Coll 28/112A ‘Persia. Tabriz – Monthly despatches of internal situation in Azerbaijan & misc. reports.’ [‎79r] (158/1237)

fear of losing him. He turned up, in fact, before we had gone many
miles on the road to Khoi. In Shatopur I called at the Bakhshdar^
office, but received the not unexpected message that the Bakhsbdar was
ill and could not receive me. In Khoi I called, likewise, at the
Farmandar’s office and received a similar excuse - that the Farmandar
was away at a funeral but if I cared to wait he might return. The
length of my day*s journey, however, did not pemit me to stay.
The road fran Khoi to fcaku - about 80 miles - is narrow, largely
unmetalled and rough; on the two passes, Kamzian and a smaller one
between <^ara 2 iadin and Maryamlar, it is, however, fairly well maintained.
The country is barer and stonier than the Rezaieh region, and very
thinly populated: between Khoi and Maku there are only three villages
on the road. At a distance of about fifteen miles from Maku the hills
on the North East fall away and there is a clear view of the Caucasus
mountains in Nakhchevan beyond the Araxes river. At nine miles from
Maku an apparently good road branches off to nraplar, the frontier town,
whence the Soviet tov« and railway station of Shahtakhti may be reached
(by Soviet citizens, of course). If the weather is clear ^ount Ararat
may be seen at a distance of about 20 miles South East of &aku.
22 I reached Maku at 4 o 1 clock and found the new Farmandar, Sadiq
Shahbazi, and the Chief of Gendarmerie, i»t. Sarmadi, waiting for me
outside the latter* s house on the main road. I was told that £ locking
had been prepared for me and on the invitation of tho Farmancar, who
accompanied me in my car, drove through the town without citify. I
found that the house was that of Anali Khanum, the widow of the late
Sardar Leader of a tribe or a polity; also refers to a military rank or title given to a commander of an army or division. of Maku, at Bag he ha Jikh, about three miles on the Western side
of the town. The chief of police haa preceded me there, anc after an
interval the lady herself joined us. As the widow of the greatest
landowner and the foremost "Najib ,, (noble) of the district she claimed
the right to entertain any British official who visited Maku. She has,
I believe, in the past been hostess to K« M. Minister, ihe house, v«hil.Q
betraying certain lapses of taste not unco muon in the i^ast, is certainly
tiie finest and best furnished I have seen in Azerbaijan, and the lady
took great pride in showing me over it. elaborate preparations hac.
been made for my entertainment that night, but at about o* 3 C I received a
brusque message from Captain Akhunuoff, the foviet Town Commandant, that
my pass was valid for Maku town only *» the single word ’’Maku” be ing
written on it - and that he would not penult me to stay the night in
Baghche Jikh. I tried to arrange matters through the Soviet ^ice-
Consulate so that I should not make my hostess ana the local Iranian
authorities who had provided the accommodation look ridiculous, but the
Town Consaandant was not to be moved. I am reportii^ this matter in
greater detail in a separate despatch, as it raises the question of my
right to move freely about my Consular District. I need only say here
that the Town Commandant’s conduct was both unreasonable and discourteous
and that I made my view of it plain to the Soviet Consular Secretary,
Mr. Muradian, whom I saw that evening. I was lodged eventually, after
great inconvenience, in the town at the house of tno chief o! '.yeno.armorxe;
but through the Commandant*s forbidding me, and for a long time my
interpreter (an Iranian subject), to return temporarily to Bajfbcha Jikh
I was not able to recover my luggage or get anything to eat until 1 a.m.
23. The Farmanaar of Maku had been in his post only ten days, and that,
I auickly gathered, was nine days too many for him. He is a fcotund
little man, grieving for the flesh-pots of the South and very frightened
of the Russians, the Kurds, the Tudeh Party and the impending crags of
Maku. As may be gathered from the preceding paragraph, the local
Soviet authorities treat him with scant respect, and twice curing my
brief stay he begged me to do something to have him transferred to a
more congenial post. His last post was Khurramabaci, and I understand
/that