INFLUENCE OF WEST

Evening Post, Issue 25, 30 January 1935, Page 13

INFLUENCE OF WEST

ANCIENT GLORIES, NEW WAYS CLASH OF MANNERS

On Porsia's glamorous past tho at tention of the Western World is more ithd more sharply focused, says a writer in the "Sunday Chronicle."

Archaeologists, toiling beneath the relentless sun of tho East, havo been "wresting tho'secrets of past civilisations from the arid soil Of Egypt, Syria, and Irak. But heretofore little consistent research "has been undertaken in Persia, to which tho Aryan tribes prej sumably trekked from the steppes of Russia about tho time'that Greece .was sacking Troy; tho ancient land whoso Islamic culture, beginning .with, the Arab invasion in 640 A,.D, and profoundly .affecting a backward, ' EuropOj recovered from the dovastai ' tions of Genghis Khari to flower for'the last time when Elizabeth was ruling England. . , , , .. Persia, inviting endless exploration, is fraught with romanco for tho West. A sepulchro stands desolate upon a plain, grass springing from tho inter* stices of its stono walls. ,It' is known to contemporary ,iMoslem Persians as "Tho Mosquo of' Solomon's Mother," and is visited by women who, desiring children, hang amulets about; its portal. This '" mosque" is the tomb of Cyrus the Great, who died in 5G9 8.C., Aaving moulded, Media and Persia in.ttf aii'"empiro, having conquered the Lydia of Croesus', having conquered Babylonia and freed tho captive Jews, Near by the nomads pitch their tents and graze their flocks upon a plateau," The Throne of Solomon," which is the grass-grow'n sito of tho great king's vanished capital.

LONG IGNORED.

,- ,The!v capital of Darius the Great, of Xerxes, demolished by Alexander of Macedon, has lain throughout the centuries an inchoato mass, ignored by educated Persians and shunned by " superstitious peasants. Overlooking a ''much-travelled highway, yet seldom Visited by Persians, the lofty palaces •rise once again upon their terrace, hewn ''from'a mountain's rocky slope. They are being restored by tho Oiiental liir 'stltu'te) which recently urfoaTth'ed 20,000 ' fclay'-tablcts i-witlt cuneiform^ inscript•ffionii >iMieve^P/ tcf constitufe"'' tho* aif-' ShfVbs of the Mcdo-PersLan Emp'ororfc who penetrated'Beyond the Danube, S'ld "■whbao* sway extonded irom Noithern ' India 'to' the Nile—thoso fust; Empirebuilders concerning whom information 'lias been ' gleaned from such alien sources as tho Old Testament and the writings of Herodotus and Plutarch. '- "■> Travelling between the Irak frontier and Hamadan, muleteers halt their caravans and regularly build their fires against the base of a, sheer cliff, unaware that 300',foctf abovo'-is the basrelief which, memorialising the' victories of Darius the Great in sculp- % tures and'also in tri-lingual inscriptions, gave archaeologists of the nineteenth century "West the key to cuneiform inscriptions found throughout the East and reposing undeciphercd in museum's. Hamadan is a sleepy town beneath whose nondescript buildings lie buried* "it is generally agveed, the ruins of Ecbatnna, the summer city of tho MedoPersian Emperors, which Alexander plundered. Revered as the Biblical Ecbatana of Ahashucrus, it is visited during Purim by Persian-Jewish pilgrims, who worship besido two gravos declared by.them to bo' tho graves of Esther and Mordecai. No one worships, however, in tho neglected mausoleum of the> Moslem poet-physician, author of the Canon of Medicine, who, dying in 1038, achieved phenomenal posthumous fame in distant Europe, where, his Persian inaino distorted,.ho was known as "Avicenna."

, THE CALIPH HAROUN.

Caliph Ilaroun-al-Kaschid,. patron of ■the arts and sciences, lies buried in Eastern Persia] where he perished on .-routo to Samaritan. In' death he is. 'separated from his -beloved Bagdad b'y ■the width of'Persia, its area-three times that of France. Persia was then an Arab dependency, and a, mosquo with a golden dome was raised above the •garden where the Caliph died. -.. Today Haroun-al-Baschid shares his golden dome with a latter-day Persian •saint; and while the saint's memory is - .worshipped by pilgrims for whom, the mosque is comparable to Mecca, "the Good Caliph" is forgotten or execrated by modern Persians, who, belonging to a dissident, Moslem sect, now deny his caliphate. ' -- ■ '

Buried also in Eastern Persia is Omar Khayyjim/. but.- gone is t'ho groat city of Nishapur, where ho foregathered with scholars and mathematicians. His tomb, a whitewashed niche, its walls covered with scribblings,'adjoins a mosque, and, overlooking an uutended garden, is a. place for peasants of modern Nishapur, a shabby village. Long and covetously have archaeologists ' contemplated a desolate area which, lying beyond the - outskirts of Teheran, the modern capital, is overlooked ,by a "Tower of Silcnpe," in which thd Zoroastrlans—worshippers of, Persia's pre-Islamic God of Light and Good—havo exposed . their dead for centuries. For here Persian peasants, tilling' the soil with wooden ploughs, have unearthed rare- specimens of early Islamic pottery. This area, covered with sprawling mounds and vestiges of ruins, is believed to bo' the site of possibly the oldest and greatest of Persia's vanished cities ; or tho site of a series of vanished cities variously known to historians as Ullages, Khei, Kei, or Kay. EAZED BY MONGOLS. Assumed by many Zoroastrians to bo tfcfl- birthplace .of Zoroaster,*'mysterious founder of one of tho first "revealed" religions, Ray—several times mentioned in the Book of Tobit —succoured D.arius.lll as he fled before Alexander. It' has also been named as the' birthplace of Haroun-al-Easchid. An Oriental mart which traded with "Babylon and, centuries later, with glamorous Bagdad, Northern Europe, and Chinese Turkes,tan,it was razed by the Mongols seven centuries ago. It will be recalled that Persia do- , clared its neutrality in 1014. But Persia is a corridor to India. And in Southern Persia are the oilfields of the -Persian Oil Company, in which

tho British Government- invested heavily in tho first year of the war. The neutral country; racked with the violence, of spies and .counter-spies, was overrun with Briti&h-Inclian, Biitish and Russian troops, with native forces which these allies recruited, and with Tuiks. * ''

