SCANNED BY DUANE TROXEL; NOT SPELLCHECKED OR PROOFREAD THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED ONLINE IN THE HOPE THAT A VOLUNTEER WILL PROOFREAD AND FORMAT IT. IF YOU CAN HELP, PLEASE CONSULT THE STYLE SHEET AT bahai-library.com/editors/style.sheet.html AND THEN WRITE TO JONAH WINTERS. THANK YOU, YOUR HELP IS GREATLY NEEDED! CURZON, GEORGE N. PERSIAN AND THE PERSIAN QUESTION (both volumes) LONDON: LONGMAN & CO, 1892 ess to enlarge. The most casual between visitor to the true East is no stranger to its strange in the East 9 and West tensity. Countries which have no ports or quays, no railways or stations, no high-roads or streets (in our sense of the term), no inns or hotels, no bedsteads or tables or chairs) but where traveller is sufficiently equipped so long as he is provided with saddle and some soap, are severed by a sufficiently wide gap from our own to appeal to the most glutted thirst for novelty. Do weever escape from the fascination of a turban, or the mystery of the shrouded apparitions that pass for women in the dusty alleys? How new to us is a landscape where there are nd hedgerows or timber, no meadows or fields; where in the brilliant atmosphere minute objects can be distinguished for many miles,ËË where the cities are not swathed in smoke, and the level roofs are not broken by shafts or chimneys. How mute and overpowering the silence that prevails over the lone expanse, so different from the innumerable rural sounds that strike upon the ear at home. And how grateful a climate where fogs and vapours never strangle, but where the sun strikes with straight lance from the zenith. In no Oriental country that I have seen is the chasm of exterior divergence between Oriental and European scenery more abrupt than in Persia. It is difficult to bring home to English I have seen a small object, such as a single but or building, for at least twenty miles before reaching it; and every traveller in Persia will confess to the frequent exasperation of hope thus baffled and delayed. |PPage_14 readers, whose ideas of nature ate drawn exclusively from the West , the extremity of the contrast that meets the eye. Mountains Extreme in Europe are for the -most part blue or purple iR in Persia, colour; in Persia they are -flame-red, or umber, or funereal drab. Fields in Europe, when not decked with the green of grass or crops, are crimson with upturned mould. In Persia thev are only distinguishable from the brown desert by the dry beds o~ the irrigation ditebes. A typical English village consists of detached and often picturesque cottages, half bidden amid venerable trees. A typical Persian village is a cluster of filthy mud buts, wbose outline is a crude combination of the perpendicular and the horizontal, huddled within the protection of a decayed mud wall. Outside the Caspian provinces and a few mountain valleys there is not a forest, and barely a wood in Persia that is worthy of the name. One may travel for days without seeing a blade of grass. Rivers do not roll between trim banks, nor do brooks babble over stones. Either you are stopped by a foaming torrent, or you barely moisten your horse's fetlocks in fording a pitiful thread. For my own part-so normal and blunted after a while do these sensations become-I find a more abiding charm in the contrast Intrinsi existing, not between the lives of the East and West, but contF _ radic in the elements and conditions of Oriental life itself. It tion is a contrast equally visible in the inanimate and in the human world. Extensive plains are suddenly terminated, almost without slope or undulation, by gaunt and forbidding peaks, A drear and colourless desolation in winter is succeeded by riotous, though ephemeral, verdure and a thousand tints of flowers in the spring. Even in the green and cultivated spots, the moment we leave the charmed circle of water distribution the stark desert recommences, and the transition is as awful as from life to death. An entrancing warmth by day is expiated in thq autumn and winter months by biting cold at night and in the hours immediately preceding sunrise. Nature seenis to revel in striking the extreme chords upon her miraculous and inexhaustible gamut of sound. And how faithfully do the cities and people respond to the The He. of suggestion that is always eloquent around them. Majestic life ruins that tell of a populous and mighty past rear their heads amid deserted wastes and vagabond tents. ËËTiny and |PPage_15 ill(c)nurtured children grow up into robust men. Conversely, female beauty in early youth is followed by a premature decay and ugliness beyond words. Just as from a distance a town surrounded by its orcbards looks a gem of beauty, but shrinks upon nearer approach into a collection of clay hovels; and just as in the exterior of these houses, consisting of blank and unsightly walls of mud, there is no hint of the flower-beds and tanks, of the taste and comeliness that sometimes prevail within, so does the human exterior tell a contradictory tale of its inmate. Splendide mendux might be taken as the motto of Persian character. The finest domestic virtues co-exist with barbarity and supreme indifference to suffering. Elegance of deportment is compatible with a coarseness amounting to bestiality.The same individual is at different Moments haughty and cringing. A creditable acquaintance with the standards of civilisation does not prevent gross fanaticism and superstition. Accomplished manners and a more than Parisian polish cover a truly superb faculty for lying and almost scientific imposture. The most scandalous corruption is combined with a scrupulous regard for specified precepts of the moral law. Religion is alternately stringent and lax, inspiring at one moment the bigot's rage, at the next the agnostic's indifference. Government is both patriarchal and Machiavellian- patriarclial in its simplicity of structure, Machiavellian in its finished ingenuity of wrong doing. Life is both magnificent and squalid the people at once dispicable and noble the panorama at the same time an enchantment and a fraud. I desire before concluding to say a few words about the literature to which the study of Persia has given birth, more especially Literature the literature of discovery and travel. Few countries so of travel sparsely visited have been responsible for so ample a bibliography. The reason is obvious. To each new-comer the comparative rarity of his experience has been conceded as the excuse for a volume. In the category of these productions are to be found works as painstaking and meritorious as ever passed through the press. Nor is their value in any degree diminished, it is, on the contrary, enhanced by the fact that the list of which I speak includes some of the most worthless rubbish that ever blundered into print. I shall hope shortly to publish in a supplementary volume as complete a bibliography of