'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎468] (527/714)

I
PERSIA
Sultanabad ; Burujirdand Niliavend ; Bnrujird, Khorremabad, and
Shushter (in course of extension to Aliwaz and Moliammerah);
Isfahan, ^'ezd, and Kerman. Statistics of the revenue and expen
diture, and of the work accomplished, are not issued.
The history and the* present condition of Journalism in Persia
afford as eloquent an illustration of the anomalous position occupied
News- by that nation—suspended, like Mohammed's coffin, he-
papers tween the two worlds of culture and barbarism—as can
be conceived. For on the one hand the outward symptoms of
civilisation present themselves in the shape of a number of journals,
published in the capital and elsewhere under Royal and ministerial
patronage; but on the other, the Press as an institution has
positively no existence, and freedom of printed speech, or even
liberty of criticism, are unknown. Hence it is an illusory, if not a
deceitful, claim that is sometimes advanced by the professional
spokesmen of the Regeneration of Persia, when they point to her
possession of three or four newspapers as a proof of respectable
advance in the domain of liberty and culture.
It was in 1850, in the administration of the famous Amir-i-
Nizam, Mirza Taki Khan, whom I have so often mentioned, that
Their his- the first Persian newspaper was established. 1 He placed
and pre- 4 ^ under an English editor, whose duty was to republish
sent judicious or interesting extracts from the European
journals; and he frequently contributed political articles to it
himself. At the same time he started the system, which has been
virtually continued with every succeeding publication—and without
which a press so straitly laced and hampered could not subsist
—of requiring the entire Civil Service above a certain rank to
become regular subscribers. This paper appears to have subse
quently expired (probably upon the degradation and murder of its
founder). In 1866 Mr. Mounsey speaks of another publication,
entitled the ' Teheran Gazette, which was started by command of
the Shah in that year, and whose columns were at first filled with
descriptions of European countries, inventions, and trades, until,
the interest of editor and readers alike in these novelties being
exhausted, the bill of fare was restricted to a Court Circular, and
to disquisitions on Oriental Science, Alchemy, &c. At the present
time the newspapers in existence in Teheran are as follows :—
(1) The c Iran,' a purely official organ, to which all functionaries
1 Vide R. B. Binning, Tn-o Years' Travel, vol. it. p. 162.