Persian is the language taught in the schools, which the children attend from early morning until about ten o’clock, and again in the late afternoon for a couple of hours. In these schools the master, usually a moullah, sits on a carpet in the centre of the room with the children in a circle round him, sitting cross-legged, with their books on their knees, and reading aloud in a sing-song manner, while rocking their bodies backwards and forwards. This rocking the body to and fro while reading becomes such a habit that in after life very few men can read anything without doing it, and their voices take on the sing-song intonation of the school. For the chastisement of the unruly and stupid, the master has a pliable rod by him. There is no sparing the rod and spoiling the child, and when the master wishes to punish one of them, the small offender is held on his back, with his legs up in the air, and receives so many cuts on the soles of his feet, and while the punishment lasts he howls piteously. Sometimes in passing by a school I have stopped, thinking a child was surely being murdered, until I saw the reason why the boy was howling, and my standing to watch generally had the effect of stopping the child’s noise, for the “Feringhee” is one of the names used to frighten children with. One end of the room in which school is held has no wall, and is open on the side facing the road, so there is nothing to prevent one watching the school children at work. Children are also taught in the school to read the old Arabic, in order that they may read the Koran, but while there are many men who can read Arabic, there are few who understand it, and fewer still, if any, who can speak it as a language. Many can recite passages from the Koran as a parrot would do, and some, who are thereby called Hafiz, can recite it from memory from beginning to end.