Henry Martyn, Saint and Scholar / First Modern Missionary to the Mohammedans, 1781-1812

CHAPTER IX

IN PERSIA—BUSHIRE AND SHIRAZ, 1811

The Persia to whose seven millions of people Henry Martyn was the first in modern times to carry the good-news of God, was just the size of the India of his day. The Mohammedan majority of its scattered inhabitants, in cities, in villages, and wandering over its plains and deserts, had never been, and are not yet, as Shi’ahs, rigid members of Islam, fanatically aggressive against all others, like the orthodox Soonnis. After the apparent extinction of the cult of Zoroaster and the flight of the surviving remnant of Parsees to India, the successive ruling dynasties were liberal and tolerant in their treatment of Christians compared with other Moslem powers; more liberal than Christian Russia is to the Jews and the non-‘orthodox’ sects. When those cultured and enterprising brothers, Sir Anthony and Sir Thomas Sherley,[46] went from Oxford to the court of Persia, then in all its magnificence under Shah Abbas the Great, two centuries before Henry Martyn, that Shah sent one back as Persian envoy to the Christian powers of Europe, to establish an alliance for the destruction of the Turks. Shah Abbas made over Gombroon to them, calling it by his own name, Bunder Abbas, which it still retains, and his Majesty’s grant used such language as this: ‘Our absolute commandment, will, and pleasure is that our countries and dominions shall be from this day open to all Christian people and to their religion.... Because of the amitie now ioyned with the princes that professe Christ, I do give this pattent for all Christian merchants,’ etc. Only the intolerance of the Portuguese, who, under Albuquerque, took the island of Ormuz, and so dominated the Persian Gulf till driven out by the English, led this great Asiatic monarch to except the power which Prince Henry the Navigator alone redeems from historical contempt to the present day.

The Suffavian dynasty gave place to the Afghan, and that to the short-lived but wide-spreading empire of Nadir Kooli Khan, from Delhi to the Oxus River and the Caspian Sea. Out of half a century’s bloody revolutions, such as formed the normal course of the annals of Asia till Great Britain pushed its ‘Peace’ up from the Southern Ocean, Aga Mohammed Khan, of the Kajar clan, founded the present dynasty in 1795. His still greater nephew succeeded on his death three years after. Futteh Ali Shah became for the next thirty-eight years the close friend of the British Crown and the East India Company. Shah-in-Shah, or king of the four kings of Afghanistan, Georgia, Koordistan, and Arabistan, the ruler of Persia had now incorporated Arabistan in his own dominion, and had lost Afghanistan. But he still claimed the allegiance of the two subject-sovereigns of Georgia and Koordistan. His uncle had avenged on the people, and especially the beautiful women of Georgia, the transfer of the country by its Wali to the Russian Catherine II. Placed in the commanding centre of Western Asia, Futteh Ali almost immediately found himself the object of eager competition by the representatives of the Christian powers at Teheran. His revenue was estimated by so competent an authority as Sir John Malcolm at nearly six millions sterling. The crown jewels, chief of them the Sea of Light, or Derya-i-Noor, a diamond weighing 178 carats, were then the most valuable collection in the world; for though the Koh-i-Noor had remained with the Afghans, whence through the Sikhs it came to a greater Shah-in-Shah, the Queen-Empress of Great Britain, he still possessed not a little of Nadir’s plunder of Delhi.

Sir Robert Ker Porter describes him about the time when Martyn reached his capital, as ‘one blaze of jewels,’ at the New Year festival of Norooz. On his head was a lofty tiara of three elevations, ‘entirely composed of thickly-set diamonds, pearls, rubies, and emeralds, so exquisitely disposed as to form a mixture of the most beautiful colours in the brilliant light reflected from its surface. Several black feathers, like the heron plume, were intermixed with the resplendent aigrettes of this truly imperial diadem, whose bending points were furnished with pear-formed pearls of an immense size. The vesture was of gold tissue nearly covered with a similar disposition of jewelry; and crossing the shoulders were two strings of pearls, probably the largest in the world. But for splendour nothing could exceed the broad bracelets round his arms and the belt which encircled his waist; they actually blazed like fire when the rays of the sun met them. The throne was of pure white marble raised a few steps from the ground, and carpeted with shawls and cloth of gold. While the Great King was approaching his throne, the whole assembly continued bowing their heads to the ground till he had taken his place. In the midst of solemn stillness, while all eyes were fixed on the bright object before them, which sat indeed as radiant and immovable as the image of Mithras itself, a sort of volley of words bursting at one impulse from the mouths of the mollahs and astrologers, made me start, and interrupted my gaze. This strange oratory was a kind of heraldic enumeration of the Great King’s titles, dominions, and glorious acts. There was a pause, and then his Majesty spoke. The effect was even more startling than the sudden bursting forth of the mollahs; for this was like a voice from the tombs—so deep, so hollow, and, at the same time, so penetratingly loud.’[47]

That was the man to whose feet the French Emperor Napoleon and the Tsar Alexander, King George III. and the greatest Governor-General of the East India Company, the Marquess Wellesley, sent special embassies; the man from whom they sought secret treaties, lavishing on his courtiers more than royal gifts. To arrest the march of the Afghan invader, who a few years before had reached Lahore on his way to set up again at Delhi the house of Timour, and in order to foil the secret embassy sent by Napoleon, who had resolved to give England its death-blow through India, a young Scotsman, Captain Malcolm, was deputed to Teheran in 1801, following up a native envoy who had been most successful just before. This soldier diplomatist, who was afterwards to help Henry Martyn to a very different success, ‘bribed like a king,’ and returned with two treaties, political and commercial, but still more with the knowledge which fitted him to write his classic history, and make his second ambassage. For England failed to carry out the first so far as to help the Shah against Russia, and from that hour Persia has seen province after province overwhelmed by the wave from the north.

