'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎460] (519/714)

MHHHHRMHH
460 PERSIA
Courts of Justice for the couduct of civil jurisprudence. 1 I can
find no trace either of their subsequent or of their present exist
ence. In 1875, after the return of the Shah from his first visit to
Europe, he introduced Councils of Administration, which were
intended to assist the local authorities in the task of government
to check injustice or corruption on their part, and to counteract
the legal prerogative of the clergy. But the mullahs, who saw
their reign threatened, succeeded in persuading the people that
such European innovations would deprive them of the slender
protection they now enjoyed against the arbitrary government of
the official classes, and created such a storm of opposition that the
project was abandoned. After the Shah's second visit to Europe,
another equally well-meaning, but equally futile, endeavour was
made. On this occasion it was the institution of hast or sanctuary,
which I have described in the chapter upon Meshed, that was most
deservedly attacked; that which was originally designed as a
safeguard against the arbitrary exercise of power having de
generated into a scandal of the worst description. Orders were
issued from Teheran that ' sanctuary was to be done away with;
and that courts of justice were to be established. But the execu
tion of the decree being committed to ' old hands ' deeply pledged
to the system under whose iniquities they had prospered, nothing
more was heard of the projected reform, which quietly vanished
from existence. Undeterred by these previous failures, and with
a serenity that bespeaks either a very sanguine or a very careless
disposition, the Shah, in May 1888, took another step in the
direction of reform. He issued the following Royal Proclamation
to all the provincial governors, by whom it was posted in the
principal telegraph stations throughout the country:—
I 1 orasmuch as Almighty God has endowed our blessed nature with
the attributes of justice and benignity and ordained us the manifestor
Royal Pro- of his ordinances and power, and has especially committed
ofl^reedoin t 0 our a ll-sufficient guardianship the lives and property of
of Life and the subjects of the divinely-guarded Empire of Iran; in
J gratitude for this great gift, we consider it incumbent on us,
in discharge of the duties it imposes on us, to relax nothing in ensuring
to the people of this kingdom the enjoyment of their rights and the
preservation of their lives and property from molestation by oppressors,
and to spare no efforts to the end that the people, secure in their per-
' Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia, p. 169.