Persian history and travel as my own studies and existing sources of information have enabled me to |PPage_16 compile; but I append here a table which I have drawn up, as the result of personal reading, of the names of all such travellers, within my knowledge, as have, since the beginning of the tenth century, added to our geographical or historical acquaintance acquaintance with Persia by themselves visiting, and writing about the country, and whose compositions are, with few exceptions, accessible to the public. To the name of each traveller I affix the date, not of the publication of his workË"Ësince that appears to me to be but an illusory guideË"Ëbut OF his own visit to Persia or residence in that conutry. And when I add that the collection of these figures has involved reference in every instance, with barely an exception, to the original work of the author, sometimes far from easy to procure, and that the cases are few in which I have not myself perused the work in question, it will, I think, be conceded that such a catalogue, the first of the kind that has ever been compiled with reference to Persia, is the result of no mean labour. In the following tables I include no writer whose work was not, originally written, or has not subsequently been translated, in a European tongue: ó the King of kings. Premising, therefore, that these are the simpleat and most obvious lines of access, I will commence upon the north with the Scheme of Enzeli-Teheran route, and will next describe the rechapter maining northern approaches; after which the eastern, southern, and western entrances will succeed each other in natural order. The Persian port, or rather landing-place (for, as will be seen, Persia enjoys no such luxury as a port), on the Caspian is at Enzeli, a villacre upon a low spit of land enclosing upon 1. Enzeli- 0 Teheran the sea side a broad but shallow lagoon, known as the route Murdab, or Dead Water, on the inner or southern shore of which, at a slight distance from the sea, is situated the considerable town of Resbt. It is in this sense that travellers commonly sp eak of landing in Persia at Resht. Enzeli is served by the steamers of -the Russian Caucasus and Mercury Company, running from Baku, which place there are Means of several methods of reaching from Europe. (1) Train may reaching be taken to Constantinople, boat (Messageiies, Austrian Enzeli Lloyd, or Russian) from thence to Batum-3 or 4 days -and train vU Tiflis to Baku-32 hours; (2) train may be taken, vid Berlin and Cracow to Odessa, and Russian steamer thence to Batum-3 days - (3) Tiflis may be reached overland from St. Petersburg and Moscow by rail to Vladikavkas, and by carriage over the famous Dariel Road-136 miles-into Georgia; (4) there is still another method of reaching Baku, viz. by rail across Russia to Tsaritsin, on the Volga, thence by river-boat to Astrakhan, and thence by Caucasus and Mercury Company steamers down the west coast of the Caspian, touching at Petrofsk and Derbent-21 . 2 days-to Baku. This is perhaps, in point of time, the most ex |PPage_ 28 peditious route. In any case the traveller cannot rely upon reaching Baku under eight or nine days from London. From May to November the Caucasus and Mercury steamers run weekly~ and sometimes bi- weekly, to Enzeli, leaving Baku as Caspian a rule on Sunday night; during the remainder of the steamers year somewhat irregularly. After touching at the Russian (once Persian) port of Leii~_oran, and the frontier village of Astara on Monday afternoon, they are timed to arrive at Enzeli -a total distance of 197 nautical miles, in from 30 to 36 hours from the start, i.e. at some time on Tuesday morning. Here, however, the peculiar and doleful idiosyncrasies of Persian travel are not unlikely to begin, for there is often such a Landing at surf on the bar I that it is quite impossible to land pasEnzeli sengers in boats; and in the winter months it not infrequently happens that the unhappy voyager, after being tossed about for several hours in sight of his destination, is taken all the way back again to Baku, whence, after a mournful week of dabbling in naphtha and becoming saturated with petroleum, he returns in order to repeat the experiment. Should the elements, however, prove propitious at Enzeli, lie is transferred to a small steam-launch, in which lie is conducted to Thethe projecting spit of land, at the western extremity of Murdabwhich stands the custorn-liouse of Enzeli, and where also is a somewhat decayed but picturesque five-storeyed pagoda or summer-liouse belonging to the Shall.The decorative features of this structure, which is painted blue, red, and green, increase in smartness as they approach the upper storeys, the topmost 0 f which is reserved for the use of His Majesty; but they are in a state of great dilapidation, and are moreover often rendered i I Tivisible by a mat covering, intended as a protection against the appalling damp. From here the launch steams across the Murdab, t0 ~ yage of about ten miles, in all hour and three-quarters. This shallow and wind-swept lagoon is some thirty miles long from east to west, by twelve in maximum breadth from north to south, and is peopled with every variety of wild fowl I This bar is such an obstruction that ships drawing over five feet of water cannot enter, but must lie outside. The Persian Government has often been pressed, but has never yet taken any steps, either to remove or reduce it. For an account of the Shah's small stearn yacht, the ËË Nasr-ed-Din,ËËwhicb is generally on the 31urdab, videa later chapter on the Navy. ËËËËTAYS A ND MEANS 29 |PPage_ cormorants, geese, swans, duck, coots, divers, guillemots, gulls)pelicans, crane, and snipe. They dot the surface and swarm in the islets and reed-beds on its inner fringe, ËËSupplying a foretaste to the sportsman of the richness of the entire belt of country between the sea and the mountains, which abounds in game. At the southern extremity of the lagoon the launch is exchanged for a native boat, which is towed up a creek for five miles to the fishing village of Pir-i-Bazaar. Pir-i-Bazaar (i.e. Saint of the Bazaar; more probably PilehBazaar, i.e. the Cocoon Mart, so called from the silk industry) Pir-i- consists of a caravanserai, a few houses and sheds,ËË and Bazaar a fishing establishment, a weir being thrown across the stream at this point, resulting in a multitudinous capture of a species of carp. Rickety carriages are here available which transport the new-comer along a vile road, roughly paved, for a distance of six miles through the jungle to Resht. The R6sht river, or Shah Rudbar, flows down to the sea; on the left hand, and snakes and tortoises . crawl in the slimy watercourses and swamps on the right. Of Resht I shall have something to say in a later chapter upon the northern provinces of Persia, of one of which, viz. Gilan, it is the ReBht capital