Philip weekly review and Bad River news. [volume] (Philip, Stanley County, S.D.) 1912-1918, 1916-03-30
PERSIA'S OLD CAPITAL
TEHERAN A CITY THAT HAS SEEN
MANY vicIssIrUoes.
Now the Center Of Warning Interests
That Threaten Its Very Existence
Mot an Especially Healthy
Place in Summer Months.


The capital Of a small buffer state
between three clashing empires. the
English, Russian and Ottoman empire,
Teheran in recent years. and more es-
pecially since the outbreak of the
great war, has had an importance
thrust upon it OF a most embarrassing
kind, begins war primer of the Ma
tional Geographic society. GeOgraph-
lcally OF greater interest to each Of the
groups Of contending powers than any
other neutral capital. Persian Teheran
is experiencing insuperable difficulties
in keeping its destiny clear of those OF
the warning giants around it.
Teheran. according to the Persian.
is very beautiful, but the praise of
his countrys capital is seldom sup
ported unreservedly by the western
er; for he finds the Persian city OF
Shiraz far more beautiful and Is
fahan the peer of the residence. The
capital lies 70 miles south of the
Caspian sea. on q plateau of coarse
sand and gravel, which is fringcd by
low, distant hills, and, to the north
by some higher mountains. Mount
Damavand is the key to the city's
setting, towering in the northeast To
a magnificent crest Of 19, 400 feet high.
To the southwark stretch level lands,
which lose themselves in waste and
desert
The East and West meet and mingle
as oil and water iii the shah's metropo-
lis. Teheran is, of course. q purely
Oriental city, but, like all eastern cen
ters of importance. it has suffered
such encroachments from the West as
street cars. telegraphs, gas lighting
and severely dyed and tailored
clothes for men. 1t is backward in its
development and uneven in its i'm
provement. Its Boulevard des Ambas-
sadeurs is more or less of a splendid
thcroughfare and it is lined with a Eu.
ropean type Of shops, two good hotels
and number Of fine native palaces. II
has one Of the largest military parade
grounds in the world-55O by $50 yards
roughly paved with strewn cobble
stones.
The modern city is not so very old.
as it care into existence less than
700 years ago, ahcut the time that
ancient RagEa, the crumbling suburb
to the south, began to sink into OBJ
livion. Ragha, known in the time Of
Alexander the Great as Ragae, was
the birthplace Of Harun al-Rashid, and
at one time the golden capital of
Parthia. In the days of its supremacy
it was as vain and rich and snowy as
stored Hamadan, the pride of earliest
Persia, the city of seven walls in seven
colors, with palaces wrought in gold
and silver and frescOed with precious
stones. Modern Teheran is the in
leritOr of the traditions and the pride
Of Ragae and Of Hamadan and of the
ancient honOrs of Pasargadae and Per.
sepolis. With the rise of Teheran.
Media regained the place that it lost
to Persia in the time of Cyrus.
Anarchy has ruled within the capf-
tai in way more or less pronounced
during the last several years, and
the people OF the city have accom-
plished little toward its mcderniza-
tion and development of its impor-
tance as place of commerce and
manufacture. There 10 an important
caravan trade, which passes through
Teheran toward the Russian borders,
and a certain manufacture Of cot
ton, linen. carpets, shoes and iron
products. Its business is enough &c
give support to a population OF about
100000, in which are included about
600 Europeans.
The climate Of Teheran is not a
favorable one and especially are the
summers unhealthy. when all OF the
people who can get away go to the
foothills in the north. Writing In
1896. a Persian gives a pathetic
summary OF q Teheran summer. He
says that the air was too hot and even
smelly, that the water was heavy and
unwholesome and, in short. everything
SO bad that the Angel of Death ran
away from It, But. then, this author
wrote shortly after a fearful cholera
plague had passed over the city. The
nearby contrast of the cool summer
gardens in the foothills. likely, has
conspired to give the Teheran summer
bad standing.