Taking alarm a second time, just before and after the Peace of Tilsit, both the Crown and the Company appointed plenipotentiaries to Teheran. It was Lord Minto’s wise policy to protect our Indian empire ‘by binding the Western Frontier States in a chain of friendly alliance.’ Hence the Governor-General’s four missions, to Sindh, to Lahore, to Cabul, and again to Persia under Sir John Malcolm. Sir Harford Jones appeared as ambassador from the Crown after Malcolm had left Teheran, and took advantage of a change in the political situation to secure the preliminary treaty of 1809, which renewed the pledge of its predecessor to assist the Shah with troops or a subsidy if any European forces should invade his territories. In a modified form this became the definitive treaty of March 14, 1812 (further altered in that of 1814), to arrange which Sir Gore Ouseley was sent out, superseding both Malcolm and Jones.[48] Sir Gore Ouseley became Henry Martyn’s friend. Commended by Sir John Malcolm to his personal friends among the Persians, and officially encouraged by the British plenipotentiary, the Bengal chaplain seeking health had all the facilities secured to him that were possible to pursue the God-given mission of the apostle of Christ to the peoples of Persia and Arabia.

The strong and wise rule of Futteh Ali Shah kept Persia itself at peace, but he could not get the better of Russian intrigue and attack, even with the friendly offices of the British Government. Up till Martyn’s arrival these vast regions had been wrested from the Shah-in-Shah: Georgia, Mingrelia, Daghistan, Sherwan, Karabagh, and Talish. During his presence in the country the negotiations with Russia were going on, which ended in 1813 in the Treaty of Gulistan, surrendering to the Tsar all he had taken, and apparently stopping his advance by a line of demarcation. But as its exact direction had to be settled by commissioners Russia has ever since continued steadily to strip Persia of its northern lands, and only the presence of the British Navy has kept it as yet out of the Persian Gulf.[49]

Such were the historical and political conditions amid which the missionary chaplain of India became a resident in the cities, and a traveller through the villages of Persia and Turkey at the age of thirty. He went there as the friend of Malcolm Sahib, whose gracious dignity and lavish gifts had made him a hero among the officials and many of the people of Persia. He went with letters of introduction from the Governor-General of India and the Governor of Bombay to the new British ambassador, who had lived at Lucknow, and must have known well of his work in the neighbouring station of Cawnpore. He went with the reputation of a man of God in the Oriental sense, and of a scholar who knew the sacred books of Mohammedans and Christians alike, and who sought the good of the people. The Armenian colonies at Calcutta and Bombay had commended him to the many members of their Church in Persia.

Bushire, or Abu Shahr, at which he began his mission to Persia, is the port of that province of Fars from which the whole empire takes its name. Its mixed Persian and Arab population, now numbering some fifteen thousand, its insanitary position on a spit of sand almost surrounded by the sea, and the filthy narrow streets hardly redeemed by the Char Burj or citadel, and the British Residency, do not attract the visitor, and he soon learns that the humid heat of its climate in summer is more insupportable than that even of the Red Sea. From Reshire, close by, in the Anglo-Persian War of 1856-7, General Havelock shelled the town when he pitched the camp of the force to the south of its gate. Henry Martyn was there in the worst season of May and June, when the thermometer rises to 100° in the shade, and sometimes 106°. He became the guest of an English merchant and his Armenian wife, and was received by the Armenians as a priest of great sanctity. His Journal describes his receptions and daily occupations.

1811, May 23.—Rode out with a party in the evening, or rather in the afternoon, for the heat of the sun made me ill.

May 24.—The Governor called on us; also the Armenian priest. Received an answer from the ambassador, Sir Gore Ouseley, to a letter I sent him from Muscat.

May 25.—In the evening called with the two Captains, the Resident, and the Captain of his guard, on the Governor. In consequence of a letter I brought for him from General Malcolm, he was very particular in his attentions, seated me on his own seat, and then sat by my side apart from the rest. I observed that a Christian was not allowed to enter a mosque; he said, ‘No,—do you wish to hear the prayers?’ I said, ‘No, but the preaching, if there is any;’ he said there were no preachers except at Yezd.

May 26. (Sunday.)—The Europeans assembled for Divine service, which was performed at the Resident’s. I preached on 1 Cor. xv.: ‘For He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet,’ etc. In the evening I went, at the padre’s request, to the Armenian church. There was the same disagreeable succession of unmeaning ceremonies and noisy chants as at Bombay. I was introduced within the rails, and at the time of incense I was censed, as the padre afterwards desired me to observe, four times, whereas the laity have the honour done them but once. I asked the old man what was meant by burning incense. He said it was in imitation of the Wise Men of the East, who offered incense to Christ. I told him, Why then do you not offer myrrh and gold? To this he made no reply. Walking afterwards with him by the sea-side, I tried to get into a conversation suitable to our profession as ministers, speaking particularly of the importance of the charge entrusted to us. Nothing could be more vapid and mean than his remarks.

May 27.—Very ill, from head-ache and overpowering sleepiness, arising, as I suppose, from a stroke of the sun. As often as I attempted to read, I fell asleep, and awoke in weakness and pain. How easily may existence be embittered; still I will say, ‘Not my will, but Thine be done.’ In the evening a Jewish goldsmith called with a fine boy, who read the Hebrew fluently. Grief has marked the countenance of the Eastern Jews in a way that makes them indescribably interesting. I could have wept while looking at them. O Lord, how long? Will Thine anger burn for ever?—is not justice yet satisfied? This afflicted people are as much oppressed in Persia as ever. Their women are not allowed to veil, as all others are required to do; hence, if there be one more than ordinarily beautiful, she is soon known, and a khan or the king sends for her, makes her a Mahometan, and puts her into the harem. As soon as he is tired, she is given to another, and then to another, till she becomes the property of the most menial servant; such is the degradation to which the daughters of Israel are subjected.

