Telling Mirza Sayyid Ali one day that I wished to return to the city in the evening, to be alone and at leisure for prayer, he said with seriousness, ‘Though a man had no other religious society I suppose he might, with the aid of the Bible, live alone with God?’ This solitude will, in one respect, be his own state soon;—may he find it the medium of God’s gracious communications to his soul! He asked in what way God ought to be addressed: I told him as a Father, with respectful love; and added some other exhortations on the subject of prayer.

May 11.—Aga Baba came to bid me farewell, which he did in the best and most solemn way, by asking, as a final question, ‘whether, independently of external evidences, I had any internal proofs of the doctrine of Christ?’ I answered, ‘Yes, undoubtedly: the change from what I once was is a sufficient evidence to me.’ At last he took his leave, in great sorrow, and what is better, apparently in great solicitude about his soul.

The rest of the day I continued with Mirza Sayyid Ali, giving him instructions what to do with the New Testament in case of my decease, and exhorting him, as far as his confession allowed me, to stand fast. He had made many a good resolution respecting his besetting sins. I hope, as well as pray, that some lasting effects may be seen at Shiraz from the Word of God left among them.

May 13.—Remained all day at the caravanserai, correcting the Prince’s copy.

May 14.—Continued our journey through two ridges of mountains to Imanzadu: no cultivation to be seen anywhere, nor scarcely any natural vegetable production, except the broom and hawthorn. The weather was rather tempestuous, with cold gusts of wind and rain. We were visited by people who came to be cured of their distempers.

May 16.—We found a hoar frost, and ice on the pools. The excessive cold at this place is accounted for by its being the highest land between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. The baggage not having come up, we were obliged to pass another day in this uncomfortable neighbourhood, where nothing was to be procured for ourselves or our horses, the scarcity of rain this year having left the ground destitute of verdure, and the poor people of the village near us having nothing to sell.

May 21.—Finished the revision of the Prince’s copy. At eleven at night we started for Ispahan, where we arrived soon after sunrise on the 22nd, and were accommodated in one of the king’s palaces. Found my old Shiraz scribe here, and corrected with him the Prince’s copy.

May 23.—Called on the Armenian bishops at Julfa, and met Matteus. He is certainly vastly superior to any Armenian I have yet seen. We next went to the Italian missionary, Joseph Carabiciate, a native of Aleppo, but educated at Rome. He spoke Latin very sprightly, considering his age, which was sixty-six, but discovered no sort of inclination to talk about religion. Until lately he had been supported by the Propaganda; but weary at last of exercising his functions without remuneration, and even without the necessary provision, he talked of returning to Aleppo.

May 24. (Sunday.)—Went early this morning to the Armenian church attached to the episcopal residence. Within the rails were two out of the four bishops, and other ecclesiastics, but in the body of the church only three people. Most of the Armenians at Julfa, which is now reduced to five hundred houses, attended at their respective parish churches, of which there are twelve, served by twenty priests. After their pageantry was over, and we were satisfied with processions, ringing of bells, waving of colours, and other ceremonies, which were so numerous as entirely to remove all semblance of spiritual worship, we were condemned to witness a repetition of the same mockery at the Italian’s church, at his request. I could not stand it out, but those who did observed that the priest ate and drank all the consecrated elements himself, and gave none to the few poor women who composed his congregation, and who, the Armenian said, had been hired for the occasion.

Before returning to Ispahan we sat a short time in the garden with the bishops. They, poor things, had nothing to say, and could scarcely speak Persian; so that all the conversation was between me and Matteus. At my request he brought what he had of the Holy Scriptures in Persian and Arabic. They were Wheloi’s Persian Gospels, and an Arabic version of the Gospels printed at Rome. I tried in vain to bring him to any profitable discussion; with more sense than his brethren, he is not more advanced in spiritual knowledge. Returned much disappointed. Julfa had formerly twenty bishops and about one hundred clergy, with twenty-four churches.

