Another grandee of Shiraz was Mirza Naim, the paymaster of the forces of Fars, a military officer of high rank and great age. (He was the general who in the time of the Baabi revolt besieged the walled city of Zinjan, the capital of a province of Persia held by those fanatics; the place was obstinately defended, the women even appearing on the walls, and fighting and dying for the sake of their ridiculous creed. On the taking of the city by assault, a kuttl-i-aum, or general massacre, was ordered, and the atrocities committed were too horrible to mention.) The Governor of Fars (at that time, 1870-5), the Zil-es-Sultan, wishing to wring a large fine, and a considerable sum of money supposed to have been appropriated by the paymaster-general, after numerous indignities placed Mirza Naim in a snow-chair—the man was seventy-five years of age—compelled him to drink water-melon juice, to produce the well-known diuretic effect, and while the sufferer was frozen to the snow-seat, caused a dog to be placed on his lap, thus insulting his aged co-religionist. Although the man had borne these horrible tortures for some hours, he now consented to pay the sum demanded. Of course the result to his aged frame was not long in doubt; he soon succumbed to the effects of the injuries he received. I am particular in describing his treatment from the Zil-es-Sultan, as it shows the improbability of the story told by a radical politician who recently travelled through Persia, and among other marvellous tales inserted the groundless calumny, seen at page 15, volume ii., of Mr. Arthur Arnold’s ‘Through Persia by Caravan,’ in which he says, “A European doctor, to his shame be it said, talking one day with the Zil-i-Sultan [_sic_] upon the interesting topic of torture, suggested an ancient method which, we were told, at once struck the prince as applicable to the snowy regions of Ispahan. To draw the teeth of Jews who refused gifts to the Government was the practice in days when the civilisation of England was no more advanced than that of Persia; but I never heard before of stuffing a man’s trousers with snow and ice as an efficient way of combating his refusal to pay a large demand in the season when the thermometer stands—as it does in Central Persia—for months below zero.” Now, as possibly I may be alluded to under the vague title of “A European doctor,” not many of whom exist in Persia to speak to the Zil-es-Sultan, and the story is glibly told by this author, yet I fancy that it will not be credited, even on the statement _of the retailer of scandals, said to be heard, through interpreters, from Orientals_; when it is considered that it was hardly needful to _apprise_ the Zil-es-Sultan of a means of cruelty, since he was so ingenious as to use the very same old method on a general of over seventy-five, _some years before—I being in Shiraz at the time, as the prince well knew—and the supposed refinement of cruelty no new thing to the prince_.[26] When