May 28.—Through the infinite and unmerited goodness of God I am again restored, and able to do something in the way of reading. The Resident gave us some account this evening of the moral state of Persia. It is enough to make one shudder. If God rained down fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah, how is it that this nation is not blotted out from under heaven? I do not remember to have heard such things of the Hindus, except the Sikhs; they seem to rival the Mahometans.

For personal comfort and freedom from insult or attack, Henry Martyn, when in Bushire, ordered the usual wardrobe of a Persian gentleman. He had suffered his beard and moustachios to vegetate undisturbed since leaving India, as he wrote to Corrie. In conical Astrakhan cap, baggy blue trousers, red boots, and light chintz tunic and chogha or flowing coat, mounted on a riding pony, and followed by his Armenian servant on a mule, with another mule for his baggage, he set out on May 30, 1811, for Shiraz. His companion was a British officer. The party formed a large caravan with some thirty horses and mules, carrying goods to the ambassador. They marched by night, in the comparative coolness of 100°, to which the thermometer fell from the noonday heat of 126°, when they lay panting in their tents protected from the scorching dry wind by heavy clothing. The journey of some 170 miles occupied the first nine days of June. After ninety miles over a hot sandy plain the traveller rises, by four rocky kotuls or inclines, so steep as to be called ladders, over the spurs of the Zagros range into a cooler region at Kaziroon, on the central plateau of Iran, and then passes through the most delightful valleys, wooded or clad with verdure, to the capital, Shiraz, surrounded by gardens and by cemeteries.

May 30.—Our Persian dresses being ready, we set off this evening for Shiraz. Our kafila consisted of about thirty horses and mules; some carrying things to the ambassador, the rest for our servants and luggage; the animal for my use was a yaboo or riding pony, a mule for my trunks, and one for my servant Zechariah, an Armenian of Ispahan. It was a fine moonlight night, about ten o’clock, when we marched out of the gate of Bushire, and began to make our way over the plain. Mr. B., who accompanied me a little way, soon returned. Captain T. went on, intending to accompany us to Shiraz. This was the first time we had any of us put off the European, and the novelty of our situation supplied us with many subjects for conversation for about two hours. When we began to flag and grow sleepy, and the kafila was pretty quiet, one of the muleteers on foot began to sing: he sang with a voice so plaintive that it was impossible not to have one’s attention arrested. At the end of the first tune he paused, and nothing was heard but the tinkling of the bells attached to the necks of the mules; every voice was hushed. The first line was enough for me, and I dare say it set many others thinking of their absent friends. ‘Without thee my heart can attach itself to none.’ It is what I have often felt on setting out on a journey. The friends left behind so absorb the thoughts, that the things by the wayside are seen without interest, and the conversation of strangers is insipid. But perhaps the first line, as well as the rest, is only a promise of fidelity, though I did not take it in that sense when I first heard it. The following is perhaps the true translation:

Think not that e’er my heart can dwell
Contented far from thee;
How can the fresh-caught nightingale
Enjoy tranquillity?

Forsake not then thy friend for aught
That slanderous tongues can say;
The heart that fixes where it ought,
No power can rend away.

Thus we went on, and as often as the kafila by their dulness and sleepiness seemed to require it, or perhaps to keep himself awake, he entertained the company and himself with a song. We met two or three other kafilas taking advantage of the night to get on. My loquacious servant Zachary took care to ask every one whence they came, and by that means sometimes got an answer which raised a laugh against him.

June 1.—At sunrise we came to our ground at Ahmeda, six parasangs, and pitched our little tent under a tree: it was the only shelter we could get. At first the heat was not greater than we had felt it in India, but it soon became so intense as to be quite alarming. When the thermometer was above 112°, fever heat, I began to lose my strength fast; at last it became quite intolerable. I wrapped myself up in a blanket and all the warm covering I could get, to defend myself from the external air; by which means the moisture was kept a little longer upon the body, and not so speedily evaporated as when the skin was exposed; one of my companions followed my example, and found the benefit of it. But the thermometer still rising, and the moisture of the body being quite exhausted, I grew restless, and thought I should have lost my senses. The thermometer at last stood at 126°: in this state I composed myself, and concluded that though I might hold out a day or two, death was inevitable. Captain T., who sat it out, continued to tell the hour, and height of the thermometer; and with what pleasure did we hear of its sinking to 120°, 118°, etc. At last the fierce sun retired, and I crept out, more dead than alive. It was then a difficulty how I could proceed on my journey: for besides the immediate effects of the heat, I had no opportunity of making up for the last night’s want of sleep, and had eaten nothing. However, while they were loading the mules, I got an hour’s sleep, and set out, the muleteers leading my horse, and Zechariah, my servant, an Armenian, of Ispahan, doing all in his power to encourage me. The cool air of the night restored me wonderfully, so that I arrived at our next munzil with no other derangement than that occasioned by want of sleep. Expecting another such day as the former, we began to make preparation the instant we arrived on the ground. I got a tattie made of the branches of the date-tree, and a Persian peasant to water it; by this means the thermometer did not rise higher than 114°. But what completely secured me from the heat was a large wet towel, which I wrapped round my head and body, muffling up the lower part in clothes. How could I but be grateful to a gracious Providence, for giving me so simple a defence against what I am persuaded would have destroyed my life that day! We took care not to go without nourishment, as we had done: the neighbouring village supplied us with curds and milk. At sunset, rising up to go out, a scorpion fell upon my clothes; not seeing where it fell, I did not know what it was; but Captain T., pointing it out, gave the alarm, and I struck it off, and he killed it. The night before we found a black scorpion in our tent; this made us rather uneasy; so that though the kafila did not start till midnight, we got no sleep, fearing we might be visited by another scorpion.

