'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎339] (388/714)

TEHERAN
339
trated here, with a view of representing, not so much a sino-le
incident, as the events of an entire period. Accordingly, Sir John
Malcolm, Sir Harford Jones, Sir Gore Ouseley, and the French
General Gardanne, all figure in the pictures, being recognisable both
by their uniforms and their features. The Englishmen's dress con
sists of a three-cornered cocked hat, laced red coat with huge skirts,
white breeches, and the then obligatory Persian red stockings pulled
up above the knee. These paintings, which possess the very highest
historical importance, and which in so dry a climate have been
admirably preserved, were the work of Mohammed Hasan Khan,
one of the most eminent artists of the period. As works of art,'
whilst violating all laws of perspective and all requirements of
light and shade, they are yet admirable also, and, in their stiff
angularity of pose, suggest no unfair idea of what was then the
most rigid and ceremonious Court of the East.
In an upper chamber of the same pavilion, Mirza Abul Kasim,
the Kaimakam, 1 or Grand Vizier, of Mohammed Shah (the father
of the present monarch), was strangled in 1835, by order of his
royal master, who therein followed an example set him by his
piedecessor, and set one himself that was duly followed by his son.
It must be rare in history to find three successive sovereigns who
have put to death, from jealous motives only, the three ministers
who have either raised them to the throne or were at the time
of their fall filling the highest office in the State. Such is the
triple distinction of Path Ali, Mohammed, and Nasr-ed-Din
Shahs.
An adjoining pavilion was devoted to the anderun, or ladies'
quarter; and here the visitor is conducted to a subterranean bath-
Bath-room room ' ^ ie centre of which is a circular pool, lined with
blue tiles, whilst at the extremity of the chamber is an
inclined plane of polished marble, 2 down which it is understood
that the shiftless naiads, over whom Sir E. K. Porter waxed
poetical, used to slide into the arms of their royal adorer, and were
by him pitched into the pool—a feat of no common exertion, con-
1 He was the son of Mirza Buzurg, also known as the Kaimakam, who was
the great Minister of Abbas Mirza, the Prince Koyal at Tabriz. When Mirza
Buzurg died, his son succeeded to his position and title with Abbas Mirza, and,
upon the latters death in 1833, with Mohammed Shah. But his haughty and
imperious demeanour rendered his fall certain.
Binning (Two Years' Travel, vol. ii. cap. xxix.) made the discovery that this
slide was sheeted with zinc; but no one else has ratified the discovery, or will.