'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎5] (36/714)

INTRODUCTORY 5
present into tlie diplomatic comity of nations, and lier efforts
to accommodate herself to the ill-fitting clothes of a civilisation
that sits but clumsily upon her: so that any man, anxious to
ascertain in any respect what is the Persia of Nasr-ed-Din Shah,
how to reach it, whither to go when he gets there, what to ask for
and to see, what has been done or explored or said by others before
him, what there remains for him to do, may discover that which he
seeks in these pages, finding therein, not merely an account of the
status quo —the fleeting record of a moment—but, pieced together,
fragment by fragment, the processes and means by which that
state has been produced, and by a knowledge of which alone will
he be able either to comprehend the resultant issue or to frame a
forecast as to the future. In a word, I shall endeavour to do here
for I ersia what far abler writers have done for most other coun
tries of equal importance, but what for two hundred years no single
English writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. has essayed to do for Iran, viz. to present a full-
length and life-size portrait of that kingdom.
linally, I shall add whatever of variety or incident may be
Travel possible to a text that might otherwise prove somewhat-
solid of substance, by describing the wayfarer's life in
the East and the ever-fresh, if seldom momentous, incidents of
travel.
It ought not to be difficult to interest Englishmen in the Persian
interest of P 60 ?^- 1 They have the same lineage as ourselves. Three
Persian thousand years ago their forefathers left the uplands of
nationality . -7 t p , •
that mysterious Aryan home from which our ancestral
stock had already gone forth, and the locality of which is still
1 In the minds of a great many English folk I fear that Persia awakens few
other images than a recollection of the tales of Herodotus, the verses of Moore,
and the diamonds of the Shah. On the whole, Herodotus more often wrote history
than story; while the quality of the Shah's jewels is unimpeachable. But I
regret to say that a heavy weight of responsibility lies at the door of Moore, whose
descriptions of Persia are about as much like the original as the Alhambra of
Leicester Square is like the exquisite palace of Boabdil. The roses of Bende-
meer's stream are equally illusory with the nightingales; 'Kishma's amber vines '
are in comical contrast with the treeless sterility of the real Kishm ; and when
Luttrell wrote— , , ,, ,
' I am told, dear Moore, your lays are sung
(Can it be true, you lucky man ?)
By moonlight in the Persian tongue
Along the streets of Ispahan,'
he must have been confiding in the ignorance, as well as humouring the egoism
of the poet.