June 2.—We arrived at the foot of the mountains, at a place where we seemed to have discovered one of Nature’s ulcers. A strong suffocating smell of naphtha announced something more than ordinarily foul in the neighbourhood. We saw a river:—what flowed in it, it seemed difficult to say, whether it were water or green oil; it scarcely moved, and the stones which it laved it left of a greyish colour, as if its foul touch had given them the leprosy. Our place of encampment this day was a grove of date-trees, where the atmosphere, at sunrise, was ten times hotter than the ambient air. I threw myself down on the burning ground, and slept; when the tent came up I awoke, as usual, in a burning fever. All this day I had recourse to the wet towel, which kept me alive, but would allow of no sleep. It was a sorrowful Sabbath; but Captain T. read a few hymns, in which I found great consolation. At nine in the evening we decamped. The ground and air were so insufferably hot, that I could not travel without a wet towel round my face and neck. This night, for the first time, we began to ascend the mountains. The road often passed so close to the edge of the tremendous precipices, that one false step of the horse would have plunged his rider into inevitable destruction. In such circumstances I found it useless to attempt guiding the animal, and therefore gave him the rein. These poor animals are so used to journeys of this sort, that they generally step sure. There was nothing to mark the road but the rocks being a little more worn in one place than in another. Sometimes my horse, which led the way, as being the muleteer’s, stopped, as if to consider about the way: for myself, I could not guess, at such times, where the road lay, but he always found it. The sublime scenery would have impressed me much, in other circumstances; but my sleepiness and fatigue rendered me insensible to everything around me. At last we emerged superas ad auras, not on the top of a mountain to go down again, but to a plain, or upper world. At the pass, where a cleft in the mountain admitted us into the plain, was a station of Rahdars. While they were examining the muleteer’s passports, etc., time was given for the rest of the kafila to come up, and I got a little sleep for a few minutes.

June 4.—We rode briskly over the plain, breathing a purer air, and soon came in sight of a fair edifice, built by the king of the country for the refreshment of pilgrims. In this caravanserai we took our abode for the day. It was more calculated for Eastern than European travellers, having no means of keeping out the air and light. We found the thermometer at 110°. At the passes we met a man travelling down to Bushire with a load of ice, which he willingly disposed of to us. The next night we ascended another range of mountains, and passed over a plain, where the cold was so piercing that with all the clothes we could muster we were shivering. At the end of this plain we entered a dark valley, contained by two ranges of hills converging one to another. The muleteer gave notice that he saw robbers. It proved to be a false alarm; but the place was fitted to be a retreat for robbers; there being on each side caves and fastnesses from which they might have killed every man of us. After ascending another mountain, we descended by a very long and circuitous route into an extensive valley, where we were exposed to the sun till eight o’clock. Whether from the sun or from continued want of sleep, I could not, on my arrival at Kaziroon, compose myself to sleep; there seemed to be a fire within my head, my skin like a cinder, and the pulse violent. Through the day it was again too hot to sleep; though the place we occupied was a sort of summer-house in a garden of cypress-trees, exceedingly well fitted up with mats and coloured glass. Had the kafila gone on that night, I could not have accompanied it; but it halted there a day, by which means I got a sort of night’s rest, though I awoke twenty times to dip my burning hand in water. Though Kaziroon is the second greatest town in Fars, we could get nothing but bread, milk, and eggs, and those with difficulty. The Governor, who is under great obligations to the English, heard of our arrival, but sent no message.

June 5.—At ten we left Kaziroon and ascended a mountain: we then descended from it on the other side into a beautiful valley, where the opening dawn discovered to us ripe fields of wheat and barley, with the green oak here and there in the midst of it. We were reminded of an autumnal morning in England. Thermometer 62°.

June 6.—Half-way up the Peergan Mountain we found a caravanserai. There being no village in the neighbourhood, we had brought supplies from Kaziroon. My servant Zachary got a fall from his mule this morning, which much bruised him; he looked very sorrowful, and had lost much of his garrulity.

June 7.—Left the caravanserai at one this morning, and continued to ascend. The hours we were permitted to rest, the mosquitoes had effectually prevented me from using, so that I never felt more miserable and disordered; the cold was very severe; for fear of falling off, from sleep and numbness, I walked a good part of the way. We pitched our tent in the vale of Dustarjan, near a crystal stream, on the banks of which we observed the clover and golden cup: the whole valley was one green field, in which large herds of cattle were browsing. The temperature was about that of spring in England. Here a few hours’ sleep recovered me in some degree from the stupidity in which I had been for some days. I awoke with a light heart, and said: ‘He knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are but dust. He redeemeth our life from destruction, and crowneth us with loving kindness and tender mercies. He maketh us to lie down in the green pastures, and leadeth us beside the still waters.’ And when we leave this vale of tears, there is ‘no more sorrow, nor sighing, nor any more pain.’ ‘The sun shall not light upon thee, nor any heat; but the Lamb shall lead thee to living fountains of waters.’

June 8.—Went on to a caravanserai, three parasangs, where we passed the day. At night set out upon our last march for Shiraz. Sleepiness, my old companion and enemy, again overtook me. I was in perpetual danger of falling off my horse, till at last I pushed on to a considerable distance beyond the kafila, planted my back against a wall, and slept I know not how long, till the good muleteer came up and gently waked me.

