THE NEW SHAH.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2054, 15 April 1907, Page 1

THE NEW SHAH.

The little finger of tlie new Shall of Persia is likely to prove thicker than his father’s loins. That is the inference one draws from reading a letter of All’. AVilliam At ax well, the muchtravelled special correspondent, written from Teheran to tho Daily Alail. The late Shall of Persia was an easygoing monarch, who loved to be happy himself and see people happy about him, and who scattered his money recklessly among tho favorites of liis palace and the hotelkeepers of Europe. AYhen lie came to tho throne the Treasury contained nearly one million pounds sterling. He loft it empty and liis country in debt. His son and successor Mahomed Ali Shah is a man of much sterner mould. Alaliomed Ali’s grandfather was a great and popular Vizier, so great and popular indeed that bis sovereign was not easy in his mind till he had met with a violent death. The new Shah seems to have inherited some of the Vizier’s statesmanlike qualities, Prior to his accession he was sent to develop liis talents for ruling in the governorship of a province on the Russian frontier. Ali his brothers who had provinces to administer were driven out of them by their impoverished and exasperated subjects. Alahomed Ali’s stronger arm managed to retain its hold on authority, though the citizens of liis provincial capital of Tabriz refused to let him live within its walls. The new Shah knows the value of money, and when his father died, and the old monarch’s opulent favorites drifted away from the Court, those who took their place were treated in a very different manner. Alahomed Ali’s favorites me said to be as poor as church mice, and they are not admitted to his counsel. The gramophones atid European toys which littered up bis father’s palace wore impatiently tossed aside by this stern man of business, who spends hours daily at his task endeavoring to master the details of a difficult and neglected administration. His father boasted that he never signed tho death warrant of one or )iis subjects. but Alahomed Ali lias a favorite saying that “a few executions are the best policemen.” AVjiep he camp to Teheran in 1905 ns regent- for his father, “lint a mouse dare put its head out of its hole,” and bakers who gave short weight did so at the risk of their ears. The new Shah has never been to Europe, and is said to be uneasy amongst foreigners. As Governor of Tabriz he has grown up under Russian influences, and speaks that language, tint Mr. Maxwell thinks that lie is more likely to he attentive to the growing cry of ‘‘Persia for tlip Persians” than to any blandishments of Russia,