Pincon wrote of the inhumanity and cruelty of Shah Abbas to his subjects, of how he “cut off their heads for the slightest offence, having them stoned, quartered, flayed alive and given alive to the dogs, or to the forty Anthropophagi and man-eaters that he always has by him”.
But Chardin, who not only spent much more time locally but also spoke Persia, changed his mind about Iranian justice: “when he first arrived in Iran, [Chardin] tells his readers, he saw Iranians as barbarians for not going about punishing criminals as methodically as Europeans, wondering about their lack of public prisons, examining boards, orderly procedures, public executions, and executioners”.
Fifteen years spent in the country changed his mind: “He came to realise that the Safavid way of dealing with criminals had to do with the rarity of crime in Iran, where home invasions and killings were all but unknown. In all of his time in the Safavid state, he had only witnessed one execution. Besides the Shah alone had the right to order capital punishment.”
This week, I wanted to challenge the common stereotype of Safavid brutality and inhumanity. I’ve been reading an article by the great Rudi Matthee, which points out how Chardin changed his mind about Safavid justice – seeing it as reflecting the extreme rarity of crime in Safavid Iran.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/jemh/2009/00000013/f0020002/art00003