'Military report on Tehran and adjacent Provinces of North-West Persia (including the Caspian Littoral)' [‎111r] (226/610)

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must also pay the expenses of the wife for three months after
the divorce.
The only course for a woman desirous of divorce is to take
refuge from her husband in the house of a Mujtahid and implore
his protection.
The position of women generally remains one of degrada
tion. At worst they are regarded as chattels, at best as only
half as good as a man.'
The upper classes generally are lax in religious observances i rr eiigi 0n of
and .drink alcohol. Upper classes.
In the Muhammadan religion the use and abuse of alcohol
are equally unlawful, and perhaps on the view that “when
the water has gone over the head what matters it whether it
be a fathom or a hundred fathom,” Persians, if they drink at
all, drink to get drunk.
•The townspeople except perhaps in Mazandaran are less
religious than formerly, but the country folk, illiterate and
isolated, scrupulously observe their religious obligations.
All men outside the pale of Muhammadanism “ kharij-az- FeeIing toward||
Mazhab ” are 114 unclean,” and in theory it is lawful and Non-Muham-
praise worthy to take the property of an unbeliever. In Foreigners,
practice, however, Persians generally appear tolerant and
well disposed to foreigners, an attitude due perhaps only to
impotence to interfere with them, but, although generally
less fanatical than Sunnis in India, they will not, like the
Sunnis, permit Europeans to enter their masjids.
Prom time to time anti-foreign agitations have been raised Anti-Foreig«
by the Mujtahids, instance the agitation raised against the agitatl0ns
tobacco regie in 1890, against the introduction of water supply
through iron piping for Tehran 1890, against the use of sugar
imported from Europe 1907. The first two agitations suc
ceeded, and as the result of the third a sugar factory An East India Company trading post. was
started at Kahrizak, near Tehran on the Qum road. The
sugar produced, however, was of inferior quality and the enter
prise failed.
As already narrated the adherence of the clerics to the
Constitutional movement was inspired by anti-foreign motives,
and they fostered opposition to the Anglo-Persian convention
of 1919.
The All Ilahis are a sect of Muhammadan dissenters who aU uahi.
believe in successive incarnatiops of the Deity. They are
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ISTajas.