The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan | Page 6

of the royal khalat or dress of office adopted as an ingenious
method of discharging the arrears of wages due to the royal ministers or

servants. In chapter xxxiii. the sub-lieutenant to the chief executioner
gives an admirable account, as true now as when penned, of the
methods by which salaries are capable of being recruited in Persia; and
the speech of the grand vizier in chapter lxxviii., on political morality
as interpreted in that country, would, I am confident, have been
enthusiastically re-echoed by every subsequent incumbent of that high
office.
The art, however, in which Morier especially excels is of introducing,
so to speak by a side wind, as a subordinate incident in the narrative, or
as a spontaneous comment on the lips of the various dramatis personae,
informing and luminous knowledge upon the local charactistics of
places, or the social customs of peoples. For instance, he takes
advantage of being at Meshed to bring in the passion-play of Hussein,
as annually enacted by the Shiah Mohammedans in the month of
Moharrem; of mentioning Herat to introduce the bad-i-sad-o-bist-ruz or
famous ‘wind of 120 days’; of conducting his hero to Kum, to describe
the curious prescription of bast or sanctuary that still adheres to that
sacred spot; and of his arrival at Bagdad, to inflict upon him the
familiar pest of the Bagdad pimple. His description of camp-life among
the Turcomans is only surpassed in fidelity by his corresponding
picture of the vagrant existence of the border Cûrds; nor is there
anywhere to be found a more dramatic realisation of the incidents of a
nomad encampment, the arrangement and meals and etiquette, the
striking of the tents, and the straggling march of the tribes with their
flocks and herds, than in the narrative of the child-hood of the Cûrdish
slave Zeenab.
It is to be noted that Morier represents her as a Yezeedi or
devil-worshipper (though it is more than doubtful whether the Yezeedis
could ever with justice be so described), and attributes her origin to one
of the incestuous nocturnal orgies that were said to be practised by that
people, and that gave rise to the epithet Chiragh Sunderun, or Lamp
Extinguishers. It is to be observed, however, that in such a case Zeenab
would have known her parentage on the maternal rather than on the
paternal side; whereas Morier, by a curious error, represents her as
knowing her father, but being in ignorance of the identity of her

mother.
In different chapters of “Hajji Baba” we are further initiated into the
domestic life and habits of the Persians. We learn that it is considered a
mark of respect for a man to keep his hands and feet hidden beneath the
folds of his dress. In two places we have mention of the profoundly
Persian device of conforming with the letter, while trifling with the
spirit of the religious law, by neatly ripping open a seam as a substitute
for rending the fabric of a garment in token of woe. We are reminded of
the prohibition from exacting interest that is imposed upon the true
believer, and of the still common custom of divination by extracting a
fall from the pages of Hafiz or Saadi. We may gain a good deal of
information about the culinary methods of Turcomans, Persians, and
Cûrds; the operations of the hammam or bath are disclosed to us, and
we are surreptitously introduced along with the hero to the mysteries
the Persian harem or anderûn, and its petty existence, inane frivolity,
open jealousy, and clandestine intrigue. The death and funeral of the
old barber provide an opportunity for a valuable account of Persian
customs upon those occasions.
Similarly the story of Yûsûf and Mariam is utilised to furnish an
equally interesting description of the Armenian ritual in cases of
betrothal and marriage. Incidentally the return of the poet Asker from
his captivity among the Turcomans acquaints us with the curious habit
of bringing back a person supposed to be dead, not by the door, but
through the roof; and when Hajji Baba, from the terrace of the doctor’s
house, listens to ‘the distant din of the king’s band, the crash of the
drums, and the swell of the trumpets, announcing sunset,’ he is alluding
to a custom that has prevailed for centuries in all the Mohammedan
courts of Central Asia and India, that is supposed to be a relic of extinct
sun-worship, and that is still observed in seats of royal or princely rule,
alike at Tehran, Ispahan and Kabul.
Mention should not be omitted, in passing, of the perfect familiarity of
the author both with cultured and colloquial Persian and with the
Persian classics. An Oriental metaphor, however hyperbolical, slips as
easily from his lips as though it had always rested there. Quotations

from