'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎322] (367/714)

ii! in
322
PERSIA
ceremonies that commonly ensue upon marriage. Here, therefore at
one fell swoop, toppled down the whole of the brilliant hypothesis,
which has sustained scores of writers, and provided material for
pages of glowing rhetoric. From the same authorities I learned
that the original Peacock Throne of Nadir Shah (i.e. the survivor
of the two facsimiles) was discovered in a broken-down and piece
meal condition by Agha Mohammed Shah, who extracted it along
with many other of the conqueror's jewels by brutal torture from
his blind grandson Shah Rukh at Meshed, and then had the re
covered portions of it made up into the throne of modem shape
and style, which now stands at the end of the new Museum
in the palace at Teheran, and to which I have alluded in my
description of that apartment. In this chair, therefore, are to
be found the sole surviving remnants of the Great Mogul's Pea
cock Throne, and the wedding present of Fath Ali Shah must
descend from the position which it has usurped in the narrative
of every 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. in this century, without exception, who has alluded
to it.
Beyond the room in the palace containing this beautiful impos
tor, which, with a respectful iconoclasm, permissible, I hope, to the
Oriental student of history, I have endeavoured to depose from its
false pinnacle, extend a series of chambers of some size,
but no merit, exhibiting an extravagant and often farcical contrast
of the Oriental and European. Illustrations, snipped from the
English illustrated newspapers appear side by side upon the walls
M photographs of the Shah and his little boy favourite, the
Aziz-es-Sultan, and with inferior copies of Italian oil-p ain tings.
Here is a picture of the Paris Exhibition and the Eiffel Tower;
there a deplorable oleograph of an Alpine village, both hung in a
100m adorned with Persian plaster-work and spread with Persian
carpets. I noticed here, what I observed in the other palaces that I
visited, that the Oriental intellect seems to derive a peculiar gratifi
cation fiom the display of duplicates. Thus, the King's son, the
/il-es-Sultan, has, in his town residence, a long row of fac
simile portraits of himself hanging upon a single wall. Similarly,
in the loyal abode, I noticed in one place two large copies of a
semi-nude Venus or Magdalen of the later Italian school, abso
lutely identical, hanging on either side of a doorway; and the
same phenomenon was constantly repeated. The impression left
upon me by an inspection of many modern Persian residences of