June 2.—Soon after midnight we mounted our horses. It was a mild moonlight night and a nightingale filled the whole valley with his notes. Our way was along lanes, over which the wood on each side formed a canopy, and a murmuring rivulet accompanied us till it was lost in a lake. At daylight we emerged into the plain of Kashan, which seems to be a part of the great Salt Desert. On our arrival at the king’s garden, where we intended to put up, we were at first refused admittance, but an application to the Governor was soon attended to. We saw here huge snowy mountains on the north-east beyond Teheran.

June 5.—Reached Kum;[80] the country uniformly desolate. The chief Moojtahid in all Persia, being a resident of this city, I sent to know if a visit would be agreeable to him. His reply was, that if I had any business with him I might come; but if otherwise, his age and infirmities must be his excuse. Intending to travel a double stage, started soon after sunset.

June 8.—Arrived, two hours before daybreak, at the walls of Teheran. I spread my bed upon the high road, and slept till the gates were open; then entered the city, and took up my abode at the ambassador’s house.

I lost no time in forwarding Jaffir Ali Khan’s letter to the premier, who sent to desire that I would come to him. I found him lying ill in the verandah of the king’s tent of audience. Near him were sitting two persons, who, I was afterwards informed, were Mirza Khantar and Mirza Abdoolwahab; the latter being a secretary of state and a great admirer of the Soofi sage. They took very little notice, not rising when I sat down, as is their custom to all who sit with them; nor offering me kalean. The two secretaries, on learning my object in coming, began a conversation with me on religion and metaphysics, which lasted two hours. As they were both well-educated, gentlemanly men, the discussion was temperate, and, I hope, useful.

June 12.—I attended the Vizier’s levÉe, where there was a most intemperate and clamorous controversy kept up for an hour or two; eight or ten on one side, and I on the other. Amongst them were two moollas, the most ignorant of any I have yet met with in either Persia or India. It would be impossible to enumerate all the absurd things they said. Their vulgarity in interrupting me in the middle of a speech; their utter ignorance of the nature of an argument; their impudent assertions about the law and the Gospel, neither of which they had ever seen in their lives, moved my indignation a little. I wished, and I said it would have been well, if Mirza Abdoolwahab had been there; I should then have had a man of sense to argue with. The Vizier, who set us going at first, joined in it latterly, and said, ‘You had better say God is God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God.’ I said, ‘God is God,’ but added, instead of ‘Muhammad is the prophet of God,’ ‘and Jesus is the Son of God.’ They had no sooner heard this, which I had avoided bringing forward till then, than they all exclaimed, in contempt and anger, ‘He is neither born nor begets,’ and rose up, as if they would have torn me in pieces. One of them said, ‘What will you say when your tongue is burnt out for this blasphemy?’

One of them felt for me a little, and tried to soften the severity of this speech. My book, which I had brought expecting to present it to the king, lay before Mirza Shufi. As they all rose up after him to go, some to the king and some away, I was afraid they would trample on the book; so I went in among them to take it up, and wrapped it in a towel before them, while they looked at it and me with supreme contempt. Thus I walked away alone in my tent, to pass the rest of the day in heat and dirt. What have I done, thought I, to merit all this scorn? Nothing, I trust, but bearing testimony to Jesus. I thought over these things in prayer, and my troubled heart found that peace which Christ hath promised to His disciples.

To complete the trials of the day, a message came from the Vizier in the evening, to say that it was the custom of the king not to see any Englishman, unless presented by the ambassador, or accredited by a letter from him, and that I must, therefore, wait till the king reached Sultania, where the ambassador would be.

