from
REPORT
ON PERSIA,
A N D ‘A B B A S
PERSIANS,
I
about 1604
Father Simon
‘Abbas I (‘Abbas the Great) became the shah, or king, of the Safavid Empire in
1588. His 41-year reign marked a golden age of Persian culture. In order to
strengthen his army, ‘Abbas sought out European weapons and technology. To this
end, he invited Western visitors to his capital Isfahan, even allowing Christian
missionaries to come and preach. In the following selection, Father Simon, a
Carmelite missionary, reports on the customs of the Safavids and on the rule of
Shah ‘Abbas.
T H I N K T H R O U G H H I S T O R Y : Forming and Supporting Opinions
What is your opinion of Shah ‘Abbas?
The country which I saw is sparsely inhabited, for the most part all flat, with
little water and much uncultivated land; while that which is cultivated has a great
abundance of all sorts of produce, such as we have in Italy, and cheap. For less
than a real1 seven pounds of white bread could be had in Isfahan,2 and at the time
there was a scarcity. . . . There is an abundance of wine, rice, grapes, melons and
other fruit—all the year round fresh can be seen—of meat and oxen sufficiently
so. The Persians do not eat the flesh of cows and calves, but mutton to a vast
extent and horseflesh, which is the most esteemed and by the nobles. The climate
is very temperate: last winter there was little cold. In Isfahan, where I was, no
snow fell, except for a little at the end of February. The heat of the summer is not
great: and on account of the clemency of the climate all sleep in the open on the
roofs, and those who are sick similarly. The Persians have few doctors, yet there
are many old men among them. Their garb is a long garment, different from that
of the Turks: they tie shawls round their waists, and almost all of them go clothed
in cotton stuffs of various colours in imitation of the king. Their chief food is rice
with meat, and they do not use such variety, nor dainties as in these countries [of
Europe]: and they are frugal and satisfied with little food. At their banquets they
display great sumptuousness, both in the great quantity of viands, as in the preparation and serving of them: Allah Virdi Khan, captain-general of the king of
Persia, in a banquet he gave to certain Kurdish ambassadors, put on the table
3,000 dishes all of gold with lids of the same, as I was informed by some Turks
who were present. Almost all of them drink wine: they sit and eat on the ground
1. real: a Persian coin
2. Isfahan: capital of the Persian empire
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from Report on Persia, Persians, and ‘Abbas I
on rich carpets. The houses are of stone, remarkable inside for the great amount
of stucco work ornamenting the ceilings and the walls: so they do not employ
tapestries. On the street side they have no windows, so that their women should
not be seen: and thus the streets are not attractive, nor is the city fine. The
Persians are white (skinned), of fair stature, courteous, friendly towards foreigners
and tractable: they set store on nobility of birth, which the Turks do not do. They
are very ceremonious and use many forms of politeness after their own fashion.
There are some of them, who profess to be philosophers and mathematicians,
almost all of them to be poets: and they continually have books in their hands.
They have many large mosques, where they go to say their prayers, and they allow
any nation whatsoever to enter them. . . . Thrice daily, morning, noon and
evening, they say their prayers: first they wash, then they spread a carpet or their
outer garment on the ground, placing on it a stone . . . and they make many prostrations, calling on God and ’Ali, in which consist all their devotions. They make
profession of cleanliness in respect of their bodies, clothes and in everything. . . .
Almost all the women who are to be seen in the squares, both in the clothes
they wear and in other matters, comport themselves with much modesty; besides
the long dresses they wear a kerchief of white linen which covers them completely
and they never let their faces or their hands be seen. For the rest they go about
and ride through the city.
The Persians were formerly very superstitious and abhorred Christians, as if these
latter were a foul race: thus they would not eat with them, nor from the vessels from
which a Christian had eaten, nor did they allow them to tread on their carpets, nor
to touch them: if a Christian were to touch the garment of one, the man would take
it off and have it washed. Nowadays, because the Shah shows great regard for
Christians, passes his time with them and sets them at his table, they have abandoned all this and act towards them as they do towards their own people: only in
some distant districts and among the common folk is it still kept up.
