ABSTRACT
Let us give honour where it is due, and start with the king. The sovereign of Persia is not that absolute monarch we in the Occident imagine
him to be. I have even read in certain writings that whilst limits could be imagined to the authority of other Asian sovereigns, including the Emperor of China, the Shah was a kind of terrestrial god and the puckering of his brow made whole provinces quake irremissibly. Those authors have taken the protocols of royal decrees a bit too literally. Without wishing to oppose a paradox to an error, I would tend rather to believe that no dynasty in the world is in such an equivocal position as that of the king of Persia.
