'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎165] (200/714)

MESHED
16/)
sojourn in the city. There is a large permanent population of
wives suitable for the purpose. 1 A mullah is found, under whose
sanction a contract is drawn up and formally sealed by both
parties, a fee is paid, and the union is legally accomplished. After
the lapse of a fortnight or a month, or whatever be the specified
period, the contract terminates ; the temporary husband returns
to his own lares et penates in some distant clime, and the lady,
after an enforced celibacy of fourteen days' duration, resumes her
career of persevering matrimony. In other words, a gigantic
system of prostitution, under the sanction of the Church, prevails in
Meshed. There is probably not a more immoral city in Asia; and I
should be sorry to say how many of the unmurmuring pilgrims who
traverse seas and lands to kiss the grating of the Imam's tomb are
not also encouraged and consoled upon their march by the prospect
of an agreeable holiday and what might be described in the English
vernacular as ' a good spree.'
Here, in the city which lie patronised and adorned, was origin
ally laid the body of the great conqueror, Nadir Shah. In his own
Tomb of he caused the buildings to be raised both for him-
Nadir self and for his son, Reza Kuli Mirza. They were situ
ated about halfway between the mosque of the Imam and
the Bala Khiaban gate. Not a trace now remains of their existence.
The brutal eunuch Agha Mohammed Khan Kajar, mindful of the
source to which lie owed his calamity, as soon as he became Shah,
gratified the instincts of a long-nurtured revenge by razing the
structures to the ground ; w T hile the bones of Nadir were removed
at his orders to Teheran, and deposited (along with those of his
other rival, Kerim Khan Zend) beneath the threshold of the palace,
so that whenever he went abroad he might trample upon the dust of
the great persecutor of himself and his family. In Eraser's day the
desecrated buildings at Meshed were heaps of rubbish. Ten years
later Burnes found a crop of turnips springing from the soil which
had sheltered the body of the conqueror of Hindustan.
There still exist a considerable number of Jewish families in
Meshed, although the practice of their own worship is strictly for-
' A sir/heh or temporary wife may be married for any period from one day to
99 years. Women often prefer being sighehs for the full period to being akdis or
real wives. The alidi can be divorced at any time, the sigheJi not before the end
of her contract, except for misconduct. Short-period sigTieli? in the big cities are
quasi • prostitutes.