'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎466] (525/714)

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466
PERSIA
Letter Post
farmed the diaper service from the Minister of Ways and Commu
nications. The conveyance of letters was an agreeable source
of profit to these individuals. There was supposed to be
some fixed scale of charge, which, however, no one knew.
As a matter of fact, they extracted a commission at both ends of the
line; for on the one hand the sender of the letter had to pay
beforehand for its conveyance; and on the other the recipient could
not secure its delivery until he too had crossed the postmaster's
palm. 1 have seen it stated that in this primitive epoch a postal
service after the European model was started, but that it was
abandoned because the contractor for the stamps was discovered
to have privately printed 100,000 for his own benefit; an incident
so profoundly Persian as to render the tale more than credible. In
1875, an official of the Austrian Post Office, by name G. Riederer,
was- entrusted with the organisation of the Persian Post upon
European lines. Beginning experimentally with a postal delivery
in the capital, and gradually extending his material and training
a staff, within little more than a year of his appointment he had
instituted the first regular riding post in Persia once a week be
tween Teheran, Tabriz, and Julfa, with a branch from Kazvin to
Resht. In the succeeding year (187G) he was appointed Post
master-General. In 1877 Persia was admitted to the International
Postal Union. Herr Riederer having quitted the Persian service
in the same year, he was succeeded by a Russian named Stahl, who
appointed Dr. Andreas, the joint author of the publication from
which I have more than once quoted. General Inspector of Persian
Posts. Within a couple of months Andreas was dismissed for
reclaiming an embezzled letter from the Governor of Shiraz, and a
year later M. Stahl fell also. For some time the service remained
in a precarious and insecure condition, valuable packets being
opened and plundered; and Europeans found it safer to trust to the
couriers of the British Legation, or to the officials of the Indo-
European Telegraph. Latterly much greater safety has been as
sured, and the arrangements now include a bi-weekly service to
Europe via Tabriz and Tiflis, and via Resht and Baku; a weekly
service to India via Bushire; and weekly services between the
capital and Meshed, Yezd, Kerman, Shiraz, and Kermanshah. In
1886 there were reported to be seventy-three post-offices in the
kingdom; and in the year 1884-5—the latest for which official
statistics are procurable—there were conveyed 1,368,835 letters,