'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎440] (499/714)

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is due. All these supplements being regulated at best only by use and
wont, there is ample scope for extortion ; and terrible are sometimes
the cases, complaints whereof are seldom of any avail, the complainant
having probably to reckon with the bastinado.
The tax list (tumar) is often drawn out years beforehand, according
to the number of taxable objects in each district: acres, fruit-trees' 5
water-springs, beasts of labour, herds, &c. Not only is this sum ex
acted thenceforward year after year, though the taxed objects are
meanwhile dwindling, but it is gradually raised. In these lists will
hgure villages which, from dearth of water or other causes, haye been
abandoned by their inhabitants. Although, in consequence of the
silk-worrp disease, and the dreadful famine of 1869-73, the economic
condition of Persia became greatly reduced during the twenty years
64 84, whence it is but recently, through the culture of opium, that
it is beginning to revive, the taxes were yet continually going up, in
many cases to an almost insupportable hgure. Only the extreme
frugality of the Persian peasant and of the lower classes in general, on
whom presses almost exclusively the burden of the taxes, explains how
they are got in at all.
I lia\ e quoted the above passage at length, because it is the
e\ idence of eye-witnesses, who lived for years in the country and
Mudakhil ^ ' 10 ^ e authority is not to be impugned. From a pefusal
of its contents, a glimpse will have been caught of that
which, along with, and perhaps even more than, the bribe or gift
requii ed to secure or to retain office of any description, is a
c hei ished national institution in Persia, viz. the mudakhil, i.e.
c( msideration, recompense, or profit which is required to balance
the personal account, and the exaction of which, in a myriad different
forms, whose ingenuity is only equalled by their multiplicity, is
the crowning interest and delight of a Persian's existence. This
remarkable word, for which Mr. Watson says there is no precise
English equivalent, 1 may be variously translated as commission,
perquisite, douceur, consideration, pickings and stealings, profit,
The -word viudalnl, for which there is no exact English term, has for Persian
ears a charm which few Europeans can comprehend. Mudahil signifies all that
one can acquire by receiving bribes, by swindling and extortion, and by all other
iiregular means. It is mudahil and not salary which every Persian official is
anxious to secure. A salary regularly paid affords no scope for the display of the
talents in which 1 ersians most excel—for dissimulating and over-reaching, oppress
ing and cringing and therefore a post which has only a good salary attached to
it. and which affords no good opportunities of making mudahil, is looked upon by
Persians as being but a poor possession.'—///^/?-// of Persia, p. 372.