# A Year Amongst the Persians

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: E. G. Browne, A Year Amongst the Persians, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> A Year Amongst the Persians
> 
> E. G. Browne
> 
> 1893/1927
> 
> single page
> 
> chapter 1
> 
> +iii
> A YEAR
> 
> AMONGST THE PERSIANS
> IMPRESSIONS
> 
> AS TO THE LIFE, CHARACTER, & THOUGHT
> 
> OF
> 
> THE PEOPLE OF PERSIA
> Received during Twelve Months' Residence
> 
> in that Country in the Year
> 
> 1887-1888
> by
> EDWARD GRANVILLE BROWNE
> 
> With
> 
> A Memoir
> 
> by
> 
> SIR E. DENISON ROSS
> 
> CAMBRIDGE
> 
> AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
> 
> MCMXXVII
> 
> + iv
> First published by Messrs
> 
> A & C Black Ltd 1893
> 
> New Edition published by the
> 
> Cambridge University Press 1926
> 
> Reprinted 1927
> 
> +v
> 
> CONTENTS
> 
> Frontispiece: EDWARD G. BROWNE (in Persian dress)
> 
> A MEMOIR by SIR E. DENISON ROSS page vii
> 
> Chapter I Introductory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
> II From England to the Persian Frontier . . . . . . 19
> III From the Persian Frontier to Tabriz . . . . . . 51
> IV From Tabriz to Teheran . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
> V Teheran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
> VI Mysticism, Metaphysics, and Magic . . . . . . . 133
> VII From Teheran to Isfahan . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
> VIII Isfahan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
> IX From Isfahan to Shiraz . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
> X Shiraz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
> XI Shiraz (continued) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
> XII From Shiraz to Yezd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .370
> XIII Yezd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
> XIV Yezd (continued) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
> XV From Yezd to Kirman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
> XVI Kirman Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
> XVII Amongst the Kalandars . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
> XVIII From Kirman to England . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
> 
> INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 637
> MAP of PERSIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . at end
> 
> Page vi
> [INTENTIONALLY BLANK]
> 
> +vii
> 
> EDWARD GRANVILLE BROWNE
> 
> A MEMOIR
> 
> by
> 
> SIR E. DENISON ROSS
> 
> That one of the world's most fascinating and instructive
> books of travel should have been allowed to remain out of
> print for many years is past comprehension. Yet such has been
> the fate of Edward Browne's Year Amongst the Persians, which,
> published in 1893, somehow failed to attract the attention it
> deserved. Having by the present re-issue obtained, as it were,
> a new lease of life, it will, we may hope, at last take its rightful
> place among the great Classics of Travel. It is, however, more
> than a mere record of travel, and goes far beyond the ordinary
> limits of such works, for apart from its lively and entrancing
> descriptions of Persia and its people, it is an infallible guide to
> modern Persian literature and thought, and as such should always
> find its place on the student's shelf beside the author's monumental
> Literary History of Persia.
> 
> The pleasant, if difficult, task has been imposed on me, as
> one who for forty years enjoyed the intimate friendship of the
> author, to prefix to this new issue a short biographical memoir.
> The life of Edward Granville Browne, outside his year in Persia,
> was singularly devoid of adventure, and in the events of that
> year his biographer can add nothing to what he has himself
> related so vividly in the present volume. My sole aim, therefore,
> is to give a picture of the manner of man he was; to convey to
> the reader his personality, his charm, his gifts, his prejudices and
> his enthusiasms without attempting a chronological survey of
> his life. Dates and details in no way help us to understand the
> mind of a scholar, in his own day the greatest exponent of
> Persian life and letters.
> 
> +viii
> 
> Edward Granville Browne was born at Uley, near Dursley
> in Gloucestershire, on 7th February 1862. His father, Sir
> Benjamin C. Browne, for many years the head of R. and W.
