"بلاد فارس والشأن الفارسي من إعداد السيد المحترم جورج ناثانييل كورزون، عضو البرلمان." [‎٨] (٧١٤/١٥)

PEKSIA
Vlll
rrtmitrv as a whole. Individual writers had
work upon the countn
selected and had, in some cases, adorned different branches of the
subject with productions of a strictly circumscribed character.
But even in their compositions I was habitually confronted by the
refusal to describe this or that locality, or to discuss this or that
question, on the ground that it had been so exhaustively done hy
earlier writers—a reluctance which, as I pushed my studies ever
further and further back, and either never found the masterpiece
in question (because it had never existed), or found it already
rendered quite obsolete by the archaeological discoveries or the
political events of a later time, I ended by ascribing as frequently
to indolence as to an honourable respect for the labours of pre
decessors. So scattered, indeed, did all correct information about
the country prove to be, that a traveller, meditating the proper
literary equipment for at all an extensive journey in Persia, would
almost require a separate baggage-animal to carry the library of
indispensable tomes. In proportion, therefore, as I advanced, so
did the horizon of my task expand before me, until 1 realised that
there was genuine and imperative need for a compendious \Noik
dealing with every aspect of public life in Persia, with its in
habitants, provinces, cities, lines of communication, antiquities,
government, institutions, resources, trade, finance, polic}, and
present and future development—in a word, with all that has made
or continues to make it a nation.
Having accepted this responsibility, 1 have endeavoured to
atone for a lack of personal fitness, which I shall be the first to
acknowledge, as well as for the blanks left in my own travels, by
such diligence of study or of inquiry as the reading of books, or
the reference to competent authorities, has permitted. Of the
works, between 200 and 300 in number, which have been written
in European languages on Persia during the last five centuries, I
have either read or have referred to nearly every one myself; and
I can truthfully say that, among the many hundred references in
these volumes, there is hardly one that is not an honest reference,
i.e. the result of my own independent reading, instead of copied