Before I quit the subject of the Persian law and its
administration, let me add a few words upon the subject of penalties and
prisons. Nothing is more shocking to the European reader, in pursuing his way
through the crime-stained and bloody pages of Persian history during the last
and, in a happily less degree, during the present century, than the record of
savage punishments and abominable tortures, testifying alternately to the
callousness of the brute and the ingenuity of the fiend. The Persian character
has ever been fertile in device and indifferent to suffering; and in the field
of judicial executions it has found ample scope for the exercise of both
attainments. Up till quite a recent period, well within the borders of the
present reign, condemned criminals have been crucified, blown from guns, buried
alive, impaled, shod like horses, torn asunder by being bound to the heads of
two trees bent together and then allowed to spring back to their natural
position, converted into human torches, flayed while living.
- Lord Curzon (Extract from “Persia and the Persian
Question”, quoted by Shoghi Effendi in the Introduction to the Dawn-Breakers)