June 9. (Sunday.)—By daylight we found ourselves in the plain of Shiraz. We went to the halting-place outside the walls of the city, but found it occupied; however, after some further delay, we were admitted with our servants into another; as for the kafila, we saw no more of it. The ambassador, Sir Gore Ouseley, was encamped near us; Sir William and Major D’Arcy, and Dr. Sharp, called on us, but I did not see the two first, being asleep at the time. In the evening we dined with his excellency, who gave us a general invitation to his table. Returned to our garden, where we slept.

June 10.—Went this morning to Jaffir Ali Khan’s, to whom we had letters from General Malcolm, and with whom we are to take up our abode. After the long and tedious ceremony of coffee and kaleans (pipes), breakfast made its appearance on two large trays: curry, pilaws, various sweets cooled with snow and perfumed with rose-water, were served in great profusion in china plates and basins, a few wooden spoons beautifully carved; but being in a Persian dress, and on the ground, I thought it high time to throw off the European, and so ate with my hands. After breakfast Jaffir took me to a summer-house in his garden, where his brother-in-law met us, for the purpose of a conversazione. From something I had thrown out at breakfast about Sabat, and accident, he was curious to know what were our opinions on these subjects. He then began to explain his own sentiments on Soofi-ism, of which it appeared he was a passionate admirer.

June 11.—Breakfasted at Anius with some of the Embassy, and went with them afterwards to a glass-house and pottery. Afterwards called on Mr. Morier, secretary to the Embassy, Major D’Arcy, and Sir W. Ouseley. Our host, Jaffir Ali Khan, gave us a good deal of information this evening, about this country and government. He used to sit for hours with the king at Teheran telling him about India and the English.

June 12.—Employed about Journal, writing letters, reading Gulistan, but excessively indolent. In the morning I enjoyed much comfort in prayer. What a privilege to have a God to go to, in such a place, and in such company. To read and pray at leisure seemed like coming home after being long abroad. Psalm lxxxix. was a rich repast to me. Why is it not always thus with me?

At Shiraz Henry Martyn was in the very heart of old Persia, to which the eldest son of Shem had given his name, Elam. One of the greatest of the Shahs, Kareem Khan, made Shiraz his capital, instead of the not distant Persepolis, which also Martyn visited. The founder of the present dynasty levelled its walls and desolated its gardens, but the city of the six gates still dominates the fine valley which no tyrant could destroy, and has still a pleasing appearance, though its Dewan Khana has been stripped of the royal pillars to adorn the palace of the new capital of Teheran. Even Timour respected Shiraz; when red with the blood of Ispahan, he sent for Hafiz, and asked how the poet dared to dispose of the Tartar’s richest cities, Bokhara and Samarcand, for the mole on his lady’s cheek. ‘Can the gifts of Hafiz ever impoverish Timour?’ was the answer; and Shiraz was spared. Kareem Khan long after built mausoleums over the dust of the Anacreon of Persia, and over that of Sadi, its Socrates in verse, as Sir Robert Ker Porter well describes the author of the Gulistan, which was Martyn’s daily companion at this time.

We have an account of Shiraz[50] and the people of Persia, written six years before Martyn’s visit, by Edward Scott Waring, Esq., of the Bengal Civil Establishment, who, led by ill-health and curiosity, followed the same route by Bushire and Kaziroon to the city. He is sceptical as to those splendours which formed the theme of Hafiz, and describes the city as ‘worth seeing, but not worth going to see.’ The tomb of the poet[51] the Hafizieh garden he found to be of white marble, on which two of his odes were very beautifully cut; a few durweshes daily visited the spot and chanted his verses. Mr. George N. Curzon, M.P.,[52] the latest visitor, contrasts the grave of Hafiz with that of his contemporary Dante, at Ravenna. Sadi’s grave was then quite neglected; no one had carved on it the beautiful epitaph (paraphrased by Dryden) which he wrote for himself on the Bostan: ‘O passenger! who walkest over my grave, think of the virtuous persons who have gone before me. What has Sadi to apprehend from being turned into dust? he was but earth when alive. He will not continue dust long, for the winds will scatter him over the whole universe.’ Yet as long as the garden of knowledge has blossomed not a nightingale has warbled so sweetly in it. It would be strange if such a nightingale should die, and not a rose grow upon its grave. Sir Robert Ker Porter, twelve years later, found both spots alike neglected. One poet had written of the garden where Hafiz was buried, ‘Paradise does not boast such lovely banks as those of Rocknabeel, nor such groves as the high-scented fragrance of the bowers of Mosella.’ Another now sadly writes, ‘Though the bowers of love grew on its banks, and the sweet song of Hafiz kept time with the nightingale and the rose, the summer is past and all things are changed.’

Six years after Henry Martyn’s residence in Shiraz, Sir Robert Ker Porter entered the city, which to him, as to every Christian or even English-speaking man, became thenceforth more identified with this century’s apostle to the Persians than with even Hafiz and Sadi. ‘Faint with sickness and fatigue,’ he writes,[53] ‘I felt a momentary reviving pleasure in the sight of a hospitable city, and the cheerful beauty of the view. As I drew near, the image of my exemplary countryman, Henry Martyn, rose in my thoughts, seeming to sanctify the shelter to which I was hastening. He had approached Shiraz much about the same season of the year, A.D. 1811, and like myself was gasping for life under the double pressure of an inward fire and outward burning sun. He dwelt there nearly a year, and on leaving its walls the apostle of Christianity found no cause for shaking off the dust of his feet against the Mohammedan city. The inhabitants had received, cherished and listened to him; and he departed thence amidst the blessings and tears of many a Persian friend. Through his means the Gospel had then found its way into Persia, and, as it appears to have been sown in kindly hearts, the gradual effect hereafter may be like the harvest to the seedling. But, whatever be the issue, the liberality with which his doctrines were permitted to have been discussed, and the hospitality with which their promulgation was received by the learned, the nobles, and persons of all ranks, cannot but reflect lasting honour on the Government, and command our respect for the people at large. Besides, to a person who thinks at all on these subjects, the circumstances of the first correct Persian translation of the Holy Scriptures being made at Shiraz, and thence put into the royal hands and disseminated through the empire, cannot but give an almost prophetic emphasis to the transaction, as arising from the very native country, Persia Proper, of the founder of the empire who first bade the temple of Jerusalem be rebuilt, who returned her sons from captivity, and who was called by name to the Divine commission.’

