A Quantity
Of Fruit Is Also Grown - Grapes, Oranges, And Pomegranates.
Shiraz is
famed for the latter.
The heat and dust, to say nothing of smells,
prevented me from often entering the city; but I walked through the
bazaar once or twice, and succeeded in purchasing some old tapestries
and a prayer-carpet. The merchants here are not so reserved and
secretive as those of Teheran and other cities, and are, moreover,
civil enough to produce coffee and a kalyan at the conclusion of a
bargain, as at Stamboul. The best tobacco for kalyan-smoking is grown
round Shiraz. Some, the coarser kind, from Kazeroon and Zulfaicar,
is exported to Turkey and Egypt, but the most delicate Shiraz
never leaves the country. The pipe is on the same principle as the
narghileh, the smoke being drawn through a vessel of water. The tube,
a wooden stalk about two feet long, is changed when it becomes tainted
with use; for the people of the East (unlike some in the West) like
their tobacco clean.
Manufactories are trifling in comparison with what they were in former
days. Where, a century since, there stood five hundred factories owned
by weavers, there are now only ten, for the supply of a coarse white
cotton material called "kerbas," and carpets of a cheap and common
kind. Earthenware and glass is also made in small quantities, the
latter only for wine-bottles and kalyan water-bowls. All the best
glass is imported from Russia. A kind of mosaic work called "khatemi,"
much used in ornamenting boxes and pen-and-ink cases, is turned out in
large quantities at Shiraz.
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