'Report on the Persian Army' [‎53r] (105/170)

PART II
MILITARY ORGANISATION OF THE
PERSIAN ARM Y IN 1899.
CHAPTER I.
Recruitment of Men.
Feudal System. Partial Military Conscription early part of Century.
Present-day System of Recruitment for Infantry and Artillery.
Khanewareh or Home Allowance. Pedaraneli or Paternal Allowance.
System of Recruitment for Irregular Cavalry. Term of Service.
Recruitment of Officers.
“Prior to the reign of Fatli AH Shah the military strength of
Persia had consisted of inexhaustible supplies of light horsemen
furnished by the. tribal chieftains on the feudal basis of a
military contribution.”
Curzon talks of the “immemorial organisation” of the
Persian army “as a loose collection of irregular cavalry
contingents” which for the must part retained its original form
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
“ Even under Shah Abbas, when the army was at its best,
there prevailed the most complete ignorance of scientific
warfare, and battles were little less than desultory cavalry
engagements on a large scale.”
The brothers Sherley, 1600 A.D., were the first to whom
Persia owed her first practical initiation into the military
science of Europe, and who enrolled a body of infantry 20,000
strong, recruited from the lower orders of the country, and
receiving a regular pay from the king. The effect of the
Sherley influence, however, does not appear to have been of any
definite permanent nature, for shortly afterwards we see Nadir
Shah overrunning Central Asia with large hordes of irregular
cavalry, and as Curzon says, “ How completely the Persian
army still retained its cavalry organisation is shown by the
statement cf Nadir Shah’s biographer, however exaggerated,
Recruit
ment, feudal
system.