'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎329] (376/714)

TEHERAN
329
Sliah, it is true, built the Musjid-i-Shah, a mosque crowned by a
small gilt dome ; and other edifices of some importance, but no
distinction, are to be found in the Musjid-i-Madr-i-Shah, or Mosque
of the King's mother, and the Madresseh-i-Khan-i-Mervi. It has
been reserved, however, for the present reign, for the wealth of a sub
ject, and toi the decade not yet complete, to raise a fabric which,
however far it may fall below the exquisite artistic beauty of earlier
monuments of the Mohammedan style, is yet calculated, by its
ambitious design and vast extent, to confer a lustre upon the epoch
and the men that produced it. This is the yet unfinished Musjid-i-
tSipah Salar, or mosque of the Commander-in-Chief, whose four
lofty and glittering minarets, entirely covered with bright tiles and
terminating in florid capitals, looked to me at a distance like
immense organ pipes protruding through the trees. This building,
or rather range of buildings, for it includes both a mosque and a
madresseh, or college, was commenced by the late Mirza Husein
Khan, the statesman who negotiated the Renter Concession of
1872, and who, after being successively Sadr Azem (Grand
Vizier), Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Sipah Salar, died in
comparative exile as Governor-General at Meshed. With the
endowments which he bequeathed for the purpose, the incomplete
works have been resumed by one of his surviving brothers, Yahia
Khan, the Mushir-ed-Dowleh, of whom I shall have something to
say later on, and are now slowly approaching completion. I went
over the buildings, which are on a very grandiose scale. A lofty
archway leads into a quadrangle, in whose centre is a large tank.
On the right is the principal facade with the four minarets; an
immense dome was being constructed over the prayer-place in its
interior. Opposite the entrance is a smaller recess, now used for
purposes of devotion, but opening into a long, vaulted prayer-
chamber, with four rows of stone pillars, fifty in all, and a broad,
shallow mihrab, or prayer-niche, tile-adorned, at the end. In a
corner of the building a library was being fitted with wooden
shelves, elegantly carved ; and outside was a tank for purposes of
drinking or ablution, with an iron railing and taps all round. The
effect of the entire range of buildings is spacious and handsome,
and the gaudy enamelled tiles give it a brave appearance. It does
not require much discrimination, however, to realise how ineffably
inferior are these modern specimens of the ceramic art of Persia
to the exquisite productions of an earlier age; or how, neither in