yezd they were allowed to ride in the desert, and only had to dismount if they met a big Mussulman. There were other similar dress restrictions too numerous and trifling to mention. Then the houses of both the Parsis and the Jews, with the surrounding walls, had to be built so low that the top could be reached by a Mussulman with his hand extended; they might, however, dig down below the level of the road. The walls had to be splashed with white round the door. Double doors, the common form of Persian door, were forbidden, also rooms containing three or more windows. Bad-girs were still forbidden to the Parsis while we were in Yezd, but in 1900 one of the bigger Parsi merchants gave a large present to the Governor and to the chief mujtahid (Mohammedan priest) to be allowed to build one. Upper rooms were also forbidden.

Up to about 1860 Parsis could not engage in trade. They used to hide things in their cellar[47] rooms, and sell them secretly. They can now trade in the caravanserais or hostelries, but not in the bazaars, nor may they trade in linen drapery. Up to 1870 they were not permitted to have a school for their children.

The amount of the jazīya, or tax upon infidels, differed according to the wealth of the individual Parsi, but it was never less than two tomāns. A toman is now worth about three shillings and eight pence, but it used to be worth much more. Even now, when money has much depreciated, it represents a labourer’s wage for ten days. The money had to be paid on the spot, when the farrash, who was acting as collector, met the man. The farrash was at liberty to do what he liked when collecting jaziya. The man was not even allowed to go home and fetch the money, but was at once beaten until it was given. About 1865 a farrāsh collecting this tax tied a man to a dog, and gave a blow to each in turn.

About 1891 a mujtahid caught a Zoroastrian merchant wearing white stockings in one of the public squares of the town. He ordered the man to be beaten and the stockings taken off. About 1860 a man of seventy went to the bazaars in white trousers of rough canvas. They hit him[48] about a good deal, took off his trousers, and sent him home with them under his arm. Sometimes Parsis would be made to stand on one leg in a mujtahid’s house until they consented to pay a considerable sum of money. Occasionally, however, the childish mockery that pervaded the persecuting ordinances enabled the Zoroastrians to evade the disabilities proposed. For instance, as the Jews had to wear a patch on the qaba, or coat, the mujtahids in about 1880 tried to make the Parsis wear an obvious patch on the shirt. Muhammad Hasan Khan was then Governor, and Mulla Bahrām of Khurramshār, a Parsi, asked him to arrange that his people should have three days’ respite to get the patches ready. During these three days the Parsi women set to work, and made a neat embroidered border round the neck and opening of the shirt. This the Parsis exhibited as the required patch; and as it was very obvious, and was certainly an insertion, there was really nothing more to be said. In Yezd a small score like this counts for more than does a firman of the Shah.

In the reign of the late Shah Nāsiru’d Dīn, Mānukjī Limjī, a British Parsi from India, was for a long while in Tehran as Parsi representative.[49] Almost all the Parsi disabilities were withdrawn, the jaziya, the clothes restrictions, the riding restrictions, and those with regard to houses, but the law of inheritance was not altered, according to which a Parsi who has become a Mussulman takes precedence of his Zoroastrian brothers and sisters. The jaziya was actually remitted, and also some of the restrictions as to houses, but the rest of the firman was a dead letter.

In 1898 the present Shah, Muzaffaru’d Dīn, gave a firman to Dīnyār, the present Qalāntar of the Parsi Anjuman, or Committee, revoking all the remaining Parsi disabilities, and also declaring it unlawful to use fraud or deception in making conversions of Parsis to Islam. This firman does not appear to have had any effect at all.

About 1883, after the firman of Nāsiru’d Dīn Shah had been promulgated, one of the Parsis, Rustami Ardishīri Dīnyār, built in Kūcha Biyuk, one of the villages near Yezd, a house with an upper room, slightly above the height to which the Parsis used to be limited. He heard that the Mussulmans were going to kill him, so he fled by night to Tehran. They killed another Parsi, Tīrandāz, in mistake for him, but did not destroy the house.

[50]

So the great difficulty was not to get the law improved, but rather to get it enforced. When Manukji was at Yezd, about 1870, two Parsis were attacked by two Mussulmans outside the town, and one was killed, the other being terribly wounded, as they had tried to cut off his head. The Governor brought the criminals to Yezd, but did nothing to them. Manukji then got leave to take them to Tehran. The Prime Minister, however, told him that no Mussulman would be killed for a Zardūshtī, or Zoroastrian, and that they would only be bastinadoed. About this time Manukji enquired whether it was true that the blood-price of a Zardushti was to be seven tomans. He got back the official reply that it was to be a little over.

