YEZDI TYPES.
The numbers are from the left.
1. A qan’at maker. This is the man who digs the tunnels bywhich the water is brought from the base of the hills to the towns inthe plain. The leather bag on his arm is a bucket.
2. A Parsi raiyat, or agriculturist, with his spade.
3. A porter.
4. A charvadar (muleteer) from Lāristān. These very big menoften come to Yezd with caravans.
5. A Jew, who is divining from his book for the charvadar. TheJew has his boy with him.
6. An oil-seller. He carries the oil in gourds.
7. A darvish, or religious mendicant.
8. An Arab. These are sometimes seen in Yezd, but like the Laricharvadar they do not really belong to the town.
FIVE YEARS
IN A PERSIAN TOWN
BY NAPIER MALCOLM
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1905
Printed in Great Britain.
PREFACE
I feel that this short sketch of a Persian townneeds an apology. It will not improbably bemistaken for a book of travel. Stopping five yearsin one place is not travelling, and the experienceof such a stay is not a traveller’s experience. Thedescriptions that will be found in this volumerefer to a very small area, and consequently agood deal of minute work has been attemptedthat would have been out of place in the paintingof a larger sphere.
Then, again, this is not a book upon missionwork. There is comparatively little about thevery interesting work which is being carried onin Yezd by the Church Missionary Society, butthere is a great deal about the circumstances[vi]under which missionaries work, for the book isreally a description of a Persian town from themissionary point of view. This will explain whycertain details, such as the dress and food of thepeople, are left out altogether; for, although theremay be some connection between these thingsand the kind of way in which missionary workought to be conducted, it is not at present apparentto the writer. On the other hand, the generaleffects of house, street, and desert, which meetthe Yezdi’s eye at every turn, have been ratherelaborately described, for scenery and scenic surroundingshave much effect on character, andthe study of character is essential in missionarywork.
In most of the descriptions I have takenspecial care to preserve the true proportion betweengood and evil, so far as I have been ableto estimate it in the thing described. I havespecially done this in the necessarily incompletesketches which I have drawn of the Yezdi’s characterand religious beliefs. But in dealing with[vii]the Persian Government I have consciously