Daily Yellowstone journal., 1885-07-07
HOW TO DIE IN PERSIA
tharms A. q Last Notwithstanding nom
the Koran-Hired Monrners.


the Koran-Hircd Mourners-
lSt. James Gazette
The sick man lies in extremis on a
thin mattress upon the floor, covered by
quilted silken coverlet. Twenty or
thirty persons are in the room where he
is dying. The smoke of many hubble
bubbles clouds the air; whispered con-
versation is general. The doctors
have declared their patients condition
hopeless, and, as last resort, certain
charms suggested by a weird looking
deryish have been tried. But the crab
broth, prepared from the tiny crusta-
ceans that inhabit the streamlets round
Shiraz, the patient has been unable to
swallow; and the Geryish points out TO
the relatives of the dying man that his
panacea has only proved infallible
because il was tried too late. A yelled
woman, the wife of the dying man, sits
weeping at the side of her husbands
pillow. She frequently holds to his
face a moistened piece of mud torn
from the wall this wetted mud is sup
posed to have very reyiying influence,
and is used by Persians as We use smell
ing salts.
lea is handed round in small cups;
the crowd in the room becomes greater;
every window is shut, and, as the out.
side temperature is 30 degrees, some
idea of the heat within can lie formed.
The crowd is not here from mere eurios-
ity. A man is sick; then where should
his friends be, they say, if not by his
bedside! The samovars RUSSIAN tea
urnsl steam and bubble; the room is
filled with clouds of tobacco smoke and
the steam from the urns, and now, just
as 200 years ago was done in England,
fowl is killed and placed warm and
bleeding on the patients feet. All is of
no avail, however. The man has
preathed his last
The wife yields her place by the bed
side. Moistened cottonwood is placed
in the mouth of the dead, in the orr
fees Of the nostrils, and in the ears.
A moo.lah begins to read aloud he
prescribed portion of tn Koran, com.
mencing 80 man, | swear by the in
struetiye Koran that thou art one of the
messengers of God sent to show the
right way" etc. This portion Of the
MuSsuIman's sacred book was called by
Mohammed himself the heart of the
Koran And now all present witness
aloud that the dead man was good
pious Mohammedan. The limbs are
composed and a cup of water is placed
at the head OF the corpse. No sooner is
this done than a moollah ascends to the
fiat roof of the house and begins 10 read
in shrill monotone certain verses from
the holy book. This announces TO the
neighbors that the man is vertically dead;
and at the same moment his relations
shrek and wall, "Wo, wo he is
dead; he has passed away" These are
the expressions of real grief. But pres
emily the professional mourners arrive
and rend the air with their shrill
screaming, which is like the "keening"
of the Irish.
The house is soon filed with friends
and neighbors, who add their cries to
the screams of the mourners. The
women OF the family hasten to array
themselves in bitter" Ii. e. somber)
garments-not in actual black, but in
sad colors; neither they nor the men
wash or dress their hair until the fu-
neral and the first days of mourning
are over. The male relatives do not lit
orally rend their garments, but give
them the right appearance by opening
certain seams of their coats and cloaks
with a pcnknife; and instead of casting
dust upon their heads they dab mud on
their hats.
And now come the washers of the
dead" To each parish are attached
family of these people, who get de-
spised livelihood by performing the last
offices for the dead. The corpse having
been washed at an adj oining stream,
the hands are placed across the chest,
and it is wrapped in the shroud of cotton
cloth that the deceased has probably
had by him as sort of memento mori
for years. Camphor real vegetable
camphor) is placed beneath the shroud,
and the body is laid in rough coffin
made OF thin planks and brought back
10 the house. The COL n in Persia is of
a thin and unsubstantial kind, and the
burial always takes place within twenty
four hours Of decease.