Chapter Tow

Part 1  -  Part 2  -  Part 3  -  Part 4  -  Part 5

A dervish means literally a "poor man", but metaphorically a "wandering mind", and the man from Tabriz whom Ibn Battuta met in Grenada would have been in the fullest sense a wandering mind, carrying with him his whole city, the houses, bazaars and streets, the people among whom he used to tell his stories and hold his philosophical and theological disputations
all carried within him to the other end of the Mediterranean where he tried to convince himself he found something of his lost and loved Tabriz. Something of the personality of these exiled intellectuals may be derived from the Shirazi poet Sa'di; Story 11 in the first chapter of his Gu/istan (Rose Garden) tells of the confrontation between a dervish (or darwish) and a tyrant ruler. This particular dervish was famous above all for the fact that his prayers were answered: this was not true of every dervish, but those of whom it was were much respected and feared. People were particularly anxious not to provoke them, for if angered they might utter some curse which in calmer moments they would restrain: but so great was their power that their malediction would be fulfilled. In other cultures it was felt to be unlucky to meet a holy man when out walking, and above all to block his way. In any case, as Sa'di tells it:

A darwish, to whose prayers were given answers, was
beheld in the land,
And Hejaj Yusuf summoned him, saying: "Speak a good
prayer for me".

The darwish prayed "0 lord, upon this man may the Angel
'of Death stretch out his hand".
And Hejaj Yusuf cried out "In God's name is this the good
prayer I asked of thee?"

And the darwish replied "It is a good prayer for thee
and for all the children of Islam",
Tyrant, thy savage rule
How long must thy people thole?
Thou usest power but as a fool,
Death is thy better goal.

A little later, in Story 15 of the same chapter, Sa'di tells of a vizier who had been disgraced and removed from office, and had entered a circle of dervishes where he grew to find himself content, so that when the king resolved to take him back into favour and ordered him to return to office he refused, saying: "Retirement is better than profession":

Those who sit down, safe, poor and far from thee Have bound the teeth of dogs and jaws of men: They tore the paper up and broke the pen,
And froze the hand and tongue of calumny.

To which the king replied:

Verily we stand in need of a man of sufficient intelligence who is able to carry on the administration of the government.

And in answer, said the dervish who had been his vizier:

It is a sign of sufficient intelligence not to engage in such matters.

About the same time as Sa'di, lived the great writer Mawlana Jalalu'ddin Rumi (1204-1271), born in Balkh (south-west of Samarkand). He travelled to Tabriz and wrote of it, including a poem about a dervish. It seems worth including, apart from its richness of imagery and quizzical humour, for it suggests that not all wandering intellectuals found themselves at odds with figures of authority in Tabriz. At least one of them seems to have found the most benevolent police inspector in literature. Here is Reynold Nicholson's translation of part of the passage from the sixth book of the Mathnawi:

A certain dervish, who was in debt, came from the outlying provinces to Tabriz. His debts amounted to nine thousand pieces of gold. It happened that in Tabriz
was a man named Badru'ddin 'Umar.
He was the Police Inspector, but at heart he was an ocean of bounty: every hair's
tip of him was a dwelling-place worthy of Hatim.
Hatim, had he been alive, would have become a beggar to him and laid his head
before him and made himself as the dust of his feet.
If he had given an ocean of limpid water to a thirsty man, such was his generosity
that he would be ashamed of bestowing that gift;
And if he had made a mote as full of splendour as a place of sunrise, even that
would seem to his lofty aspiration to be an unworthy action.
That poor stranger came to Tabriz in hope of him, for to poor strangers he was
always a kinsman aI1d relative.
That poor stranger was familiar with his door and had paid unnumerable debts
from his bounty.
In reliance upon that generous protector he ran into debt, for the poor man was
confident of receiving his donations.
He had been made reckless by the Inspector and almost eager to incur debts in
hope of his enrichment by that munificent sea.
His creditors looked sour, while he was laughing happily, like the rose, on account
of that garden of generous souls. . . .
The poor stranger, afflicted with fear on account of his debts, set out on the way to
that Abode of Peace.
He went to Tabriz and the rose-garden district: his hope was to lie supine on roses. From the glorious imperial city of Tabriz darted light upon light on his hope. His spirit was laughing for that orchard of noble men and the fragrant breeze from
Joseph and the Egypt of union.
He cried, "0 cameleer, let my camel kneel for me to alight: my help is come and / /my need is flown.
Kneel down, 0 my camel! My affairs are flourishing: verily, Tabriz is the place
where princes alight.
Graze, 0 my camel, round the meadows: verily Tabriz is for us the most excellent
source of bountifulness.
0 camel-driver, unload the camels: 'tis the city of Tabriz and the district of the
rose-garden.
This garden hath the splendour of Paradise: this Tabriz hath the brilliance of
Heaven.
At every moment of time joy-enkindling odours diffused by the Spirit are floating
down from above the empyrean upon the inhabitants of Tabriz."
When the poor stranger sought the Inspector's house, the people told him that the
loved one had passed away.
"The day before yesterday," they said, "he removed from this world: every man
and woman is pale with grief for the calamity that has overtaken him.
That celestial peacock went to Heaven, when the scent of Heaven reached him
from invisible messengers. Although his shadow was the refuge of people, the Sun rolled it up very quickly. He pushed off his boat from this beach the day before yesterday: the Khwaja had
become sated with this house of sorrow."
The man shrieked and fell senseless: you would say that he too had given up the
ghost on the heels of the Inspector.
Then they threw julep and water on his face: his fellow-travellers wept and
bewailed his plight.
He remained unconscious till nightfall, and then his soul returned, half-dead, from
the Unseen.

