'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎162] (197/714)

162
PERSIA
superb. The dome, which is larger and loftier than that of Imam
Reza, is covered with tiles of blue, green, and orange patterns,
which have peeled off in places.
Entrance is found by one of the archways in the principal
Sahn to a madresseh, or religious college, which was erected by
the munificence of one Mirza Jafir, a wealthy Persian
buildings merchant who had made a fortune in India ; and it is the
in the Bast (Per.) A Persian custom allowing an individual to seek asylum at a designated location. ^ird finest building in Meshed, resembling the mosques
in structural features and decoration. It was further endowed by
its founder with large revenues, which supported fifty or sixty
mullahs. Also included in the parallelogram are other madressehs,
courts, lodging-houses, and baths, as well as a great refectory,
where the pilgrims are fed at the expense of His Highness (each
new-comer being entitled to three days' gratuitous board), at the
rate of SO mans or 195 lbs. of rice a day. Here it is said that
500 or 600 meals are served daily to the hungry guests of the
Imam.
We are indebted to Khanikoff, who was a most scholarly and
accurate inquirer, for the following information about the library
Library of ^ ie Imam. He says that the date of its foundation
the Imam cannot be placed earlier than the time of Shah Rukh, the
oldest volume being a Koran that was deposited in his reign. The
next donations occurred in the reigns of Shah Abbas and Shah Sultan
Husein. A catalogue had been drawn up shortly before Khanikoffs
visit in 1858, from which he learnt that the library contained
2,997 works in 3,654 volumes, of which 1,041 were Korans (189
printed, and 852 manuscripts, some of the latter of great dimen
sions and rare beauty), 299 prayer-books and guides to pilgrims, 246
works on general ecclesiastical law, and 221 on that of the Shiah
persuasion alone. It is curious to learn that the greatest benefactor
of the library was the unlettered Nadir Shah, who presented it
with as many as 400 manuscripts.
The revenues of the shrine in money and in kind are very large.
Fraser says that under Shah Sultan Husein, the last of the Sefavi
dynasty, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, they
were 15,000 tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. -, but in 1821 he gives the figures as
2,000 to 2,500 tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. (can this be a misprint for 20,000
to 25,000 ?). Bassett, in 1878, gave the total as 40,000 tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. ,
which were then equivalent to 16,000Z. According to the informa
tion supplied to me, they now stand at 60,000 tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. (equivalent at