Chapter 25

GOVERNOR.

Persia is divided into thirteen states. The King appoints a governor over each state; this governor appoints a mayor over each city within his territory. This office is not awarded on the basis of education, ability or worthiness, but is given to the man who will pay the most money, provided his ancestry is fairly good. Many mayors of cities are related to the royal family. These offices are limited to terms of one year, but many times a mayor is removed before his time is out; the subjects may complain, or some person may bid more money for the office. When a man is appointed mayor of a city, the lords and counts of that city, accompanied by soldiers, will go three miles out of the city to meet the new official. He is greeted with discharges of artillery. These lords ride on very fine Arabian horses, with goldbitted bridles, and escort the mayor into the city. The new governor of the city admires the fine horses of his lords, and sometimes covets some fine steed, and before his term expires finds a way to get possession of it by helping the lord out of some trouble.

If the new mayor is a prince all prisoners confined in the city jails are taken before him as he enters the city. This is to signify that, as a member of the royal family, he has authority to behead them. The third day after a new mayor has arrived in a city it is customary for lords and counts to visit him with presents of money, golden articles, Arabian horses etc. as presents. A mayor has from one hundred to three hundred servants. He pays them no salary. Some became his servants for the name, some from fear, and others from choice. Most of these servants get their living from fines and bribes. Some of them are detailed to settle quarrels between men in some village that belongs to the city. This is their opportunity and they early learn to make the most of it. The mayor has great power. He is judge, sheriff, tax-collector, etc. He has things his own way. When there is an injustice done there is no other local officer to appeal to.

PRISONS.

The prisons are frequently cellars, underground, without windows, damp and infested with flies. They are seldom ventilated, and there is no bed nor furniture in them. The government does not feed the inmates. Friends of the imprisoned ones bring bread and throw to them, and some of this even, is sometimes picked up by the jailer and kept for his own nourishment. No men are allowed to visit the prisons, but wives or daughters are allowed to visit their friends if they pay a fee to the jailer. The torture of prisoners is regulated according to the nature of their crimes. The common method of torture for thieves, robbers and murderers is to put the bare foot of the criminal in a vice and squeeze it until he cries in agony. If he gives the jailer some money or promises to give some the next time his friends visit him, the pressure on the foot is lessened. If a man goes to jail wearing good clothes, the jailer often exchanges his own poorer suit for the good clothes.

EXECUTION.

This is done in different ways. A prince from the royal family has authority to behead men. Sometimes when a good friend of the king is appointed governor, the king presents him with a knife. This is a sign and carries with it authority to behead men. Every prince-mayor or other governor who has been given this authority keeps two executioners. The uniform of their office is a suit of red clothes. These two men walk before the mayor when he goes through the streets. When a condemned man is to be executed he is brought from the cell, hands chained behind, and with a chain about his neck. He is surrounded by a group of soldiers with fixed bayonets. The guilty man has been in a dungeon for several months perhaps. His clothes are in rags, and, having had no bath since first imprisoned, he is very dirty, his hair and beard are long and shaggy. A few steps before him walks the executioner, with blood-red garments and a knife in his hand. Thus they proceed to the public square, and before the assembled crowd the executioner steps behind the kneeling victim and with a single stroke of the keen knife cuts his throat, and another soul takes its flight, having completed its part in the drama of life.

A common mayor who has not the authority to behead, may kill criminals by fastening them to the mouth of a cannon and sending a ball through the body. Another method is to bury the condemned alive in a cask filled with cement, leaving only the head exposed. The cement soon hardens and the victim dies. Sometimes when their crime is not very bad the punishment is the severing of one hand from the body. If the man thus punished should commit a second crime the remaining hand would be severed. If a Mohammedan becomes drunk with wine and gets loud and abusive, he is arrested, and the executioner punctures the partition skin between the nostrils of the drunken man, and a cord of twine, several feet long, is passed through the opening. Then the executioner starts down the street leading his victim. The man soon gets sober and is very much ashamed. Shopkeepers give the executioner pennies as he passes along the street. Men who quarrel and fight are punished by tying their feet to a post, with the bare soles upward, and then whipping the feet until the flesh is bruised and bleeding and, frequently, the nails torn from the toes. The victims frequently become insensible under this punishment. One good thing in the laws of punishment is that no Christians or Jews are ever beheaded. The Mohammedans consider the Christian and Jew as being unclean, and think it would be a mean thing to behead them.

Princes, lords and counts are never beheaded. The most severe punishment for a prince is to pluck out his eyes. The method of execution for counts and lords is of two kinds. The king will send a bottle of Sharbat to the condemned man which is given him in the form of a sweet drink but it contains a deadly poison. He is compelled to drink this and soon dies. Another form is for the condemned man to be met by a servant from the governor after having taken a bath and the servant cuts blood-vessels in the arm of the condemned until death results from loss of blood.

Thus it will be seen that the contrast in modes of punishment in a Christian nation and a Mohammedan nation is very great. The kind of punishment inflicted on criminals in any country grows out of the prevailing religious belief of that country. A religion that has much cruelty in it will lead a people to torture its criminals. But a nation whose religion is based upon love will deal with its criminals effectively, but as kindly as possible. The writer has visited prisons in both Persia and America and finds that the contrast between the prisons of the two countries is like the contrast of a palace and a cellar. Prisoners in America ought to be very thankful for the humane treatment they receive under this Christian government.