...The ‘madakhil’ is a cherished national institution in
Persia, the exaction of which, in a myriad different forms, whose ingenuity is
only equalled by their multiplicity, is the crowning interest and delight of a
Persian’s existence. This remarkable word, for which Mr. Watson says there is
no precise English equivalent, may be variously translated as commission,
perquisite, douceur, consideration, pickings and stealings, profit, according
to the immediate context in which it is employed. Roughly speaking, it
signifies that balance of personal advantage, usually expressed in money form,
which can be squeezed out of any and every transaction. A negotiation, in which
two parties are involved as donor and recipient, as superior and subordinate,
or even as equal contracting agents, cannot take place in Persia without the
party who can be represented as the author or the favour or service claiming
and receiving a definite cash return for what he has done or given. It may of
course be said that human nature is much the same all the world over; that a
similar system exists under a different name in our own or other countries, and
that the philosophic critic will welcome in the Persian a man and a brother. To
some extent this is true. But in no country that I have ever seen or heard of
in the world, is the system so open, so shameless, or so universal as in
Persia. So far from being limited to the sphere of domestic economy or to
commercial transactions, it permeates every walk and inspires most of the
actions of life. By its operation, generosity or gratuitous service may be said
to have been erased in Persia from the category of social virtues, and cupidity
has been elevated into the guiding principle of human conduct.... Hereby is
instituted an arithmetical progression of plunder from the sovereign to the
subject, each unit in the descending scale remunerating himself from the unit next
in rank below him, and the hapless peasant being the ultimate victim. It is not
surprising, under these circumstances, that office is the common avenue to
wealth, and that cases are frequent of men who, having started from nothing,
are found residing in magnificent houses, surrounded by crowds of retainers and
living in princely style. ‘Make what you can while you can’ is the rule that
most men set before themselves in entering public life. Nor does popular spirit
resent the act; the estimation of any one who, enjoying the opportunity, has
failed to line his own pockets, being the reverse of complimentary to his
sense. No one turns a thought to the sufferers from whom, in the last resort,
the material for these successive ‘madakhils’ has been derived, and from the
sweat of whose uncomplaining brow has been wrung the wealth that is dissipated
in luxurious country houses, European curiosities, and enormous retinues.
- Lord
Curzon (Extract from “Persia and the
Persian Question”, quoted by Shoghi Effendi in the Introduction to the
Dawn-Breakers)
