'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎373] (426/714)

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THE NORTHERN PROVINCES 373
Cbardin goes on to relate, 1 The malignity of the air was so cross to
his designs and projects, that, about 1630, the 30,000 Christian
families were reduced to 400." The Italian Pietro della Valle who
visited the Court of Shah Abbas in Mazanderan, was very much
smitten with the ladies of that province. ' The women,' he wrote
' were in my eyes perfectly beautiful; and 1 had full opportunity
of judging, as, unlike other Mohammedans, they never cover the
face, but converse freely with man. In addition, they are affable
and exceedingly obliging.'
I have previously spoken of the Cossack descent upon Mazan
deran that occurred in the year 1668. Fifty years later the
Eussian Russians made their first determined attempt, in the
invasion closing years of ^ ^ ^
southern shores ot the Caspian. Such conflicting versions of this
episode have found their way into books about Persia, that I will
briefly relate, so far as can be ascertained, what actually occurred.
The best authorities are Jonas Han way, who was in the country
withm a few years of the event; G. Forster, the first overland
traveller from India to England, sixty years later; Captain
P. H. Bruce, an Englishman serving in Peter the Great's army
during the first Persian Campaign ; Dorn's ' Caspia ' (in Russian) ;
and a work byM. Fonton entitled 'La Russie dansI'AsieMineure.'
From a collation of these several sources we may reconstruct the
narrative of events as follows. In 1722, Peter sent an ambassa
dor to the Persian Court at Isfahan to demand redress for serious
damage done to the property of Russian merchants by the Lesghians,
then m constant revolt against Persia, in the town of Shemakhi.'
The envoy, arriving at the capital, found that Shah Sultan Husein
had been deposed, and that Mahmud, the Afghan usurper, was on
the throne. The latter replied that he could not accept the respon
sibility, and that the Czar had better safeguard his own trade. Peter,
who was never slow at accepting a hint, at once assembled an army
of 30,000 veterans at Astrakhan, embarked in July 1722, and sailed
against Derbend, which yielded to his arms. He was proceeding to
advance upon Baku and Shemakhi, when he was met by the Ottoman
ambassador with the threat that, unless he withdrew (the Turks
also laying claim to the entire Caucasus), he would find a Turkish
as well as a Persian war upon his hands. He then retired for the
winter to Astrakhan, leaving a garrison at Derbend and a fort on
a river further south, which was presently attacked by the Afghans