'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎631] (700/714)

I
RAILWAYS 0g^
facilitated by a Mohammerah railroad—viz., to Kum on the north,the
final resting-place of the illustrious Fatima, sister of Imam Reza of
Meshed; to the shrines of Kerbela, Nejef (or Meshed Ali), and
Samara, all in close proximity to the Euphrates or Tigris, and the
last depositories respectively of the hallowed dust of Husein, Ali
and Imam Hasan Askeri; and, not least, to Mecca itself, whither
the devout Shiah who aspires to become a Haji must go once, at
least, in his lifetime. When we consider the hundreds of thousands
of persons of both sexes who yearly wend their laborious way over
vast distances to these consecrated spots, and remember the extra
ordinary fondness for railway travel of the normal Asiatic, we may
infer no mean return from the booking-offices of a line which would
accommodate so many pious inclinations.
Continuing westwards, we complete our circuit of the entire
Persian frontier when we approach the often-suggested line of
rails from Baghdad to Teheran. The distance would be
12. Bagh- rrvA -i i •
dad- 5U0 miles, and the important towns of Kermanshah and
Teheran JJamadan would be passed en route. Already a great deal of
merchandise enters and leaves Persia by this route, and Europeans
in Teheran, desirous of importing some object or article which they
are specially reluctant to expose to the perils of the kotals between
Bushire and Shiraz, are in the habit of sending it up river to
Baghdad, and transporting it thence to the capital. This line
might be expected to do a considerable business, though it would
be a costly one to construct, the ascent from the Chaldean plains
to the Persian plateau being very steep and difficult. But neither
in goods nor in passenger traffic could it compete with the line
last sketched, nor would it tap the resources of so extensive a
country, nor be so easily reached from the sea.
The mention of a Baghdad-Teheran line suggests a concluding
reference to the schemes, of which less is now heard than was once
Indo- the case, of a Euphrates Valley railway, approaching
Mediter- Baghdad from the Mediterranean and the north-west.
ranean o
railways Or, perhaps, seeing that other routes than that of the
Euphrates basin have been suggested and supported, it would be
better to include all projects of a transcontinental line entering
Persia from the west under the generic title of Indo-Mediterranean
railways, India being the ultimate destination and the Mediter
ranean the starting-point in each case, and Persia merely consti
tuting a link in the intervening connection.