. . . The king, Shah ’Abbas . . . is 34 years old . . . of medium height, rather thin
than fat, his face round and small, tanned by the sun, with hardly any beard: very
vivacious and alert, so that he is always doing something or other. He is sturdy and
healthy, accustomed to much exercise and toil: many times he goes about on foot,
and recently he had been forty days on pilgrimage, which he made on foot the
whole time. He has extraordinary strength, and with his scimitar3 can cut a man in
two and a sheep with its wool on at a single blow—and the Persian sheep are of
large size. He has done many other feats and has found no one to come up to him
in them. In his food he is frugal, as also in his dress, and this to set an example to
his subjects; and so in public he eats little else than rice, and that cooked in water
only. His usual dress is of linen, and very plain: similarly the nobles and others in
his realm, following suit, whereas formerly they used to go out dressed in brocade
with jewels and other fopperies: and if he see anyone who is overdressed, he takes
him to task, especially if it be a soldier. But in private he eats what he likes. He is
3. scimitar: a curved Asian sword
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sagacious in mind, likes fame and to be esteemed: he is courteous in dealing with
everyone and at the same time very serious. For he will go through the public
streets, eat from what they are selling there and other things, speak at ease freely
with the lower classes, cause his subjects to remain sitting while he himself is standing, or will sit down beside this man and that. He says that is how to be a king,
and that the king of Spain and other Christians do not get any pleasure out of ruling, because they are obliged to comport themselves with so much pomp and
majesty as they do. He causes foreigners to sit down beside him and to eat at his
table. With that and accompanying all such condescension he requires that people
shall not want in respect towards him and, should anyone fail in this regard, he
will punish the individual severely. So the more he demonstrates kindliness to his
subjects and the more familiarly he talks with them, they tremble before him, even
the greatest among them, for, while joking, he will have their heads cut off. He is
very strict in executing justice and pays no regard to his own favourites in this
respect. . . . While we were at his Court, he caused the bellies of two of his
favourites to be ripped open, because they had behaved improperly to an ordinary
woman. From this it comes about that in his country there are so very few murderers and robbers. In all the time I was at Isfahan, i.e. 4 months, there was never a
case of homicide. He is very speedy in dispatching business: when he gives audience, which he does at the gate of his palace, in the Maidan, he finishes off all the
cases that are brought to him. The parties stand present before him, the officers of
justice and his own council, with whom he consults when it pleases him. The sentence which he gives is final and is immediately executed. If the guilty party deserve
death, they kill him at once: to this end, when he gives audience, twelve dogs and
twelve men [? sic], who devour men alive, are kept ready: he keeps them in order
to use the greater severity. Apart from the officials, once the sentence is given, it is
not permitted to anyone to make any reply: for the person is at once driven off
with blows of the sticks of some 30 to 40 royal farrashes,4 who stand ready to do
this. When he wants to stop giving audience, he causes it to be proclaimed that no
one, on pain of death, may bring him petitions, and, when he wants to go out of
doors unaccompanied, that no one should follow him.
The like speed in dispatching business is practised by his officials: and his
Wazir, or chancellor, who has charge of all the royal revenues, the dispatch of
ambassadors, and all other affairs, and who is the first person after the Shah, used
to dispatch 200 petitions in a morning and after having sat and given a hearing
for six or seven hours would go out as serene, as if he were coming from taking
his horse for a walk. . . .
He has to be obeyed absolutely: anyone failing in the slightest will pay for it
with his head. And so he has had most of the old nobles of Persia killed off and
put in their stead low-bred persons whom he has aggrandized. . . .
Because of the great obedience they pay him, when he wills to have one of the
nobles killed, he dispatches one of his men to fetch the noble’s head: the man goes
4. royal farrashes: servants in charge of the living quarters
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from Report on Persia, Persians, and ‘Abbas I
off to the grandee, and says to him: “The Shah wants your head.” The noble
replies: “Very well,” and lets himself be decapitated—otherwise he would lose it
and, with it, all his race would become extinct. But, when they [i.e. the grandees]
allow themselves to be decapitated, he aggrandizes the children. . . .
He is very valiant and has a great liking for warfare and weapons of war, which
he has constantly in his hands: we have been eye-witnesses of this because, whenever we were with him, he was adjusting scimitars, testing arquebuses,5 etc.: and
to make him a present that will give him pleasure is to give him some good pieces
of arms. This is the great experience which he has obtained of warfare over so
many years, that he makes it in person and from the first it has made him a fine
soldier and very skilled, and his men so dexterous that they are little behind our
men in Europe. He has introduced into his militia the use of and esteem for arquebuses and muskets, in which they are very practised. Therefore it is that his realm
has been so much extended on all sides.
Source: Excerpt from A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia and the Papal
Mission of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, Volume 1, edited by H. G. Chick
(London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1939), pp. 155–161, 248–255.
5. arquebuses: heavy portable matchlock guns
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