RICHES OF PERSIA'S KING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16216, 29 April 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

RICHES OF PERSIA'S KING.

HUGE TREASURE HOUSES.

A BLAZE OF ' SPLENDOUR. It is fitting that a land which has had Darius and Xerxes among its rulers should still have the most splendid and picturesque of all the world's sovereigns. To his people, although they number but two millions more than live within the bemads of Greater London, he is the "King of Kings," the Shadow of God, the Centre of the Universe, the Woll of Science, and the Footpath of Heaven, to give him but a few of his high-sounding title?. He is the supreme autocrat, absolute lord of the lives and property of all his subjects; and his riches surpass those of any other living ruler. Time was when Persia was one of the most powerful countries on earth— Xerxes led nearly three million fighting men to Thermopylae, and was lord of a war-fleet of four thousand ships. To-day her army has shrunk to a paltry 24,000 men, on a peace footing, and her navy consists of two ships and a river steamer; but in her ruler, at least, she. still continues the traditions of pomp and magnificence which she has maintained unbroken through more than two thousand years.

01 Simple Tastes. To his people the Shah-in-Shah is a being of another world, whom none may approach except with bowed head and silent tongue. When ambassadors, princes, nobles, and Cabinet Ministers gather at a Durbar-i-Khas (a special levee), the highest of them can only speak to him through the Safir of his Empire; and not one of them is ever allowed to sit at table with him. Ho always dines in solitary state, and every dish ho partakes of is first examined by his Lord Chamberlain.

And yet, in spito of this splendour and dignity, the Shah-in-Shah is usually a man of very simple tastes and with a liberal sharo of human weaknesses. Nasr-ed-Din, whose visits to London are still well remembered, was a very child in his love of fun, with a positive passion for practical jokes. On one occasion he procured a number of bicycles, and, mounting his chief ministers and nobles on them, made his royal sides ache with laughter at their absurd antics and their ignominious tumbles. On another occasion he sent a dozen of his aides-de-camp and chamberlains for a row on one of the palace lakes in a collapsible indiarubber boat, a valve of which he had first opened, and laughed until the tears ran down his checks at the ridiculous plight in which they soon found themselves.

Treasure Bouses. Probably nowhere in the world will you find palaces so magnificent—so richly adorned, so splendid in architecture, so crowded with treasures as those of which the boy-Shah of Persia is lord. His Teheran palace, with its diamond gate, its pavilion of dream-like beauty, and its glorious gardens; his Badguir palace; IshratAbad; his fairy-like pleasure-home in the Laar Valley, and his rtiany other palaces and castles, scattered in profusion throughout Persia, are of a beauty, variety and splendour which no other ruler, not even; the Tsar of Russia himself, can rival.; To do any sort of justice to their beauties and magnificence would fill a volume. I

And certainly nowhere in the world .would you find a room to compare with the "Treasure House" in the Royal Palace of Teheran, of whoso wonders Mrs. Bishop tells us in her " Journeyings in Persia and Kurdistan." ,

This hall of splendours, with its mosaic floor of exquisite coloured tiles and its walls of blue and white, has for its furnishing tables and '• chairs covered with beaten gold. "Possibly," writes Mrs. Bishop, "its accumulated splendours of pearls, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and I sapphires; basins and vessels of solid gold; ancient armour flashing with precious stones, shields studded with diamonds and rubies, scabbardß and sword-hilts encrusted with costly gems, helmets red with rubies golden trays and vessels thick with diamonds, crowns of jewels, chains and ornaments of every description, jewelled "coats of mail, exquisite enamels of great antiquityall in a profusion not to be described, have no counterpart on earth. They are a dream of splendour not to be forgotten."

Relics of Persia's Glory. On all sides are glass cases from two to three feet high and a foot or more in width and depth, full to the brim of nearls and diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, flashing with all the hues of the rainbow. Another large case is ablaze with all the Shah's jewelled orders; and near it is a globe of gold, twenty inches in diameter, on which the various countries of the earth are outlined and covered with gems— with diamonds, England with rubies, and so on. The equator and eclintic a<p of large diamonds, and the world's seas are a green blaze of emeralds. Whcrevor the eyes turn, they are dazzled by' the flashes of jewels and the gleam of gold. "J am certain," says one who has seen this Golconda of - gems, "that I counted nearly, a hundred emeralds from half-an-ich square to an inch and threo-quartcrs long and an inch broad. In one sword-scabbard, which is covered with diamonds, there is not a single stone less than a nail of a man's little finger. On one emerald, as large as a walnut, the names of the different kings who have been its owners aro engraved; and one tornuoise, said to be the finest in the world, is more than three inches long and absolutely without a flaw." In a neighbouring room is the worldfamous "Peacock Throne." brought by Nadir Shar, together with gems valued at twenty million pounds, from Delhi two centuries ago. This throne, exquisite in its grace and almost blinding in its splendours, is of gold enamel,' entirely covered with rubies and diamonds, many of them of enormous size and all of flawless purity. And it stands on a carpet, the white arabesque portion of which is formed entirely of pearls. And these arc only a part of the jeweltreasures of Persia's Shah, which include the famous Dar-i-nur, or " Sea of Light," said to bo the second most valuable diamond on earth; many strings of perfect pearls, one of which alone is valued at £100,000; the famous Kaianian crown encrusted with gems and surmounted by a ruby "as large as a hen's egg;" and the Knianian belt, a foot wide, which if. one glittering mass of pearls and diamonds, emeralds and rubies.

Well may a writer ask, "If such a blaze of splendour exists in this shrunken, shrivelled, depopulated Empiro, what must have been the magnificence of the courts of Darius and Xerxes, into which were brought the treasures of almost 'all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them' ?"