'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎439] (498/714)

THE GOVERNMENT
489
governor engages to pay to the Shah a sum in excess of that
mentioned in the Jcitabcheli —the prolonged duration of peace
having increased the general productiveness of the whole country 5
such sum being determined by the competing bribes of the several
candidates, one of whom will perhaps undertake to pay to the
Crown 30,000 tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. above the official assessment (in order to
cut out the existing governor, who may only be giving 20,000),
and will presently find himself outbidden by a third, who offers
40,000. Every post of any importance in Persia being, in theory,
tenable only for one year, and being renewable at the annual
festival of the vernal equinox or No Ruz, then comes the moment
at which the most minute and delicate calculation of the requisite
bribe prevails. I extract the following account of the system in
its actual operation from the excellent report upon the condition
of modern Persia, contributed to Petermann's ' Mittheilungen' 1 in
1885, by Messrs. Andreas and Stolze, who were themselves for
some years in official or other employment in Persia :
Every official has to purchase his appointment and to pay for his
continuance in office by a present once a year, frequently almost equiva
lent to the salary that he receives. To this rule there are few excep
tions, from the governor of a province, whose present goes direct into
the private purse of the Shah, down to the lowest servant of an under-
governoi. The governors of provinces are required every year to pay
m to the government the taxes of their provinces at a sum determined
at the beginning of the spring equinox. Now, by law each has the
right of levying a certain sum beyond—the Hak-el-Hukumah. All
this, however, will go in presents to the Shah and Ministers. He is,
therefore, compelled, for the maintenance of his own state and house
hold, to extort a much higher sum still. Careful investigations,
instituted in Ears, during the several years' government of the
Motemed-ed-Dowleh—justly celebrated as the best governor in the
country, under whom Ears attained its zenith of order and prosperity
—showed that, instead of the prescribed 6,360,000 francs, 10,000,000
francs were collected. It is an open secret in Persia that the excess
of levies averages at least 66f per cent. The method of collection is as
follows. The sub-governors {zabit) have to deliver in instalments to
their respective superiors on each occasion a higher sum than is entered
on the tax,roll (kitahcheh). They, in their turn, receive the taxes
from the different heads of districts {kalantars), and these from the
village magistrates; the collector at each stage paying in more than
1 Die Handelsverhaltnisse Persiens, by F. Stolze and F. C. Andreas.