city. In this context it is regarded solely as the first town in which the traveller sets foot on Persian soil, and as the starting-point of his journey into the interior. From the aspect of the place and of the surrounding country he will probably derive an impression of Persian scenery and life which requires very early to be abandoned, and which is as unlike the general characteristics with which he will afterwards become so sorrowfully familiar as Dover is unlike Aden. At Resht he sees red-tiled cottages and mosques, lanes, and hedgerows, and gardens, which speak to him of other lands, whilst in the wealth of wood and water that is spread around he observes a favourable indication of the fertility of Persian soil. Let him take his soul's fill of both sights; for the modest yet appreciable architectural features of Resht he will see nowhere repeated beyond the Caspian littoral, and the forests and rivers will presently be succeeded by stony deserts and treeless peaks. At Resht the traveller will form his first experience of that Persian wayfaring, of whose pleasures and pains I shall have so much to say as I proceed. Here he must decide between the only |PPage_ so two practicable methods of travel in that country, viz. riding chapar, i.e. by Government post- or riding with his own animals Choice of and appointments by caravan. The formerËËmcaiis rapid, means of if exhausting and sometimes painful progress; the latter Progression. Cha- is attended with less physical discomfort, but is apt to par-riding be unutterably tedious, and, as the same animals must be used day after day, unconscionably slow. Ill the one case the traveller is an item or piece of animate baggage, who is transferred from his starting-point to his destination with as much swiftness as a succession of mediocre -and sometimes aboiniliable steeds can manage to convey him, or as his own inclinations. or strength will permit. He transports his wherewithal oil hors ËË eback with him, he sleeps in chapar-khanehs, or post-houses, which occur at regular intervals along the route, lie carries his food in portable shape or buys it on the way, he, pays a fixed tariff for horses and accommodation, he diverges not one inch from the main track, he seldom looks behind him, and he has but one appetite -viz. to get on. The other plan involves much forethought and preparation-the purchase of a camp and equipments, the hiring of a large number Caravan of riding and baggage animals and of servants to look ning after both, and all the responsibilities consequent upon the superintendence of a numerous following. On the other hand, it leaves the traveller absolute discretion as to his movements, and, while it never allows him to hurry (for baggage animals cannot be trusted to do more than twenty-five miles on an average in the day), it gives him unstinted liberty to dawdle. According to his objects and tastes, therefore, the stranger will have very little difficulty in choosing between the two. If he is anxious to go ahead, does not mind roughing it a little, and is fairly active and strong, he will travel chapar. If lie has ladies or a family and household with him, if he is not inured to much riding, still more if he requires to move slowly and investigate or explore, and most of all if he wishes to diverge from the, beaten track (for there are less than a dozen post,-roads in Persia, the number being restricted to the chief lines of communication), lie will travel caravan. In either case he will probably do wisely to adopt the speedier method as far as Teheran, where he can then make up his plans as to the future; whilst, if lie can persuade some friend at the capital to send down a gholam (courier) or a Persian servant Ìó, from three to four days. Such is the main and the easiest avenue ofËËapproach to the Persian capital from the Caspian. Under peculiarly favourable Length of COnditions~ and with a perfect correspondence of trains journey and steamers, the journey from London to Teheran can be accomplished in a fortnight. In the majority of cases it occupies a little less than three weeks. I pass now to the overland routes which enter Persia from the north-west, and have for their immediate objective the commercial capital Tabriz, Teheran being reached therefrom, via Kazvin, by a postal road whose length from Tabriz is about 360 miles. Of these routes there are two, of which the one is taken by caravans laden with other than Russian merchandise, and, in order II. Trebi- to escape the prohibitory tariffs of Batum and the zond-, starts Tabri freight charges of the Transcaucasian Railway, route from the Turkish port of Trebizond, in the south-east comer of the Black Sea, following from there a very steep line of country, 500 miles in length, to Tabriz. This route, as I shall subsequently show in a chapter upon the commerce of Persia, has been somewhat extensively adopted by English trade during the last half-century, and particularly since the final abolition by Russia of the free transit across the Cau~6asus in 1883, and is unquestionably the shortest way by which merchandise can reach Tabriz. It is not likely, however, to be followed by the traveller, unless he is anxious to visit the Turkish fortre ss of Erzeruni en route, or- to pursue a local examination of the Kurdish or the Armenian Question.ËË .It is described by Lieut.-Col. Stuart (1835), Tom-nal of a Be8idewe in N. Persia, pp. 76- 138; Ch. Texier (18,19), Desar~ption de IËËArmMie, la Per8e, *c., vols.i.,H.; M. Wagner (1843), Travels in Per8ia,vols.ii.,iii, part Iii.; Arm. Vamb6ry |PPage_ 40 The second is the line taken by the Russian import and export traffic, and also by a large number of travellers, which approaches III, Tiflis- Tabriz from the direction of Tiflis, crossing the frontier Tabriz between Russia and Persia at Julfa, on the Ara's (Araxes). route In former times Tiflis was the starting-point of this route for all travellers by road; I but since the Caucasian isthmus has been crossed by a railroad the station of Akstafa, about 50 miles east of Tiflis, is the usual point of departure where the train is left) 2 and where vehicles or horses are engaged for the journey.3 (1862), Life and Adventures, caps. iv., v., vii.; and byJ.Bassett (1871), Persia,t7w Land of the -1mams, cap. ii. The list of caravan stations between Trebizond and Tabriz, and the duration of the journey in hours between each (1 be Turkish hour or measurement by time being the precise counterpart of the Persian far8akh, or measurement by distance-i.e. the marching pace of a baggage animal in the hour) is as follows:-Trebizond-Djevizlik (6), Kbamsikeui (5), Ardassa (8), Gamushkbaneh (5), Murad Khan (5), Kadrak (5), Baiburt (6), Kop Dagh Khan (6), Ash Kaleh (9), llidja (8), Erzerum (3), Hassan Kaleh (6), Amrakum (5), Deli Baba (6), Tayar (5), Mullah Suleiman (7), Kara Kilissa (7), Tashlitchai (5), Diadin (6), Kizildizeh (5), Ovadjik [Persian frontier] (5), Karaaineh (7), Zorova. (6), Pereh (6), Khoi (3), Seyid Haji (5), Tessich (6), Diza Khalil (7), Mayana (6), Tabriz (3). Total, 172 hours, or (at the normal calculation of three miles an hour) 516 miles. Colonel Stuart, in 1835, calculated the distance as 490 miles. I The journey from Tiflis to Tabriz has been described by Sir J. Chardin (1671), Travels, pp. 238-252; J. P. Morier (1814), Second Journey, pp. 301-320; Lieut.