Literary History of Persia
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No useful purpose would be served by enumerating here all the notable persons in each class mentioned by Iskandar Munshí, who wrote, as he repeatedly mentions in the course of his work, in 1025/1616, but the most important are, amongst the divines and
There is a well-known tradition of the Muhammadans235 that Solomon died standing, supported by the staff on which he leaned, and that his death remained unknown to the Jinn, who laboured at his command in the construction of the Temple, for a year, until the wood-worm ate through the staff and the body fell to the ground. This legend may well serve as a parable of the century of Ṣafawí rule which followed the death of Sháh ‘Abbás the Great, who, by his strength and wisdom, gave to Persia a period of peace and outward prosperity which for nearly a hundred years protected his successors from the results of their incompetence. Four of his house succeeded him ere the catastrophe of the Afghán invasion in A.D. 1722 effected its downfall, to wit, his grandson Sháh Ṣafí above mentioned (A.D. 1629-1642); his great-grandson Sháh ‘Abbás II (A.D. 1642-1666); his great-great-grandson Ṣafí, subsequently recrowned under the name of Sulaymán (A.D.1666-1694); and his great-great-great-grandson Sháh Ḥusayn (A.D. 1694-1722). Of Sháh Ṣafí, Krusinski236 says that “’tis certain there has not been in Persia a more cruel and bloody reign than his” and describes it as “one continued series [page 112] of cruelties”; while Hanway237 observes that “he interfered so little in the affairs of the government that the Persians would have scarcely perceived they had a king, had it not been for the frequent instances of barbarity which stained his reign with blood”; and that “by his own folly he lost Kandahar and Babylon [Baghdád], two of the most important places on his frontiers.” Than Sháh ‘Abbás II, on the other hand, according to Krusinski238, “next to Ismael I and Schah-Abas the Great, Persia never had a better king of the family of the Sophies.” Although, like his father and predecessor, he was “too much subject to wine, and committed some acts of cruelty, yet, abateing a few excursions, of which he might justly be reproached, he shewed himself, during the whole course of his reign, truly worthy of the crown he wore.” “The farther he advanced into his reign,” continues the Jesuit, “the more he was beloved by his subjects and the more feared by his neighbours. He loved justice, and had no mercy of the governors and other public officers who, abusing their authority, oppressed the people, of which several instances may be seen in Tavernier. He had a great and noble soul, was very kind to strangers, and openly protected the Christians, whom he would not have in the least molested for their religion, saying, ‘That none but God was master of their consciences; that, for his own part, he was only governor of externals; and that all his subjects being equally members of the State, of what religion soever they were, he owed justice to them all alike.’” This reign, however, was the last flicker of greatness in the Ṣafawí dynasty, for Sulaymán (to quote Krusinski239 once more), a “degenerated very much from the virtues of his father Schah-Abas II, and made his reign remarkable only by a thousand instances of cruelty, [Illustration: SHÁH ‘ÁBBAS THE SECOND 1920. 9.17-013 [2] (Brit. Mus.)] [page 113] the bare mention of which is shocking. When he was in wine or in wrath nobody about him was sure of life or estate. He caused hands, feet, nose and ears to be cut off eyes to be plucked out, and lives to be sacrificed upon the least whim that took him; and the man that was most in his favour at the beginning of a debauch was generally made a sacrifice at the end of it. This is the character given us of him by Sir John Chardin, who was in part a witness of what he relates as to this matter. Persons thought their lives in such danger whenever they approached him that a great lord of his Court said, when he came from his presence, that he always felt if his head was left standing upon his shoulders. It was under this prince that Persia began to decay. He thought so little like a king that when it was represented to him what danger he was in from the Turks, who, when they had made peace with the Christians, would come and attack his finest provinces if he did not put himself in a position to repel them, he answered very indifferently that he did not care, provided they left him Iṣfahán.” Sháh Ḥusayn, the last Ṣafawí king (for his nominal successors Ṭahmásp II and ‘Abbás III were mere puppets in the hands of Nádir Sháh), was very unlike his predecessors, for his clemency was so excessive as “rendered him incapable of any severity, though never so moderate and necessary240,” while having one day accidentally wounded a duck with his pistol “he himself was as much terrified as if he had really committed murder, and made the same exclamation as is customary in Persia upon the shedding of human blood, by saying Kanlu oldum241, i.e. ‘I am polluted with blood’; and that very instant he caused two hundred tomons to be given to the poor as an atonement for what he thought a [page 114] great sin.” He was something of a scholar and theologian, much under the influence of the Mullás, and so careful of his religious duties and so much attached to the reading of the Qur’án as to earn for himself the nick-name of Mullá or “Parson Ḥusayn242.” Though at first a vehement prohibitionist, he was later induced by his