Note 46 — Notes on Chapter II.

It has long been a barbarous practice in Persia to pluck out the eyes of political offenders. Morier, in his romance of Zohrab the Hostage, represents the brutal tyrant Aga Muhammad Shāh, during the horrible massacre which followed the capture of Astrābād, as coolly counting, with the handle of his riding-switch, the number of pairs of eyes placed before him on a tray; and a reference to the account of this monster’s conduct after the capture of Kirmān, in Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia, will show that the novelist has not exaggerated in this matter.