134 
ISPAHAN. 
son, who stood humbly in tlie court-yard among the attendants, and 
furnished us with a strong instance of the respect which children pay 
to their parents in the East; for on a public occasion like this, let the 
son possess what power he may, he never sits before his father. 
Rachael said unto Laban, Let it hot displease my lord that I cannot rise 
up before thee. Gen. xxxi. 35. The same respect is shown to mothers; 
and nothing can better mark the antiquity of the custom, than what 
Alexander is made to say to Sisygambis : “ I know that amongst you it 
is considered a great offence for a son to seat himself before his mother^ 
unless she grants him the permission."*^ ^ 
The great city of Ispahan, which Chardin has described as being 
twenty four miles in circumference, were it to be weeded (if the ex¬ 
pression may be used) of its ruins, would now dwindle to about a quar¬ 
ter of that circumference. One might suppose that God’s curse had ex¬ 
tended over parts of this city, as it did over Babylon. Houses, bazars, 
mosques, palaces, whole streets, are to be seen in total abandonment; 
and I have rode for miles among its ruins, without meeting with any 
living creature, except perhaps a jackal peeping over a wall, or a fox 
running to his hole. 
In a large tract of ruins, where houses in different stages of decay 
are to be seen, now and then an inhabited house may be discovered, 
the owner of which may be assimilated to Job’s forlorn man, dwelling 
in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which are ready 
to become heaps. Chap. xv. ver. 28. Such a remark as this must have 
arisen from scenes similar to those which parts of Ispahan present; and 
unless the particular feeling of melancholy which they inspire has been 
felt, no words can convey adequate ideas of it. 
But if the ruins when examined in detail are saddening to the sight; 
yet, as they are not distinguishable from the inhabited houses when 
seen in masses from afar, they tend greatly to magnify the extent of 
the city, and to give it the appearance now of what must have been its 
former greatness. The view which breaks upon the traveller when he 
* Quintus Curtius, lib. v. c. 2 . 
