Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/411

ISPAHAN 395 is now tenanted by some 300 wretched families, and the Christian churches, which used to number thirteen, and were many of them maintained in great splendour, are now reduced to half a dozen edifices with bare walls and empty benches. At the same time it must be noted that some improvement has recently taken place in the education of the young, and also in their religious teaching, the wealthy Armenians of India having contributed liberally to the national schools, and a Scottish gentleman, Mr Bruce, having been engaged for some years in missionary labours among the ignorant Christian peasantry of Julfa and Feridun. The commerce of Ispahan has also greatly fallen off from its former flourishing condition. Ths manufactures, it is true, for which the city has been long famous, are still to a certain extent carried on ; in the bazaars are yet to be found the brocades, satins, and silks of former days, together with calicoes, chintzes, and other cotton goods ; the daldls still hawk about the lacquered boxes, pen-cases, mirror-frames, and book-covers, beautifully painted and ornamented, which are peculiar to Ispahan, while sword- blades, damascened gunbarrels, glass, and earthenware continue here and there to be exhibited in the stalls for sale ; but the imports, both from India and from the north, have greatly diminished, and this has crippled the demand for native produce. Whether the trade of former days can ever be restored is doubtful. British mercantile houses, established at Bushire, are making great efforts to push on their operations to the northward. Various schemes have been discussed for opening direct communication with the Persian Gulf, either by railway through Shiraz to Bushire, or across the mountains to Shuster on the Kariin, and thence by river steamer to Mohamreh. If the Persian Government can be induced to throw open the navigation of the Karun to British enterprise, it is probable that an attempt will really be made to connect Shuster and Ispahan by rail, notwithstanding the formidable engineering difficul ties to be encountered in crossing the BakhtLiree moun tains ; and in that case, as the Indian trade from the south would compete both with the Russian and British trade from the north, in siipplying eastern Persia, Ispahan might be expected to derive great benefit from the com petition. The position indeed is so favoured by nature and is so conveniently situated in the very focus of the British Indian lines of traffic that in due course of time some improvement may be confidently looked for. The Ispahanfs have a very poor reputation in Persia either for courage or morals. They are regarded as a clever, but at the same time a dissolute and disorderly community, whose government requires a strong hand and unyielding temper. The looties indeed of Ispahan are pro verbial as the most "rowdy" set of vagabonds in Persia. There is also a good deal of religious fanaticism and party spirit among the lower classes, the city being divided into two factions of Na amet Ullahi and Hyderi (so called from two famous saints of former days), who reside in the rival quarters of Jubareh and Deridasht, and are continually coming into collision. The priesthood on the other hand are much respected for their learning and high character, and the decisions of the chief " mujtehid " of Ispahdn are considered of more authority even than those of the sheikh- el-Ishim at the capital. The merchants also of Ispahan are a very respectable class, occupied in extensive dealings with India, with Baghdad, and with Constantinople, and rarely, if ever, failing in their engagements. Altogether Ispahan is one of the most interesting cities in the East, exhibiting a genuine picture of active Oriental life. The natural advantages of Ispahan a genial climate, a fertile soil, and abundance of water for irrigation must have always made it a place of importance. In the most ancient cuneiform docu ments, referring to a period between 3000 and 2000 B.C., the pro vince of Ansan, which certainly included Ispahan, was the limit of the geographical knowledge of the Babylonians, typifying the ex treme east, as Syria (or Martu-ki) typified the west. The two pro vinces of Ansan and Subarta, by which we must understand the country from Ispahan to Shuster, were ruled in those remote ages by the same king, who undoubtedly belonged to the great Turanian family; and from this first notice of Ansan down to the 7th century B.C. the region seems to have remained, more or less, dependent on the paramount power of Susa. With regard to the eastern frontier of Ansan, however, ethnic changes were probably in extensive oper ation during this interval of twenty centuries. The western Iranians, for instance, after