Gloomy was tho Persian piospect when tho present Shah, a former peasant officer'of .the Persian-Cossacks, made- his now historic , .'fflaich upon Teheian, where, his coup slightly antedating MussoliniV march upon Rome, he seized tho Ministry of War. Becoming Prhno Minister, he assumed the rolo of dictator. Theie was no room for tho hereditary Shah, who reheated to Europe. After toying with the idea of becoming first Piesidont of a Persian Republic, tho soldier, mounting the throne, becamo Shah Riza Pahlavi. Persia, with its masses of landless peasants and sheep-herding nomads, remains a feudal land. Therefore the story of modern Persia is tho story of this aggressivo soldier who is less an Oriental despot than a modern dictator. His government 'meticulously conforms with tho provisions of tho Constitution, haid-won by Persian Liberals. But no opposition party is now permitted to raiso its head in the Representative Assembly.

CENSORSHIP.

Tho Press and all public utterances are rigidly censored. And while "The Merchant of Venice" has been repeatedly given by native troupes, those plays of Shakespearo's revealing tho fallibility of rulers aro banned, as are foreign * films containing intimations of resistance to any established •authority. ' Billed by a soldier; Persia is not—in proportion to its revenues—lagging behind nations oi the West in its. increasing expenditures up\m '-militarisation. Maintaining more . than 100,000 men inder arms, it possesses a 'standing winy, tho first in centuries, together vith a small air force, nine gunboats in l ho Persian Gulf, military police in all hrgo settlements, and a- nation-wide c endarmerie to 'police its roads, now rircly menaced by bandits. Teheran, tht capital, has two modern military colleges for training officers, an arsenal and also a smokeless-powder plant, rocently purchased from Germany. In bygone centuries Persia was [famous for the excellence of its trade i routes, by one of- which Marco Polo, headed for China, ma'do his way to India. The routes have remained unchanged, throughout^ the centuries. But tiavolling thirteen years ago was both I dangerous and' laborious, the roads having dcgeneiated into trails and cari-tiackp. Today.jPersia,boasts 6000 miles of gravel-surfaced highways and 4000 miles of, improved .„ dirt roads. Gone aro tho rickety post-chaises, thai caravans .are disappearing, and i the! roads aro used by thousands of motor, vehicles, consuming gasoline supplied by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company or shipped in—at, mischievously " lower, prices—by; the i~ Soviet Government. I Pious Moslems, the men in European dress, mak'e thoir pilgninages by auijor mobile, while lorries bulging with ricd and wheat dash _p*ast' fhe'- slow-footed camels,'and |j:he distojansplate muleteers. Foreign' archaeologist's', 'ttieir cats filled with the latest scientific equipment, speed, jn, comfort between tho sites of vanishetTcities','- travelling'" over the ancient routes. -. -

GREAT CHANGES.

In the large settlements—no longer isolated and no longer a law unto themselves —great changes aie apparent. Mod,efn couits are, administering laws, copied wholesale fi'om Prance.' Schools for girls as wcir'asl boys are being erected, and. also hospitals. To be .Sure, the number of these institutions is i^mall, for Persia is a poor country, and tho Government is gravely, handicapped tiy' a laclc of teachprs and docf tprs.; r H i QWCver,4,-.schools , jqf ..[higher Je'airping'and a medical' pollqge. ,havo been opened in Teheran, ~ , Moslem wqmen, enjpying a_ mild yet revolutionary1 ' freedom,', visit ' public parks, ' cafes, and moving picture theatres. They ''are timidly unveiling or quietly adopting" foreign dress despito 'tho cries of; outraged Moslain clerics, who, ,their 'ranks diminished, are now shorn of" temporal power. - Gone are the Quaint Jcostumes that, woin iyy Persian man, once .brightened th'e stark Peisian landscape. Every Persian male, 'says the licensed-' cleric, now wears a foreign sac suit, or its approximation, and also a prjaked cap, resembling a'car conductor's and known as a "Pahlavi." Incongiuous when worn'by a sheep'-herding "nomad or'a peasant; this semi-foreign costume, prescribed by law,, indicates that Persia, rejecting tho past, is done with Oriental quaintness. It is also symbolic of the determination of the. strongly nationalistic Government to efface tho sharp differences which, existing between antipathetic groups within the country and constituting i a menace to internal peace,' were formerly 'advertised by'"differences of costume1 and even "wider difference of headgear.' There is no longer* any extra-tcrri-toiiality in Persia; foreign nations, under pressure from the nationalistic Shah, have been oompellcd to relinquish their long-standing special privileges, thus following a precedent voluntarily established by Soviet Russia. To receive possible foreign offenders against Peisia's new laws, the Government has built a modern prison, in Teheran. It is in this prison that Persians,ad judged guilty of Gommunist activities . aro executed.