no 
POPULATION OF SHIRAZ. 
The rich hire a dedeh^ or wet-nurse for their children. If a boy, 
the father appoints a steady man from the age of two years to be his 
lalehi who I conjecture must stand in the same capacity as the hringers 
up of children^, mentioned in the catastrophe of Ahab’s sons (2 Kings, 
X. 5.); but if it be a daughter, she has a gees sefeed, or white head, 
attached to her for the same purpose as the laleh. 
During our stay at Shiraz, I endeavoured to acquire some correct 
information concerning the number of its inhabitants, but it is so 
difficult to attain even an approximation to the truth, from a people 
whose great characteristic is falsehood, that I despaired of arriving at 
any satisfactory conclusion. Registers of births are unknown, and the 
accounts which are kept of the number of houses, are too incorrect to 
serve as the basis of a correct calculation. However, I set a man in 
my pay secretly to enquire of the Ketkhodas or chiefs of the different 
mahals or divisions, what was the number of houses in each mahal, 
and the result was as follows : — 
The city is divided into ten mahals, viz. 
Houses, 
Der Shah Zadeh 
- 
1300 
Derbe Ishak Beg - 
- 
1350 
Bala Keft - - _ 
- 
1420 
Meydan Shah 
- 
1200 
Sok-el-teer, or Bazar Morgh 
- 
500 
Seng Seeah - - - 
- 
450 
Ser Dezek _ - - 
- 
750 
Lebe Aub _ - - 
- 
500 
Der Mesjid No 
- 
130 
Ser Bagh _ _ _ 
- 
180 
7780 
* This term comes from a word which 
means 
to nurse (araan). 