> Hawthorn, Leslie and Co., engineers and shipbuilders of
> Newcastle-on-Tyne, came originally from Gloucestershire, and his
> mother was a Northumbrian. He was sent to a preparatory
> school, to Glenalmond and to Eton, but nowhere did his
> teachers discover how to make him happy, nor, apparently, how
> happy he might have made them. Like many another man of
> latent gifts, he underwent the discipline of purely wasted years
> undiscovering and undiscovered; but it is perhaps inevitable
> under any system of public schooling that the most impressionable
> period of a boy's life must be spent in trying to be exactly
> like every other boy; and woe betide the one who cannot
> conform! Of his happy college days, and his simultaneous study
> of Medicine and Oriental Languages he tells us all we need to
> know in the Introduction to the present volume. The turning-point
> in E. G. B.'s career was the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. All
> through his life his sympathies were unfailingly drawn towards
> any nation that was small and oppressed, and when he saw Turkey
> being crushed by the great Russian Tsar, the picture of the gallant
> struggle against defeat made by the losing side and the cant of
> the anti-Turkish party in England made him feel he "would have
> died to save Turkey." It is important to remember that this
> deep feeling for the Turks was, in this lad of sixteen, totally
> unconnected with any prejudices such as would naturally have
> stirred in him after he had begun to study the languages and
> history of Islamic peoples. It was the misfortunes of a Muhammadan
> power that brought him to the threshold of the treasurehouse
> of Oriental lore, of which nature had made him one of the
> rightful inheritors. If he was to serve Turkey in any capacity,
> Turkish must be studied, and, all unknown to himself, with the
> first perusal of Barker's Turkish Grammar, his career as an
> Orientalist had begun. The youth to whom Latin and Greek
> 
> +ix
> 
> as taught in our schools had made no appeal whatever, whose
> dormant genius no master had ever suspected, suddenly found
> his own soul, and although fortune decreed that he should
> devote some of his best years to the study of medicine, all his
> spare moments were nevertheless given to acquiring Islamic
> languages. In 1882 he took the Natural Sciences Tripos, and in
> 1884 the Indian Languages Tripos.
> 
> In 1882 he had spent the Long Vacation in Constantinople,
> but Persia and not Turkey was destined to be the lodestar of
> his life, and this was no-doubt due to the superior attractions of
> Persian literature, especially in the field of Sufi mysticism, which,
> while he was studying medicine, took a very firm hold of his
> imagination; and it now became his chief ambition to visit the
> country that had given birth to Hafiz and to tread "the pure
> Earth of Shiraz." When at last in 1887, thanks to his Pembroke
> Fellowship, he was able to undertake this journey, and entered
> the country of his dreams, he encountered in the Babi movement
> a phase of Persian life which was to occupy his devoted attention
> for many years to come. It was no doubt the long and often weary,
> but always instructive, hours he had spent with Mirza Muhammad
> Bakir in Limehouse, that had fitted him to grasp from the
> first the hair-splitting heterodoxies of this sect, which had
> produced so many brave martyrs, and whose sufferings made
> such a ready appeal to his sympathetic mind. His understanding
> of spoken Persian when he first came among the people was
> already of a standard rarely attained by Europeans after years
> of residence, for he was at once able to discuss metaphysics, and
> to grasp the full meaning of quoted verses which were new to
> him. Anyone who has merely read Persian poetry in texts knows
> that this last was no simple achievement; for although modern
> Persian is in many respects an easy language, especially in regard
> to its accidence and the regularity of its verbal forms, it happens
> to be in the matter of vocabulary as difficult as any other language,
> seeing that it has a claim on any Arabic word whatsoever,
> 
> +x
> 
> and the very simplicity of its grammatical terminations and
> Indo-Germanic construction make it elusive as a poetical medium.
> E. G. B.'s memory was astonishing, and he not only understood
> what was said to him, but usually remembered conversations
> verbatim. As a feat of memory alone A Year Amongst the Persians
> always struck me as unique.
> 
> It is a strange fact that a gift for languages in almost all cases
> is a gift for a particular group or type of languages, and it is
> quite conceivable that if E. G. B. had not been accidentally
> attracted to the languages of Islam, he would never have taken
> up linguistic studies at all. I do not think other tongues ever
> came easily to him, for although he readily learnt to read, speak
> and write Arabic, Persian and Turkish, he never acquired the
> same fluency in other languages, and obviously found French
> and German far less easy to speak than those infinitely more
> difficult idioms; but he confesses that he never derived much
> pleasure from Hindustani, which was one of the subjects in his
> Tripos, although it is an Islamic language. Certain people are
> only able to pick up quickly certain languages, but it is further
> a fact that they have particular gifts in respect of those languages.
> E. G. B. had no ear for music, and he did not pronounce imitatively
> even those languages he knew best. But he spoke them with the
> same fluency that characterised his English talk. He was
> not really interested in languages as such; neither Semitic nor
> Iranian philology made any appeal to him, although at one period
> he developed a keen interest in the earliest examples of modern
> Persian and its dialects, as witness his articles in the Journal of
> the Royal Asiatic Society, 1894, 1895 and 1897.
