MODERN PERSIA AXD ITS CAPITAL 



389 



Photograph from Faye Fisher 



A PERSIAN SCHOOL FOR BOYS 



Schools such as these are scattered through the shopping districts of Persian cities. 

 They resemble shops with one side all open to the street. The teacher sits at one end with 

 a long stick which he uses on the boys if they stop studying aloud for a moment. 



A noted spring gushes from under the 

 broken ramparts. Chashmah-i-Ali, or The 

 Fountain of AH, it is called, in honor of 

 AH, the son-in-law of Mohammed. Above 

 it is a modern rock carving, and near by 

 a palimpset replacing a Sassanian bas- 

 relief, both of them commemorating the 

 reign of Fath AH Shah, who ruled in 

 Persia a hundred years ago. Neither is 

 of historic value except as a reminder of 

 the conceited king who presumptuously 

 obliterated the ancient and valuable in- 

 scription to provide for the record of his 

 own supposedly greater glory. 



teheran's tower of silence 



To the northeast of Rei, on a bare, 

 shelving hillside, the Zoroastrian Tower 

 of Silence stands, visible from all the 

 surrounding country. 



On this circular, whitewashed tower, 

 which is perhaps fifty feet in diameter 



and thirty feet high, the modern Zoroas- 

 trians, according to ancient religious cus- 

 tom, expose the bodies of their dead to 

 the vultures and the weather. Gruesome 

 as this strange cemetery may seem, it is 

 a better tribute to the still glowing embers 

 of old Persian national life and customs 

 than the mouldering walls of forgotten 

 Rei. 



In the case of Teheran, as of a great 

 many other things Persian, distance lends 

 enchantment to the view. The shaded 

 avenue from a northern gate leads moun- 

 tainward through bare, rolling foothills, 

 past a deserted palace of a former shah, 

 and ascends through cultivated fields, 

 brown walled villages, and past the cool 

 summer gardens of the legations, the Per- 

 sian aristocracy, and the royal family, to 

 the very base of the great inner wall of 

 the Elburz. 



Then a narrow bridle-path climbs sky- 