The rest of the poem is a prayer of the wretched survivor to Allah asking pardon for having put an earthly being on the same level as Allah as a protector and provider, and thanking Allah for giving him his existence and the means for enjoying what his friend had formerly given him. Elsewhere Rumi wrote: "When imagination becomes imprisoned in colour or materialism, Moses acts against Moses. When you free imagination from bondage, Moses and Pharaoh become friends." This was his message that materialism is only acceptable as the means of human unity, not as an end in itself (which brings only division). But how the bereaved bankrupt escaped from his creditors, Rumi does not say.
So my city had always had its incomers and outgoers, not that all of those coming were bankrupt seekers of philanthropy, or those going limited to alienated intellectuals. And if the karvan-sarai confronted me with the obvious fact of the traffic in and out, the bazaar showed the results, most especially in the part where the various carpets from all over the East were bought and sold. It was a meeting across time as well as distance. Some of the carpets I would have seen being sold, while my mother still begged me to make haste, could have been as much as 500 years old; others would certainly have been of very recent manufacture. And the customers in my day, as formerly, came from West as well as East, although now there was far more traffic from the West than in the PSlst.
The great bazaar through which we were making such slow progress was an enormous building, called the Muzaffaria, which was lit by huge skylights. It had been rebuilt in the 19th century, but it had had many ancestors. A short distance from the great bazaar many sarais, or houses, were situated, surrounded by offices, and in the middle of the area - which is open, unlike a bazaar - could be seen sacks of dried fruit, pistachio nuts, walnuts, almonds, raisins, dried figs and all sorts of spices, which were to be sold all over Europe and in other parts of the world. The offices surrounding the area were occupied by merchants who dealt with famous cities in other countries, and whose camel-drivers we had noticed earlier. The sarais were reached through huge gateways, some of them having as many as three or four, which opened onto different bazaars, streets and parts of the city. The great gates were usually closed at sunset, by sarai-dars, and for those who left last of all the sarai-dars opened a small door at the bottom of the great gate so that the final exits had to be made crouched down and almost crawling: they then locked up even the small doors for the night. These doors were intended to keep the goods safe from possible thieves and marauders at night, but during the daytime the sarai-dars turned a blind eye to small children who found these huge yards an excellent place for hideand-seek and also to feed themselves on the dried fruits when they were hungry. My father's office was quite nearby, and children from different offices and I, when I was older, used to congregate to play in one of these sarais. Naturally there was more dried fruit to be obtained from sacks which were old and had holes, or were tom open, and from there we fed ourselves whenever we wanted to. We used to eat anything we liked, but we never
took anything away, and I remember that no one ever told us off at any time for touching these things.
One of the very few early European accounts of Tabriz comes from the witness of a boy not much older than myself and my friends when we were raiding the bags of dried fruit. Marco Polo was about 17 when he first saw Tabriz, around 1271, just before the death of Rumi, and he conveys the excitement of the place as a hub of competing civilizations. He was highly conscious of Rumi's muslim co-religionists - most of them much more orthodox the Rumi - and he and his father and uncle were bound on their journey deeper and deeper into the Mongol Empire; and of course for all of his enforced cosmopolitanism he retained the prejudices of his native Venice:

