'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎492] (583/748)

492
PERSIA
want of people it is very easy to comprehend. It proceeds on the one
hand from the immeasurable extent of these monarchies, and on the
other from the arbitrary government that is exercised there. 1
Ohardin further attributed the dearth of people to four sub
sidiary causes, namely, unnatural vice, immoderate luxury, early
marriages, and constant migration to the Indies. Malcolm, in the
early part of the present century, estimated the population as about
6,000,000, balancing against the checks upon its growth, which
were identical with those named by Chardin, 2 the following advan
tages, viz., £ the salubrity of the climate, the cheapness of provisions,
the rare occurrence of famine, 3 the bloodless character of their civil
wars, their obligation to marry, and the comparatively small number
of prostitutes.' Rawlinson in 1850 estimated the population as
10,000,000 ; but in 1873, after two desolating visitations of cholera
and famine, as 6,000,000. The figures given by other writers
duringthe last twenty years vary between 5,000,000 and 10,000,000.
Nor, indeed, is any estimate based upon data that are either
scientific or reliable. No census is taken in Persia, the machinery
or means for doing so in at all an adequate fashion not being in
existence, and the idea being repugnant to the religious orders.
Neither the assessment for taxation which I have described, nor
the military conscription list, affords a basis of calculation, which
must therefore be in every case more or less a matter of guesswork.
The two most recent estimates that I have seen differ as widely in
1 Voyages (ed. Langles), vol. iii. pp. 270-1.
2 Dr. J. E. Polak, who was a physician, in his Report on Persia in 1873, gave
the following as the main causes of the decline of population: (1) The unfavourable
position of women, including the facility of divorce, early marriage and premature
age, the length of the suckling period, and the thereby impaired fertility of the
sex; (2) decay of sanitary police, and consequent greater ravages by typhus,
dysentery, cholera, plague, and, more particularly, owing to the inadequacy of
inoculation, by small-pox—the mortality of children in the second year of their
age being very striking ; (3) the exterminating wars of the Tartars, Mongols, and
Afghans, the raids of the Turkomans in the eastern provinces, and sale of the
inhabitants in the slave markets of Khiva and Bokhara, civil wars, and the
mortality among soldiers enlisted for life, but swept away in masses before
properly acclimatised to the different garrison stations; (4) emigration of non-
Mussulman elements, such as Guebres, Christians, and Jews, to India, the Caucasus,
and Turkey; (5) oft-recurring famine, caused by dearth of rain and snow, but
intensified to the highest degree by want of means of communication, prejudice
against the corn trade, bad condition of water channels, and misgovernment.
3 This cannot, I think, be said with truth. In the second half of this century
famines of greater or less severity have occurred at intervals of about ten years.