‘GAZETTEER OF PERSIA VOL. I Comprising the Provinces of ASTARÁBÁD, SHÁHRUD-BÚSTAN, KHÚRÁSÁN, AND SÍSTÁN’ [‎253v] (513/722)

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when a great offender is concerned. It is indeed, obvious, that a noble of
rank (particularly the chief of a tribe) would almost always have the means
of escaping" punishment; and the monarch is forced, therefore, to proceed
with caution, lest, in the attempt to destroy a gnilty individual, he should
hazard his own safety or the peace of the country. It is from these causes
that marks of favour and honorary dresses not unusually precede disgrace
and death. The victim is decorated for the sacrifice; and the dagger of
assassination is employed to perform the office of the sword of justice.
The actual power of the monarch of Persia depends upon the condition
of his empire ; and as that is continually fluctuating, it is impossible to do
more than to offer some general observations on the limits fixed to it by
usage, and to state what the king himself recognises as the bounds of
his own authority, and what is generally believed he cannot overstep with
out danger of serious discontent and tumult, if not of general rebellion.
The king claims, as has been before stated, the right of judging upon
all occasions the conduct of his ministers, officers, and servants, and of
finding, disgracing, plundering, or putting them to death, at pleasure.
But even this admitted power, which is always considerably checked
by public opinion, does not extend to any interference with their religion;
nor is he considered to have a right to seize, or to confiscate, any personal
property belonging to them, which their family possessed before they
entered his service, and which is guarded by legal titles, and has either
been granted or purchased by them, or their ancestors. This species of
property is deemed under the peculiar protection of the shara, or
written law, and a violent seizure of it would be considered as a most
tyrannical outrage. It, however, continually occurs that when the king
imposes a heavy fine upon a minister or governor of a province whom he
deems a public delinquent, he adopts rigorous measures to enforce payment,
till he compels him to sell his estate, and government is usually the
purchaser ; but the very observance of this form, in cases where the
individual is one of that class whose persons and property are admitted
to be at the mercy of the monarch, is the strongest of all proofs of that
respect in which this kind of property is held. It is owing to the violent
revolutions to which Persia has been lately exposed that so many estates
have been forfeited by the flight or extinction of the families by whom
they were possessed ; but there are numbers of this class who can boast
the enjoyment of lands that have for centuries belonged to their ancestors.
The conduct of the monarchs of Persia to the ecclesiastical order has,
with very few exceptions, been always the same. This class is, in a great
degree, exempt from that tyranny which oppresses others; and the land
which has been granted by government, or by individuals, for the support
of mosques, colleges, and tombs, is deemed sacred, and can neither be
alienated nor seized. It is true that Nadir Shah secularised almost the
whole of this property ; but this measure was deemed not only indefen
sible, but sacrilegious ; and we have not in Persian history another
example of so violent an act of authority. If the sovereign be restrained
by a sense of the religion he professes, and a deference for the general
feeling of those whom he governs, from oppressing the religious orders,
he is no less prevented, by usage and the apprehension of exciting secret
discontent or open revolt, from interfering with the established customs
of the military tribes of his dominions ; and even the civil branches of
the population of Persia may, unless in cases of insurrection, be pronounced