-Col. Stuart (1833), Journal of a Residence in N. Persia, pp. 145-169, E. B. Eastwick (1860), Journal of a Diplomate, vol. i. pp. 146-178; A. H. Mounsey (1865), Journey through the Caucasus, pp. 50-90; A. H. Schindler (1881), Zeit. d. Gesell. fWr Erd. z. Berlin, vol. xviii.; Mine. Dieulafoy (1881), La Term, pp. 12-43; 1-1. Binder (1884), AuXurdi8tan, pp. 17-51. The last named gives an accurate account of the journey as at present accomplished, by rail to Akstafa, vehicle to Julfa, and chapar to Tabriz. 2 Duration of journey from Tiflis to Akstafa 3J hours by quick train, 5 hours by ordinary train; first-class fare, 5 roubles. 3 A podorojva, or postal order, for the purpose must be procured at Tigis, and entitles the bolder to the hire of horses and use of the post-houses along the road. A carriage (either a phaeton or a springless wooden troika) can be hired for the entire distance from Akstafa to Julfa (but not beyond) for 30 to 40 roubles. The hire of rost-horses is at the rate of 3 kopecks per verst Q mile) per horse, _plus a regulation gratuity of 20 kopecks to the driver at each stage. The stages between Akstafa and Tabriz, and the distances in versts are as follows: AkstafaUzuntali (221) Caravanserai (171), Tarsa Chai (181), Dilijan (141), Semenofska , 4 1 2 2 2 0 81), Helenofska (21ËË2), Achti (16J), Fontanka (12), Eilyar (191), Erivan (15), Agha Hamdali(13), Kamarlu (15), Davalu (181), Sadarak (183), Bascbnurasobin 4 (221), Tartshah (10), Kivrak (19), Bejukdusi (121), NakhChivan (21), Alinja. t 4 Chai (25), Julfa (13). Total, 363a versts, or 2421 miles. Of the above stations ó Imliewar, Rajmi Sabun, Aamij, Giseir Khubaz, Kubaisa, and Hit. which were infinitesimal in 1887, rose to 9 3 5,8 2 2 1., a total which suggests to England the urgent necessity of developing, if possible, her own sources of supply in Beluchistan, India, and Burmah. In Russian hands the port of Batum, hitherto not a particularly good one, except for the great depth of water close up to the shore, is being rapidly improved. A mole had been built on the inner side of the north breakwater during the past year, and is to -be fortified by a turret at the end; piles, were being sunk all round the shore-line, which will be fitted -with a stone quay, and it is ultimately intended to carry forward an additional breakwater from the lighthouse on the south till it overlaps the pier oil the north. The entire cost of these harbour improvements is estimated at about half a million sterling, which will be borne by the Imperial Government. Lately (October, 189 1) it has beeTj stated in the press that the trading port is to be transferred to Poti, where great docks will be constructed, while Batum will remain a military and naval establishment, and an arsenal. But I doubt this. Strategical requirements are, indeed,. far from being neglected FROM LONDON TO ASHKABAD 63; at Batum. They are being advanced with a strenuousness and a. purpose that sufficiently indicate the value set by Russia upon this maritime key to her Caucasian -base. Five large forts-some of Russian them not yet completed-command the shore line, and |PPage_ military are already mounted with over twenty guns of heavy dispositions calibre, The principal battery, in the centre of the town, immediately overlooking the harbour, contains twelve guns of, it is said, f~om eighteen to twenty-two tons each. All strangers, and even Russian civilians, are strictly excluded from its precincts. Practice was proceeding, on the day that I left, at canvas targets. moored out at sea. Higher up on the side or summits of the first range of hills behind the harbour, four other batteries are being, or have been constructed, armed, for the most part, with mortars. The permanent garrison of Batum is three battalions, kept at theirmobilized strength of 1,000 men each. At the time of my visit four other infantry battalions were in the immediate neighbourhood, engaged in constructing a military road into the interior up a valley where it will be masked from marine attack by the intervening hills. These details will show that Russia is keenly alive to the importance of her new acquisition; and that, should a naval armament ever steam up from the Bosphorus with hostile intent, she is not likely to be caught napping at Batum. An interesting commentary is thus afforded upon the complacent puerilities about Batum that were the commonplaces of a certain class of English politicians at the time of the Berlin Congress in 1878. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the line of railroad from Batum to Tiflis. Leaving Batum on the south, it describes a Railway semicircle round the town on the outside, and follows the from Batum to coast on the north for a distance of thirty miles in the Tiflis direction of Poti before it plunges inland into the valley of the Rion, that ancient waterway of the Phasis, up which sped the, adventurous keel of the I Argo.ËË The vegetation is almost tropical in its luxuriance; maize is planted everywhere in the low lands; and the hills are wrapped from foot to crown in a sumptuous forest mantle. At every station, where are sidings, long lines of tankcars stored with oil crawl by like an army of gigantic armourplated caterpillars, and disappear down the stretch of rails just vacated. Each portentous insect is laden with a wealth to which that of the Golden Fleece was nothing, and which attracts to the Phasis many a modern ËËArgoËË that would have struck Jason with |PPage_ 64 even greater consternation than the magic of the Colchian princess. As the line ascends, clinging closely to the bed of the stream almost to its source in the watershed that separates the Caspian and Black Sea drainage, the scenery becomes more imposing. The mountains climb to an airier height, and the train creeps tortuously through solemi gorges and magnificent glens. The station platforms are crowded with wild Georgian urchins-true sons of the mountains-anxious to exchange for a few kopecks long strings of chestnuts or bunches of miniature grapes. Stately bearded figures, close pinched at the wais , t by the tightly fitting tcherkess or Circassian pelisse, and wearing a curled lambskin bonnet, tall leather boots, and a small armoury of damascened weapons, attend the arrival and departure of the trains with military regularity, and survey the scene with stalwart composure. The railroad from Batum to Tiflis, a distance of about 220 