Since Tabriz is the most splendid city in the province, I will tell you about it.
The people of Tabriz live by trade and industry; for cloth of gold and silk is woven here in great quantity and of great value. The city is so favourably situated that it is a market for merchandise from India and Baghdad, from Mosul and Hormuz, and from many other places; and many Latin merchants, especially Genoese, come here to buy the merchandise imported from foreign lands. It is also a market for precious stones, which are found here in great abundance. It is a city where good profits are made by travelling merchants. The inhabitants are a mixed lot and good for very little. There are Armenians and Nestorians, Jacobites and Georgians and Persians; and there are also worshippers of Mahomet, who are the natives of the city and are called Tabrizis. The city is entirely surrounded by attractive orchards, full of excellent fruit. The Saracens of Tabriz are wicked and treacherous. The law which their prophet Mahomet has given them lays down that any harm they may do to one who does not accept their law, and any appropriation of his goods, is no sin at all. And if they suffer death or injury at the hands of Christians, they are accounted martyrs. For this reason they would be great wrong-doers, if it were not for the government. And all the other Saracens in the world act on the same principle. When they are on the point of death, up comes their priest and asks whether they believe that Mahomet was the true messenger of God; if they answer "Yes", then he tells them that they are saved. That is why they are converting the Tartars and many other nations to their laws, because they are allowed great licence to sin and according to their law no sin is forbidden.
Within the confines of Tabriz is a monastery named in honour of the Venerable St Barsamo. Here there is an abbot with many monks who wear a habit in the style of Carmelites. These monks, so as not to give themselves up to idleness, are continually weaving woollen girdles, which they afterwards lay on the altar of St Barsamo when they celebrate Mass. When they go through the province begging (like the friars of the order of the Holy Ghost), they give some of them to their friends and to noblemen, because they are efficacious in relieving the body of pain; and for this reason everyone devoutly wishes to have one.
(From Marco Polo, The Travels.)

When I was with my mother, I never dared to enter the sarais. This was not because I was afraid, but because I realised that such an action would bring my mother to great trouble. She was wearing her chador, and it was impossible for her to see me clearly with it; she would have difficulty in following me and would be in danger of being tripped up by the huge sacks of the merchants' produce. I myself would be in serious danger of losing her because when veiled she simply looked like hundreds of other women similarly protected. Indeed, several times in the past I had lost her for this very reason. In much less populated places I had only been able to recognise her by the shape of her shoes and by a hand gesturing in my direction under her garment. But when we used to arrive at the Great Mosque - Masjed Jami' - I used to sit on the platform next to the great gate with my mother standing next to me. I used to watch the merchants rolling open great carpets in front of the mosque and displaying them to their customers. While these beautiful carpets were lying in front of the gate of the mosque I noticed people walking over them, and I drew my mother's attention to this as it was strictly forbidden at home for us to walk on the carpets with our shoes on. She explained to me that here this did not matter, as the merchants wanted the carpets to look older than they actually were, so that they would be taken to be valuable antiques and would therefore sell for a better price.
Sometimes I would say to my mother that I wanted to go to the toilet, and she would tell me to find a wall and go behind it and relieve myself that way. But I was shy and didn't want to, and besides I liked the adventure of finding a public, official toilet and going there myself just like a man. So when we came to the mosque on this occasion I was allowed to go to the toilets situated in front of it to use the facilities. This meant that I had to go into the dark, where it was frightening, since there was only one light at the far end of the passage, but it was also most welcome in its cool, soothing air, so different from the hot day outside. When I reached the open space I found many men washing in a large pool, preparing themselves to go in and pray, for which they had to be scrupulously clean. Beside the pool were little toilets. When I went in I found a great deep hole in the ground, into which a little boy might fall, and I could hear the noise of the sewer far below. So when I returned I told my mother of my fears and she said, yes that was why she had wanted me to go behind the wall.
I wanted to know why my mother would not come into the mosque with me, especially since it was so cool and agreeable after the open air. But she would only say that it was the wrong time. It was not until much later that I realised this was the time of the month when she was having her period, and it was forbidden for women to enter the mosque and pray during the days of their menstruation. She would remain outside while I would be allowed a few minutes to savour the quiet, peace and cool temperature.
Many men and boys were sleeping in some corners of the mosque, and when there was no mass prayer in progress the porters who had been carrying heavy carpets and loads on their backs and in their arms through the bazaar would go there to rest and have their meal. In fact after a few years when I was in my father's office, I myself slept in the mosque once or twice. Often, instead of going to collect my father's debts I would retire to the mosque and read my books in a quiet, cool place. Outside the mosque there were many rooms, including classrooms, where religious students read and studied. In fact it was the place where in later years I studied the Gulistan of Sa'di and the Arabic languages.
Immediately after we had passed the mosque we came to a huge open area with _illow trees which was surrounded by these classrooms. I really wanted to go and paddle in the great pool there, but it contained pure water, reserved for the students who were at work, so that they could wash their hands and face, according to the religious rites, before prayer, and my mother forbade me in case I should be thought to be desecrating the water. The mosque itself was n_ more than two centuries old, but like most mosques in Tabriz it had been rebuilt many times over the centuries. The chief cause of the destruction of the mosques was the persistent recurrence of terrible earthquakes. One of the oldest surviving poems by a Tabrizi writer, the work of Qatran Tabrizi, deals with one of these earthquakes. It was written almost two centuries before Rumi and Marco Polo visited Tabriz, and long before the Mongols made their fierce conquest which resulted in Tabriz becoming so powerful and important a city. He speaks of the earthquake as the work of Yazdan, God.