As the guest of Jaffir Ali Khan, now in his house in Shiraz, and now in his orange summer garden, Henry Martyn gave himself up to the two absorbing duties of making a new translation of the New Testament into Persian, assisted by his host’s brother-in-law, Mirza Seyd Ali Khan, and of receiving and, in the Pauline sense, disputing with the learned Mohammedans of the city and neighbourhood. But all through his inner life, sanctified by his spiritual experience and intensifying that, there continued to run the love of Lydia Grenfell.

To Lydia Grenfell

Shiraz: June 23, 1811.

How continually I think of you, and indeed converse with you, it is impossible to say. But on the Lord’s day in particular, I find you much in my thoughts, because it is on that day that I look abroad, and take a view of the universal church, of which I observe that the saints in England form the most conspicuous part. On that day, too, I indulge myself with a view of the past, and look over again those happy days, when, in company with those I loved, I went up to the house of God with a voice of praise. How then should I fail to remember her who, of all that are dear to me, is the dearest? It is true that I cannot look back upon many days, nor even many hours passed with you—would they had been more—but we have insensibly become more acquainted with each other, so that, on my part at least, it may be said that separation has brought us nearer to one another. It was a momentary interview, but the love is lasting, everlasting. Whether we ever meet again or not, I am sure that you will continue to feel an interest in all that befalls me.

After the death of my dear sister, you bid me consider that I had one sister left while you remained; and you cannot imagine how consolatory to my mind this assurance is. To know that there is one who is willing to think of me, and has leisure to do so, is soothing to a degree that none can know but those who have, like me, lost all their relations.

I sent you a letter from Muscat, in Arabia, which I hope you received; for if not, report will again erase my name from the catalogue of the living, as I sent no other to Europe. Let me here say with praise to our ever-gracious Heavenly Father, that I am in perfect health; of my spirits I cannot say much; I fancy they would be better were ‘the beloved Persis’ by my side. This name, which I once gave you, occurs to me at this moment, I suppose, because I am in Persia, entrenched in one of its valleys, separated from Indian friends by chains of mountains and a roaring sea, among a people depraved beyond all belief, in the power of a tyrant guilty of every species of atrocity. Imagine a pale person seated on a Persian carpet, in a room without table or chair, with a pair of formidable moustachios, and habited as a Persian, and you see me.

June 26.—Here I expect to remain six months. The reason is this: I found on my arrival here, that our attempts at Persian translation in India were good for nothing; at the same time they proposed, with my assistance, to make a new translation. It was an offer I could not refuse, as they speak the purest dialect of the Persian. My host is a man of rank, his name Jaffir Ali Khan, who tries to make the period of my captivity as agreeable as possible. His wife—for he has but one—never appears; parties of young ladies come to see her, but though they stay days in the house, he dare not go into the room where they are. Without intending a compliment to your sex, I must say that the society here, from the exclusion of females, is as dull as it can well be. Perhaps, however, to a stranger like myself, the most social circles would be insipid. I am visited by all the great and the learned; the former come out of respect to my country, the latter to my profession. The conversation with the latter is always upon religion, and it would be strange indeed, if with the armour of truth on the right hand and on the left, I were not able to combat with success the upholders of such a system of absurdity and sin. As the Persians are a far more unprejudiced and inquisitive people than the Indians, and do not stand quite so much in awe of an Englishman as the timid natives of Hindustan, I hope they will learn something from me; the hope of this reconciles me to the necessity imposed on me of staying here; about the translation I dare not be sanguine. The prevailing opinion concerning me is, that I have repaired to Shiraz in order to become a Mussulman. Others, more sagacious, say that I shall bring from India some more, under pretence of making them Mussulmans, but in reality to seize the place. They do not seem to have thought of my wish to have them converted to my religion; they have been so long accustomed to remain without proselytes to their own. I shall probably have very little to write about for some months to come, and therefore I reserve the extracts of my Journal since I last wrote to you for some other opportunity; besides that, the ambassador, with whose despatches this will go, is just leaving Shiraz.

July 2.—The Mohammedans now come in such numbers to visit me, that I am obliged, for the sake of my translation-work, to decline seeing them. To-day one of the apostate sons of Israel was brought by a party of them, to prove the Divine mission of Mohammed from the Hebrew Scriptures, but with all his sophistry he proved nothing. I can almost say with St. Paul, I feel continual pity in my heart for them, and love them for their fathers’ sake, and find a pleasure in praying for them. While speaking of the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, I observed that the ‘Gospel of the kingdom must first be preached in all the world, and then shall the end come.’ He replied with a sneer, ‘And this event, I suppose you mean to say, is beginning to take place by your bringing the Gospel to Persia.’