miles, or at least from Poti to Tiflis, has now been open for many Suram years; bu , t the , Russians have for some time been engaged Tunnel upon extensive alterations upon a section of the line works between the stations of Rion and Michaelovo, where the existing rails climb the steep and laborious gradients of the Suram mountain at a height of 3,000 feet above the sea. The alterations involve not only the piercing of a tunnel three miles long through the mountain, but the entire realignment, at a more practicable level, of the railroad for a distance of several miles, an undertaking which necessitates the construction of new bridges and viaducts, as well as an immense amount of cutting, stonework ËË and embankment. A large number of workmen were engaged upon this task when I passed a year before. In the interim 0; great advance had been made. The spring of 1890 was named as the period when the works would be finished, but it was not till October that the tunnel was opened, after the Russian fashion, with a religious service; nor did that mean the completion of the whole undertaking. The Russian Government is putting itself to an enormous outlay in this quarter, a fact which illustrates the importance attached by it not only to see-Lire, but to easy and rapid rail communication in the Vaucasus.ËË The -works struck me as being conducted on a large and worthy scale, and as being marked by great strength and solidity. The Suram Tunnel is remarkable I It has since been announced (November 1890) that a military railway has been authorised, connecting the fortress of Kars with the main line. FROM LONDON TO ASHKABAD 65 as surpassing all European tunnekin the dimensions of its profile. The St. Gothard Tunnel has a section of only sixty square metres, but that of the Suram Tunnel is ninety metres. Perhaps it is the |PPage_ expense thus incurred that accounts for the heavy charge for passenger traffic from Batum to Baku. A first-class ticket costs 471 roubles, for a distance of 560 miles-that is, at the rate of 2 over 2d. a mile. The locomotives between Batum and Baku are entirely propelled by residual naphtha, or m3tatki, ËËas it is called, driven in the form of a fine spray into the furnace. Over the Suram. mountain a double Fairlic engine pulls in front, while a second pushes and puffs behind. I found that the time consumed in getting to Baku wag three hours longer than formerly. Upon inquiring the reason, I was told that the railway used to belong to 6 company, but has since been purchased by the State. To those who know the ways of the Russian Government this was quite enough. Tiflisis too well known to travellers to deserve mention. Those only who are unacquainted with the East are likely to go Tiflis into ecstasies over its modest, though perhaps singular attractions, among which Orientalism plays every year a less and less distinguished part. The town was in some excitement over an agricultural and industrial exhibition, the first ever held in the Caucasus, which had just been opened in a series of wooden pavilions on an open space outside, the town. Here were collected specimens of the agriculture, horticulture, viticulture, pisciculture, and arboriculture, as well as of the textile fabrics and manufacturing industries of the Caucasus, together with objects from Central Asia ËËand Transeaspia. , The local manufactures, whether in metals or textiles, were varied and interesting, but the general level of the exhibition did not rise above that of an agricultural show in an English county town; and the grounds appeared to be visited quite as much for the sake of the bands and refreshment booths as for more business-like objects. The H6tel de Londres at Tiflis is perhaps the most wonderful rendezvous of varied personalities that is to be found in the East. HRel de Situated on the dividing line between Europe and Asia, Londres and on the high road to the remote Orient, almost every pilgrini to or from those fascinating regions halts for a while, within its hospitable walls. Here the outgoing traveller takes his last taste of civilisation before he plunges into the, unknown. Here, too, the returning wanderer enjoys, very likely for the first |PPage_ 66 time for months, the luxury of sheets, and forgets his hardships over the congratulatory glass of champagne. Here, for instance, at the time of my visit, were collected a young French vicomte, fresh from the slaughter of ovis 1)o1i in the Tian Shan Mountains upon the Mongolian frontier; a high official of the AngloEuropean Telegraph Department in Persia; an Irish engineer employed on the Transcaspian Railway ; the Polish contractor who built the famous wooden bridge over the Oxus; two English sportsmen fresh from a hunting expedition amid the glaciers of the Caucasus; as well as Russians, Armenians, and the polyglot crowd that is always to be found upon the fringe of civilisation. Dragomans, who have accomp-aiied eminent travellers and have left their names in well-1-mown books, loiter about the doorway and present their travel-worn letters orrecommendation. Clearly, as I write at home, can I recollect the emotions of anticipation, half hesitating and half confident, with which I have more than once started from the threshold of the H6tel de Londres ; no less than the satisfaction with which, my purpose accomplished, I have at a later date re-entered its doors. After three daysËË stay I was not sorry to leave Tiflis, the more so as some enterprising Tiflite took advantage of ËËmy parting Departure moments at the station to relieve me of a porte-monnaie from Tiflis containing 101. in roubles. Considering, however, that the hour when the train starts is about midnight, and that the voyager seldom gets off without a wait of nearly two hours in the midst of a packed and constitutionally predatory crowd, I regarded myself as having purchased at a reasonable price the privilege of departure, and turned my back without annoyance upon the amenities of the West. Baku, with its chimneys and cisterns and refineries, with its acres of rails outside the station covered with tank-cars, its grimy Baku naphtlia-besprinkled streets, its sky-high telegraph poles and rattling tramears, its shops for every article under the sun, its Persian ruins and its modern one-storeyed houses, its shabby conglomeration, of peoples, its inky barbour, its canopy of smoke, and its all-pervading synells-Baku, larger, more pungent, and less inviting than ever, was reached on the evening of the day after I had left Tiflis. The population is now estimated at no less than 90,000, a growth which is almost wholly that of the last fifteen years, and is the exclusive creation of the petroleum FROM LONDON TO ASHKABAD 67 industry. When I inquired the basis -of this calculation, the reply was given that it was only an approximate census; and that, when asking for accurate or official statistics, I