Page 142 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

ruler, Agha Mohammed Khan. Ali Khan and his followers met
Agha Mohammed Khan on the battlefield, but before the fighting
started, Agha Mohammed sent his brother alone, to propose a
parley. Ali Khan agreed to this with some reluctance, and went
with a few of his men to the enemy camp. He was lulled with
wine, and then seized, and his eyes were put out ‘in the most cruel
and painful manner by hot irons’. For a long time he was kept
in prison, then, during the anarchy which followed the murder
of Agha Mohammed, he was liberated, and when Loch met him,
he was receiving a small pension from the .East India Company.
Loch always enjoyed his visits to Bushirc, where the climate
was better than elsewhere in the Gulf. Even in the summer, he
remarked on the delightful coolness of the early mornings, be­
sides, it was possible to ride inland towards the range of mountains
which made a background to Bushirc. Often he accompanied
Bruce on visits to the mountain villages.
Loch used to be awakened in the quiet of the early morning by
‘the fine sonorous voices’ of the muezzins calling the faithful to
prayer from the minarets of the seven mosques, three of the
mosques belonged to the Sunni sect, and four to the Shia sect.
Though Loch admired the sound of the muezzins’ voices, the
Bushiris were notorious for their harsh, ugly accents, and their i
corrupt pronunciation of Persian. Buckingham’s opinion of the
Bushiris was ‘a disagreeable mixture of the Arab and the Persian,
in which whatever is amiable in either character is totally rejected,
and whatever is vicious in both, is retained’. Today, in some of
the Gulf towns, the call to prayer is relayed on loud speakers,
which saves the muezzin the trouble of having to ascend the
minaret, but defects in the machines are apt to produce strange
gurgling sounds which spoil the effect of the chanting.
After the call to prayer, the flat roofs of the houses, where
people slept in the summer time, were all a-bustlc. Hawkers
appeared in the narrow streets and lanes, crying their wares, selling
cakes, made of honey and almonds, fresh milk, prawns, sweet­
meats, and dried locusts. From every courtyard sounded the
clang of pestles and mortars beaten in time to the song of the
women who were pounding the coffee beans for the day. Soon
strings of laden mules and camels started off through the town
gates, on their long journey through the mountain passes to
Shiraz and beyond, followed by the blue-clad women water-
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