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(Inclosure 8.)-The Sadr Azim to Mr. Murray. (Translation.) November 15, 1855. I HAVE received your Excellency's letter of yesterday's date, regarding Meerza Hashem Khan, and it also has been perused by His Majesty the Shah. By His Majesty's orders, I beg to state in reply that there is no necessity for writing at any length. The answer is exactly that contained in my letter of the 4th November, which was written from the Royal autograph. Any consequences arising from Meerza Hashem Khan, a servant of this Government, will rest with that person who illegally commits an act at variance with the customs of this country.

With regard to the verbal communication, which I do not recollect in the least, your Excellency has written a good deal. My engagements in official business are confined to those which are contained in official documents. Anything which I may have written, or you may write, will be considered as binding and received in evidence. As the affairs of Meerza Hashem Khan were entirely terminated between me and Mr. Thomson, I do not trouble you further, and these few lines have been penned solely for your information.

C. A. Murray, Esq.

SADR AZIM.

(Inclosure 9.)-Mr. Murray to the Sadr Azim.

November 16, 1855.

Ir is my duty to inform your Highness that the day before yesterday a complaint was made to me by Meerza Hashem Khan, lately taken into the service of this Mission, that his wife was forcibly detained and imprisoned in the house of Sultan Hoossein Meerza by order of the Persian Government.

On inquiry into the particulars of his complaint, I learnt that this seizure and detention of his wife was occasioned by his having taken service under this Mission, and that she was threatened, if he did not leave the British service and protection, that she would be forcibly divorced from him.

As I could not believe, without full evidence, that the Persian Government was capable of conduct so contrary to all the rules of law and justice, I sent Meerza Hashem Khan yesterday, accompanied by two employés of the Mission, to the house of Sultan Hoossein Meerza, to demand that his wife might be restored to him. His Highness positively refused to do so. Upon this, Meerza Hashem Khan produced and showed to him the fetwahs* of two of the principal Mooshtehidst in Tehran, proving to him the illegality of his proceedings. He replied, that he was perfectly aware of

*Religious decrees.

+ High Priests.

the law on the subject, but that he was acting under orders which he could not disobey, and that if any further explanation were required, application must be made to your Highness.

It must be some secret and malignant enemy of your Highness who has persuaded you to order or to sanction this most irregular and unjust proceeding, which is at once an affront to a friendly Government and a flagrant violation of the laws of Islam. Those who have evinced their courage in threatening and terrifying an imprisoned woman, will scarcely have the courage to avow that, by the Persian laws, a wife not charged with any crime can lawfully be withheld from her husband, or that she can be forcibly divorced by command of any third party, without the consent of her husband.

It is not, however, my object at present to comment upon any acts of injustice committed by the Persian Government, so long as they do not affect persons connected with this Mission; but as in the present case the complainant is in the employment and under the protection of the British Government, and as on that very ground his wife is forcibly imprisoned and withheld from him, it is my duty to request that your Highness will give immediate orders for the lady's liberation and restoration to her husband. H.E. The Sadr Azim.

CH. A. MURRAY.

(Inclosure 10.)-The Sadr Azim to Mr. Murray.

(Translation.)

November 17, 1855. I HAVE received your Excellency's letter of yesterday's date. As the subject of which it treats touches on a discussion regarding ladies-moreover those connected with the Royal harem, and clashes with the honour of His Majesty; and as the discussion of such a subject is not only extremely delicate, and not to be thought of in this country, but is also unprecedented, I have always myself avoided doing so, and have never allowed myself even to contemplate the matter, far less to make it a subject of a correspondence with any person being a foreigner, and the Representative of a foreign Government.

It being quite out of my power to discuss this matter in any way, and more especially in an official correspondence, I, therefore, with the greatest respect, beg to state this much in reply to your Excellency, that I am excused from considering your letter as an official communication, and that I am in duty bound to look upon it as if it had never been received. SADR AZIM.

C. A. Murray, Esq.

(Inclosure 11.)-Mr. Murray to the Sadr Azim. November 17, 1855. I HAVE the honour to acknowledge your Highness's despatch dated 17th November; and in reply, to inform your Highness that, although you are pleased to state that, on account of the nature of the subject of which it treats, you cannot consider my despatch of the 16th as official, it is my duty to state, that not only is it official but that the continuance of the friendly relations existing between the Persian Government and this Mission depend upon the answer which your Highness gives to the demand contained in it, and renewed in what I now write.

Your Highness truly says that an official discussion concerning ladies, and especially ladies connected with the Royal "anderoon," is a matter of extreme delicacy, and without precedent. I grant it; but I add, that, however unbecoming or unprecedented it may be, the blame of it rests with those who have provoked it; for it is also unbecoming and unprecedented that the Persian Government should give orders for the forcible detention and imprisonment of the wife of an employé in this Mission.

Your Highness well knows that the protection enjoyed by employés in this and other foreign Missions, extends to their houses and family; and the Persian Government, in seizing and imprisoning the wife of Meerza Hashem Khan, has offered the same affront to Her Majesty's Government as if they had seized and imprisoned the Meerza himself, which last step your Highness has informed me officially that you would take if I sent him on the duty to which he has been appointed. Although I do not intend to enter into any further discussion on this matter, I wish to give your Highness full time to consider the consequences of the decision to which you may come; and I therefore now officially inform you that if, by 12 o'clock on Monday next, the wife of Meerza Hashem Khan is not set free and restored to her husband, the flag of the Mission will be hauled down, and the responsibility of the interruption of friendly relations between the British and the Persian Governments will rest on those who have caused it, by an act of flagrant and unprecedented injustice.

