A COMET SEEN. 
157 
to those leading to our camp; for it was feared, that should any attack 
be made, we, who were known to carry many valuables in our train, 
should be the first objects of it. The precautions taken by the Persians 
against an attack, afforded us an opportunity of judging what would be 
their mode of defending a city in a case of real war. Ispahan has but 
few of its walls remaining, and therefore has a thousand neglected 
• avenues by which it may be entered. Notwithstanding this, small 
bodies of men, from twenty to fifty each, armed with matchlock guns, 
were stationed at the principal gates, bridges, and causeways, where 
they built up small temporary breastworks of mud, leaving apertures 
through which, crouching down, they might insert their muskets, in 
case they should be brought to the extremity of firing them. With¬ 
out such a screen, no Persian soldier, left to his own modes of defence, 
would stand ; and this indeed is the case with most Asiatic troops, who, 
not having a point of union in the open field, have been known to fight 
well under the protection of walls. 
On the 18th of September, 1811, we first saw a comet, bearing 
N. W. from Ispahan. The Persians informed us, that they had seen it 
many days before, and that then it was in the direction of the Pointers 
in the Ursa Major. They look upon a comet, which they call sitareh 
dumdar, or the star with a tail, as portentous of evil, announcing wars, 
dissensions, famine, scarcity, &c. The old poet Mahomed Cossim 
Walah compared it to Buonaparte, who, he said, never appeared in any 
country, but misery and misfortune attended him. 
During our residence at Ispahan, great apprehensions were enter¬ 
tained about the issue of a war that was waging between Mahomed Ali 
Mirza, Governor of Kermanshah, and Abdurakhman Pasha, a powerful 
chief of the Courdistan, of the origin and progress of which the follow¬ 
ing are the particulars. 
The Courdistan is governed by chiefs, some of whom are depen¬ 
dent on the Turkish, and some on the Persian government; others 
are nominally dependent, passing from the territory of the one power 
to that of the other, as may suit their interests, and lead a predatory 
and an unsettled life. Abdurakhman Pasha was dependent upon the 
