212 PURCHASE OF CAMELS FOR MILITARY PURPOSES. 



dromedarj artillery, which without any hindrance, followed them 

 with the utmost rapidity from one end of the kingdom to the other. 



THE ARMY IS NEGLECTED.— REVOLT OF THE AFFGHANS.— BATTLE OF 

 GOUL NABAT.— FIRST USE OF ZEMBOUREKS. 



I cannot omit a brief sketch of the lamentable history of the Shah 

 Sultan Hussein, one of the last princes of the family of Sophy, that 

 reigned in Persia, for it was under his reign that the AfPghans used 

 the dromedary with the greatest success in the execution of some of 

 their boldest attacks. This weak monarch, guided by the advice of the 

 Mollahs and eunuchs, plunged his country into the most deplorable 

 condition. In the first years of his reign he so abandoned himself ta 

 the pleasures of the harem, that the epoch received the name of the 

 " hunt for virgins " ; * afterwards, age having subdued his passions, 

 he became as fanatic as he had been profligate. The enormous ex- 

 penses of his harem, f the gifts to mosques, and the fees to priests, 

 by dissipating the revenues of the state, rendered it impossible to 

 maintain an army capable of defending the independence of the nation, 

 or even of suppressing revolts. The astrologers predicted from the 

 phenomena happening at that time | inevitable misfortunes, which 

 the Mollahs, however, promised to avert by public prayers. The 

 eunuchs, the courtiers, the swarm of princes and princesses, § and 

 even the physicians^, who promised to re-establish the exhausted pow- 

 ers of the king by prescriptions into which diamonds and rubies 



rapidity of movement ; that to besiege a town, he would prefer to transport metal on ther 

 backs of camels, and cast before it a heavy piece of artillery. 



In 1838, at the siege of Herat, the king, Mahemed Shah, observing that his field artil- 

 lery did not produce the desired effect upon the fortifications of the town, had a bronze 

 piece of 48 cast. It was bored, turned, and mounted in the same manner as the finest 

 piece from the arsenal, and all of it done before the besieged town. When the siege was 

 raised, (which lasted ten months,) the king had it sawed into pieces and transported to 

 Teheran. As a memorial of this deed, the mouth of the piece was placed in the royal 

 square at Teheran, where it may still be seen. 



* The historians of the time relate that the governors of the difierent provinces had 

 orders to send to the Shah all the beautiful girls they could find, and that they had obeyed 

 with so much zeal, that in a single month there were presented to the king thirty cradles 

 containing as many little princes and princesses. 



f This prince, contrary to the custom of his predecessors, preserved all of his women 

 . and children. Until then, it had been the barbarous practice to put to death all the 

 women who became needless to the pleasures of the Shah ; and to put out the eyes of the 

 male children for the purpose of destroying their pretensions to the throne, and so assur- 

 ing it to the heir designated by the king. 



I The author of a Persian manuscript says, that the sun was obscured during ten days, 

 and that the horizon in all that time was of a red and bloody hue. Father Kruzinski, an 

 eye-witness, observes that in the summer of the year 1721 the clouds were thicker than 

 common, that the sun had a color red as blood, which lasted for nearly two months. He 

 adds : "that the astronomers declared that it announced a great effusion of blood ; and 

 that this prediction increased the general consternation." 



Tabriz was completely destroyed by an earthquake, by which a large number of the in- 

 habitants lost their lives. According to the memoirs of Kruzinski, (p. 186,) there per- 

 ished by it near 80,000 persons. 



§ He had one hundred and eighty children. 



