'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎400] (455/714)

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PERSIA
at Doshan Tepe. The Sliali was so consumed with anxiety for the
welfare of the mother that, being detained by the ceremonies of
the Tazieh in Teheran, he had the telegraph wires in the capital
connected with an improvised bureau opposite the cage of the
animal, so as to be in possession of the latest news ; and finally
cashiered an unsympathetic clerk who telegraphed, ' The beasts
are doing well,' on the ground that ' the true beast was not the
lion, but the man who could call the lion by such a name.'
Almost the same in kind, if superior in degree, is the intense
fondness which the Shah has developed in recent years for the
little boy, known as the Aziz-es-Sultan, whom he brought with
him to England, and whom he seldom allows out of his sight at
Teheran. This child, whose name is Gholam Ali Khan, is a
nephew of the Amin-i-Akdas (Trusted of the Sovereign), one of
the Shah's favourite wives. She was only a Kurdish slave, and
her brother, the father of the child, was a peasant, as his appear
ance and manner sufficiently indicated when he came over to
England in the retinue of the Shah. There seems to have been
no truth in the stories circulated throughout Europe of a super
stitious origin of the Shah's attachment to this boy, which would
appear to be no more than one of the peculiar caprices of the royal
nature. The child, who is eleven or twelve 3'ears of age, is a
Field-Marshal, and wears a huge portrait of the Shah, set in
diamonds, round his neck. While in Teheran, I saw him driving
about in a state and style second only to that adopted by the
sovereign ; and he was deputed by the latter as a special compli
ment to make a call upon the British Minister. If the lad is not
well, the Shah is at once in a bad humour, and is incapable of
attending to affairs of State.
From these anecdotes of personal idiosyncrasies which I have
related, not so much because of the interest attached in popular
The Shah estimation to the deeds and fancies of sovereigns, as
as ruler because they illustrate the bent of a character which
could hardly have been moulded in any other surroundings than
those of an Asiatic throne, 1 turn to a contemplation of Nasr-ed-
Din Shah in his more important capacity as a monarch and a
statesman. Here he possesses many excellent business qualities,
and betrays a voracious appetite for any and every affair of State.
Rising early in the morning, he devotes the forenoon to audience
with his ministers and to matters of State. The smallest detail is