June 13.—Disappointed of my object in coming to the camp, I lost no time in leaving it, and proceeded in company with Mr. Canning, who had just joined me from Teheran, towards Kasbin, intending there to wait the result of an application to the ambassador. Started at eleven, and travelled till eleven next morning, having gone ten parasangs or forty miles, to Quishlang. The country all along was well watered and cultivated. The mules being too much tired to proceed, we passed the day at the village; indeed, we all wanted rest. As I sat down in the dust, on the shady side of a walled village by which we passed, and surveyed the plains over which our road lay, I sighed at the thought of my dear friends in India and England, of the vast regions I must traverse before I can get to either, and of the various and unexpected hindrances which present themselves to my going forward. I comfort myself with the hope that my God has something for me to do, by thus delaying my exit.

June 22.—We met with the usual insulting treatment at the caravanserai, where the king’s servants had got possession of a good room, built for the reception of the better order of guests; they seemed to delight in the opportunity of humbling an European. Sultania is still but a village, yet the Zengan prince has quartered himself and all his attendants, with their horses, on this poor little village. All along the road, where the king is expected, the people are patiently waiting, as for some dreadful disaster; plague, pestilence, or famine is nothing to the misery of being subject to the violence and extortion of this rabble soldiery.

June 25. (Zengan.)—After a restless night, rose so ill with the fever that I could not go on. My companion, Mr. Canning, was nearly in the same state. We touched nothing all day.

June 26.—After such another night I had determined to go on, but Mr. Canning declared himself unable to stir, so here we dragged through another miserable day. What added to our distress was that we were in danger, if detained here another day or two, of being absolutely in want of the necessaries of life before reaching Tabreez. We made repeated applications to the moneyed people, but none would advance a piastre. Where are the people who flew forth to meet General Malcolm with their purses and their lives? Another generation is risen up, ‘who know not Joseph.’ Providentially a poor muleteer, arriving from Tabreez, became security for us, and thus we obtained five tomans. This was a heaven-send; and we lay down quietly, free from apprehensions of being obliged to go a fatiguing journey of eight or ten hours, without a house or village in the way, in our present weak and reduced state. We had now eaten nothing for two days. My mind was much disordered from head-ache and giddiness, from which I was seldom free; but my heart, I trust, was with Christ and His saints. To live much longer in this world of sickness and pain seemed no way desirable; the most favourite prospects of my heart seemed very poor and childish; and cheerfully would I have exchanged them all for the unfading inheritance.

June 27.—My Armenian servant was attacked in the same way. The rest did not get me the things that I wanted, so that I passed the third day in the same exhausted state; my head, too, was tortured with shocking pains, such as, together with the horror I felt at being exposed to the sun, showed me plainly to what to ascribe my sickness. Towards evening, two more of our servants were attacked in the same way, and lay groaning from pains in the head.

June 28.—All were much recovered, but in the afternoon I again relapsed. During a high fever Mr. Canning read to me in bed the Epistle to the Ephesians, and I never felt the consolations of that Divine revelation of mysteries more sensibly and solemnly. Rain in the night prevented our setting off.

June 29.—My ague and fever returned, with such a head-ache that I was almost frantic. Again and again I said to myself, ‘Let patience have her perfect work,’ and kept pleading the promises, ‘When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee,’ etc.; and the Lord did not withhold His presence. I endeavoured to repel all the disordered thoughts that the fever occasioned, and to keep in mind that all was friendly; a friendly Lord presiding; and nothing exercising me but what would show itself at last friendly. A violent perspiration at last relieved the acute pain in my head, and my heart rejoiced; but as soon as that was over, the exhaustion it occasioned, added to the fatigue from the pain, left me in as low a state of depression as ever I was in. I seemed about to sink into a long fainting fit, and I almost wished it; but at this moment, a little after midnight, I was summoned to mount my horse, and set out, rather dead than alive. We moved on six parasangs. We had a thunder-storm with hail.

July 1.—A long and tiresome march to Sarehund; in seven parasangs there was no village. They had nothing to sell but buttermilk and bread; but a servant of Abbas Mirza, happening to be at the same caravanserai, sent us some flesh of a mountain cow which he had shot the day before. All day I had scarcely the right recollection of myself from the violence of the ague. We have now reached the end of the level ground which we have had all the way from Teheran, and are approaching the boundaries of Parthia and Media; a most natural boundary it is, as the two ridges of mountains we have had on the left and right come round and form a barrier.