The Yezd Parsis have been helped considerably by agents from Bombay, who are British subjects, and of late years things have slightly improved. About 1885, a Seyid, that is, a descendant of Muhammad, killed a Zardushti woman in Yezd. Ibrāhīm Qalīl Khān took him, and, by order of the Zillu’s Sultān, Prince Governor of Isfahan, and elder brother of the Shah, killed him before daybreak. When the Mohammedan mullas heard of it in the morning, they gave orders for a general slaughter[51] of the Parsis. Many of the Parsis were injured, but none killed. Then in 1899 the Sahāmu’l Mulk, at the commencement of his governorship of Yezd, killed a Mussulman servant of the Mushīru’l Mamālik for a criminal assault upon a Zoroastrian woman. This man was not a Seyid, which made the matter more simple. Just before, when the Mushīru’l Mamālik was temporary Governor, Isfandiār, the Parsi schoolmaster at Taft, one of the large Yezd villages, and Salāmat, another Parsi, were killed by two lūtīs (roughs) without reason. One of these lutis was a Seyid. Both were sent to Tehran, and a mujtahid went up with them to ask for their release. The Shah ordered the Seyid’s release, but the fate of the other is not known. That the Seyid was not much intimidated is certain, as in the August of 1901, when I was in Taft, he used to wander about with other lutis quite openly.

During the last nine or ten years the governors in Yezd have been much stronger, and they have, generally speaking, been friendly to the Parsis. The Parsis are an industrious and intelligent people, and they have become in Yezd a wealthy community. Also there is an extremely wealthy Parsi in Tehran, Arbāb Jamshīd, who is probably[52] more able to influence the Persian Government in favour of his countrymen than are the Indian Parsis from Bombay. Nowadays no governor who wants to remain in Yezd can afford to leave the Parsi community out of his calculations. The real advance made by the Parsi colony seems to date from the second term of government of the Jalālu’d Daula, eldest son of the Zillu’s Sultān, Governor of Isfahan. The Parsis themselves also put down a great deal of the improvement in their circumstances to the spread of the Behāī faith, and certainly, although a semi-secret sect, the Behāīs individually plead openly for a general religious liberty and toleration. Naturally such a movement has been of considerable assistance to the Parsis. As an indication of the influence of the Parsis, it is interesting to notice that during the late Behāī massacres, immediately there was talk of an attack on the Parsi quarter, the Mussulman clergy applied themselves to suppressing the movement.

Although the Jews are very much weaker and poorer, they have their place in the social organisation of the town, and the contempt in which they are held does not prevent the Yezdis from recognising their right to a kind of citizenship.[53] Their religion of course is held in much greater respect than that of the Parsis, for they are people of the Book, and although the Persian Shiahs granted the Zoroastrians a certain share in this status, when they allowed them to continue in the country on the same terms as Jews and Christians, the ordinary Yezdi of to-day hesitates considerably before he allows that Zoroaster was in any sense a prophet.

I myself have met Mussulmans serving in a menial capacity in Parsi houses; I have entertained Parsis of standing and Mussulmans of standing together on public occasions; and I have no hesitation in saying that even the bigoted Mussulman recognises the bond of common citizenship, although it is certainly true that on most occasions he prefers the bond of religion. Still, a Persian’s religious feeling, even when it seems to amount to fanatical bigotry, is generally so connected with self-interest, that, when it is disconnected from thoughts of profit, it is difficult to know how much influence it will possess with him.

It is certainly a fact that a year or two ago, when an Isfahani Seyid came and preached in the Yezd mosques against painted trays, Manchester[54] cottons, bank-notes, and Bibles, the Yezdi Mussulmans gave him the cold shoulder, and treated him as a foreigner who had intruded himself into their domestic concerns.

