Britain's Long Association With Iran

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 212, 8 September 1941, Page 6

Britain's Long Association With Iran

AXTHAT did you think of when the news canae that the British and the Russians had moved into Iran, otherwise Persia? What did the old name call up? I suggest rugs and carpets, gardens and nightingales, sherbet, camels and deserts, Shahs ablaze with jewels, and Omar Khayyam, with a dim background of Xerxes and Darius, Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis. Also oil, but oil is a newcomer. By Cyrano A curious mixture of association, this, to be called up by the relic of one of the greatest empires of antiquity. The news led me to think about Iran's history during the last century and a half, and especially its connection with Britain. I looked up some books and picked out a few things of general and special interest. I am always intrigued when I find history repeating itself. We have acted now to check Hitler's moves in Persia, on the road to India, and to keep a door open into Russia. During the Napoleonic Wars there was a similar apprehension about India, but with much less reason, for Napoleon had no motor cars or aeroplanes to cover the great distance between Europe and India. That eminent authority on the Middle East, Sir Percy Sykes, says in his history of Persia that the British in India were obsessed by fears of such an attack, and that the move was seriously contemplated bv Napoleon and the Emperor Paul of Russia. Neither side realised the difficulties. It was this fear that brought Persia within the orbit of European policies. There were British missions to Persia, and British officers took service with the Persian Army. Soldier-Diplomats

The Britons who went to Persia in the nineteenth century included some remarkable men. Of General Malcolm, who headed three missions between 1800 and 1810, Sykes says that "his fine character, his justice, and his knowledge of the world impressed the Persians so much that all Englishmen in Persia still benefit by the high qualities displayed by their great representative." (Sykes wrote this some 25 years ago.) The Persian decoration, "The Lion and the Sun," was founded in Malcolm's honour.

The interest of British diplomatists and soldiers—they were generally both—was not confined to policy and war. One of them was the famous Sir Henry Rawlinson, who, taking service in Persia as a young officer from the army in India, was attracted by Persian history and inscriptions, and became one of the greatest of Orientalists. One of his first achievements was to solve the mystery of what is among the most important archaeological monuments in the world, the Rock of Behistun, with its three-language inscriptions of the exploits of Darius. It is the key to the cuneiform characters in the inscriptions that abound in the Mesopotamian Plain. To get at the writing, Rawlinson had himself jowered over the rock face, which is some hundreds of feet high. His enthusiasm and skill laid the foundation of a vast new sphere of historical research. A Little War As the nineteenth' century advanced our relations with Persia became closer and more important. This was partly because Persian and Afghan affairs were interwoven, and we kept a most watchful eye upon Afghanistan. It was a Persian attack on Herat, a town in Afghanistan,* contrary to a treaty with Britain, that led to the war between Britain and Persia in 1856-57, one of the least remembered of Britain's many little wars. The British wanted to save Herat without hurting Persia seriously, another respect in which history is repeating itself. We landed troops on the shores of the Persian Gulf, took Bushire, fought a battle or two, and because there was no telegraph, went on fighting after a peace treaty had been signed. Sir James Outram, of later Mutiny fame, made a reputation in this campaign; the troops received a medal; some British regiments bear "Persia" in their battle honours; and because some of the Persian soldiers were nearly invisible in their dustcoloured uniforms, khaki, which means "dust," was introduced into the Indian Army. The Persians were amazed at the moderation of our peace terms, and the war left little bitterness.

Old and New Persia The internal history of Persia in the last hundred years is a record of inefficiency and corruption until the much more enlightened dictatorship of the present ruler, Riza Shah. The contrast between wealth and poverty, desolntion and beauty, age-old customs and modern innovations struck every observant traveller. You will fin J very lively descriptions of the old Persia, as it was until Riza's time, in an admirable book by an American correspondent. E. Alexander Powell's "Freelance." His picture of a Persian caravanserai, with its leprous cook, makes an interesting footnote to Omar. They don't think so much of Omar in Persia as we ao. He is honoured as a philosopher and an astronomer rather than as a poet. One Shah was astonished when the British Minister told him of the Omar cult. "We have had a great many better poets in Persia than Omar Khayyam, and indeed I myself—" but here his Majesty modestly stopped. The amount of money sunk in jewels in Persia is staggering. "He was one blaze of jewels, which literally dazzled the si.iht on first looking at him," said an English traveller of the Shah a hundred and twenty years ago. The famous Peacock Throne was valued long ago at six million pounds, and. seeing that Lord Curzon described it as entirely overlaid with gold, which was exquisitely chiselled and enamelled, and absolutely oncrusted with precious stones, one may believe it.

Old Culture Omar is a reminder of the wealth of Persian cultv.ro. The exhibition of Persian art in London ten years ago, to which Riza gave every assistance, attracted an amount of attention surprising to the promoters. It was said of this exhibition officially: "Persia is one of the very few countries where there exists to-day a complex culture still capable of expressing its aspirations in literature, art and philosophy, which can yet claim a continuous tradition going back into the preChristian world. ... In the matter of such an expressive culture we Europeans are mere upstarts and parvenus compared with the Persians." We may be certain that if Hitler could lay his hands on Iran he wouldn't care a hoot for all that.