grandmother, instigated by wine-loving courtiers and power-seeking eunuchs, to taste the forbidden liquor, which gradually obtained such a hold on him that “he would not by any means hear the mention of business, but left it all to the discretions of his ministers and eunuchs, who governed the kingdom just as they pleased, and took the greater license because they were very sensible they had nothing to fear from a prince who was so weak as to refer the very petitions he received to them without so much as reading them243.” In such a work as this, which is concerned primarily with Persian literature and only secondarily with Persian history, and that only in broad outlines, save in the case of periods which witnessed some definite change in the national outlook, it is unnecessary to enter into a more detailed account of the later Ṣafawí period; the more so because several excellent accounts of the decline and fall of this remarkable dynasty, and of the state of Persia at that time, are readily accessible to the English reader. Of these the following may be especially commended. Adam Olearius, Secretary to the Embassy sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein to Russia and Persia, was in the latter country from November, 1636 until February, 1638. His Voyages and Travels, originally written in Latin, were translated into French and thence, by John Davies, into English. I have used the English version published in 1669. Olearius, or Oelschläger, to give him his original [page 115] name, was a careful observer, and seems to have had a very fair knowledge both of Persian and Turkish, and his work is one of the best accounts of Persia in the seventeenth century. Le Père Raphaël du Mans, Superior of the Capuchin Mission at Iṣfahán, was born in A.D. 1613, went to Persia in 1644, and died there in 1696. His Estat de la Perse en 1660 in the learned edition of M. Schefer (Paris, 1890) gives a valuable if not very lively account of Persian institutions at a somewhat later date than Olearius. The Chevalier Chardin was born in A.D. 1643, was twice in Persia for about six years each time (A.D. 1664-70 and 1671-77), and settled in London in 1681, where he died in 1713. Of the numerous editions of his Voyages en Perse I have used that of the learned Langlès (Paris, 1811) in ten volumes, of which the last contains (pp. 151-244) an admirable Notice chronologique de la Perse, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à ce jour by the editor, carried down to the time of Fatḥ-’Alí Sháh Qájár. Shaykh ‘Alí Ḥazín, who traced his descent from the celebrated Shaykh Záhid-i-Gílání, the spiritual director of Shaykh Ṣafiyyu’d- Dín, the ancestor of the Ṣafawí kings, was born in A.D. 1692 at Iṣfahán, where he spent the greater part of his time until he left Persia for India, never to return, in A.D. 1734. He wrote his Memoirs (published in the original Persian with an English translation by F. C. Belfour in 1830-1) in 1741, and died at Benares at a ripe old age in 1779, Though he was himself involved in the disaster which overtook Iṣfahán in 1722, he gives a much less vivid and moving picture of the sufferings of its inhabitants during the siege by the Afgháns than that drawn by Krusinski and other European observers. His portraits of contemporary statesmen, theo- [page 116] logians and poets, on the other hand, lend a special value to his book. Father Krusinski, Procurator of the Jesuits at Iṣfahán for some eighteen or twenty years previous to A.D. 1722, compiled an admirable History of the Revolution of Persia from the beginning of the Ṣafawí dynasty down to A.D. 1727 in which the circumstances of the Afghán invasion and its consequences are narrated in the utmost detail. Jonas Hanway, who was in Persia in A.D. 1743-4, wrote and published in 1753 in two volumes An historical account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea, with a Journal of Travels, which he supplemented by two further volumes on the Revolution of Persia, the first containing The Reign of Shah Sultan Hussein, with the Invasion of the Afghans, and the reigns of Sultan Mir Maghmud and his successor Ashreff, and the second The History of the celebrated usurper Nadir Kouli, from his birth in 1687 till his death in 1747, to which are added some particulars of the unfortunate reign of his successor Adil Shah. For the earlier part of his history Hanway is much indebted to Krusinski, but for the later period (A.D. 1727-1750), including the whole account of Nádir Sháh, he is an independent and most valuable authority, while his narrative is throughout lively and agreeable to read. These are only a few of the many writers and travellers whose works throw light on this period. I have mentioned them because they are the ones I have chiefly used, but a long and serviceable account of a much larger number will be found in Schefer’s Introduction to his edition of le Père Raphaël du Mans mentioned above. The European writers are here, for reasons well set forth by Sir John Malcolm244, more instructive and illuminating than the Persian historians, for [page 117] whom, as he says, “we can hardly imagine an era more unfavourable. A period of nearly a century elapsed without the occurrence of any one political event of magnitude; and yet the extraordinary calm was productive of no advantage to Persia. The princes, nobles, and high officers of that kingdom were, it is true, exempt from the dangers of foreign or internal war; but their property and their lives were the sport of a succession of weak, cruel and debauched