THE STRONG POETIC SPIRIT of the Persians finds an opportunity for expression in the month of Moharram, when all Shiah Mohammedans mourn the death of Imam Hussein, with his seventy followers, on the plain of Kerbela. During the first ten days of the month, meetings are held every evening in mosques and private houses, where weeping companies listen to recitations of the life and death of the martyrs, embroidered with an infinite variety of fantastic legend. On Ashura, the tenth day of the month, a play portraying the whole tragedy of Kerbela is produced in the courtyards of the mosques. In all these plays and recitations, poetry has a prominent part. At the evening meetings, a ritz-i-khin' ('reciter of misfortunes') often tells the story in a poetic version of his own; or he will declaim a famous poem-perhaps the lament of Hussein's wife Zeinab over the death of her husband. The passion-play is all in poetry and is constantly changing. There are set speeches in Persian and Arabic for the principal characters, but the minor parts are changed from year to year and from place to place at the will of the producers of the play. In Tabriz, although the people speak a dialect of Turkish called Azerbaijani, the poetry of the riiz-i-khjnis and of the plays is Persian, a language of greater dignity than that used by the people. There is, however, a large body of popular Azerbaijani poetry composed for use at this'time. During the first days of Moharram, the streets are crowded with religious processions: confused masses of men and boys beating their breasts with their hands or their backs with steel chains, and cutting their foreheads with knives, and others dressed to represent characters in the tragedy of Kerbela. Nearly all are shouting or chanting. A procession is arranged from each district of the city, and every year the different districts vie with one another in the composi-