Part I A PERSIAN PILGRIM IN THE MAKING (continued 2)

So true and so deep is this outburst of sorrow that every Englishman who believes the Persian people to be corrupt should weigh well his evidence before he passes a sentence so sweeping and so unjust. The nobility of a nation is dependent, not so much on ends which consist in “immediate material possession” of European means and methods of transport, as “on its capability of being stirred by memories,” on its faculty to animate an alien creed with the breath of its own spirit, or on the courage of its conscience to remain incorruptible in the day of persecution and death. These tests, though they be of the spirit and as such unworthy of the consideration of a trading nation and a commercial age, would, if applied to Persia, raise that distressful country to the rank of the first eminence. The power of steam, though it rules the waves and devours distance, has its limits as a civilising influence, among mankind. It cannot fill the hungry heart, though it may be the means of overloading the belly; much less, if less may be, can it inspire in the soul by its achievements the passion whereof the religious drama of Persia is the embodiment. The incorruptibility of the Persian’s outlook on spiritual truth has been vindicated in the blood of countless martyrs, and out of his susceptibility to be inspired by the heroism of the mighty dead, or, to put the proposition more particularly, out of his unfeigned devotion to the memory of the family of the Tent, has sprung the Shiah Passion-drama, as from the depth of a whole Empire’s sorrow. Were it not so, the growth of the Miracle-play, that passionate outcry of the Aryan spirit in the Persian Muslim, would be a miracle indeed.

The truth is, the Shiah religious drama makes a most touching appeal to the best qualities of the heart and the mind. In its pathos, the episode of the Tent recalls the tragedy of Calvary, and the virtues of the members of the House of Hashem might have been modelled on those of the twelve Apostles of Christ. The sublime figure of Huseyn stands out among them as the redeemer of his people. As the Founder of Christianity was tempted of the devil in the wilderness to forego His lofty mission that He might gain a worldly kingdom, so Huseyn, in the scene on the plain of Kerbela, rejects the assistance offered to him by the King of the Jinns on purpose to atone for the sins of his people by death. On the Cross Christ’s heart forsook him—once, and only once. It was when He cried: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” In like manner the heroic Huseyn, within sight of Kufá, having to baffle the attack of Yazíd and his hosts by turning aside from the direct road leading to his city of refuge, and seeing the exceeding anguish of his beloved sister Zainab, had felt the sting of his own destiny: “Ye crooked conducted spheres,” he had cried, “how long will ye tyrannise over us? How long will ye act thus cruelly to the family of God’s Prophet?” Then, nerving himself to the trial, he prophesied his death on the morrow, and said, with his customary fortitude, that the sacrifice of himself and his companions was not a cause for grief, since it would work for the salvation of his grandfather’s people; and thenceforward his resolution to meet the fate he had chosen for himself never swerved; not even when the very angels of heaven sought to save his life from sheer love of a soul so dauntless and so incorruptible.

The reward of his martyrdom is won in the last scene of all, which represents the resurrection. The Prophet, failing to save his followers from punishment, notwithstanding the united efforts of himself, of ’Alí, and of Hasan, throws away his rod, his cloak, and his turban, in his disappointment. Nor is he in the least pacified until Gabriel makes it clear to him that Huseyn, who “has suffered most,” must lend him the assistance he requires. The compassionate heart of the man is wrung, so that when Huseyn makes his appearance it is to receive from his magnanimous grandsire the key of intercession. The Prophet says to him: “Go thou, and deliver from the flames every one who hath in his lifetime shed a single tear for thee, every one who hath in any way helped thee, every one who hath performed a pilgrimage to thy shrine, or mourned for thee, and every one who hath written tragic verses to thee. Bear each and all with thee to Paradise.” And this being done, all the sinners redeemed by their mediator enter into heaven, crying: “God be praised! by Huseyn’s grace we are made happy, and by his favour we are delivered from destruction.”

One word more. Among the sinners whom Muhammad commanded Huseyn to rescue from hell-fire, as the reader will have read, perhaps with a smile, were those who had written tragic verses in praise of the martyr of the Tent. His smile may, possibly, ring out in a laugh when we inform him that the Seyyid Rúzé Kháns, the Shiah friars, are said to have been the originators of the Passion-drama. The foresight of the authors in thus securing for themselves an entrance into Paradise and for their fellow-writers the yearly prayers of the endless generations of mankind, was it not ingenuously artful?