> 
> INTELLECTUAL LIFE
> 
> I think that the intellectual life of this scholar may best be
> depicted by an enumeration of the special phases of enthusiasm
> through which he passed. They almost admit of chronological
> arrangement, though they do not coincide exactly with the list
> 
> +xi
> 
> of his various writings as they appeared. Relying on personal
> memories and reminiscences I should set them out as follows:
> 
> (I) The Islamic languages, with special regard for Persian
> poetry, 1879.
> 
> (2) Persian Sufiism, especially the Masnavi of Jalalu'd-Din
> Rumi, 1880-1887.
> 
> (3) The Babis, his interest being first aroused by reading Count
> Gobineau's Religions et Philosophies dans Asie Centrale, a work
> for which he had the profoundest admiration, and secondly
> by meeting and receiving the confidences of many Babis in Persia
> (see pp. 223 sqq.) which led him to devote precious years to
> the study of a subject which was not perhaps wholly worthy of
> so much strenuous labour, especially in view of the later development
> of Beha'ism and the resultant obscuring of the Bab, 1890.
> 
> (4) The history of Persian literature, in which subject he laid
> the foundation of his later work by a careful study of the Biographical
> Anthologies known as tadhkiras, 1895.
> 
> (5) When he first set about his great work on the Literary
> History of Persia he became much engrossed by the story of the
> deciphering of the cuneiform Persian and of Pahlavi and by the
> great controversy between Sir William Jones and Anquetil du
> Perron, 1900.
> 
> (6) With the second volume he became especially interested
> in the Shahnama of Firdawsi, and at this time began to appreciate
> fully the great pioneer work of Theodor Noldeke.
> 
> (7) Volume III brought him for the first time into close touch
> with the history of the Mongols, and led him to suggest to the
> Gibb Trustees the publication of the two greatest works dealing
> with this subject, namely the Jahan-gusha of Juwayni and the
> Jami'u'-t-Tawarikh of Rashidu'd-Din. In this connection may be
> mentioned the deep interest he took, as early as 1880, in the
> Isma'ilis of Persia and in the literature of the Hurufis.
> 
> (8) The next phase was the deep concern he showed in
> the Persian revolution and the controversial and tendentious
> 
> +xii
> 
> literature to which it gave birth, 1909-1914. From 1905, when the
> revolutionary movement began in Persia, E. G. B. devoted much
> of his time to the cause of Persia. He was instrumental in forming
> the Persia Committee, composed of prominent members of the
> Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament, which from 1908 to
> 1912 exercised considerable influence on public opinion both in
> England and in Europe. In 1909 he published a Short Account
> of Recent Events in Persia, and in 1910 a History of the Persian
> Revolution 1905-1909, and in 1914, The Press and Poetry of Modern
> Persia, all with the object of explaining to the West that a new
> spirit of sound nationalism had been born in the country.
> 
> (9) With his preparations for the fourth volume he became
> entirely engrossed in the rise of the Safavis, especially in the
> founder of the dynasty and in the revival of Shi'ism, 1918-20.
> 
> (10) Arabic Medicine. In 1919 he was invited to deliver a
> course of four FitzPatrick lectures at the College of Physicians
> on Arabic Medicine, which appeared in book form in 1921. This
> was the first occasion he had of utilising his combined knowledge
> of Arabic and of Medicine on an extended scale, although his
> medical studies had already stood him in good stead in other
> of his writings, notably in connection with his translation of
> the Chahar Maqala, which has a chapter devoted to Doctors.
> 
> (11) Towards the end of his life, when he had seen the fourth
> volume through the press (1924), he devoted most of his time
> to making a catalogue of the many valuable manuscripts he had
> collected, especially in the last decade, by the purchase of the
> collections of General Houtum-Schindler and of Haji 'Abdu'l-
> Majid Belshah.
> 
> Apart from his purely literary activities he devoted much
> time to the promotion of Oriental studies in the University,
> and was mainly responsible for the creation of a School of Living
> Oriental Languages in Cambridge in connection with the Sudan
> Political Service and the Consular Department of the Foreign
> Office. Mention must also be made of his practical efforts in the
> 
> +xiii
> 
> production of reliable and inexpensive editions of Arabic and
> Persian texts, towards which he contributed out of his own
> resources.