July 2.—At two in the morning we set out. I hardly know when I have been so disordered. I had little or no recollection of things, and what I did remember at times of happy scenes in India or England, served only to embitter my present situation. Soon after removing into the air I was seized with a violent ague, and in this state I went on till sunrise. At three parasangs and a half we found a fine caravanserai, apparently very little used, as the grass was growing in the court. There was nothing all round but the barren rocks, which generally roughen the country before the mountain rears its height. Such an edifice in such a situation was cheering. Soon after we came to a river, over which was a high bridge; I sat down in the shade under it, with two camel drivers. The kafila, as it happened, forded the river, and passed on without my perceiving it. Mr. Canning seeing no signs of me, returned, and after looking about for some time, espied my horse grazing; he concluded immediately that the horse had flung me from the bridge into the river, and was almost ready to give me up for lost. My speedy appearance from under the bridge relieved his terror and anxiety. Half the people still continue ill; for myself, I am, through God’s infinite mercy, recovering.

July 4.—I so far prevailed as to get the kafila into motion at midnight. Lost our way in the night, but arriving at a village we were set right again. At eight came to Kilk caravanserai, but not stopping there, went on to a village, where we arrived at half-past nine. The baggage not coming up till long after, we got no breakfast till one o’clock. In consequence of all these things, want of sleep, want of refreshment, and exposure to the sun, I was presently in a high fever, which raged so furiously all the day that I was nearly delirious, and it was some time before I could get the right recollection of myself. I almost despaired, and do now, of getting alive through this unfortunate journey. Last night I felt remarkably well, calm and composed, and sat reflecting on my heavenly rest, with more sweetness of soul, abstraction from the world, and solemn views of God, than I have had for a long time. Oh, for such sacred hours! This short and painful life would scarcely be felt could I live thus at heaven’s gate. It being impossible to continue my journey in my present state, and one of the servants also being so ill that he could not move with safety, we determined to halt one day at the village, and sent on a messenger to Sir Gore, at Tabreez, informing him of our approach.

July 5.—As soon as it was day we found our way to the village where the Doctor was waiting for us. Not being able to stay for us, he went on to Tabreez, and we as far as Wasmuch, where he promised to procure for us a fine upper room furnished; but when we arrived, they denied that there was any such a place. At last, after an hour’s threatening, we got admittance to it. An hour before break of day I left it, in hopes of reaching Tabreez before sunrise. Some of the people seemed to feel compassion for me, and asked me if I was not very ill. At last I reached the gate, and feebly asked for a man to show me the way to the ambassador’s.

July 9.—Made an extraordinary effort, and as a Tartar was going off instantly to Constantinople, wrote letters to Mr. Grant for permission to come to England, and to Mr. Simeon and Lydia, informing them of it; but I have scarcely the remotest expectation of seeing it, except by looking at the almighty power of God.

Dined at night at the ambassador’s, who said he was determined to give every possible Éclat to my book, by presenting it himself to the king. My fever never ceased to rage till the 21st, during all which time every effort was made to subdue it, till I had lost all my strength and almost all my reason. They now administer bark, and it may please God to bless the tonics; but I seem too far gone, and can only say, ‘having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.’

To Lydia Grenfell

Tabreez: July 12, 1812.