Gaze on the might of Yazdan. Gaze on the mighty work of his hand.
Such deeds seem as little or naught to the hand of Yazdan.
No man can comprehend in its fullness the power of God.
No man can comprehend in its fullness the valour of God.
He makes gardens into barren hills and plains - such is his power.
He converts barren hills and plains into rich gardens in flower.
If contemplation makes you aware of humility - that is but fitting. . .
If you are cast into confusion by his might and his mystery - that, too, is fitting. You who would reach to the innermost sense of these things,
You who would master the innermost motive of all of these things,
Make your way to Tabriz, learn how God's mighty hand cast it down,
Make your way to Tabriz, learn the tale of that most tragic town.
The city through the centuries raised its head to the sky,
Through the centuries men raised its walls up on high,
The town where men stretched out their hands for a star,
The town that raised towers to Saturn on far,
Lost its pride and was crushed in the space of one hour,
Death took a great toll in the span of one hour.
Many women of beauty, like Kashmir's most fair,
Died in gardens of paradise - still they lie there.
The departed, entombed, shall rest in Heaven's law
In once lovely homes in the earth's ghastly maw.
Men whose homes were once filled with rich goods of all kinds,
Men whose stores were once filled with good things of all kinds,
Have been felled by misfortune and roll in the dust.
They perforce sold their sons for the sake of a crust.
People starve though the city is bursting with bread.
People thirst though the waters have everywhere spread.
In penury people put value on wealth,
But, death being near, on life and on health.
Those who perished were saved from misfortune and badness,
While the living are plunged in a sea of deep sadness.
All men knew misfortune. For children they keen.
The deaths of their brothers and sisters they've seen.
In mourning they bloody their cheeks with their nails.
They gnaw at their fingers to stifle their wails.
In the night-time disaster enveloped the town
You have heard how the towers and walls were cast down.
Helpless children were left by their more helpless mother.
Inconsolable lovers forgot one another.
Till that day of doom none shared woe with another.
Till that day no man had to comfort his brother.
Today in disaster men lack clothes and bread,
And everyone feels he were better off dead.
Since God in his wisdom created the world
And beyond it the planets in symmetry whirled,
Such tremors on earth there never had been,
A calamity such as mankind had not seen.
This misfortune is fruit of our own wicked acts,
For we did not repent for our unworthy acts.
To bring comfort to those who were not taken by death
The Emir, and his son were saved from sure death. . .
(Slightly amended, from Azerbaijan Poetry, an anthology.)

There is no doubt in my mind that this is a brilliant and angry satire.
I fear that in a more frivolous spirit of satire I am now taking us forward to the 19th century to view Tabriz through the eyes of the most superior Englishman of his time, or so his contemporaries seemed to consider him. Tabriz had seen Cyrus the Great and Marco Polo. She had been under the rule of Medes and Persians, Mongols and Turks. She had known some of the greatest poets and philosophers of antiquity. She was now to receive, in 1892, the reflections of the Honourable George Nathaniel Curzon:

Tabriz, the capital city [of Azerbaijan], which occupies much the same position in North-Western as does Meshed in North-Eastern Persia, which is the residence of the Heir Apparent, the station of a British Consul-General, and the largest commercial emporium in Persia, deserves somewhat minute attention. Situated at the extremity of an extensive plain, which extends to the gleaming expanse of the Urumiah Lake, and a little to the south, of the Aji Chai (chai is Turki for river), which irrigates the gardens outside the city, it is framed in a landscape of orange and red-coloured hills, while on the south rises the snow-covered cone of Mount Sehend, 11,800 feet above the sea.
Tabriz has enjoyed, or perhaps I should say suffered, an eventful history. Situated at so slight a distance from the frontier, it has fallen the first victim to invading armies, and has been successively held by Arabs, Seljuks, Ottomans, Persians, and Russians. What the rage of conquest or the licence of possession has spared, Nature has interfered to destroy. The city has been desolated by frequent and calamitous earthquakes. Twice we hear of its being levelled to the ground before, in 1392, it was sacked by Timur, whose path was strewn with ruins that vied with the convulsions of Nature. Five times during the last two centuries has it again been laid low. A reliable historian (Krusinski) tells us that 80,000 persons perished in the earthquake of 1721; and we hear from another source that half that number were claimed for the death-roll by its successor in 1780. It is small wonder that a city so relentlessly persecuted has scarcely ventured to raise its head, that its streets are mean and narrow, that it contains few or no public buildings of any )distinction, and that the bulk of its dwelling-houses are onestoreyed and low. What is the use of building a lofty structure, only to find it toppling down upon your ears?
A fanciful tradition ascribes the origin of the name to the gratitude of Zobeideh, the famous wife of the Kalif Harun-er-rashid, who, having been cured of a fever by its salubrious climate, is said to have called the spot Tab-riz, or Fever-expelling. This, in common with other far-fetched interpretations that excited the curiosity of the seventeenth-century travellers from Europe, must be not too respectfully dismissed. Tabriz is an Aryan word, derived from tab or tap, warm, tepid, and rez, riz, resh, a verbal root meaning to flow. It signifies, therefore, "warm-flowing", and originated from the hot springs in the neighbourhood. This word became the classical Tauris, which at the close of the third century after Christ was the capital of the Armenian King Tiridates Ill. Its predecessor, located by Rawlinson at Takht-i-Suleiman, was Ganzaca, or Gaza, the Kandsag of Armenian history. To Zobeideh we may concede the distinction of having, in 791 A.D, rebuilt and beautified the city, a service which has more than once in history procured for its author a founder's claim and honour. In Marco Polo's time it was a city where "the merchants make large profits". The Spaniard Clavijo spent nine days here in 1404 and nineteen days in 1405, on his journey to and from Samarkand; and so speedily had the city recovered from Timur's visitation that even then, though formerly much more populous, it contained 200,000 inhabitants, and "the finest baths in the whole world". A few years later it became the capital of the Kurdish dynasty of Kara Koyunlu, or Black Sheep; but they in their turn were expelled in 1468 by Uwn Hasan (Long Hasan), the chief of the Ak Koyunlu, or White Sheep, who made himself sovereign of Persia, and in whose reign the Venetian travellers, whose diaries have fortunately been preserved and given to the world, visited his dominions. Josafa Barbaro, who was at Tabriz in 1474, called him King Assambai (i.e. Hasan Beg), and left a long account of the city. Ambrosio Contarini called the King Ussun Cassan. A little later the anonymous merchant whose travels have also been published in the same collection (1507-20) said the city was without walls but twenty-four miles in circumference. As for the ladies, he seems to have found time in the intervals of business to appreciate their charms, for he leaves record that The women are as white as snow. Their dress is the same as always has been the Persian costume - wearing it open at the breast, showing their bosoms and even their bodies, the whiteness of which resembles ivory.

On the other hand, less favoured or more exacting was "the most noble magnifico" Vincentio d'Alessandri, who in 1571 said

The women are mostly ugly, though of fine features and noble dispositions. They wear robes of silk, veils on their heads, and show their faces openly.

All the writers of this and the succeeding epoch concur in eulogies of the great commercial wealth and importance of Tabriz. Tavernier, in the middle of the next century, said that "money trolls about in that plac_ more than any other part of Asia". Chardin, however, in 1671, has left the most glowing account of its extent and features:

It is really and truly a very large and potent city; as being the second in Persia, both in dignity, in grandeur, in Riches, in Trade, and in number of Inhabitants. It contains 15,000 Houses and 15,000 shops. I did not see many palaces or magnificent houses at Tauris. But there are the fairest Basars that are in any place of Asia. And it is a lovely sight to see their vast extent, their largeness, their beautiful Duomos, and the Arches over 'em; the number of people that are there all the day long, and the vast quantities of merchandise with which they are filled.