H.E. The Sadr Azim.

CH. A. MURRAY.

No. 52.—Mr. Murray to the Earl of Clarendon.—(Rec. Jan. 1, 1856.) (Extract.) Tehran, November 20, 1855. IN continuation of the matter contained in my despatch of the 17th instant, I have the honour to inform your Lordship that yes. terday Prince Seif-ed-dowleh Meerza called upon me on the part of the Sadr Azim and discussed at length the case of Meerza Hashem Khan. He said that with regard to the liberating of the Meerza's

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wife and restoring her to her husband, there would be no difficulty about it, and it might be effected immediately; but in that case he wished to know what I meant to do in respect to the Meerza himself. I replied that I should send him to Shiraz in obedience to the instructions of Her Majesty's Government. To this he replied that such a proceeding would be very painful to the Shah and to the Persian Government, after all the correspondence that had taken place, and asked me whether there was no course which I could suggest by which a satisfactory arrangement might be effected. To this I replied that, in order to show that it was not my wish to drive matters to extremes, I was ready to restore Meerza Hashem Khan to the Persian service, provided the Persian Government, after having liberated his wife, offered to the Meerza a salary somewhat better than that attached to our Shiraz Agency, and gave me a document assuring its continuance and the safety of the Meerza's person, family, &c. The proposals made by the Prince on the part of the Government were reasonable, and indeed liberal, so I agreed to allow him to negotiate an amicable arrangement of the affair on this basis.

As our conversation had been of some duration, and the hour of noon fixed in my despatch to the Sedr Azim as the time at which my flag would be struck if the Meerza's wife were not liberated, was near at hand, he asked for 2 hours' delay in order that the Shah's pleasure might be taken; to this I acceded. Just as the time had elapsed, and the Meerza was on his way to demand his wife, a messenger came down post haste from the Prince asking for 2 hours' more delay, on the plea that His Majesty had been out riding and had only just returned; to this I again acceded.

Whether the Persian Government considered these concessions of delay, and my listening to their proposals of a compromise, as a proof of weakness or hesitation, I know not; but certain it is that when, a little before sunset, the Meerza went to demand his wife's liberation, it was peremptorily refused, and an answer given that it could not be done without an order from the Sadr Azim. On receiving this intelligence, just as I was about to give an order for striking the flag, Hyder Effendi, the Ottoman Chargé d'Affaires, came to me on the part of Sadr Azim, with whom he had discussed the whole affair; he acknowledged that, in his own opinion, I was entirely in the right, and the conduct of the Persian Government in seizing and imprisoning the Meerza's wife entirely indefensible; but he entreated me to defer striking my flag till the following morning, in order that he might have time to go back to the palace and persuade the Persian Government to send back the Meerza's wife, the same evening, under charge of her brother, to her husband's house. To this I replied that, although the behaviour of the Sadr [1856-57. XLVII.]

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in this matter deserved and would obtain from me no such concession, out of my regard for Hyder Effendi himself, and my respect for the office which he held, I agreed to his request, and he left me to return to the Sadr. About 10 P.M. I received a note from him, saying that the Sadr could do nothing in the matter, as the Shah was on a visit to his mother, and he asked for 24 hours' more delay; I received, also, about the same hour, a private note from M. Bourée urging me in the strongest terms to give a further delay of a few days. To these 2 notes I replied by expressing my regret that it was out of my power to agree to the suggestions contained in them, as the pretexts and subterfuges to which the Persian Government had had recourse during the preceding 3 days, proved to me that they had no intention of acceding to my just and peremptory demand for the liberation of the Meerza's wife.

I regret very much that it has been out of my power in this instance to adopt the views and counsel of my French colleague, but in this case I held the maintenance of the rights and honour of this Mission to be a consideration of higher importance than the inconveniences which might be consequent upon the temporary sus pension of relations with the Persian Government, and accordingly this morning I have struck my flag.

Although I feel fully assured of your Lordship's support and approbation upon the grounds heretofore set forth, yet in full justification of a measure so serious and so contrary to my own wishes and those of Her Majesty's Government, I am compelled to state additional grounds which I would gladly have withheld from the pages of an official correspondence. I refer to the language held by the Sadr Azim, both verbally and in writing, respecting myself and other members of this Mission. His Highness on two several occasions has said to two European gentlemen, both holding official situations at Tehran, that the reason why Mr. Thomson first took Meerza Hashem Khan into the Mission and retained hini under protection, was that he had an intrigue with the Meerza's wife; he has also stated more lately the same thing of myself as my reason for continuing the protection and employment of the Meerza, and he has spread this report throughout the whole of the Shah's palace. Now, my Lord, as this calumny is as gross and groundless in both cases as if it had been directed against the character of the Sadr's own mother, I respectfully ask your Lordship whether such conduct on the part of the Sadr, the unjustifiable slander of a lady so nearly related to the Shah, and the attribution of such motives for my public conduct and that of Mr. Thomson, are not most offensive, reprehensible, and hypocritical actions, when proceeding from the Prime Minister, who penned the inclosure in my despatch of the 17th instant, in which he says that he never would dare to speak,

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