was surely forgetting in what country I was travelling. I remember once being told in |PPage_ Russia that the only really scientific -table of statistics which the Government had issued for some years was one relating to the consumption of vodka and its effect upon the national mortality. The population was divided into three classes : the moderate drinkers, the excessive drinkers, and the total abstainers; and it was triumphantly demonstrated by the returns that the first named were rewarded with the longest span of life; a result which was as warmly welcomed by the Excise Department as it was acceptable to the consuming public. The story, so non 6 vero, 6 ben trovato. From Baku to Uzun Ada I crossed the Caspian in the same English-built boat, the ËËBariatinski,ËË in which I had made the Across the passage last year. Though now an old vessel, she is still Caspian one of the best of the Caucasus and Mercury Company's fleet. The total number of their steamers plying between the different ports of the Caspian is fifteen, and they are in receipt of a large annual subsidy from the State for the conveyance of mails a . nd troops, and also for the use of their boats for transport in case of, war. One of these steamers sails from Baku to Uzun Ada twice a week-on Wednesdays and Fridays, leaving at 5 P.M. We had a beautiful passage, the Caspian having exhausted its h-umours after a storm of ten daysËË duration; and, after a long steam up the serpentine channel framed in yellow sand hills, reached Uzun Ada at 2.30 the next afternoon. General Annenkoff was residing at Uzun Ada at the time, and extended to me his customary, hospitality, talking with enthuGeneral siasm of the present and future of his railway, and Annenkoff expounding his well-known ideas of a Russo-Indian railway and an Anglo-Franco-Russian alliance. I Subsequently, at an im . rovised entertainment, he drank courteously to the health p of the English visitor, who, if he did not altogether share these roseate views, had, at any rate, on a previous occasion shown his willingness to do justice to the Transcaspian Railway, and honour to the policy of its promoters. Uzun Ada appeared to me to have somewhat extended its scanty and unstable dimensions during the past year; and the piers and surrounding sand were literally The population in October 1889 was 1,650 persons. |PPage_ 68 PERSU packed with bales of cotton waiting for shipment. The General hoped to be able to undertake the extension from Samarkand to Tashkent, which, he said, had been finally sanctioned, in the forthcoming summer; I and at no distant date to effect a junction with the projected Omsk- Tomsk line through Siberia to Vladivostock. Nor in the dim future had he renounced his pet project of a Aterv-Penideh-Herat-Kandahar diversion, which should bind the East and West in friendly fusion. At Uzun Ada the number of native passengers waiting to take tickets at the single small window of the ticket office-Uzbegs Native from Bokhara, Sarts from Samarkand and Tashkent, passengers Chinese Mohammedans from Ku1ja, Turkomans, and even Afghans, returning from pilgrimages to Mecca or other sacred slirines-was so great that it was not till two hours after the quoted time that the train steamed out of the station. It appeared to be difficult to persuade these inveterate Orientals either to regard the price of a ticket as a fixed quantity or to comprehend the French system of the queue. They fought and jostled each other at the tiny opening; and when the ticket distributor named the price, in true Asiatic fashion they offered about. half the sum in the expectation of a leisurely haggle and a possible bargain. . A cloudless sun on the following morning showed me again the starino, waste of the Kara Kum and the crumpled mountain zn The Desert gorges of the Kuren Dagh. Great improvement was noticeable at most of the railway stations-more trees, more water, greater general comfort. We passed Geok Tepe at 11.30 A.M., and I had time to pay a flying visit to the ruins of the famous fortress whichËËI have described at length in my previous work. The solidly-built walls of rammed clay appear to dwindle very little, and, unless artificially levelled, should be visible for at least a, century. It has since been announced (November 1890) that a new use is to be made of Geok Tepe. A penal settlement is to be established here, and a large prison erected for convicts from the Caucasus sentenced to hard laboar, whose constitution is unequal to the rigour of Siberia. Russian convicts at work amid a native population by whom, only ten years ago, Russian prisoners in battle were being put to death, will -be a dramatic accessory thoroughly in keeping with the, surroundings. Two hour,-, behind I Nevertheless, it the tinie of going to press (winter 1891), it bas not been begun. FROM LONDON TO ASHKABAD . 69 our time (having made no effort to pick up arrears), and nineteen hours after leaving Uzun Ada, we steamed into the station of |PPage_ Ashkabad (literally ËËabode of loveËË), the capital of Transcaspia, situated 300 miles from the Caspian. Here I was to leave the train, and here was to commence the long ride of 2,000 miles which lay in front of me before my programme of Persian travel was exhausted. I watched the noisy departure of the locomotive with the feelings of one who is saying good-bye to an old and faithful friend. I |PPage_ 70 ó Annenkoff's passion for economy and a plausible balance-sheet, though excellent in their way, have somewhat retarded the proper development of the railway. A triple Wire runs parallel to the line from the Caspian to Samarkand, whence it is continued to Tashkent;- whilst branch |PPage_ 76 wires conduct from Kizil Arvat to Bujnurd, and thence to 0hikishliar and Astrabad, from Karibent to Sarakhs, from Merv to Takhta The Bazaar (Penjdeh), from Charjui to Khiva, from Bokhara telegraph station to Bokhara town, and, I was informed, ËËfrom Charjui to the advanced post of Kerki on the Oxus. Elsewhere it has been reported that the service in the latter case is performed by pigeon-post. The question of connecting the Russian wires from their advanced point at Sarakhs or Takhta Bazaar with those of India vid Afghanistan, touching Herat and Kandahar on the way, and thereby of providing an alternative overland telegraphic route from Europe to India, is one that has suggested itself to certain English and Indian authorities. But, apart from the advisability of the project, which is open to question, the circumstances are not at present such as would be favourable to its execution. On the occasion of my first visit to Transcaspia in 1888, the duration of the journey from Uzun Ada to Samarkand-a disthnce SMd and of 900 miles-was seventy-two hours. This has now been service reduced for the passenger and postal trains, which run two or three. times a week, according to the season, to a little over