That Sháh 'Abbás deserved the title of “the Great” there can be no question, and many of his severities have been palliated, if not excused, even by European historians like Sir John Malcolm; * but his cruel murder of his eldest son The chief blot on his reign. Ṣafí Mírzá and his blinding of another, Khudá-banda Mírzá, and the tragical circumstances connected therewith, * form a dark page in the records of his otherwise glorious reign, which ended with his death in the early part of A.D. 1629. He was succeeded by his grandson Sám Mírzá, who, on his accession, took the name of his unfortunate father, and mounted the throne of Persia under the title of Sháh Ṣafí I.

There is a well-known tradition of the Muhammadans * that Solomon died standing, supported by the staff on which he leaned, and that his death remained unknown to the Jinn, who laboured at his command in the construction of the Temple, for a year, until the wood-worm ate through the staff and the body fell to the ground. This legend may well serve as a parable of the century of Ṣafawí rule which followed the death of Sháh 'Abbás the Great, who, by his strength and wisdom, gave to Persia a period of peace and outward prosperity which for nearly a hundred years protected his successors from the results of their incompetence.

The successors of Sháh 'Abbás the Great. Four of his house succeeded him ere the catastrophe of the Afghán invasion in A.D. 1722 effected its downfall, to wit, his grandson Sháh Ṣafí above mentioned (A.D. 1629-1642); his great-grandson Sháh 'Abbás II (A.D. 1642-1666); his great-great-grandson Ṣafí, subsequently recrowned under the name of Sulaymán (A.D. 1666-1694); and his great-great-great-grandson Sháh Sháh Ṣafí (A.D. 1629-1642), a blood-thirsty tyrant. Ḥusayn (A.D. 1694-1722). Of Sháh Ṣafí, Kru-sinski says that “'tis certain there has not been in Persia a more cruel and bloody reign than his” and describes it as “one continued series of cruelties”; while Hanway observes that “he interfered so little in the affairs of the government that the Persians would have scarcely perceived they had a king, had it not been for the frequent instances of barbarity which stained his reign with blood”; and that “by his own folly he lost Kandahar and Babylon [Baghdád], two of the most important places on his frontiers.” Than Sháh 'Abbás II, on 'Abbás II (A.D. 1642-1666), a good king, save in his cups. the other hand, according to Krusinski, “next to Ismael I and Schah-Abas the Great, Persia never had a better king of the family of the Sophies.” Although, like his father and predecessor, he was “too much subject to wine, and committed some acts of cruelty, yet, abateing a few excursions, of which he might justly be reproached, he shewed himself, during the whole course of his reign, truly worthy of the crown he wore.” “The farther he advanced into his reign,” continues the Jesuit, “the more he was beloved by his subjects and the more feared by his neighbours. He loved justice, and had no mercy of the governors and other public officers who, abusing their authority, oppressed the people, of which several instances may be seen in Tavernier. He had a great and noble soul, was very kind to strangers, and openly protected the Christians, whom he would not have in the least molested for their religion, saying, ‘That none but God was master of their consciences; that, for his own part, he was only governor of externals; and that all his subjects being equally members of the State, of what religion soever they were, he owed justice to them all alike.’” This reign, however, was the last flicker of greatness in the Ṣafawí dynasty,

Sulaymán (A.D. 1666-1694), a cruel and debauched king. for Sulaymán (to quote Krusinski once more), “degenerated very much from the virtues of his father Schah-Abas II, and made his reign remarkable only by a thousand instances of cruelty,

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the bare mention of which is shocking. When he was in wine or in wrath nobody about him was sure of life or estate. He caused hands, feet, nose and ears to be cut off, eyes to be plucked out, and lives to be sacrificed upon the least whim that took him; and the man that was most in his favour at the beginning of a debauch was generally made a sacrifice at the end of it. This is the character given us of him by Sir John Chardin, who was in part a witness of what he relates as to this matter. Persons thought their lives in such danger whenever they approached him that a great lord of his Court said, when he came from his presence, that he always felt if his head was left standing upon his shoulders. It was under this prince that Persia began to decay. He thought so little like a king that when it was represented to him what danger he was in from the Turks, who, when they had made peace with the Christians, would come and attack his finest provinces if he did not put himself in a position to repel them, he answered very indifferently that he did not care, provided they left him Iṣfahán.”

Sháh Ḥusayn, the last Ṣafawí king (for his nominal successors Ṭahmásp II and 'Abbás III were mere puppets in Sháh Ḥusayn (A.D. 1694; deposed 1722; killed 1729), a “meek zealot.” the hands of Nádir Sháh), was very unlike his predecessors, for his clemency was so excessive as “rendered him incapable of any severity, though never so moderate and necessary,” * while having one day accidentally wounded a duck with his pistol “he himself was as much terrified as if he had really committed murder, and made the same exclamation as is customary in Persia upon the shedding of human blood, by saying Kanlu oldum, * i.e. ‘I am polluted with blood’; and that very instant he caused two hundred tomons to be given to the poor as an atonement for what he thought a great sin.” He was something of a scholar and theologian, much under the influence of the Mullás, and so careful of his religious duties and so much attached to the reading of the Qur'án as to earn for himself the nick-name of Mullá or “Parson Ḥusayn.” * Though at first a vehement prohibitionist, he was later induced by his grandmother, instigated by wine-loving courtiers and power-seeking eunuchs, to taste the forbidden liquor, which gradually obtained such a hold on him that “he would not by any means hear the mention of business, but left it all to the discretions of his ministers and eunuchs, who governed the kingdom just as they pleased, and took the greater license because they were very sensible they had nothing to fear from a prince who was so weak as to refer the very petitions he received to them without so much as reading them.”*

In such a work as this, which is concerned primarily with Persian literature and only secondarily with Persian history, and that only in broad outlines, save in the case of periods which witnessed some definite change in the national outlook, it is unnecessary to enter into a more detailed account of the later Ṣafawí period; the more so because several excellent accounts of the decline and fall of this remarkable dynasty, and of the state of Persia at that time, are readily accessible to the English reader. Of these the following may be especially commended.

Adam Olearius, Secretary to the Embassy sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein to Russia and Persia, was in Best contemporary accounts of this period. the latter country from November, 1636 until February, 1638. His Voyages and Travels, originally written in Latin, were translated into French and thence, by John Davies, into English. I have (1) Olearius (A.D. 1636-1638). used the English version published in 1669. Olearius, or Oelschläger, to give him his original name, was a careful observer, and seems to have had a very fair knowledge both of Persian and Turkish, and his work is one of the best accounts of Persia in the seventeenth century.

Le Père Raphaël du Mans, Superior of the Capuchin Mission at Iṣfahán, was born in A.D. 1613, went to Persia in (2) Raphaël du Mans (A.D. 1644-1696). 1644, and died there in 1696. His Estat de la Perse en 1660 in the learned edition of M. Schefer (Paris, 1890) gives a valuable if not very lively account of Persian institutions at a somewhat later date than Olearius.

The Chevalier Chardin was born in A.D. 1643, was twice in Persia for about six years each time (A.D. 1664-70 and (3) Chardin (A.D. 1664-1677). 1671-77), and settled in London in 1681, where he died in 1713. Of the numerous editions of his Voyages en Perse I have used that of the learned Langlès (Paris, 1811) in ten volumes, of which the last contains (pp. 151-244) an admirable Notice chronologique de la Perse, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à ce jour by the editor, carried down to the time of Fatḥ-'Alí Sháh Qájár.