monarchs. The lower orders were exposed to fewer evils than the higher, but they became every day more unwarlike; and what they gained by that tranquillity which the State enjoyed lost almost all its value when they ceased to be able to defend it. This period was distinguished by no glorious achievements. No characters arose on which the historian could dwell with delight. The nation may be said to have existed on the reputation which it had before acquired till all it possessed was gone, and till it became, from the slow but certain progress of a gradual and vicious decay, incapable of one effort to avert that dreadful misery and ruin in which it was involved by the invasion of a few Afghan tribes, whose conquest of Persia affixed so indelible a disgrace upon that country that we cannot be surprised that its historians have shrunk from the painful and degrading narration.” Shaykh ‘Alí Ḥazín245 takes precisely the same view. “Many ages having now elapsed,” says he, “since civilization, tranquillity, and the accomplishment of all worldly blessings had attained a state of perfection in the beautiful provinces of Írán, these were become a fit object for the affliction of the malignant eye246. The indolent King and princes, and the army that sought nothing but repose and for near a [page 118] hundred years had not drawn the sword from the scabbard, would not even think of quelling this disturbance247, until Maḥmúd248 with a large army marched into the provinces of Kirmán and Yazd, and, having committed much plunder and devastation, proceeded on his route to Iṣfahán. This happened in the early part of the year 1134/1721.” Jonas Hanway249 speaks in a similar strain. “Persia never enjoyed,” says he, “a more perfect tranquillity than in the beginning of the present [i.e. the eighteenth] century. The treaties she had concluded with her neighbours were perfectly observed and secured her against any foreign invasions; whilst the effeminacy and luxury of her inhabitants, the ordinary consequences of a long peace, left no room to apprehend any danger from the ambition of her own subjects. This monarchy, which had suffered so many revolutions in past ages, seemed to be settled on a solid foundation when the news of its subversion surprised the whole world. The authors of this amazing catastrophe were a people hardly known even to their own sovereigns, and have now acquired a reputation only by the fame of those nations which they brought under their subjection. These people … are comprised under the general denomination of Afghans250.” The policy of Sháh ‘Abbás the Great has been described above as wise and far-sighted, but this statement needs some qualification; for, while it greatly strengthened the power of the Crown, it undoubtedly conduced in the end to the weakening of the nation [page 119] and the degeneration of its rulers. Previous kings had been embarrassed chiefly by ambitious relatives, powerful tribal chiefs, and turbulent townsmen; and for all these things Sháh ‘Abbás set himself to provide remedies. Instead of allowing his sons to hold high administrative posts and take a prominent part in wars, he either blinded them or put them to death, or immured them in the ḥaram, where, as Krusinski well explains251, they lead a life of hardship and privation rather than of luxury and pleasure, while receiving a very imperfect education, and falling under the influence of the palace eunuchs, who ended by becoming the dominant power in the State. To his destruction of the great nobles and tribal chiefs, and his creation of the Sháh-sevens as a counterpoise to the seven tribes to whom his predecessors owed their power, allusion has already been made252. A more extraordinary example of his application of the maxim Divide et impera was his deliberate creation in all the large towns of two artificially antagonized parties, named, according to Krusinski253, Pelenk and Felenk, who indulged at intervals in the most sanguinary faction-fights, they being, as Krusinski puts it, “so opposite, and so much enemies one to the other, that people in different States, in arms against one another, do not push their aversion and enmity farther.” He adds (p. 92) that “though they fought without arms, because they were not supposed to make use of anything else but stones and sticks, it was with so much fury and bloodshed that the King was obliged to employ his guards to separate them with drawn swords; and hard it was to accomplish it, even with a method so effectual, insomuch that at Ispahan in 1714 they were under a necessity, before [page 120] they could separate the combatants, to put about three hundred to the sword on the spot.” Besides the eunuchs, there grew up and attained its full development under “Mullá Ḥusayn,” the last unhappy though well-meaning occupant of the Ṣafawí throne at Iṣfahán, another dominant class whose influence hardly made for either spiritual unity or national efficiency, namely the great ecclesiastics who culminated in the redoubtable Mullá Muḥammad Báqir-i-Majlisí, the persecutor of Ṣúfís and heretics, of whom we shall have to speak at some length in a future chapter. His admirers254 call attention to the fact that his death, which took place in 1111/1699-1700255, was followed in a short time by the troubles which culminated in the supreme disaster of 1722, and suggest that the disappearance of so saintly a personage left Persia exposed to perils which more critical minds may be inclined to ascribe in part to the narrow intolerance so largely fostered by him and his congeners. 