July 5.—I am so incessantly occupied with visitors and my work, that I have hardly a moment for myself. I have more and more reason to rejoice at my being sent here; there is such an extraordinary stir about religion throughout the city, that some good must come of it. I sometimes sigh for a little Christian communion, yet even from these Mohammedans I hear remarks that do me good. To-day, for instance, my assistant observed, ‘How He loved those twelve persons!’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘and not those twelve only, but all those who shall believe in Him, as He said, “I pray not for them alone, but for all them who shall believe on me through their word.”’ Even the enemy is constrained to wonder at the love of Christ. Shall not the object of it say, What manner of love is this? I have learned that I may get letters from England much sooner than by way of India. Be so good as to direct to me, to the care of Sir Gore Ouseley, Bart., Ambassador at Teheran, care of J. Morier, Esq., Constantinople, care of G. Moon, Esq., Malta. I have seen Europe newspapers of only four months’ date, so that I am delightfully near you. May we live near one another in the unity of the Spirit, having one Lord, one hope, one God and Father. In your prayers for me pray that utterance may be given me that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mysteries of the Gospel. I often envy my Persian hearers the freedom and eloquence with which they speak to me. Were I but possessed of their powers, I sometimes think that I should win them all; but the work is God’s, and the faith of His people does not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Remember me as usual with the most unfeigned affection to all my dear friends. This is now the seventh letter I send you without having received an answer. Farewell!

Yours ever most affectionately,
H. Martyn.

Shiraz: September 8, 1811.

A courier on his way to the capital affords me the unexpected pleasure of addressing my most beloved friend. It is now six months since I left India, and in all that time I have not heard from thence. The dear friends there, happy in each other’s society, do not enough call to mind my forlorn condition. Here I am still, beset by cavilling infidels, and making very little progress in my translation, and half disposed to give it up and come away. My kind host, to relieve the tedium of being always within a walled town, pitched a tent for me in a garden a little distance, and there I lived amidst clusters of grapes, by the side of a clear stream; but nothing compensates for the loss of the excellent of the earth. It is my business, however, as you will say, and ought to be my effort, to make saints, where I cannot find them. I do use the means in a certain way, but frigid reasoning with men of perverse minds seldom brings men to Christ. However, as they require it, I reason, and accordingly challenged them to prove the Divine mission of their prophet. In consequence of this, a learned Arabic treatise was written by one who was considered as the most able man, and put into my hands; copies of it were also given to the college and the learned. The writer of it said that if I could give a satisfactory answer to it he would become a Christian, and at all events would make my reply as public as I pleased. I did answer it, and after some faint efforts on his part to defend himself, he acknowledged the force of my arguments, but was afraid to let them be generally known. He then began to inquire about the Gospel, but was not satisfied with my statement. He required me to prove from the very beginning the Divine mission of Moses, as well as of Christ; the truth of the Scriptures, etc. With very little hope that any good will come of it, I am now employed in drawing out the evidences of the truth; but oh! that I could converse and reason, and plead with power from on high. How powerless are the best-directed arguments till the Holy Ghost renders them effectual.

A few days ago I was just on the eve of my departure for Ispahan, as I thought, and my translator had consented to accompany me as far as Baghdad, but just as we were setting out, news came that the Persians and Turks were fighting thereabouts, and that the road was in consequence impassable. I do not know what the Lord’s purpose may be in keeping me here, but I trust it will be for the furtherance of the Gospel of Christ, and in that belief I abide contentedly.

My last letter to you was dated July. I desired you to direct to me at Teheran. As it is uncertain whether I shall pass anywhere near there, you had better direct to the care of S. Morier, Esq., Constantinople, and I can easily get your letters from thence.

I am happy to say that I am quite well, indeed, never better; no returns of pain in the chest since I left India. May I soon receive the welcome news that you also are well, and prospering even as your soul prospers. I read your letters incessantly, and try to find out something new, as I generally do, but I begin to look with pain at the distant date of the last. I cannot tell what to think, but I cast all my care upon Him who hath already done wonders for me, and am sure that, come what will, it shall be good, it shall be best. How sweet the privilege that we may lie as little children before Him! I find that my wisdom is folly and my care useless, so that I try to live on from day to day, happy in His love and care. May that God who hath loved us, and given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, bless, love, and keep my ever-dearest friend; and dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, and abiding under the shadow of the Almighty, may she enjoy that sweet tranquillity which the world cannot disturb. Dearest Lydia! pray for me, and believe me to be ever most faithfully and affectionately yours,

H. Martyn.

Shiraz: October 21, 1811.

It is, I think, about a month since I wrote to you, and so little has occurred since that I find scarcely anything in my Journal, and nothing worth transcribing. This state of inactivity is becoming very irksome to me. I cannot get these Persians to work, and while they are idle I am sitting here to no purpose. Sabat’s laziness used to provoke me excessively, but Persians I find are as torpid as Arabs when their salary does not depend on their exertions, and both very inferior to the feeble Indian, whom they affect to despise. My translator comes about sunrise, corrects a little, and is off, and I see no more of him for the day. Meanwhile I sit fretting, or should do so, as I did at first, were it not for a blessed employment which so beguiles the tediousness of the day that I hardly perceive it passing. It is the study of the Psalms in the Hebrew. I have long had it in contemplation, in the assurance, from the number of flat and obscure passages that occur in the translations, that the original has not been hitherto perfectly understood. I am delighted to find that many of the most unmeaning verses in the version turn out, on close examination, to contain a direct reference to the Lord our Saviour. The testimony of Jesus is indeed the spirit of prophecy. He is never lost sight of. Let them touch what subject they will, they must always let fall something about Him. Such should we be, looking always to Him. I have often attempted the 84th Psalm, endeared to me on many accounts as you know, but have not yet succeeded. The glorious 16th Psalm I hope I have mastered. I write with the ardour of a student communicating his discoveries and describing his difficulties to a fellow student.

