TABREEZ. 
227 
that had been attached to maintaining its military strength, under 
Abbas the Great, must of course have increased the inhabitants 
of the city. But in the beginning of the eighteenth century, we 
find its population so wonderfully reduced, that at the earthquake 
of 1727, which demolished the chief part of the town, not more 
than seventy thousand persons were its victims : an incredible 
disproportion to the rate of its inhabitants just before. And at 
the succeeding shock, which happened sixty years afterwards, 
only forty thousand remained, to be swallowed up in the second 
gulph. If the vast number reported by Chardin as the popu¬ 
lation of Tabreez, in the year 1686, were the real fact, how 
terrible must have been the events of war and its attendant 
evils, famine and pestilence, which must have swept the province 
of Azerbijan, and reduced the people of its capital city, in the 
course of little more than forty years, (from the time of his 
calculation, to the first earthquake,) from half a million of souls, 
to hardly more than one-fifth of that multitude. 
His Royal Highness Abbas Mirza, is doing all in his power to 
restore the place to the military importance it formerly attained, 
under the command of his great predecessor of the same name. 
The Prince does not aim so much at adorning the city, as to 
strengthen it. The present fortifications were begun, and finished 
by him ; and a maidan, or square, laid out, and surrounded with 
barracks, for the troops he is organizing according to European 
tactics. A palace also is under the masons’ hands, for his own 
residence; but it possesses none of the architectural pomp, 
which seems to have characterised the royal residences of former 
times. Indeed, it is not in modern Persia that the traveller 
must look for the magnificent exterior of eastern palaces, and 
other public buildings. Taking his course through the towns 
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