The aim of their criticism is the same as that of their degrading accounts of the Iranians’ morals and manners – to prove their own European superiority and to justify their domination of Iran. In their accounts, the travelers often portray Iranian society as permeated by bribery at all levels, starting with the Shahs. They tell their readers that it is impossible to achieve anything in Iran without paying a bribe and complain about “general bribery.”1 Fedor Bartolomei claims that “everybody in Persia, starting from the Shah and down to the last farrash, takes presents and bribes.” He adds, “when the Shah appoints his sons and high officials to the position of governor in a province, he often appoints the person who has paid him more.”2 “Bribery is spread all over Persia, among everybody, from the small to the great,” states “Misl’-Rustem.”
According to Captain Strel’bitskii: Only a wealthy person is right and strong; for money it is possible to get absolutely everything from the ruler, and vice versa, without a bribe it is impossible to achieve anything, and therefore everyone tries to get rich at any cost . . . Money serves as a measure for evaluating absolutely everything: religion, justice, family, honor, the life of a human being . . . The shah sells the provinces for huge sums of money, and the rulers, after receiving the appointment and knowing that the next day the same province can be resold to someone else who has offered a larger bribe, try to get back the money they have spent with interest as soon as possible . . . All other administrators are in the same situation; the population, which suffers under the oppression of this system, grows used to it, gives as much as it can, and even supports those rulers who in their extortion don’t cross certain boundaries.
The thorough corruption of the administration and the system of justice in Iran is blamed for the miserable condition of Iran: “Persia has neither law nor justice, and the only right which is successfully applied here is the right of the strong. Nobody has a guarantee for his life or belongings.” Though they never mention it, Russians could be considered experts on corruption in the administration and courts: Russia in the nineteenth century, especially prior to the reforms of Alexander II in the 1860s, was notorious for its “Asiatic” bribery.
Along with its administrative system, the Iranian army draws a lot of criticism from the travelers. For the significant number of military officers who were sent to Iran on government missions, it was their area of expertise and often a part of their assignment. They report on the miserable condition of the soldiers, their poor training, the useless and incomplete equipment for the men and for the artillery, their awkward and unskilled maneuvers, and their lack of patriotic spirit. An anonymous member of the Ermolov Mission to Iran defines a drill of Persian artillery which he observed in Tabriz as “a satire on our infantry” and states that “in general, the Persian sarbaz [soldier], or the socalled regular army, are in their infancy.” He also witnessed artillery maneuvers and wrote that “out of more than one hundred shots, not a single one hit the target, though all of them landed quite close to it.”
Captain Kublitskii who has studied the condition of the Persian artillery and reported on it, comes to the following conclusion: “In Persia artillery does not yet exist.” An anonymous “competent Russian military officer” states unequivocally: It can be said without exaggeration that a Persian army, in the regular sense of the word, does not exist. In reality, the so-called “Persian armed forces” fall further and further into decay every year and only exist on paper; what does exist is a crowd of tramps dressed in drab rags who do not have the slightest idea of discipline . . . Drills do not exist.
Villiam Dittel’ characterizes Persian soldiers as follows: The rights of these defenders of the state are unlimited: they trade, steal, rob the people while moving from one province to another – in other words, do everything which can be encouraged by poverty, idleness, laziness, and impunity. Baron Fedor Korf describes with amazement the disorder in a Persian military camp that is “strange to a European’s eye, for whom the notion of an army is connected with the idea of unusual order and monotony.” He concludes his observations: “If an enemy attacked a Persian camp at night, it is hard to imagine what confusion it would cause: most of the soldiers would crush each other being unable to find their way out of this mess of ropes and stakes.”
Nikolai Murav’ev, who has observed a Shah’s military camp, is also shocked by the lack of discipline, observing “half-naked sarbaz” busy trading and buying “among the multicolored tents set up in disorder.” After visiting the arsenal in Tehran, the author reports: “If we look at it through a European artilleryman’s eyes, it is in a state of infancy!” Murav’ev gives a lot of information concerning the Persian army, its numbers and training, and makes an interesting remark concerning the army’ morale: “it has been in very low spirits since all the failures it has endured from the time of ‘Abbas the Great.” He also notes that in better circumstances the Persian army could become a real threat.11 V. Kosogovskii complains about the corruption permeating the army at all levels including the very top: “the Shah himself quietly resells the battalions from one commander to another for two or three thousand [gold pieces]."
In his extensive account, Ivan Blaramberg includes a description of the Persian army, its campaigns, the armories, the irregular cavalry, the militia, the forts, and the foreign officers in the Persian service.13 Misl’- Rustem devoted three separate chapters to the Iranian infantry, artillery, and cavalry. Along with the numbers and the detailed information, he complains about the uneducated officers and the bribery at every level of the army, though he does not deny its potential if only the proper training and minimal supplies were provided. A number of other authors write about the miserable condition of the Iranian army in more or less detail.
The comparison of the Iranian army with the European armies, obviously including the Russian one, makes the authors feel confident about Russian military superiority and often allows them to conclude that further military advances into Iranian territory would not meet much resistance. Criticizing the Iranian military in general does not prevent some authors from doing justice to the potential of individual soldiers. Some Russian military officers think Iranians possess qualities which could make them good soldiers, given the appropriate training. Ivan Blaramberg evaluates them in the following way: A Persian soldier . . . is well built, used to labor, quick, abstemious, patient and an excellent walker. With such qualities, it would be possible to have a good army, if they only knew how to use [the men]. However, the shortage of good military officers is a serious problem in Persia.
Zithers
