We left Khoy towards evening,ÁrminiusVambé on the 8th of June, for fear of being interrupted in our journey, on account of the feast of _Kuram Bairam_ (the month of merry-making after the fast), and stopped at the village of _Hadji Aga_, inhabited altogether by _Seids_, that is, descendants of the prophet. These men are the most pretentious men in all Persia in their pride of descent, but they are especially arrogant in their behaviour towards strangers, and indeed one must have Job's patience to bear their impertinences meekly. No matter how rich they are, they will beg wherever they see a chance of getting something. Indeed they do not ask for any alms, but they impose a tax, due to them as the descendants of the head of Islam. They commit capital crimes, under the plea of sanctity, and the people rarely dare to call them to account. The authorities seem to be less indulgent, for I was told that the governor of Tebriz, to the horror of the whole world, condemned a Seid who had committed robbery to death by fire. The Mollahs fell to protesting, but the governor gave them the following reply: "If he is a true Seid he will not be touched by the flames," and caused the culprit to be cast into the blazing pile.
Tebriz is a town of remote antiquity, and is said to have been built by the wife of Harun el Rashid. But of the ancient greatness and splendour in which Tebriz was said to have once vied with the city of Raghes, very little is now to be seen. Its commerce, however, is quite as flourishing to-day as it was reputed to have been in ancient times. The grand life of the bazaar had surprised me already at Khoy, but compared to that of Tebriz, it was only a picture in miniature. Here the din and noise, the stir and bustle, the pushing and elbowing, the stifling crowds are magnified a hundredfold. At the recommendation of several persons I put up at the Emir Caravansary, which, however, it took me over an hour to find. Not being used to this deafening noise, and to pushing through such dense crowds of people and mules without number, which seemed perilous to both life and limb, I was apprehensive lest I might at any moment ride over somebody with my horse. In recalling how the dervishes were dancing onward ahead of me through this dire confusion, uttering their unearthly screams, brandishing high, and casting up, into the air their sharp axes, seizing them again by their handles upon coming down, I wonder, to this day, how I ever got safely to the Emir Caravansary.