> 
> In between these enthusiasms which occupied his hours of
> quiet work--and it was always a marvel how those hours were
> extracted from the twenty-four, seeing that he never grudged
> giving his best to all who came to his rooms, or later on to his
> house--he devoted much time to the management of the affairs
> of the E. J. W. Gibb Trust. Among the earliest friends with
> whom he was brought into contact by his Turkish studies, was
> E. J. W. Gibb, who devoted the whole of his life to the study of
> Ottoman poetry. When in 1901 Gibb died, only one volume of
> his monumental History of Ottoman Poetry had appeared, although
> the rest of the work was nearly complete. As a labour of love
> E. G. B. took upon himself the most onerous task of seeing the
> whole work through the press, and completing the unfinished
> portions; and this involved an immense amount of patient
> research, seeing that every quotation had to be verified, and that
> the Turkish originals of the many poems translated in the body
> of this work had to be traced to their sources, often in rare
> manuscripts, and copied for the printer. It would be hard to
> overestimate the unselfish devotion to which this undertaking bore
> witness. But his tribute of esteem to the great Turkish scholar
> did not end here. In order to perpetuate the memory of E. J. W.
> Gibb, Mrs Jane Gibb, his mother, left a sum of money yielding
> considerable yearly interest to be controlled by a body of trustees
> and to be employed in the publication of texts and translations
> of Turkish, Persian and Arabic books, and it fell to the lot of
> E. G. B. to carry into effect this laudable bequest. In 1904 he
> established, with five other scholars and the widow of the Turkish
> scholar, the "E. J. W. Gibb Memorial," which has since that
> time published more than forty volumes of texts and translations;
> and it was E. G. B. who, up to the time of his death, was
> the moving spirit of the Trust, which has conferred on scholars
> 
> +xiv
> 
> +xv
> 
> +xvi
> 
> marvellous entertainment which every kind of visitor enjoyed
> in these rooms, the high table at Pembroke provided in those
> years, especially from 1890 to 1900, some of the best talk and
> company to be found in Cambridge. Some names occur to one,
> as those of Neil, Heriz Smith, and Moriarty, to mention only
> those who are no longer among the living. It would be hard
> to imagine a more delightful evening than one which began in
> the Combination Room and ended at any o'clock in E. G. B.'s
> rooms. E. G. B.'s hospitality had one characteristic which
> must have struck all those who had the privilege of enjoying
> it, namely, that it made no distinction of persons. Just as all
> were welcome, so were all worth entertaining. In E. G. B.'s
> rooms, as afterwards in Firwood, no one was ever regarded as
> a sar-i-khar, or donkey's head (see this volume, p. 300). He
> would always give of his best and most brilliant, no matter who
> composed his audience; the colleague, the professor, the graduate
> and the freshman were all regaled with the same feast of talk;
> for E. G. B. was rather a talker than a conversationalist, and no
> one who listened to him could possibly have wished it otherwise.
> His fund of anecdote was inexhaustible, and yet one cannot
> remember ever having heard him merely help a current story on
> its rounds. His tales were drawn either from Oriental literature
> or from the adventures of himself or his friends, to which he had
> the gift of lending a peculiar charm which made even one's own
> adventures, should one happen to be the protagonist, seem new,
> and he would remember sayings verbatim that the speaker had
> forgotten as soon as uttered. And of what did he talk? And who
> shall attempt to describe the manner of his discourse? One can
> recall a hundred topics which sometimes kept his hearers enthralled
> for a whole evening: such as, the visit of an Oriental; the Irish
> question; the iniquities of Tsarist Russia; Stephen Leacock's
> latest nonsense; Wilfrid Blunt; or the beauties of Oriental
> poetry, in describing which he would not only quote the original
> Arabic or Persian without hesitation, but would follow this with
> 
> +xvii
> 
> a fluent literal rendering in which not a point would be missed.
> He had a wonderful gift of rendering such poetry into English
> verse and one can only regret that he did not leave behind him
> more of such renderings. I am not aware that he ever attempted
> to write original verse, except in dedicating books to his mother
> or to his wife, but his translations go to show that he had in him
> the true poetic feeling. Excepting only his love of Persian carpets,
> he had no real interest in the fine arts; I do not think he
> cared any more for Persian miniatures, apart from their subject-
> matter, than he did for a language, apart from the thoughts it
> conveyed. I never heard him discuss either Religion or Art. He
> took no interest in society outside that of Cambridge; London
> only existed for him as containing the British Museum and a
> few book-shops, though he did like a good full-blooded melodrama.
