Iran -- Description and travel; Iran -- Politics and government
It will be remembered that in 1891 an agitation was raised regarding the
reported abduction of an Armenian girl, named Katie Greenfield, by a
Kurd in Persian Kurdistan. An attempt which was made to take the girl
back to her family caused the couple to cross the frontier into Turkish
Kurdistan, and great excitement among the Kurds on both sides of the
border was created. The contention grew, and commissioners and consuls,
with troops, Persian and Turkish, took part in it. In the end it was
made perfectly clear that the girl had gone off with Aziz, the Kurd, as
the husband of her own choice, and had embraced the Mohammedan faith by
her own wish. The Kurds in Persian Kurdistan appear to live on friendly
terms with their Armenian village neighbours, and on this occasion a
runaway love-match became the cause of some popular excitement in
England, and much trouble and tumult on the Perso-Turkish frontier.
The Armenian Archbishop in Persia, who resides at Isfahan, is always a
Russian subject from the monastery of Etchmiadzin, near Erivan, the seat
of the Catholicus, the primate of the orthodox Armenian Church, and this
doubtless has its effect in suggesting protection and security. France
also for a longtime past has steadily asserted the right to protect the
Catholic Armenian Church in Persia, and once a year the French Minister
at Tehran, with the Legation secretaries, attends Divine service in the
chapel there in full diplomatic dress and state, to show the fact and
force of the support which the Church enjoys. France similarly takes
Catholic institutions in Turkey under her protection, and appears to be
generally the Catholic champion in the East.
The careful observer in Tehran cannot fail to be struck with the
religious tolerance shown to non-Mohammedan Persian subjects in the
'shadow of the Shah.' Amongst these, other than Christians, may be
mentioned the Guebres (Parsees) and the Jews. Persecuted in the
provinces, they receive liberal treatment in Tehran, and it is to be
hoped that the late Shah's gracious example will in time be followed by
his Majesty's provincial governors.
The Babi sect of Mohammedans, regarded as seceders from Islam, but who
assert their claim to be only the advocates for Mohammedan Church
reform, are at last better understood and more leniently
treated--certainly at Tehran. They have long been persecuted and
punished in the cruellest fashion, even to torture and death, under the
belief that they were a dangerous body which aimed at the subversion of
the State as well as the Church. But better counsels now prevail, to
show that the time has come to cease from persecuting these sectarians,
who, at all events in the present day, show no hostility to the
Government; and the Government has probably discovered the truth of the
Babi saying, that one martyr makes many proselytes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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