'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎496] (555/714)

PERSIA
There is also a college, nominally on a similar plan, at Tabriz;
but, in the absence of direct Royal supervision, it is ill-attended,
Provincial an ^ not much work is done. At Isfahan a college was
colleges opened by the Zil-es-Sultan, under the direction of a
Persian officer who had passed the examination of an artillery lieu
tenant at Fontainebleau.
Such is the modest scope of liberal education that is open to the
subjects of the Shah. The Royal College at Teheran is an excellent
Limited institution in its way, but, standing practically alone, it
scope j g on f ar ^ 00 sma ii a scale to have any appreciable effect
in leavening the lump. It is disappointing to think that, in the
forty years of the Shah's reign, more progress has not been made,
and that, while the crumbs of European knowledge are dispensed
to the few, the old, stale loaves of Mussulman lore are still thought
food enough and to spare for the many.
Of the religion of Persia, of the precepts of the creed of Islam,
and of the differences, ceremonial, practical, and dogmatic, between
Religious f^e Shiah and the Sunni persuasions, I purposely say
questions nothing in this book. There are few writers on Persia
who have not entertained their readers with disquisitions on the
subject, and those who are desirous of the rudiments of information
thereupon may confidently be referred to the pages of a score of
writers infinitely better qualified to handle the matter than 1.
There are, however, three questions, closely connected with the state
of religious feeling in Persia and possessing a peculiar interest for
foreigners, upon which the majority of authors have either been
silent or, at least, inadequate, and which, in a work dealing with
contemporary thought and action, require to be mentioned. These
are the present condition of the Babi movement, the attitude of
Persia towards Christian missionary enterprise, and the state of
religious toleration towards other non-Moslem persuasions. In
each of these cases some clue may be found to the interpretation of
modern Persian life, some straw to show which way the wind is
setting in Iran.
Both about the history and the dogma of the Babi movement
great confusion and much error have prevailed among European,
The Babi an d especially English, writers, of whom Binning and
movement Markham, for instance, have gone conspicuously astray.
The early history of a schism, particularly if visited with prompt
persecution, is apt to become involved in mystery and to suffer