> He cared little what he ate, and had no taste for wines; the only
> repast I ever knew him to enjoy was his tea at midnight which he
> brewed himself; he made it very strong, and generally allowed it
> to get cold, but its preparation on a spirit-lamp played almost
> the part of a religious ceremony in his life, which might
> never be omitted. He loved cigarettes and smoked them incessantly,
> but he never took either to cigars or a pipe, except the hubble-bubble
> on his first return from the East. He began fly-fishing rather
> late in life, but in the end preferred it to all other recreations
> in his summer holidays. While at Pembroke he rowed and had a
> place in his College boat; he also played tennis and squash racquets,
> but on the whole he was not a lover of games.
> 
> In later life he became a rich man, and was thus freed from all
> financial anxiety, permitted to practise his natural generosity
> and enabled to buy all the books he needed; and never was
> an assured competency better bestowed by Fortune. For his
> liberality knew no bounds, and the number of Orientals alone
> who, deserving or undeserving, were the recipients of his charity
> is hard to estimate. But his kindness never seemed to lie so much
> 
> +xviii
> 
> in the tangible results as in the infinite trouble he took to help
> all who came to him.
> 
> His married life was of the happiest, and in Alice Blackburne-
> Daniell he found an utterly devoted wife, a wonderful mother
> of his two sons, and a help-meet fitted by intellectual gifts to
> appreciate his talents and to encourage him in his scholarly
> labours; and the hospitality of Firwood Library quickly made up
> for the desertion of the Pembroke rooms. Mrs Browne was
> indeed the ideal wife for such a man, and during their nineteen
> years of undisturbed happiness she devoted to him all her
> thoughts and all her strength. In November 1924 he was
> suddenly stricken with a severe heart attack, which brought his
> activities to an end. For eight long months every effort was
> made to restore his strength, but when, in June 1925, his wife,
> worn out with the constant anxiety, suddenly collapsed and died,
> there was no one who could take her place, and he never rallied
> from the blow. He only survived his wife's death by six months,
> during which time, by a tremendous effort of will, he answered
> in his own hand all the letters of condolence he had received,
> numbering over 300 in all, but his life's work was finished.
> 
> He was a most punctilious correspondent and wrote letters
> with the same ease in Arabic, Persian or Turkish as he did in
> English, and his correspondence in all these languages was
> voluminous. Both in English and in Arabic he had a wonderfully
> neat writing, and his own books and manuscripts were
> always annotated with the greatest care and legibility.
> 
> What has been said regarding his correspondence and his
> hospitality is merely an indication of his great natural generosity
> in the matter of time, which is the commodity which scholars
> are apt most to grudge. But with time he was a magician, for
> he always seemed to find it for his own work, no matter what
> the distractions of the day and night might have been. I can only
> say from personal experience that in the many weeks and days
> I have spent with him, I hardly ever remember to have caught
> 
> +xix
> 
> him at work. Occasionally he would write a note or two in one's
> presence, but otherwise all his time seemed to be at the disposal
> of his visitors. How remarkable this is when one considers
> the dimensions of his literary output, including as it did much
> reading of Oriental proofs, an occupation demanding the utmost
> care, and considerable strain to the eyes on account of the
> diacritical points of the Arabic alphabet.
> 
> It is not my purpose here to describe his numerous works,
> or even to provide a list of them; for this I would refer the
> reader to Professor R. A. Nicholson's Introduction to the
> forthcoming Catalogue of E. G. B.'s manuscripts.
> 
> He was held in the deepest esteem and affection by the Persians,
> and I cannot support this statement better than by quoting
> from an article in French which appeared in a .Teheran newspaper,
> 
> Mihan, 6th of Rajab, A.H. 1334:
> 
> "Je dois maintenat vous exposer, en grandes lignes, les services qu'il
> a rendus a la Perse. Ces services peuvent se diviser en deux categories:
> 
> (1) Services rendus a la litterature persane.
> 
> (2) Services rendus a la cause nationale persane.
