November ii, 1915] 



NATURE 



287 



PERSIA.^ 



'OL. SYKES has long won a position of 

 authority and distinction in Persian ques- 

 >ns by his travels and studies, including- the 

 ill-known "Ten Thousand Miles in Persia," an 

 rnvrage couronne " (by the Royal Geographical 

 )ciety) more than ten years ago. But for many 

 ^ears he has cherished the idea of a Persian his- 

 )ry, only now fulfilled — the crown of his labours. 

 >ir John Malcolm's "History of Persia from the 

 lost Early Period to the Present Time " appeared 

 1815, and since that time no English Orientalist 

 las attempted the same task on a similar, or 

 Adequate, scale. Sir Clements Markham's useful 

 ^Sketch of the History of Persia " (1874) does not 

 lim to come into the comparison — excellent as 

 is. Since Malcolm's work, a century ago, the 

 Id of investigation has been transformed ; mines 



buried treasure have shown 

 »mething more than " neglected 

 fricultural land." The cunei- 

 form inscriptions have been de- 

 ciphered ; such records as the 

 cylinder of Cvrus and the Behis- 

 tun record of Darius have been 

 discovered and interpreted ; his- 

 toric sites have been excavated ; 

 we have in a measure evoked the 

 spirit of ancient Persia. The 

 modern world is now in a position 

 to understand to some degree the 

 Persian side in the struggle with 

 Hellas and with Rome, and to 

 revise old notions, based exclu- 

 sively upon Western information 

 and Western views. Ancient 

 Persia can no longer be treated 

 as a mere barbaric despotism, 

 which has contributed nothing to 

 civilisation. 



Col. Sykes has special advan- 

 tages from his close personal 

 knowledge of so much of the 

 ground ; for twenty-one years he 

 has lived in Persia ; as a diplomatist, a soldier, a 

 traveller, and a student he has seen the Middle 

 East from various sides and penetrated many dis- 

 guises. Peculiarly good, among many good 

 things, are the geographical and topographical 

 sections and references, such as the chapters that 

 introduce the work ("Configuration, Climate," 

 etc.), and the constant elucidations of history 

 through the personal wanderings and investiga- 

 tions of the writer. Archaeology and topography 

 are well combined in the account of the great 

 ruined sites of Achaemenian and Sasanid Persia, 

 and the history of culture is not forgotten in the 

 sections given to Persian customs, language, 

 letters, and art, in various periods. 



This book seems to give a fresh interest and 

 value to the time of early Persian greatness — 



1 " A History of Persia." By Lieut.-Col. P. M. Sykes. Vol. i., pp. xxvi 

 +544. Vol. ii., pp. xxii + 565. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1915.) 

 Price SOT. net, two volumrs. 



from the rise of Cyrus to the death of Darius 

 Hystaspes — as well as to that attractive and 

 neglected subject of the Sasanid kingdom, where 

 " Asiatic slaves " appear struggling so long and 

 so successfully against the Far Eastern expansion 

 of Rome. The whole subject of Zoroaster and 

 fire wbrship is sympathetically treated, and one 

 may learn much of Old Persian architecture, art, 

 and poetry from these pages. 



In the Abbasid period of Muhammadan rule the 

 author well develops the subject of Persian in- 

 fluence — so notably revived, after a time of deep 

 depression, by the overthrow of the Umayyads and 

 the transference of the capital from Syrian 

 Damascus to Baghdad on the Tigris. The reader 

 may be referred to the forty-ninth, fiftieth, and 

 fifty-fourth chapters : " Persian Ascendancy in the 

 Early Abbasid Period," "The Golden Age of 

 Islam," and "Persian Literature before the 



NO. 2402, VOL. 96] 



Fig. I. — Gold model of Achaemenian chariot. (From " Treasure of the Oxus.") From " A History 

 ot Persia.'' 



Mongol Invasion," some of the most interesting 

 and valuable in this work. 



The Mongol Ilkhanate of Persia, in its political 

 history, might perhaps have been made more of 

 (except for the reign of the ugly and glorious 

 dwarf, Ghazan, which is fully appreciated) ; on 

 the other hand, the survey of Persian literature 

 and art under the Mongols is very useful. But no 

 part of this history is more serviceable, for none 

 fills a more evident want, than the picture of the 

 rise and fortunes of the new independent Shiite 

 Persia, after the fall of the Timurids, in the six- 

 teenth century. Of few parts of Persian story is it 

 perhaps more diflficult to gain really good informa- 

 tion and criticism ; of few parts is there more 

 general ignorance. 



The illustrations, by themselves, are note- 

 worthy, and place us under a debt to the author, 

 who has furnished many from his own collections 

 and photographs. Some excellent things come 