My dearest Lydia,—I have only time to say that I have received your letter of February 14. Shall I pain your heart by adding, that I am in such a state of sickness and pain, that I can hardly write to you? Let me rather observe, to obviate the gloomy apprehension my letters to Mr. Grant and Mr. Simeon may excite, that I am likely soon to be delivered from my fever. Whether I shall gain strength enough to go on, rests on our Heavenly Father, in whose hands are all my times. Oh, His precious grace! His eternal unchanging love in Christ to my soul never appeared more clear, more sweet, more strong. I ought to inform you that in consequence of the state to which I am reduced by travelling so far overland, without having half accomplished my journey, and the consequent impossibility of returning to India the same way, I have applied for leave to come on furlough to England. Perhaps you will be gratified by this intelligence; but oh, my dear Lydia, I must faithfully tell you that the probability of my reaching England alive is but small; and this I say, that your expectations of seeing me again may be moderate, as mine are of seeing you. Why have you not written more about yourself? However, I am thankful for knowing that you are alive and well. I scarcely know how to desire you to direct. Perhaps Alexandria in Egypt will be the best place; another may be sent to Constantinople, for though I shall not go there, I hope Mr. Morier will be kept informed of my movements. Kindest love to all the saints you usually mention. Yours ever most faithfully and affectionately,

H. Martyn.

To Rev. C. Simeon

Tabreez: July 12, 1812.

My dearest Friend and Brother,—The Tartar courier for Constantinople, who has been delayed some days on our account, being to be despatched instantly, my little strength also being nearly exhausted by writing to Mr. Grant a letter to be laid before the court: I have only to notice some of the particulars of your letter of February of this year. It is not now before me, neither have I strength to search for it among my papers; but from the frequent attentive perusals I gave it during my intervals of ease, I do not imagine that any of it has escaped my memory. At present I am in a high fever, and cannot properly recollect myself. I shall ever love and be grateful to Mr. Thornton for his kind attention to my family.

The increase of godly young men is precious news. If I sink into the grave in India, my place will be supplied an hundredfold. You will learn from Mr. Grant that I have applied for leave to come to England on furlough; a measure you will disapprove; but you would not, were you to see the pitiable condition to which I am reduced, and knew what it is to traverse the continent of Asia in the destitute state in which I am. If you wish not to see me, I can say that I think it most probable that you will not; the way before me being not better than that passed over, which has nearly killed me.

I would not pain your heart, my dear brother, but we who are in Jesus have the privilege of viewing life and death as nearly the same, since both are one; and I thank a gracious Lord that sickness never came at a time when I was more free from apparent reasons for living. Nothing seemingly remains for me to do but to follow the rest of my family to the tomb. Let not the book written against Muhammadanism be published till approved in India. A European who has not lived amongst them cannot imagine how differently they see, imagine, reason, object, from what we do. This I had full opportunity of observing during my eleven months’ residence at Shiraz. During that time I was engaged in a written controversy with one of the most learned and temperate doctors there. He began. I replied what was unanswerable, then I subjoined a second more direct attack on the glaring absurdities of Muhammadanism, with a statement of the nature and evidences of Christianity. The Soofis then as well as himself desired a demonstration, from the very beginning, of the truth of any revelation. As this third treatise contained an examination of the doctrine of the Soofis, and pointed out that their object was attainable by the Gospel, and by that only, it was read with interest and convinced many. There is not a single Europeanism in the whole that I know of, as my friend and interpreter would not write anything that he could not perfectly comprehend. But I am exhausted; pray for me, beloved brother, and believe that I am, as long as life and recollection lasts, yours affectionately,

H. Martyn.

Tabreez: August 8.

My dearest Brother and Friend,—Ever since I wrote, about a month, I believe, I have been lying upon the bed of sickness; for twenty days or more the fever raged with great violence, and for a long time every species of medicine was tried in vain. After I had given up every hope of recovery, it pleased God to abate the fever, but incessant head-aches succeeded, which allowed me no rest day or night. I was reduced still lower, and am now a mere skeleton; but as they are now less frequent, I suppose it to be the will of God that I should be raised up to life again. I am now sitting in my chair, and wrote the will with a strong hand; but as you see I cannot write so now. Kindest love to Mr. John Thornton, for whose temporal and spiritual prosperity I daily pray.—Your ever affectionate friend and brother,

H. Martyn.