sixty hours, of which ton are consumed in ttoppages. Slo Wer trains, mixed passenger and merchandise, circulate every day, and occupy about fifteen hours longer in the transit. Refreshment cars of moderate but serviceable quality are now attached to the trains, and have replaced the stationary buff6ts, except at the larger stations. The figures of recei pts and cost of working of the Transcaspian Railway, which are sometimes officially published, sometimes communicated by General Annenkoff to newspaper sheet correspondents, and sometimes gleaned from private sources, are unfortunately as conflicting as the different estimates which have at various times been derived from the same, variety of sources of the original cost of construction. The working expenses of 1887 showed an excess of 40,OOOZ. above the receipts ; those of 1888 an excess of 30,0001. A deficit in the balance-sheet of the same amount was expected in 1889; but the ËËNovoe VremyaËË has published the total of working expenses in that year as 241,7311., and declared that the receipts were 7,OOOZ. in excess. General Annenkoff, however, gave me much more ambitious figures at Uzun Ada. The budget of M. Vishnegradski, the singularly able TR&NSCASPIA 77 Russian Minister of Finance, who himself visited Transcaspia in the autumn of 1890, returned the working cost of the Transcaspian Railway and Oxus Flotilla combined.in 1889 as 287,2351., figures which are not irreconcilable with those above quoted from the |PPage_ I Novoe Vremya.ËË On the other hand, the same Minister's estimate for 1890 contained an addition of 120,4471. to the figures of 1889, or a total of 407,6821. for the combined charges of railway and flotilla during that year. I have since heard that a surplus of 29,00014 is claimed for 1890.1 About one fact there can be no doubt-viz. that the goods traffic -upon the railway is enormously on the increas~, and that it will Goods reach infinitely greater proportions still. The total traffic weight of goods carried upon the railway in 1889 was 21,741,880 ponds, or 350,675 tons; out of which Central Asian indigenous product and raw material amounted to 9,069,081 pouds, or 146,275 tons. In, the same year the value of manufactured goods and sugar imported by the railway into Transcaspia, .13okhara, and Turkestan was 94 per cent. higher than in 1888; while the value of exports conducted thereby from Central Asia to Russia, and consisting of cotton, wool, silk, dried fruits, and grain, increased 127 per cent. -Of the goods thus conveyed by far the most remarkable, and an as yet unexhatisted, rise has been that in exports of cotton from the ever-spreading Asiatic plantations. InËË 1888 the amount so carried was-1,213,274 pouds, or 19,655 tonS,2 in ËË 1889 it was 2,200,000 pouds, or 35,484 tons; in January 1890 it was 252,760 pouds, or 4,077 tons (of which 193,229 pouds, or 3,116 tons, came from Bokhara); figures which indicate a much higher monthly average than in the preceding year, even although they do not quite come up to General Annenkoff's confident expectation, which he confessed to myself, of a total of 4,000,000 ponds in the whole year. In June, however, more than a quarter of a million ponds were reported to be lying on the piers at Uzun Ada waiting for shipment, while the railway was said to be bringing up some 20,000 ponds daily. The receipts for the first five months of 1890 were also said, largely in consequence of this increased export, to be larger by more than 50,0001. than in theIn February 1891, however, the Xovoe Vremya stated the surplus at 323,6101., figures which I can hardly credit. ; Before the construction of the TraDscaspian Railway the total annual export of cotton from Central Asia to European Russia by camel caravan, vid Orenburg, was 9,680 tons. |PPage_ . TRANSCASPIA 79 corresponding period of 1889. Afghan merchants were further declared, for the first time since the completion of the railway, to have established direct relations with it by the despatch of several hundred bales of cotton to Charjui.1 The great mercantile use made of the railway, and the stream of goods traffic pouring towards it from all points of the compass, organisa- have necessitated a thorough Custom-house organisation. tion of in Transcaspia. This has been constituted on the basis, Customs familiar in Russian practice, of exclusion, so far as possible, of foreign competition, preferential treatment of subject populations, and protection of home products and manufactures. The chief Custom-liouse is at Uzuii Ada, but posts are also established at Kizil Arvat, Ashkabad, Artik, Kaalika, Dushak, Tej end, Sarakhs, Merv, Yuletan, and Taklita Bazaar. Anadvalorem, duty of 2-1 per cent. is levied at Uzun Ada on all foreign goods 2 imported by sea. A similar duty, calculated at local market prices, is also levied on all goods of European, Persian, or Indian origin, brought by land into Traiiscaspla, whether for local consumption or in transit to Bokhara, Kliiva, or Turkestan. All such goods, if exported from Uzini Ada to European Russia or the Caucasus, are -further liable to in ad valorem duty of 5 per cent. (the duty previously levied being returned). On the other hand, goods from Bokhara, Khiva, and Turkomani a, for European Russia or the Caucasus, are allowed to pass through Uzun Ada free of duty. Similarly, all Persian goods in transit to Europe are passed duty free if forwarded by Asbkabad or other stations of the Transcaspian Railway. Thesefacts, as well as everything that I saw or heard on my second visit, tend to bear out my previous conclusions as to the immense commercial future that lies before the TransGreat commercial caspian Railway. Skirting or traversing countries of future great though inadequately developed resources, con)manding the export and import traffic of Transcaspia, Khorasan, Bokhara, North Afghanistan, and Russian Turkestan, conveying to those countries the exclusive productions of Russia, and taking away from tl~em in return the cotton and silk and wool and tissuesIn order still further to encourage and. develop the growth of cotton by Russian mercliants in Central Asia, the Minister of Finance in 1890 ratified a project for leasing 170,000 acres in Turkestan to the I Central Asian Commercial and Industrial Society,ËËthe lease to run for ninety years, and no rent to be paid for the first fifteen. and furs of the East, it will in a few yearsËË time be the artery of the whole of Central Asia, along which the life-blood of half a continent will throb, commingling the already lialf- amalgamated strains of East and West. This. railway is a far more potent. weapon to Russia in her subjugation of Asia than half a dozen |PPage_ Geok Tepes or a dozen Panjdehs. It marks a complete and bloodless absorption. Great credit must be allowed to General AnnenkoffËË for the inexhaustible energy with which he has worked for this