'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎331] (418/748)

THE KARUN. EIVEE
331
conditions have very greatly changed since the majority of their
> narratives were written, and the drama of life is fast nearing the
close of a chapter whose leaves will presently be turned back and
sealed for ever. A riparian population of Arab tribes under native
sheikhs, who sustain a fitful and expiring independence against
the ever advancing encroachments of Persian governors and tax-
collectors ; an inland population of nomad tribes, of mixed origin
and reluctant loyalty, who in their native hills still retain their old
clan organisation and a vagrant liberty of life ; townspeople, half
Arab and half Persian, whose character is as composite as their
origin; these ingredients alone suggest a tableau of dramatic out
line and vivid contrast. How much more complex and absorbing
is it bound to become when an outside competitor, in the person
of Great Britain, steps upon the scene !
The Karun river is described in text-books of geography as
the only navigable river in Persia. Rising in the knotted mountain
The Kamn range to the west of Isfahan, from which I have briefly
xiver traced its passage in the previous chapter, it pursues a
westerly course through wild gorges and upland plains, until,
emerging from the hills immediately to the north of Shushter, it
turns sharply to the south and, after adorning that town with the
waterworks that have rendered it famous in history and still leave
it respectable in decay, pursues a sinuous course over the wide
alluvial plain that stretches to the Shat-el-Arab and the Persian
Oulf. On the way it receives, at Bund-i-Kir, its main affluent, the
Ab-i-Diz, or river of Dizful; whilst lower down its channel is in
terrupted, and navigation is impeded, by the renowned rapids
of Ahwaz. At the river-port of Mohammerah it flows into the
estuary by which, forty miles lower down, at Fao, the combined
waters of the Tigris and Euphrates enter the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. .
Berlin, 1879, pp. 38-67 and 81-124; Journal of the R.A,S., vol. xii., p. 312. Pro
ceedings of the R.G.S., March 1883, containing : Paper by Col. J. Bateman-Cham-
pain; Speech by Mr. G. S. Mackenzie; ' Surveying Tours in South Persia,' by Major
H. L. Wells. Mme. Dieulafoy, Leu Perse^X^l; A Suse, 1888. Col. M. S. Bell, V.C.,
Blachwood's Magazine, April 1889. Gen. Sir K. Murdoch Smith, Chamber of Com-
merce Journal, March 5, 1889; Journal of the Society of Arts, May 10, 1889.
W. Tomaschek, Topogr, Erlduterung der Kustenfahrt Nearchs, 1890. Mrs. Bishop,
Journeys in Persia, 2 vols., 1891. Perhaps I may be permitted to add to this
bibliography my own contributions on the same subject, which have been partly
utilised for this chapter : Letter xi. of the series on Persia in the Times, February
1890; leaves from a Diary on the Karun Elver,' Fortnightly Review, April
a.nd May 1890; ' The Karun River,' Proceedings of the R.G.S., September 1890.