I think of you incessantly, too much, I fear, sometimes; yet the recollection of you is generally attended with an exercise of resignation to His will. In prayer I often feel what you described five years ago as having felt—a particular pleasure in viewing you as with me before the Lord, and entreating our common Father to bless both His children. When I sit and muse my spirit flies away to you, and attends you at Gurlyn, Penzance, Plymouth Dock, and sometimes with your brother in London. If you acknowledge a kindred feeling still, we are not separated; our spirits have met and blended. I still continue without intelligence from India; since last January I have heard nothing of any one person whom I love. My consolation is that the Lord has you all under His care, and is carrying on His work in the world by your means, and that when I emerge I shall find that some progress is made in India especially, the country I now regard as my own. Persia is in many respects a ripe field for the harvest. Vast numbers secretly hate and despise the superstition imposed on them, and as many of them as have heard the Gospel approve it, but they dare not hazard their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus. I am sometimes asked whether the external appearance of Mohammedanism might not be retained with Christianity, and whether I could not baptize them without their believing in the Divinity of Christ. I tell them, No.

Though I have complained above of the inactivity of my translation, I have reason to bless the Lord that He thus supplies Gibeonites for the help of His true Israel. They are employed in a work of the importance of which they are unconscious, and are making provision for future Persian saints, whose time is, I suppose, now near. Roll back, ye crowded years, your thick array! Let the long, long period of darkness and sin at last give way to the brighter hours of light and liberty, which wait on the wings of the Sun of Righteousness. Perhaps we witness the dawn of the day of glory, and if not, the desire that we feel, that Jesus may be glorified, and the nations acknowledge His sway, is the earnest of the Spirit, that when He shall appear we shall also appear with Him in glory. Kind love to all the saints who are waiting His coming.

Yours, with true affection, my ever dearest Lydia,
H. Martyn.

It is now determined that we leave Shiraz in a week, and as the road through Persia is impassable through the commotions which are always disturbing some part or other of this unhappy country, I must go back to Bushire.

My scribe finished the New Testament; in correcting we are no further than the 13th of Acts.

October 24 to 26.—Resumed my Hebrew studies; on the two first days translated the eight first Psalms into Persian, the last all day long thinking about the word Higgaion in the 9th Psalm.

October 27 to 29.—Finished Psalm xii. Reading the 5th of St. Matthew to Zachariah my servant. Felt awfully convinced of guilt; how fearlessly do I give way to causeless anger, speaking contemptuously of men, as if I had never read this chapter. The Lord deliver me from all my wickedness, and write His holy law upon my heart, that I may walk circumspectly before Him all the remaining days of my life.

November 1.—Everything was prepared for our journey to Baghdad by the Persian Gulf, and a large party of Shiraz ladies, chiefly of Mirza Seid Ali’s family, had determined to accompany us, partly from a wish to visit the tombs, and partly to have the company of their relations a little longer. But a letter arriving with the intelligence that Bagdhad was all in confusion, our kafila separated, and I resolved to go on through Persia to Armenia, and so to Syria. But the season was too far advanced for me to think of traversing the regions of Caucasus just then, so I made up my mind to winter at Shiraz.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] The Three Brothers, or the Travels and Adventures of Sir Anthony, Sir Robert, and Sir Thomas Sherley in Persia, Russia, Turkey, Spain, &c., London, 1825.

[47] Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, &c., by Sir Robert Ker Porter, 2 vols., London, 1821.

[48] Mr. J.C. Marshman, C.S.I., who lived through the history of India, from Wellesley to Lord Lawrence, and personally knew almost all its distinguished men, writes in his invaluable History: ‘The good sense of Sir Harford and Colonel Malcolm gradually smoothed down all asperities, and it was not long before they agreed to unite their efforts to battle the intrigues and the cupidity of the court. Colonel Malcolm was received with open arms by the king, who considered him the first of Englishmen. “What induced you,” said he at the first interview, “to hasten away from Shiraz without seeing my son?” “How could I,” replied the Colonel with his ever ready tact, “after having been warmed by the sunshine of your Majesty’s favour, be satisfied with the mere reflection of that refulgence in the person of your son?” “Mashalla!” exclaimed the monarch, “Malcolm Sahib is himself again.” ... Sir Gore Ouseley had acquired the confidence of Lord Wellesley by the great talents he exhibited when in a private station at the court of Lucknow, and upon his recommendation was appointed to Teheran as the representative of the King of England.’ The two embassies cost the East India Company 380,000l.

[49] Sir C.U. Aitchison’s Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sunnuds relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, 2nd edition, vol. vi. Calcutta, 1876.

[50] A Tour to Sheeraz by the route of Karroon and Feerozabad, London, 1807.

[51] In two splendid volumes, printed by native hands under the sanction of the Government at Calcutta, in 1891, Lieutenant-Colonel H. Wilberforce Clarke published an English prose translation of The Divan, written in the Fourteenth Century, by Khwaja Shamshu-d-Din Muhammad-i-Hafiz. The work is described in the Quarterly Review of January 1892, by a writer who thus begins: ‘About two miles north-west of Shiraz, in the garden called Mosella which is, being interpreted, “the place of prayer,” lies, beneath the shadow of cypress-trees, one of which he is said to have planted with his own hand, Shems-Edden Mohammed, surnamed Hafiz, or “the steadfast in Scripture,” poet, recluse, and mystic.... No other Persian has equalled him in fame—not Sadi, whose monument, now in ruins, may be visited near his own; nor Firdusi, nor Jami. Near the garden tomb is laid open the book of well nigh seven hundred poems which he wrote. According to Sir Gore Ouseley, who turned over its pages in 1811, it is a volume abounding in bright and delicate colour, with illuminated miniatures, and the lovely tints of the Persian caligraphy.’

[52] Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols. (Longmans), 1892.

[53] Travels, vol. i. pp. 687-8.

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