نسخة مذيلة من "بلاد فارس والشأن الفارسي" بقلم جورج كرزون، مع أوراق مدرجة [و‎‎٤‎٩‎٠] (١٨١٤/٩٩٠)

FROM TEHERAN TO ISFAHAN
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caravanserais, 27o batlis, and twelve cemeteries • and that the various
computations of the total of inhabitants varied between 600,000
The Sefavi an d 1,100,000. 1 The figures of Olearius, viz. 18,000
capital houses and 500,000 people, do not fall greatly below the
lesser total. No wonder that the Oriental hyperbole should have
vented itself in the vainglorious boast that 4 Isfahan nisf i Jehan,’
i.e. ‘ Isfahan is half the world.’ Kaempfer and Struys credited it,
the suburbs included, with an even ampler circuit, which they
fixed at sixteen farsakhs, or forty-eight miles. In the time of
Abbas II. the king possessed, in addition to his own numerous
residences, lo7 royal palaces (probably in many cases only private
mansions) in different parts of the city, acquired either by inheri
tance, purchase, or seizure, and devoted to the entertainment of
foreign envoys and strangers of consideration. When the former
were received in public audience in the Chehel Situn, or Forty
Pillars, all business was suspended for the day ; a magnificent but
tedious ceremonial preceded and delayed the approach of the
ambassador to the footstool of royalty ; gorgeous banquets, cul
minating in general intoxication, followed; while in the Great Square
the populace were regaled with the exhibitions of wrestlers, fencers,
jugglers, and acrobats, with polo-matches and puppet-shows; and
with combats of animals, bulls, rams, buffaloes, wolves, and, on
great occasions, lions and panthers. When, night fell fantastic
fireworks illumined and prolonged the festive scene. In one part
of the city stood a great tower sixty feet high, and twenty feet
thick, called the Kelleh Minar, composed of the horns and skulls
of wild animals slain by one of the earlier monarchs in the chase. 2
The favour and the prestige in which foreigners were held, and the
latitude allowed by the liberal-minded Abbas and his successors to
the Christian religion, were exemplified by the establishments and
1 In illustration of the immense size of Isfahan, Chardin tells the stoiy of a
slave who fled from his master to another part of the city, opened a shop there,
and remained undiscovered for years. He did not himself, however, think the
population greater than that of London.
2 Commonly attributed to Shah Ismail or Shah Tahmasp, but doubtless of
later origin. Olearius says there were the heads of two thousand stags and
gazelles that were all killed at one hunting by Shah Tahmasp. Chardin mentions
the popular belief that the architect’s head was placed on the apex by the royal
sportsman, because he had said that the skull of some peculiar great beast was
wanted for the summit. Engravings of the tower occur in the works of Chardin
and Sanson. Herbert and Tavernier both declared that a great many of the
skulls were human.