PERSIA IN EXTREMIS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3100, 13 August 1913, Page 75

PERSIA IN EXTREMIS.

LAST OF AX AX Cl EXT EMPIRE

Persia is rapidly dissolving into anarchy and final decay. ,A Blue .book just published m England presents a picture of the ancient kingdom which, as the Times remarks, it is impossible to peruse without a deep impression of the hopelessness of the Persian situation. The Shah still in infancy, the Regent hiding for his life, the Cabinet in a constant state of resignation, the treasurer making agonised appeals for money—all these are '‘only the more conspicuous figures adrift on a sea of dismal anarchy."’ Wherever we look in Persia we have the same spectacle of a lapsed civilisation. “ Xot only Government authority, but also tribal authority, is in complete dissolution. The tribes have split up into warring units, but all unite m despoiling caravans and stripping chance travellers.” Governors of provinces .corner grain, while the populace is starving; Ministers in Teheran engage in similar speculations during periods of scarcity. Bluejackets and Indian infantry are repeatedly landed at ports on the Persian Gulf to save the inhabitants from bands of raiders. Representative government has ludicrously failed. Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Minister, is at his wits’ end to rescue the country from its troubles. Great Britain, The Times concludes, must either shoulder fresh and dangerous burdens in Southern Persia or abandon her considerable interests in that region altogether. leaving the country to chaos andnational extinction.

It is an inevitable law of historv, and one pregnant with thought for every' great and prosperous people, that nations are born, they rise to vast power, they become the conquerors of the world, and just as in the life of the individual there is a decline from strength to weakness and death, so national power wanes almost imperceptibly, but none the less surely. Ambitious neighbours take advantage of a gradual decrepitude; the fairest provinces are annexed; racial characteristics extinguished by an intermingling of new blood ; the once ihvincible mistress of the earth becomes a nerveless wreck, and in the course of a few ages Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Arabia, Spain are reduced to national impotence, or bequeath to a wondering posterity but the vaguest memories of their former glory. Persia’s history is not so glorious as that of Greece or Rome, for it is largely a record of conquest and the fighting qualities of a hardy race. But it is a story of profound interest. spreading over hundreds of years, in the nadir of its magnificence, yet unable to avert a pathetic and despicable

doom. While Greece was a series of small States engaged in a fierce rivalry, the Valley of the Euphrates had been the scene of mighty Imperial movements. For three centuries the great Assyrian Empire had dominated the west of Asia. Various causes undermined its strength, and, like Rome in later times, it had broken up before the attacks of northern barbarians. Upon its ashes several kingdoms had been established, one of the smallest of which was Persia, and the greatest Midia. Under the leadership of Cyrus, the first great Persian King, the mountaineers, in 559 b.c., overthrew the Midian Empire. Cyrus aimed at bringing under his sway all the lands that had ever belonged to Assyria. In 546 he conquered Lydia in Asia Minor. This brought Persia into touch with the rich, cultured, but defenceless Greek cities on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, and they were soon absorbed into the Persian Empire. The death of Cyrus in 529 did not stop the progress of Pei'sian conquests. Babylon had already fallen, Egypt was quickly conquered, Darius, who followed Cambyses as King, even made his way into India. Within the world known to the Greeks there was no power equal to Persia or comparable to her, when in 521 Darius assumed the title of the “ Great King.” The Greeks of Asia Minor frequently rebelled, but the strong arms of Darius could not be defeated. The Persians next attempted the spoliation of .Athens and Gretrir., but the expedition was driven back on the fateful field of Marathon. Darius was followed by his son Xerxes, in whom, for the first time, a wholly unmilitary and incompetent ruler seems to have mounted the Persian throne. But Xerxes was in no doubt as to the renewal of the attack on Greece, and ho raised a mighty host to avenge the reverse at Marathon. If he had succeed d the world to-day probably would have beer: the poorer for his victory. Athens was arrayed against a force, the success of which would have annihilated civilisation. It wag essentially libertv that was at stake. On the side of the Greeks was freedom of

thought and of speech, and the participation of citizens in the affairs of Government. Art and literature and philosophy had all thrust out promising shoots. Had Persia won she would have merely added a new province to an Empire already too large. The triumph of Themistoclcs, in the' Bay of Salamis. gave the Greeks two centuries during which they could develop themselves and their ideas freely, and during those two centuries the Greeks laid the intellectual foundations of modern Europe. During the next century Persia was governed by a number of weak and unwarlike princes. The annals of Herodotus are a record of wholesale assassination by the reigning monarch?, or their usurping successors. 'The Persians had a civilisation, a Government, a religion of thenown, and they possessed courage and truthfulness beyond the measure of their enemies. But the empire was the prey of opposing factions, whose quarrels made it impossible for the central power to retain its hold on distant States. Egypt was lost and recovered, and finally the glory of ancient Persia perished in the series of victories, ending in 000 i;.c.,

which made Alexander the Great supreme in Western Asia.

