FINANCIAL DISORDER. 373 sale bribery which he saw around him. By degrees he effected much in the way of putting a stop to corruption ; but his next task proved to be too much even for his energy and unlimited power. The sectarian spirit in Persia is kept alive mainly by the annual exhibition on the stage of the sufferings and the martyrdom of the Imam Hussein ; and during the month of Moherrem the whole populations of the cities of Northern Persia are worked up into a state bordering upon frenzy ; notwith- standing that the chief Moslem authorities hold that these exhibitions are contrary to the duty of the followers of Mahomed. The Ameer-i-Nizam endeavoured to take advantage of the weight of religious authority to do away with a custom so productive of fanaticism as is the Persian Tazeeah. The Sheeahs of Irak and Azerbaeejan were, however, too much attached to the yearly-recurring exhibition to submit to its suppression, and the Ameer was forced unwillingly to permit its continuance. Soon after the arrival of the Shah at his capital, a royal commission was appointed to examine into the state of the finances of the kingdom, and to draw up for the king's information a statement of the revenues and of the expenditure of the country. At this time the latter far exceeded the former. It appears that one mode of courting popularity practised by the minister Haji Meerza Aghassi had been, seldom or never directly to refuse compliance with a petition for the grant of a donation or a pension. He had not made direct payments, excepting to his own tribesmen, as a general rule ; but he had been in the habit of issuing government orders on the different provincial authorities.
