"بلاد فارس والشأن الفارسي من إعداد السيد المحترم جورج ناثانييل كورزون، عضو البرلمان." [‎٧] (٧١٤/٣٨)

INTRODUCTORY
arms to the walls of Byzantium. Then fell the sword of Omar
and the devouring flame of the Koran. In the ensuing ages
great names—Avicenna (Abu-ibn-Sena), Firdusi, Omar-el-Khayam,
Sadi, and Hafiz—adorned her literary annals, and have left her a
legacy of imperishable renown. Finally a native dynasty and a
naturalised religion appeared; and the name of Shah Abbas the
Great is to this hour associated with anything that is durable or
grandiose during the last three centuries of Persian history. A
record of inferior names, of internecine conflict and international
struggle, in the course of which Russia and England enter upon
the scene, brings us down to the present time, when a dominion,
greatly contracted, but withal much consolidated, acknowledges a
Turkish dynasty, and parades before the world the now familiar
figure of Nasr-ed-Din Shah. If Persia had no other claim to
respect, at least a continuous national history for 2,500 years is a
distinction which few countries can exhibit.
There is, further, in the special connection of Persia with this
nation at different epochs, and more especially during the present
century, a claim upon Englishmen s attention which no
Persian student of his country s history should be willing to
connection jg nore< l on g a go as the reign of Edward I. an
accredited plenipotentiary was deputed from Great Britain to the
court of the Mongol sovereign Arghun, in whose dominions 1 ersia
was included. Nearly three centuries later an envoy bore letters
from Queen Elizabeth to the second Sefavi monarch. An ambas
sador from Charles I. reached Persia only to die. In the sixteenth
and again in the seventeenth centuries gallant attempts weie made
by British agents to establish a trade with Persia by the north of
Europe and the Caspian. Between the two periods the growing
maritime ascendency of Great Britain had opened to her first a
share, and presently the control, of the commerce of the 1 ersian
Gulf. Finally, with the dawn of the present century, emerged a
policy of close Anglo-Persian relationship, which, though twice
suspended by diplomatic rupture, and once by war, has remained
in existence ever since; which has given birth to a few deserved 1\
great reputations; and which, though it has been signalised b\
many follies and by some shame, by spasms of prodigal concern
succeeded by intervals of unreasoning apathy, has ^et bound the
two nations in a closer bond of political interest than unites this
country with any other independent sovereignty in Asia.