The enthusiastic Frenchman went on to say that the city contained 250 mosques, 300 caravanserais, and a population of 550,000, and that

The Piazza of Tauris is the most spacious Piazza that ever I saw in any city of the world, and far surpasses that of Ispahan. The Turks have several times drawn up within it 30,000 men in Battel.

In the present century the most notable experience of Tabriz has been its unresisted occupation by the Russian army under Paskievitch in the campaign of 1827. The Governor was seized and handed over as a prisoner to the Russians, and the latter occupied the Citadel and captured the town without firing a shot. Nevertheless the "St Petersburg Gazette", in chronicling this achievement, stated that the garrison made a most obstinate defence, but that nothing could impede the ardour of the Imperial troops, who carried all before them, took numerous stands of colours, and finally wrested from the Governor the keys to the city. The colours, which had been specifically manufactured in the bazaar at Tabriz, and then artificially perforated with bullet-holes, were sent to Moscow and were enshrined in great state in the Kremlin. There were only eight gates in the city, but fifteen colossal keys, also manufactured for the purpose, were despatched to the same destination, and, I doubt not, are treasured as among the proudest trophies of Muscovite prowess. The city was restored to Persia upon the conclusion of peace in February of the following year.
Since 1805 Tabriz has been the capital and residence of the Heir Apparent, having been first chosen for that purpose in the case of Abbas Mirza, the selected son of Fath Ali Shah. Kinneir, about 1810, described it as "one of the most wretched cities in Persia", and as having only 30,000 inhabitants. Morier, in 1812, gave it 50,000. In the long reign of peace that has succeeded the Russian war, the numbers have gradually swollen, being reported at different intervals as from 100,000 to 140,000, until at the present moment they are said to be between 170,000 and 200,000. In 1886 General Schindler reported the town as containing eight imamzadehs, 318 mosques, 100 public baths, 166 caravanserais, 3,922 shops, twenty-eight guard-houses and five Armenian churches; but a good many of these figures, represent deserted fabrics, while the majority of the so-called mosques are tekiehs or public prayer-places; so that the totals give an exaggerated impression of the existing city.
Imposing and extensive as Tabriz must once have been, there are at this moment positively only two monuments of antiquity worthy of any notice, and both of them are in a state of ruin. The first of these is the Kabud Musjid, or Blue Mosque, so called from the magnificent specimens of enamelled fa"ience by which it was once encrusted. It was built by Jehan Shah, the last sovereign of the Black Sheep dynasty (1437-1468 A.D.). Earthquakes have shattered its walls; its dome has fallen in; and but few relics survive of the departed splendour; although these are sufficient to have drawn from a competent observer the remark that the Mosque of the Sunnis, as he calls it, from the tradition that it was raised in the days when the Sunni was the national faith, is the "chef-d'oeuvre of Persian, and, perhaps, of all Oriental architecture". The other relic is the Ark or Citadel, in the south-west part of the city, originally built by Ali Shah, and which once contained a magnificent mosque within the walls. It was converted into an arsenal in the first quarter of this century by Abbas Mirza, who employed a large number of English workmen; and here, in July 1850, was shot the Bab, or founder of the Babi heresy. A solid mass of masonry 120 feet high, and with walls twenty-five feet thick at the base, towers above the city, and is a relic of the ancient structure. Faithless wives used to be hurled down from its summit; but this method of execution was abandoned when one of these ladies, sustained by her inflated petticoats as by a parachute, descended unharmed on to terra firma.
The palace of the Vali-Ahd, or Heir Apparent, is the most elegant modern building in the city. The Europeans live in the Armenian quarter. Here are the residences of the Turkish, Russian, and British Consul-Generals, the last named having a charming and spacious house, a great contrast to the quarters in which I left him before his transfer from Meshed. France also maintains a Consul at Tabriz, whose business it is to foster such trade as she may possess, and to supervise the interests of the Catholic Nestorians whom she has taken under her protection. There was once a Belgian Consul; but a sinecure so complete could only end in withdrawal. As I have said, the interior of the town possesses no distinction: the houses are low, the lanes narrow and dirty; and size and business alone demonstrate the existence of a capital. Considering that it is the second city in the kingdom, the residence of the heir to the throne, and the seat of great wealth, and that there are in the neighbourhood abundance of the most beautiful marbles and building materials, it is surprising, in spite of the earthquakes,
Ark (Citadel) in Tabriz.

that more effort has not been made to embellish Tabriz. An inner wall encircles the building of the Ark, and a double outer wall, in no sort of repair, surrounds the city.

(From George N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question.)