ath by his miserable guilty Deianira of a wife, and lastly the
never-to-be-forgotten sacrifice of Hasan's brother, the heroic Hosain,
on the bloody field of Kerbela (A.D. 680). With the establishment in
Persia, early in the 16th century, of the Safawid (Sufi) dynasty by the
Shi'ites, the cult of the martyrs Hasan and Hosain secured the official
sanction which it has since retained. Thus the performance of these
_teazies_, and the defraying of the equipment of them, are regarded as
religious, and in a theological sense meritorious, acts; and the plays
are frequently provided by the court or by other wealthy persons, by way
of pleasing the people or securing divine favour. The plays are
performed, usually by natives of Isfahan, in courtyards of mosques,
palaces, inns, &c., and in the country in temporary structures erected
for the purpose.

It would seem that, no farther back than the beginning of the 19th
century, the _teazies_ were still only songs or elegies in honour of the
martyrs, occasionally chanted by persons actually representing them.
Just, however, as Greek tragedy was formed by a gradual detachment of
the dialogue from the choric song of which it was originally only a
secondary outgrowth, and by its gradually becoming the substance of the
drama, so the _Miracle Play of Hasan and Hosain_, as we may call it, has
now come to be a continuous succession of dramatic scenes. Of these
fifty-two have, thanks to the labours of Alexander Chodzko and Sir Lewis
Pelly, been actually taken down in writing, and thirty-seven published
in translations; and it is clear that there is no limit to the extension
of the treatment, as is shown by such a _teazie_ as the _Marriage of
Kassem_, dealing with the unfortunate Hosain's unfortunate son.[54] The
performance is usually opened by a prologue delivered by the
_rouzekhan_, a personage of semi-priestly character claiming descent
from the Prophet, who edifies and excites the audience by a pathetic
recitation of legends and vehement admonitions in prose or verse
concerning the subject of the action. But the custom seems to have
arisen of specially prefacing the drama proper by a kind of induction
which illustrates the cause or effect of the sacred story--as for
instance that of Amir Timur (Tamerlane), who appears as lamenting and
avenging the death of Hosain; or the episode of Joseph's betrayal by his
brethren, as prefiguring the cruelty shown to Ali and his sons. At the
climax of the