> 
> "Il n'y a personne dans notre histoire dont les services rendus a la
> litterature persane puissent etre compares a ceux de Browne exceptes ceux
> rendus par les grands rois tels que Mahmoud Ghaznavi le Patron de Ferdowsi et
> Sandjar Seldjoukide, le Protecteur de Anwari. Et tandis qu'eux travaillaient
> dans l'interet de leur propre pays Browne faisait tout pour la renaissance et
> la propagation d'une langue qui n'etait pas la sienne.
> 
> "Passons maintenant aux services qu'il a rendus a la cause nationale
> persane.
> 
> "Deja en 1887 quand Browne ecrivait son ouvrage intitule 'Un an au milieu
> es Persans' ou il racontait son voyage en Perse, il plaignait le people persan
> d'avoir un gouvernement corrompu a sa tete. A partir de 1906 ou la Revolution
> s'est declaree en Perse, notre Regrette Ami a consacre une grande partie
> de son temps a defendre notre cause....
> 
> "En parlant des services que notre regrette Ami a rendus a la cause
> nationale persane je n'ai pas voulu parler des aides materielles et morales
> qu a apportees aux refugies persans, victimes de la tyrannie etrangere, qui
> avaient pris le chemin de l'Europe pour echapper au sort funeste qui les
> attendait dans leur patrie meme. Le chateau de Firwood pres de Cambridge
> our vivait Browne etait un asile pour tous les Persans qui se rendaient en
> Angleterre, et l'hospitalite qu'il reservait a nos compatriotes etait sans
> 
> +xx
> 
> limites et sans bornes. Les Persans qui s'y rendaient se croyaient chez eux,
> dans leur propre pays, tant par la facon dont etaient [etait] amenage le
> chateau que par l'accueil chaleureux dont ils etaient l'objet.
> 
> "Apres ce court expose vous voyez, Messieurs, quels motifs nous ont
> pousses a organiser cad reunion commemorative. Dans la personne de
> Browne nous aeons peru un grand Ami qui a consacre tout son etre pour
> nous faire connaitre au monde. Cad grande ame genereuse n'avait pas
> seulement de la sympathie et de l'admiration pour notre pays mais de l'amour,
> de l'amour pur, profond et desinteresse que l'on voit dans toutes ses ouvres
> et dans chacune des lignes qu'il a ecrites.
> 
> "Nous aeons envers lui une grande dette de gratitude qui ne pourra etre
> acquittee que par les generations a venir. Browne vivra toujours dans nos
> coeurs et la Perse gardera de lui le souvenir ineffacable, le souvenir
> precieux et cher d'un grand et noble Anii qui a tout fait pour reduire ses
> souffrances et la faire aimer."
> 
> The tributes paid to him after his death, both in the public
> press and in private letters, all testify as much to his personal
> qualities as to his profound learning. On the Continent and in
> America he was regarded as the greatest authority on Persia,
> and he was universally recognised as one of the foremost
> Orientalists of his day. In 1921, on the occasion of his fifty-
> ninth birthday, he received a complimentary address, accompanied
> by beautiful presents, signed by a number of representative
> Persians, expressing their appreciation of the services he
> had rendered to their language and literature. In 1922, on his
> sixtieth birthday, he received, in addition to letters and addresses
> from Europe and Persia, a volume of Oriental studies, to which
> scholars of every country had contributed articles. He never
> sought for honours and did not care to take a Doctor's degree
> at Cambridge, which he could have done any time, but it is
> remarkable that he received so little public recognition from
> learned Societies abroad. From the Shah of Persia he received
> the order of the Lion and the Sun, he was in 1922 elected a
> Vice-President of the Royal Asiatic Society, in 1903 a Fellow
> of the British Academy, and in 1911 a Fellow of the Royal
> College of Physicians. Had he wished he might have been
> Master of Pembroke, but he disliked administrative work and
> 
> +xxi
> 
> obeyed grudgingly the calls which various University meetings
> were wont to make on his time.
> 
> In reading this great book of travel, in which the discoveries
> are confined to the soul of the people, one cannot fail to be struck
> by the great toleration the author shows towards the weaknesses
> of the Persians. The fact that one of his hosts had become the
> terror of those he governed and was guilty of a thousand unjust
> executions and judgments, does not in any way lower E. G. B.'s
> admiration of his gracious manners or his fine library. He so
> loved his Persians that he forgave everything, and only stayed
> to praise and admire.
