'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎308] (353/714)

PERSIA
«pace being occupied by its courts and buildings. From the south
east corner the Nasirieh Gate leads down to the eastern entrance to
the palace and to the bazaars. From the south-west corner the
Dowlet Gate conducts to the Khiaban-i-Almasieh (or Avenue of
Diamonds), from which the western or public entrance to the Ark
and palace is gained. Upon this gate, when the Shah is in
Teheran, floats the royal standard.
Two other meidans are worthy of notice. One is the Meidan-i-
Mashk, a vast open space, over a quarter of a mile in length, whicli
. 0ther is used as a Champ de Mars, or parade-ground, for the
meidans garrison, and where I witnessed a military display which
1 shall afterwards describe. This meidan is a little to the north
west of the Tup Meidan, and is reached by a gateway opening out
of the so-called Street of Ambassadors, which leads from the north
west angle of the Gun Square. The remaining square, called the
Meidan-i-Shah, is outside the gardens of the Ministry of War,
and the more southerly portion of the palace enclosure. It contains
a large tank in the centre, and a colossal brass gun, known as the
up-i-Murvarid, or Cannon of Pearls, which has always been an
especially sacred hast, or sanctuary, for the fugitive criminal, a
veritable ' horns of the altar," in Teheran. Successive chroniclers
of the capital have given different and inconsistent accounts of this
monster cannon, some alleging that it was brought by Nadir
Shah from Delhi, where it was originally decorated with a string
of pearls near the muzzle, others that it was cast by him in Persia.
Sir R. K. Porter says that it was the same gun that Chardin
saw in the meidan at Isfahan; but, as I cannot find that
Chardin saw or described any particularly big gun there, I am loth
to accept this explanation. Elsewhere I have read that the gun
was cast by Kerim Khan Zend at Shiraz, and that, having been
kept for some time under cover in an imamzadeh there, it acquired
a sacred character, which it has retained since its removal to the
Kajar capital. Jehangir Khan, the late Minister of Fine Arts, in
formed me, however, that, according to Persian historians, this
cannon is one of the Portuguese ordnance captured by the allied
Persians and British at Ormuz in 1622. 1 Whatever be the truth, its
1 This version has already been given by Mme. Serena (Honimes et Chases en
Perse, p. 54), although she proceeds, quite gratuitously, to make Ormuz 'a port in
the island of Muscat in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. '; Muscat being neither in the Persian
Gulf, nor an island, nor the site of Ormuz.