n also write a
little and have a smattering of arithmetic.

The teaching, except in the larger and principal centres, is almost
entirely in the hands of the Mullahs, so that naturally, as in our
clerical schools, religion is taught before all things, verses of the
Koran are learnt by heart, and the various rites and multiple religious
ceremonies are pounded into the children's brains, and accessory
religious sanitary duties of ablutions, etc., which are believed to
purify the body and bring it nearer to Allah, are inculcated. Even in
remoter villages, the boys are taught these things in the Mosques as well
as a little reading, and enough writing for daily uses and how to add and
subtract and multiply figures. Famous bits of national poetry and further
passages from the Koran are committed to memory.

[Illustration: Iman Jumeh. Head Priest of Teheran, and Official Sayer of
Prayers to the Shah.]

In the large cities a higher education can be obtained in the elaborate
Madrassahs adjoining the mosques, and here, too, entirely at the hands of
the Mullahs; but these higher colleges, a kind of university, are only
frequented by the richer and better people, by those who intend to devote
themselves to medicine, to jurisprudence, or to theological studies.
Literature and art and science, all based mostly on the everlasting
Koran, are here taught _a fond_, the students spending many years in deep
and serious study. These are the old-fashioned and more common schools.
But new schools in European or semi-European style also exist and,
considering all things, are really excellent.

In Teheran, a Royal College has been in existence for some years. It has
first-class foreign teachers, besides native instructors educated in
Europe, and supplies the highest instruction to the students. Modern
languages are taught to perfection, the higher mathematics, international
jurisprudence, chemistry, philosophy, military strategy, and I do not
know what else! I understood from some of the professors that the
students were remarkable for their quickness and intelligence as compared
with Europeans, and I myself, on meeting some of the students who had
been and others who were being instructed in the University, was very
much struck by their facility in learning matters so foreign to them, and
by their astounding faculty of retaining what they had learnt. It must be
recollected that the various scientific lessons and lectures were
delivered not