separating from their eastern brethren on the Oxus, as early perhaps as 3000 B.C. , must have followed the line of the Elburz mountains, and then bifurcating into two branches must have scattered, westward into Media and southward towards Persia. The first substantial settlement of the southern branch would seem then to have been at Ispahan, where Jem, the eponym of the Persian race, is said to have founded a famous castle, the remains of which were visible as late as the 10th century A.TJ. This castle is known in the Zoroastrian writings as Jam-gird, but its proper name was Sarti or Sarilk (given in the Bundahisn as Sruica or Srobak), and it was especially famous in early Mahometan history as the building where the ancient records and tables of the Persians were discovered which proved of so much use to Abu-Mhslicr (Albumazar) and his contemporaries. A valuable tradition, proceed ing from quite a different source, has also been preserved to the effect that Jem, who invented the original Persian character, " dwelt in Assan, a district of Shuster" (see Fliigel s Fihrist, p. 12, 1. 21), which exactly accords with the Assyrian notices of Assan or Ansan classed as a dependency of Elymais. Now it is well known that native legend represented the Persian race to have been held in bondage for a thousand years, after the reign of Jem, by the foreign usurper Zohdk or Biverasp, a period which may well repre sent the duration of Elymsean supremacy over the Aryans of Ansan. At the commencement of the 7th century B.C. Persia and Ansan are still found in the annals of Sennacherib amongst the tributaries of Elymais, confederated against Assyria ; but shortly afterwards the great Susian monarchy, which had lasted for full 2000 years, crumbled away under continued pressure from the west, and the Aryans of Ansan recovered their independence, founding for the first time a national dynasty, and establishing their seat of govern ment at Gabre on the site of the modern city of Ispahan. The royal city of Gabae was known as a foundation of the Achifi- menidte as late as the time of Strabo, and the inscriptions show that Achremenes and his successors did actually rule at Ansan until the great Cyrus set out on his career of western victory. Whether the Kdbi or Kdvi of tradition, the blacksmith of Ispahan, who is said to have headed the revolt against Zohak, took his name from the town of Gabse may be open to question ; but it is at any rate re markable that the national standard of the Persian race, named after the blacksmith, and supposed to have been first unfurled at this epoch, retained the title of Darafsh-a Kdvdni (the banner of Kavi)to the time of the Arab conquest, and that the men of Ispahan were, moreover, throughout this long period, always especially charged with its protection. The provincial name of Ansan or Assan seems to have been disused in the country after the age of Cyrus, and to have been replaced by that of Gabene or Gabiane, which alone appears in the Greek accounts of the wars of Alexander and his succes sors, and in the geographical descriptions of Strabo. Gabre or Gavi became gradually corrupted to Jal during the Sassanian period, and it was thus by the latter name that the old city of Ispahan was generally known at the time of the Arab invasion. Subsequently the title of Jai became replaced by Shcheristdn or Mcdineh, " the city " par excellence, while a suburb which had been founded in tlie immediate vicinity, and which took the name of Yahudich, or the "Jews town," from its original Jewish inhabitants, gradually rose into notice and superseded the old capital. 1 Shcheristdn and Yahudich are thus in the early ages of Islam described as independent cities, the former being the eastern and the latter the western division of the capital, each surrounded by a separate wall; but about the middle of the 10th century the famous Boide king known as the Rukn-cd-Doivlch united the two suburbs and many of the adjoining villages in one general enclosure which 1 The name of Yalmdieh or " Jews town " is derived by the early Arab geographers from a colony of Jews who are said to have migrated from Babylonia to Ispahan shortly after Nebuchadnezzar s conquest of Jerusalem, but this is pure fable. The Jewish settlement really dates from the 3d century A.D. , as is shown by a notice in the Armenian history of Moses of Chorene, lib. iii. cap. 35. The name IspaMn has been generally compared with the Aspadana of Ptolemy in the ex treme north of Persis, and the identification is probably correct. _ At any rate the title is of great antiquity, being found in the Bundahish, and being derived in all likelihood from the family name of the race of Feridun, the Athviydn of romance, who were entitled Asiriy&n in Pehlevi, according to the phonetic rules of that language.