Only the Courts subordinate to the Ministry of Justice will be competent to deal with cases in which one of the parties is a foreigner. In the event, however, of the proclamation of martial law when a case brought before a special tribunal has been established, such,a, tribunal may take cognizance of the case.
Foreigners can only be tried by non-religious tribunals.
Persons will only be sentenced to imprisonment by a police court who ask for imprisonment in lieu of fine. Such imprison ment shall not exceed a week in duration. No sentence of corporal punishment shall be inflicted on foreigners.
No foreigner may be arrested or imprisoned without a warrant save flagrante delictu, nor may he be kept imprisoned for more than 24 hours without being brought before a magistrate. No entry or search of foreigners' houses or offices may be undertaken without a warrant.
Foreigners arrested and imprisoned shall have the right to communicate with their nearest consul, who shall be permitted to visit them.
Facilities for release on bail shall be granted save in cases of serious crime.
Trials will be held in public save in very exceptional cases.
The accused is free to choose his own counsel, who need not be a Persian.
Prisons "fulfilling the necessary hygienic conditions" are to be constructed. A foreigner sentenced to more than a month's im prisonment may claim transfer to one of these.
In affairs of succession, divorce, and status non-Muslim British subjects in Persia shall have recourse to their own Courts, if they so wish. Muslim British subjects will be subject to Persian religious Courts "till the question is definitely settled." No tax or impost shall be levied on foreigners which is not levied on Persian subjects.
All judgments given by the former tribunals shall stand.
Questions relating to security for costs, orders for the payment of costs and expenses, execution of judgments, etc., shall be regulated by separate conventions.
British subjects are permitted to acquire, occupy, or possess such property in Persia "as is necessary for their dwelling and for the exercise of their commerce and industry." British subjects cannot be arrested or suffer restraint in their individual liberty in order that civil claims of a pecuniary nature against them may be provisionally safe, except where there would seem to be a serious risk that distraint to be made, owing to any act on the part of a debtor, upon that debtor's possessions which are actually in Persia, would not be effective and could not other wise be assured.
Similar safeguards over other foreign subjects will doubtless be embodied in due course by the Persian Government in treaties with other foreign powers.
Generally speaking agriculture, in extent, yield, diversity and method, has changed little in the past half-century—or, indeed— for centuries, in all probability. There is no disposition, on the part of the sons of landlords and gentry, to go on the land and apply their education to the development of their properties. They prefer to remain town-dwellers or absentee landlords, rarely putting back into their properties a proportion of the rents received except it be in the form of repairs to qanats.
The method of cultivation of cereals is governed—geographi cally for the most part—by the division into irrigated and unirri gated lands; the Caspian zone, with a rainfall which may exceed so inches and produces great humidity, being to some extent an exception, though even there the rice-fields need irrigation. The rivers of Persia capable of being worked for irrigation by gravi tation are few; on the northern seaward slopes, the Safid Rud, Harhaz, Gurgan and Atrak; in the S. the Karun, Jarrahi and Qara Agach, which reach the Gulf. The main Iranian plateau is watered by a number of streams, mostly of inconsiderable length, which in some years when swollen by snow or excessive rainfall, run away to waste in marshes or lakes, but are ordinarily dry watercourses for eight months of the year. In such conditions agriculture relies for the most part on irrigation, drawn either by (i.) gravitation from those rivers holding a supply from spring to autumn, or more commonly by (ii.) "qanats," artificial subter ranean canals starting from the foot hills and collecting water for long distances, possibly 12-20 miles till they are brought to the surface, and the stream led above-ground to the lands to be irri gated.