400 NOTES. 
Punishment of Theft , p. 204.]—This was a punishment inflicted by the 'Emperor 
Aurelian. Gibbon, i. p. 355. 
P. 217.]— Gardanne complains in the same manner of the publicity of Persian diplo¬ 
macy. “ Les Gardes, les Secretaires, les curieux sont presens. Nous avoirs sou vent 
tc demande de les faire eloigner, mais les Ministres gardent toujours du monde. On ne 
K peut pas rester seul avec eux.” Journal, p. 34. 
Teheran , p. 224.]—It is interesting to trace the progress of a capital. At about the 
same distance from Phages , (at which the present city of Teheran may be placed from the 
remains of Rcy) appears the town of Tahora , in the Theodosian tables : a sufficient pre- 
sumption that Teheran itself had an original and independant existence, and did not rise 
only from the ruins of the greater metropolis. Its continuance as a contemporary city 
cannot now be traced distinctly; it may indeed have borne a different name in Eastern 
geography, as it is the Teheran or C'herijar of Tavernier. It re-appears however under 
its present name in the journey of the Castilian Embassadors to Timur, at a period when 
the greatness of Pey was still very considerable. At the end of two centuries, Pietro 
della Valle re-visited it. He calls it the city of planes; tom. ii. 390 : the soil is pro¬ 
bably particularly adopted to the tree; for Olivier mentions one in the neighbourhood 
that measured round an excrescence at the root, seventy feet; tom. v. p. 102. About the 
same time with Della Valle, Herbert described it fully. It is the Tyroan of his 
travels. Tavernier notices it more perhaps from the materials of others than from his 
own observation, tom. i. 313: and Chardin speaks of it only as “ petite ville.” Tom. ii. 
p. 120. Its name occurs with scarcely a line of comment, in a route given by Hanway, 
vol. i.; and though it was a place of some interest in the reign of Nadir, its actual state 
cannot be collected with any certainty till the accession of the present dynasty. It had 
long indeed been the capital of a province; and its name had been frequently connected 
with objects of importance in the history of the last two centuries; yet it owes its more 
immediate pre-eminence to the events of the last few years. It had been so much de¬ 
stroyed by the Affghans , (when after the battle of Salman ah ad they invested it, in the hope 
of seizing Shah Thamas, who had retired thither) that Aga Mahomed, the late King, 
may be considered as almost its second founder. Its nearness to his own tribe and province; 
the facilities of raising instantaneously from the wandering tribes around it a large force of 
cavalry; and its central situation between the general resources of his empire and the 
more exposed frontiers, combined to justify his choice of Teheran as the capital of Persia. 
It has risen rapidly. In 1797 Olivier describes it as little more than two miles in cir¬ 
cumference, and of the whole area the palace occupied more than one-fourth. Tom. v. 
p. 89. In 1809, it is stated to be between four and a half and five miles round the walls. 
The population, according to Olivier, even with all the encouragement which Aga Ma¬ 
homed afforded to settlers, and including his own household of three thousand persons, 
amounted in 1797 to only fifteen thousand persons. Gardanne describes it, ten years after¬ 
wards, as having more than fifty thousand inhabitants during the winter; though he notices 
