'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎518] (577/714)

618 PERSIA
so wealthy a province to sustain, although some injustice is inflicted
by irregular assessments and by the unscientific mode of collec
tion.
, Tabriz , the capital city, which occupies much the same position
in ^ orth-Western as does Meshed in North-Eastern Persia, which is
Tabriz t J ie resid e nce of the Heir Apparent, the station of a British
Consul-General, and the largest commercial emporium in
Persia, deserves somewhat minute attention. Situated at the
extremity of an extensive plain, which extends to the gleaming
expanse of the Urumiah Lake, and a little to the south of the Aji
Chai (chai is Turki for river), which irrigates the gardens outside
the city, it is framed in a landscape of orange and red-coloured
hills, while on the south rises the snow-covered cone of Mount
Sehend, 11,800 feet above the sea.
Tabriz has enjoyed, or perhaps I should say suffered, an eventful
history. Situated at so slight a distance from the frontier, it has
Earth- fallen the first victim to invading armies, and has been
1 1 ( successively held by Arabs, Seljuks, Ottomans, Persians,
and liussians. What the rage of conquest or the licence of posses
sion has spared, Nature has interfered to destroy. The city has been
desolated by frequent and calamitous earthquakes. Twice we hear
of its being levelled to the ground before, in 1392, it was sacked
by Timur, whose path was strewn with ruins that vied with
the convulsions of Nature. Five times during the last two
centuries has it again been laid low. A reliable historian
(Krusinski) tells us that 80,000 persons perished in the earthquake
of 1/21 ; and we hear from another source that half that number
were claimed for the death-roll by its successor in 1780. It is
small wonder that a city so relentlessly persecuted has scarcely
ventured to raise its head, that its streets are mean and narrow,
that it contains few or no public buildings of any distinction, and
that the bulk of its dwelling-houses are one-storeyed and low.
What is the use of building a lofty structure, only to find it
toppling down upon your ears ?
A fanciful tradition ascribes the origin of the name to the
gratitude of Zobeideh, the famous wife of the Kalif Harun-er
Early Rashid, who, having been cured of a fever by its salubrious
climate, is said to have called the spot Tab-riz, or Fever-
expelling. This, in common with other far-fetched interpretations
that excited the curiosity of the seventeenth-century travellers