CHAPTER IV. AN OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF PERSIA DURING THE LAST TWO CENTURIES (A.D. 1722-1922). Only after much hesitation and several tentative experiments have I decided to endeavour to compress into one chapter two centuries of Persian history. Were this book, primarily intended as a political history of Persia, such an attempt would be out of the question; for this long period witnessed the Afghán invasion and its devastations; the rise, meteoric career, and sudden eclipse of that amazing conqueror Nádir Sháh; the emergence in a world of chaos and misery of Karím Khán-i-Zand, generally accounted the best ruler whom Persia ever possessed, and of his gallant but unfortunate successor Luṭf-‘Alí Khán; the establishment of the still reigning Qájár dynasty, and within that period the occurrence, amidst many other important events, of two remarkable phenomena (the rise and growth of the Bábí religious movement since 1844, and the political Revolution of 1906) which profoundly affected the intellectual life and literary development of Persia, each one of which might well form the subject of a lengthy monograph rather than a chapter. This book, however, is written not from the political but from the literary point of view, and the historical part of it is only ancillary, and might have been omitted entirely if a knowledge of even the general outlines of Oriental history formed part of the mental equipment of most educated Europeans. From this point of view much fuller treatment is required for periods of transition, or of great intellectual activity, than for periods of unproductive strife not so much of rival ideas and beliefs as of conflicting ambitions. To the latter category belongs the greater part [page 122] of the two centuries which must now engage our attention. During this period the literary language (which, indeed, had become fixed at any rate in the fourteenth century, so that the odes of Ḥáfiẓ, save for their incomparable beauty, might have been written but yesterday) underwent no noticeable change; few fresh forms of literary expression were developed until the middle of the nineteenth century; and few fresh ideas arose to modify the Shí‘a frenzy of Ṣafawí times until the rise of the Bábí doctrine in A.D. 1844, of which, however, the literary effects were less considerable than those of the Revolution of 1906. Moreover excellent and detailed accounts of the Afghán invasion, of Nádir Sháh, and of the earlier Qájár period already exist in English, several of which have been mentioned at the end of the preceding chapter256; these could hardly be bettered, and would only be marred by such abridgment as would be necessary to fit them into the framework of this book. Hence I have deemed it best to limit myself in this chapter to a brief outline of the more salient events of these last two centuries. The Afghán Invasion (a.d. 1722-1730). Unlike the Arabs, Mongols, Tartars and Turks, who were instrumental in effecting previous subjections of Persia by foreign arms, the Afgháns are, apparently, an Íránian and therefore a kindred race, though differing materially in character, ‘from the Persians. The Persian language is widely spoken in their wild and mountainous country, while in their own peculiar idiom, the Pushtô, James Darmesteter saw the principal survivor of the language of the Avesta, the scripture of the Zoroastrians. They are a much fiercer, hardier, and more warlike people than the Persians, less refined and ingenious, and [page 123] fanatical Sunnís, a fact sufficient in itself to explain the intense antagonism which existed between the two nations, and enabled the Afgháns to give to their invasion of Persia the colour of a religious war. In A.D. 1707 Qandahár, a constant bone of contention between the Ṣafawí kings of Persia and the “Great Moghuls” of India, was in the possession of the former, and was governed in a very autocratic manner by a Georgian noble named Gurgín Khán. Mír Ways, an Afghán chief whose influence with his fellow-countrymen made him an object of suspicion, was by his orders banished to Iṣfahán as a state prisoner. There, however, he seems to have enjoyed a considerable amount of liberty and to have been freely admitted to the court of Sháh Ḥusayn. Endowed with considerable perspicacity and a great talent for intrigue, he soon formed a pretty clear idea of the factions whose rivalries were preparing the ruin of the country, and with equal caution and cunning set himself to fan the suspicions to which every great Persian general or provincial governor was exposed. This was the easier in the case of one who, being by birth a Christian and a Georgian of noble family, might, without gross improbability, be suspected of thinking more of the restoration of his own and his country’s fortunes than of the maintenance of the Persian Empire, though there seems in fact no reason to suspect him of any disloyalty. Yüklə 1,57 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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