THE SHAH'S WIVES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7525, 27 August 1886, Page 4

THE SHAH'S WIVES.

The! number of tho Shah's wives has , , beon>- greatly; exaggerated. Tho Shah's I greatgrandfather, Tath Ali, never had ] fewer- than some hundreds of wives at a j timo. 1 Altogether he had over 1000 j his j progeny numbered 260'; 110 of his children j survived him..- But tho present Shah has ] '- now only 42 wives— three of these are Ak- , dees^refjular wives of whom, according 1 ' to Mussulman law a man may have only j four— and' the remainder are Meogliehs, or i . . temporary wives. The Shah, of course, 1 hos'ihad. altogether many more wives ; j some'A!cdees : .uavd-.<lied, rifauy Seegliehs { have been scut or given away. ASeegheh 1 sometimes remains only a few hours in the 1 . harem, and niaybo sent away for various' J reasons. She may not please the Shah ; t for instance,- her eyebrows may be too thin,, i ' or she may have' arrived at an inauspicious c , moment; sometimes, .too, she is given to j a faithful. servant as a reward for his < "• ' services; The three regular wives are the 1 following :— Shookoo-ua Sultana ("the J glory of the empire"), daughter of the. , ' late Prince Fath Ullae, a grandson of 3 Path 'Ali Shah. She is thus a cousin of < the Shah. She is the .mother of the ! . " Crown.Priuce, and. as such first lady of ,j the hareni. 'The next regular wife is a 1 daughter of the late Prince Ahmed Ali, | ' a son';'of Path Ali Shah; she is thus an , ' aunt 'of tlie Shah. The Shah has no 1 children •by her. The third wife is tho ' former favbiite, Seghen Anees-ed-dowleh j (" thb^cpmpanion of the King"). She is, , the daughter of a poor miller of Imamah, 1 . a village near Denmvehd, and one day as { tho Shah was riding through the village | she came and offered him some fruit. ] She evidently knew what'would happen. 1 The Shah,, who has the right of seeing j . any of Iris female subjects unveiled, told , her to uncover., ' She was very beautiful then,-and her features made a great iin- j pressiou on the Shah's imflammable heart. 1 Next day she was taken into the harem as , •■- a Seegh'eh,: and; soon after became the . favorite.- Nine years ago, on the death of one of ;the four Akdees (the daughter of the Prince Imad-ed-dowleh), Anees-ed-dpwleh became a regular wife, and she is still one of the Shdh's favorite wives, although she has not home him any children. Anees- ' ed-dowleh is the • type of Persian beautyi very fat, and shaped 'like a melon. All the members of her family have benefited by her being the favorite ; her two uncles and two of her half-brothers are chamber lams 'at Court, with good incomes and much influence ; another brother is marshal of her extensive household; a fourth ' brother refused a position at Court, and earns a Hying as muleteer. Thanks to the munificence of the Shah, Anees-ed-' dowleh has a large private income, which : sho employs for aot3 of charity. ■ i