People were surprised at this happening in the city which a few years before had been regarded as one of the most fanatical in the whole of Persia. As a matter of fact, the so-called fanaticism of Yezd was two-thirds of it non-religious in character. There was an element of turbulency, produced by a series of weak governors; there was a real religious element; and there was an element of insularity, utterly unconnected with creed and doctrine. In spite of the smallness of the Christian colony, which even at present consists of only eighteen Europeans, to which may be added twenty-two Armenians (the households of men in European employment), the people of the town which is after all not large, had soon become familiarised with this little settlement as a Yezd institution. Then the insular spirit came to be enlisted on the side of the Ferangis, and, the turbulence produced by weak governorship being eliminated, there was only the religious difficulty left.

There have only been Europeans in Yezd for[55] some twelve years. The early arrivals were a bank manager and a merchant’s agent. The work of the Church Missionary Society has been established there for some six years, and the English telegraph clerk has been there for about a year. Now all the members of the colony have contributed something to the life of the town, and all the Europeans have worked together with marked cordiality and harmony. Both of these things have certainly had a great effect in hastening the establishment of the colony in the town, and in winning for it the support of the Yezdis’ insular prejudices. The merchants are distinctly glad of the bank, and of the resident agent from a responsible Manchester firm. The people have learnt to value the Medical Mission; and the schools, though they appeal to a smaller class, appeal equally strongly.

Even the directly spiritual work of a Mission is granted an established position in the town by the natives, if it is partially in connection with the Christian community. Having granted a community right of residence no Mohammedan would deny them the right of religious observance. Indeed this would be expected to exist as a matter of course.

[56]

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. All that can be said is that, at present, the right of a Christian missionary to baptize a Mussulman is in Yezd by no means established, but that his right to live and work and preach in the town as, primarily, the mujtahid of the Ferangis, and secondarily, an accepted Yezd teacher, is practically recognised by all. This point seems to have been arrived at chiefly through the acceptance of the entire European colony as unitedly Christian and as a real part of the town. Things that have helped us to arrive at it have been the usefulness of the various branches of work engaged in by the Europeans, their general straightforwardness and honesty of life, combined with their ready co-operation in Christian effort; also the extreme acceptability of the work of the medical missions, and the linking of the clerical work with the life of the town through the medium of schools. To these must be added the smallness of Yezd, which[57] makes it impossible for the population consistently to ignore or refuse to assimilate any important band of workers that can maintain a residence at all prolonged within its walls, and the insularity which makes it impossible to refuse altogether to champion what has become part of the town. Also we must not forget the natural proneness of the Shiah to religious speculation, and the special ferment of religious ideas at present prevailing throughout Persia. This, however, is a matter that will be dealt with at length, later on.

A curious incident occurred in Yezd not long ago, that will perhaps serve to point to the extraordinary way in which the Europeans have in the mind of the Yezdi become an established part of the town population, with rights and privileges similar to those possessed by the native section of the townsfolk. One of the European residents had received a threatening letter from a young Mussulman, whom he had dismissed from his employ; and he had paid as little attention to the matter as it deserved. It so happened that the next day he came to our house for a week’s visit, I being a clerical missionary; and the dismissed servant then[58] spread the report through the bazaars that his master was frightened, and had taken sanctuary with his mujtahid, this being a common Mussulman custom when danger is apprehended either from lutis or from the law. Not only was the report believed, but one of the other Europeans was obliged to give up a visit which he had intended to pay us, as he was a business man, and his credit might have been temporarily shaken.

A similar story is told by Canon Bruce, of an experience in Isfahan. Though in some ways more curious, it is, however, less convincing with regard to the particular moral to which I am attempting to point, since the Canon was then working largely amongst the Armenian Christians of Julfa, who are a considerable colony, and subjects of the Shah. The Roman Catholic Armenian priests, who were also working amongst the Armenian Christians, got the chief Mussulman mujtahid of Isfahan, of which Julfa is a suburb, to summon Canon Bruce to his house. The mujtahid, they said, was, after all, the chief religious authority in the place, and Canon Bruce was as much a heretic in Christianity as the Babis were in Islam. This quaint summons was actually issued, and the Mussulman mujtahid[59] required Canon Bruce to defend himself against the charge of preaching incorrect Christian doctrine. This, of course, was an acceptance of Canon Bruce’s position; but the acceptance of the position of a clerical missionary in a place where there were only eight or nine households belonging to Christian races, European or Armenian, is stranger still.

The possibility of such a thing ought, however, to encourage us with regard to the future of missionary work in isolated and apparently bigoted Persian towns, and also to make missionaries realise the immense value of the co-operation of Christian residents, and the necessity of attending fully to their spiritual needs.