THE BAZAARS OF HAMAVAN. 125 



The bazaars are busy and fairly spacious, presenting 

 the long covered-in arcades with their many rami- 

 fications, familiar to the traveller in the East. Great 

 impetus was given to the trade of the town by the 

 stifling of the transit trade through Caucasia, which 

 has resulted in much of the trade which formerly 

 went to Tabriz now reaching Hamadan via Bagh- 

 dad. I walked through the greater part of the 

 bazaars, where I found Manchester prints and cottons 

 everywhere displayed, Kussia supplying only about 

 10 per cent of such goods at the present time (1903). 

 With regard to other goods, however, Russia sup- 

 plies the lion's share. Glass ware, crockery, cutlery, 

 &c., all come from her, while whereas fifteen years 

 ago E-ussian sugar was unknown in Hamadan, 80 

 per cent now bears her trade-mark. I did not see 

 a single package of Marseilles sugar in the bazaar. 

 The chief article of local manufacture is leather, 

 while wine is made from the grapes which grow 

 abundantly all round, and has a considerable local 

 reputation. With praiseworthy perseverance, but 

 quite gratuitously, more than one writer has per- 

 sisted in extolling the excellence and widespread 

 reputation of the copper ware of Hamadan. As a 

 matter of fact there is no copper work in Hamadan, 

 or at any rate no more than there is in any other 

 Persian town. The only copper - ware repositories 

 that I saw were one or two shops in a small side 

 bazaar, whose copper goods admittedly all came 

 from Kashan. 



The chief objects of interest in the town are the 

 tombs of Esther and Mordecai, and of Avicenna 

 (Abu ibn Sena), and a beautiful little mosque of 

 Seljuk origin ; and through a snowstorm and the 

 appalling filth of the narrow streets I ploughed my 



