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Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [597v] (1209/1814)
The record is made up of 2 volumes with inserts (898 folios). It was created in 1892-1924. It was written in English, Urdu and German. The original is part of the British Library: India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. Records and Private Papers Documents collected in a private capacity. .
Transcription
This transcription is created automatically. It may contain errors.
194
PERSIA
a foreign idea, is elevated into a class and a dignity of its own by the
monumental solidity of its construction. No merely slavish copyist
would have detected in the footslopes of the Kuh-i-Rahmet so magnifi
cent an opportunity. The polygonal facing of the platform is an equally
ancient contrivance ; but I doubt if anywhere it was so well executed,
or displayed with such majestic effect, as on the plain of Mervdasht.
It is, however, when we come to the sculptures of the staircases, with
their long processional panels, their inscriptions, and their figures
that ascend the steps with the ascending visitor, that we see the
Persian architect at his most original and his best. For staircases,
and their capacities of sculptural display, the Egyptians cared little,
and the Greeks hardly at all. They had other iconostases for their
delineation of the pageantry either of religious ceremonial or of royal
mao-nificence. It was the distinction of the Persian artist to have
o
invented and brought to its highest perfection a method which served
the triple purpose of economising space, of adding to the elevation and
consequent grandeur of the buildings, and of realising the sole aim
and object of his employment, viz., the glorification of royalty.
Similarly in the case of the rock-tombs, though the idea was Egyptian
in origin, the execution owes no external debt in point of combined
dignity and skill. The deeply-incised cross in the cliff, the noble
fagade, the repetition of the palace-frontal upon the rock, the terraced
platform of the adoring king—all these are Persian, and Persian only.
Native, too, in all probability, is the great clemi-bull capital of the
composite Grseco-Egyptian column, that so successfully crowned its
somewhat clumsy shape and so suitably supported the timbered rafters
of the ceiling. Above all, we may congratulate the Persian artist
upon his slow, but very perceptible, advance along the pathway of
genuine artistic progress. Not yet had he learned to make beauty his
main canon, to subordinate subject to shape, to thrill to the enchant
ment of movement and form. His footsteps were clearly prescribed
for him : he could diverge little to the right or to the left; the king
in his majesty, and nothing but the king, was his pre-ordained theme.
And yet he had left far behind the stiff and often ludicrous conven
tionality of the earlier styles. The bizarre, the grotesque, the
disproportionate, the c horrendum, informe, ingens, 1 that form so large
a feature in Egyptian and Assyrian architecture, have been relegated
to a secondary place ; and although the conception of majesty and its
attributes must still conform to well-established rules, the sculptor can
yet find scope for some of the statelier elegances of the statuary’s art.
Having thus rendered to the Persian artist his due, we are at
liberty to notice his limitations, both of theme and style. No one can
wander over the Persepolitan platform, from storied stairway to stairway,
from sculptured doorway to graven pier, no one can contemplate the
About this item
- Content
These two volumes are George Curzon's own personal annotated copies of both volumes of his book Persia and the Persian Question , which was published in 1892. Alongside the volumes are various loose papers relating to Persia [Iran], consisting of the following: received correspondence; newspaper cuttings; publishers' press releases; cuttings from various booksellers' catalogues; various journal and magazine articles; two items of printed official British correspondence; several prints of photographs and sketches; and a few handwritten notes by Curzon.
In most cases these papers, which range in date from 1892 to 1924, relate to the chapters in the book where they were originally inserted, suggesting that they were kept by Curzon with the intention of using them to inform a revised edition of the book.
Of particular note among the small amount of correspondence are two letters received by Curzon in 1914 and 1915 from retired schoolmaster and Islamic scholar Sayyid Mazhar Hasan Musawi of Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India (ff 5-9 and ff 44-53). These letters, which are written in Urdu and are accompanied by English translations, discuss in detail several inaccuracies found in the Urdu version of Persia and the Persian Question .
The various prints of photographs and sketches, which were originally inserted into volume two, are of different locations in the Gulf region. Several of these appear to have been produced in preparation for the publication of the second volume of John Gordon Lorimer's Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , Oman and Central Arabia (i.e. the 'Geographical and Statistical' section) in 1908, as they are identical to the versions found in that volume.
Also of note among the loose papers are an illustrated article from Country Life dated 5 June 1920, entitled 'The People of Persia' (ff 36-37), and a printed family tree of the Shah of Persia [Aḥmad Shah Qājār], produced in preparation of his visit to Britain in 1919 (f 233).
Volume one of Persia and the Persian Question contains a map of Persia, Afghanistan and Beluchistan [Balochistan], which is folded inside the front cover (f 1).
The German language material consists of a publisher's press release for two books authored by German archaeologist Ernst Emil Herzfeld (ff 29-30).
- Extent and format
- 2 volumes with inserts (898 folios)
- Physical characteristics
Foliation: this shelfmark consists of two physical volumes. The foliation sequence commences at the first folio of volume one (1-463), and terminates at the last folio of volume two (ff 464-898); these numbers are written in pencil, are circled, and are located in the top right corner of the recto The front of a sheet of paper or leaf, often abbreviated to 'r'. side of each folio. Each volume contains a large number of loose leaves, which have been foliated in the order that they were inserted into the volume; for conservation reasons, these loose folios have been removed from the volume and stored separately. The foliation sequence does not include the front and back covers of the two volumes.
Pagination: the file also contains an original printed pagination sequence.
- Written in
- English, Urdu and German in Latin and Arabic script View the complete information for this record
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Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [597v] (1209/1814), British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, Mss Eur F111/33, in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100157213848.0x00000a> [accessed 5 June 2026]
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- Reference
- Mss Eur F111/33
- Title
- Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Questionby George Curzon, with Inserted Papers
- Pages
- 54r:135v, 147r:149v, 158r:180v, 183r:221v, 224r:224v, 227r:246v, 248r:257v, 259r:260v, 268r:362v, 364r:364v, 367r:388v, 390r:400v, 402r:416v, 419r:432v, 434r:444v, 448r:462v, 464r:471v, 475r:481v, 483r:513v, 516r:525v, 527r:544v, 546r:563v, 566r:598v, 600r:622v, 624r:656v, 658r:665v, 667r:675v, 678r:684v, 687r:688v, 691r:691v, 693r:693v, 695r:708v, 711r:721v, 724r:726v, 728r:729v, 731r:736v, 742r:742v, 746r:757v, 759r:761v, 763r:763v, 765r:765v, 772r:777v, 780r:789v, 793r:794v, 797r:809v, 811r:821v, 825r:840v, 843r:898v
- Author
- Curzon, George Nathaniel, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
- Usage terms
- Public Domain