> 
> He had a certain dislike of things Indian, due perhaps to a
> difference between the Indian and the Persian spirit, and reinforced
> by a grudge which he bore Indian Muslims because they
> pronounced Persian unlike the Persians themselves. Another
> element in this was his disapproval of Anglo-Indian officials,
> who were his constant bugbear. His anti-Indian prejudices
> extended even to Indo-Persian poets, that is, the Persian poets
> like Amir Khusraw and Sa'ib who settled in India, although quite
> late in life, while he was writing the fourth volume of his great
> Literary History, he was at length compelled to recognise their
> merits and make the amende honorable. His feelings towards Indian
> Muslims also underwent a complete change partly on account
> of the favourable impression created by some young Indian
> students who came to study Islamic literature under him in
> Cambridge during the last six years of his life, and partly owing
> to his great admiration for the writings of Maulavi Shibli
> Nu'mani of Aligarh.
> 
> That Edward Browne was a genius no man could deny, and
> his genius was of two distinct kinds; he not only fulfilled the
> condition of possessing the capacity for taking infinite pains
> but also had the genius which reveals itself in the inspiration of
> the spoken word. For it was in his talk and conversation that
> the scholar, the wit, the enthusiast and the man of heart were
> 
> +xxii
> 
> revealed in full bloom, beside which his writings, with all their
> brilliance, are but so many pressed flowers.
> 
> To write dispassionately of so dear a friend has been no easy
> task, but my aim was to represent this great scholar in the light
> of common day, so that some lasting memorial should remain
> of his intellectual progress and his mental outlook, of his steadfast
> ideals, his simplicity of character and his untiring devotion
> to the cause of sound scholarship.
> 
> E. DENISON ROSS
> 
> +xxiii
> 
> EXORDIUM
> (DEDICATED TO THE PERSIAN READER ONLY)
> In the name of God, the Merciful, the Forgiving
> 
> PRAISE be to GOD, the Maker of Land and Sea, the Lord of "'BE,' and it
> shall be":1 Who brought me forth from the place of my birth, obedient
> to His saying, "Journey through the Earth":2 Who guarded me from the
> dangers of the way with the shield of "No fear shall be upon them and no
> dismay":3 Who caused me to accomplish my quest and thereafter to return
> and rest, after I had beheld the wonders of the East and of the West!
> 
> BUT AFTERWARDS. Thus saith the humblest and unworthiest of His
> servants, who least deserveth His Bounty, and most needeth His Clemency
> (may God forgive his failing and heal his ailing!): When from Kirman and
> the confines of Bam I had returned again to the city on the Cam, and ceased
> for a while to wander, and began to muse and ponder on the lands where I
> had been and the marvels I had therein seen, and how in pursuit of
> knowledge I had forgone the calm seclusion of college, and through days
> warm and weary, and nights dark and dreary, now hungry and now athirst I
> had tasted of the best and of the worst, experiencing hot and cold, and
> holding converse with young and old, and had climbed the mountain and
> crossed the waste now slowly and now with haste, until I had made an end
> of toil, and set my foot upon my native soil; then, wishful to impart the
> gain which I had won with labour and harvested with pain (for "Travel is
> travail"4 say the sages), I resolved to write these pages, and, taking ink
> and pen, to impart to my fellow-men what I had witnessed and understood of
> things evil and good.
> 
> Now seeing that to fail and fall is the fate of all, and to claim
> exemption from the lot of humanity a proof of pride and vanity, and
> somewhat of mercy our common need; therefore let such as read, and
> errors detect, either ignore and neglect, or correct and conceal them
> rather than revile and reveal them. For he is lenient who is wise, and
> from his brother's failings averts his eyes, being loth to hurt or harm,
> nay, meeting bane with balm. WA'S-SALAM.
> 
> 1 Kur'an, ii, III; iii, 42, etc.
> 
> 2 Kur'an, vi, II; xxvii, 71, etc.
> 
> 3 Kur'an, ii, 36, 59, 106, etc.
> 
> 4 So Burton has well translated the Arabic proverb: "Es-seferu kit'atun
> mina's-sakar." ("Travel is a portion of hell-fire.")
> 
> single page
> 
> chapter 1
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views36910 views since posted 2000; last edit 2024-06-12 23:12 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../browne_year_amongst_persians;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> Scanned 1996 by Juane Troxel; Formatted 2000 by Jonah Winters.
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> Shortlink: bahai-library.com/188
> Citation: ris/188
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> — *A Year Amongst the Persians (Used by permission of the curator)*