After the dissolution of the Macedonian empire, on the death of Alexander, w T e do not hear much of Persia as a separate people for nearly 500 years. About 226 a.d. Persia seems to have recovered its ascendency under Artaxerxes, who ruled over the whole of Central Asia, and

founded a dynasty that lasted for 4(JO years, only coming to an end when Persia fell under Mohammedan ascendency. Then we have the era of Persian chivalry and the exploits of the most renowned heroes in Persian romance. The greatest of them was Sapor II (310 to 381), who made the country more powerful than it had ever been since the time of the first empire, and proved a more formidable enemy to the Romans than any other Persian king. Sapor won from the Romans Mesopotamia and Armenia, and the five Roman provinces to the east of the Tigris. His conquests were carried also into Tartary and India. The empire had a succession of despots after the death of Sapor, some weak, others powerful, and under whom the boundaries of Persia expanded or curtailed according to the fighting capacity of the" kings. With the conquest of Persia by the Arabs and Turks, in 651, the history of the modern Persian empire begins. The Mongols, under chiefs like Gonghis Khan and the terrible Tamerlane, were dominant from the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, after

which Persia was in the hands of the Turcomans, who remained masters for 100 years.

The next great Persian commander was Shah-Abbas (1587-1628) who re-established the empire by his conquests. He rescued territory from the Turks, the Portuguese, and the Mongols, and humbled Georgia, which had refused to pay tribute. ShahAbbas introduced absolute power into Persia, and governed his inheritance with an iron hand In 1626 he concluded a commercial treaty with England, through the British ambassador, Sir I). Cotton. Again the Persian star declined owing to a regime of bad Governments. Then the famous Nadir Shah (1736) once more made Persian arms the terror of Asia, and not only recovered, by conquests or treaties, territory ceded to Russia and Turkey, but he forced the great Mogul Mohammed to give him provinces on the Indus, and most of his treasures. Nadir was murdered by his guards in 1747, and his death threw the empire into renewed confusion. The following hundred years saw the decline in government, and the growth of misrule throughout the country. There were wars with Turkey, Russia, and Great Britain. The British Government disputed the occupation of Herat by Persia, which would have given Russian influence the command of an important key to India. In 1856 English troops landed at Bushire on the Persian Gulf, and, having captured that town, began the march to Teheran, the advance being arrested only by the prompt conclusion of a treaty of peace. Apart from these troubles with foreign Powers, successive Sultans were men of indolent and slothful character, and with no other object in government than to raise money from a povertystricken country to feed their own vicious extravagance. One of the best-known Persian monarchs of modern times was Nasru-’d-Din, who came to the throne in 1848. amid insurrection and revolt, not only amongst the partisans of claimants to the throne, but in two important provinces. His reign was most exciting, being accompanied by disorder in Afghanistan, Russian intrigue and domestic difficulties that were The sure forerunner of national collapse. The Shah visited Europe on three occasions, on the last of which he excited much curiosity by his spending immense sums in gifts to opera dancers. Nasru was assassinated in 1896, and was succeeded by his eon, Mazaffar-ud-Din. The reign of the latter was remarkable for the granting of a constitution, the first Majlis (national council) being onened in 1906. In the following year the Shah died, and his eldest son, Mohammed Ali Mirza, came to the throift\ the new sovereign pledging himself to adhere to the new constitution. The grant of responsible government did not alleviate Persia’s troubles. Party intrigues culminated in 1908 in a revolution, and civil war in the provinces. In 1909 Mohammed Ali was forced to abdicate, and the Majlis chose his son, Ahmad Mirza-, a boy of 13, in his place. Since then Persian disorder and anarchy have gone from bad to worse. The Government is utterly unable to maintain the law, English interests are seriously menaced, and it looks very much as if the once mighty realm of Persia, like the relics of many another ancient kingdom, will pass on its deathbed into the protecting tegis of Great Britain.