consummation. Touching the facilities of the line for English travellers, I heard that less objection is now raised to the appearance of Facilities strangers than was formerly the case, though this appeared forEngliBh to be a general belief rather than an induction from travellers recorded cases. So great, however, is the traffic ËË upon the line that a stranger might conceivably travel along it unobserved. He would, however,.of course, be liable to be warnedËË~ff or sent back if he could not produce a special permit from St. Petersburg. It is possible, As time goes on, that the stringency of these regulations may be relaxed. Nevertheless, the experience of ,subsequent English travellers upon the railway, including -a lady, was not a favourable one. They were treated with some discourtesy and suspicion, the First Secretary of a British Legation being actually brought, upon a fictitious charge, before a Russian police court at Samarkand. These amenities were, I subsequently heard, intended as a reply to my own too truthful description of Russian affairs and policy in Central Asia.ËË I have already spoken of the Mullah Kari-Krasnovodsk extension, now sanctioned. The suggested branch from Charjui to Kerki along the left bank of the Amu Daria, which was a good deal. talked about at the time of the Afghan war scare in the spring of 1889, has since disappeared from view, and will probably not I am tempted to say in this context that there is small inducement to any English writer to endeavour to treat Russia with fairness or generosity in matters where the two nations happen to be political or national rivals. After issuing a work which aspired, and was, I believe, considered, to render greater justice to Russian labours and aims in Central Asia than any recent publication, the only Russian acknowledgment that I received was a sneering article from the bestknown Russian writer in the English press, the blackening out of eTery passage of my book that was anything but complimentaxy to Russia by the Press Censorship of that country, and the remark, in a leading Russian newspaper, that if an Englishman could pay such a tribute to the merits of Russians in Central Asia, what, fools must the latter be not to take greater advantage of our innocence I |PPage_ 80 TRANSCASPIA 81 atrain be heard of till forward operations are contemplated. On I and the Volga at the same time by a rail to Petrofsk from Tsaritsin. the other hand, the extension from the present terminus at Simultaneously a commission has been entrusted with the task of Extensions Samarkand to Tashkent, which I previously predicted as reporting upon the feasibility of a tunnel through the main range of the probable,has emerged into clearer perspective; and of the Caucasus from Vladikavkas or some neighbouring point Transct-Lspian GeneralAnnenkoff hoped to be able to start work upon to a station on the Batum-Tiflis line.ËË Surveys are also being Railway it in Mav 1890.1It has since been announced that made for a line from Adji-Kabul on the Batum-Baku line to Astara the. Czar has given his approval to the scheme drawn up by a on the Persian frontier. The fact that all these rival projects are special commission for the great Siberian Railway, debouching upon at the same moment on the tapis is an indication of the importance the Pacific at Vladivostock, which is to be 4,785 miles in length, c most wisely attached by Russia to the improvement of her direct to occupy ten years in construction, and to cost a sum variously communications between European Russia and the Caspian; since eStiTnated it from twenty-five to forty millions sterling.2 Should the any military operations undertaken upon the eastern side of the scheme be carried out, it cannot be long before the Transcaspian latter sea must depend for their reinforcements and supplies almost Railway, prolonged by then to Tashkent, will be carried forward wholly upon correspondence with the West. till it joins the Siberian trunk line and. completes the, circle with While in Transcaspia I penned the following words to the I TimesËË European Russia. The point of junction is said to have been fixed newspaper: I My ears have been, as usual, assailed with stories of the intrigues and scandals, the drinking, gambling, and at Omsk. In. Transcaspia itself a branch line is talked of from Russian Karibent on the Tejend to Sarakbs. This would take Russia morale in other vices, that, unknown to the authorities at home, Transeighty miles nearer to Herat. caspia are said to prevail in Russian military circles in Trans Casting our eyes back upon Europe, where the Caucasian rail- caspia. So persistent and, it may be added, so consistent are able corollary and complement of the contain a large percentage of truth. way system is the indispens, these tales that they must Parallel Traiiscaspian Railway, we find that after many delays the Young men who have committed in iscretions, or ost money, or |PPage_ European Vladikavkas-Petrofsk line is said once again to have taken to bad habits in European Russia are banished to a tempoextensions received the Imperial sanction;3 although other voices t rary purgatory in Central Asia, in forgetfulness of the fact that are heard recommending a junction with the Central Russian lilies In r the painful tediu ËËof life in those regions is an incentive rathe than a deterrent to rI Captain A. C. Yate, the latest English traveller on the Transcaspian Railway every Russian station in Central Asia is rife with gossip - and (October isgo), informs me that there is now an idea of continuing the line fromscandal. Every prominent man has a host of enemies who would Samarkand to Khokand, so as to avoid the expense of bridging the Syr Daria. 2 After a protracted controversy between the rival schemes of a combined railstick at nothing in order to pull him down. An outward show of and waterway, anda continuous railway, the latter was decided upon in March discipline masks acute discontent, evil tempers, and ill-regulated 1891. The line will run from, Zlatoust, the present terminus of the Samara-Ufahabits. Much must be forgiven in consideration of the frightful line to the mining districts of Miask and Cheliabinsk (~4 miles); thence vid climate and the utterly odious life. But it is questionable whether Tukalinsk, Kaensk, Mariensk, Krasnokarsk, and Kansk, to Nijni Udinsk (1,736 miles), the estimated cost of this section being 11,807,5001. or 6,5001. a mile.a Power so represented in Central Asia is one whose moral prestige Thence the line will run vid, Uchtuskaia, Irkutsk, S. Baikal, Sretensk, andis likely to remain, in the ascendant, or whether its forces, if Habarovka, to Vladivostock, (2,965 miles.) Total length, 4,785 miles; total esti-directed against an enemy, might not be found to have been weakroated cost, 36,765,0001., or an average of 7,6801. a mile. Work has been com 0 ened by the long-existing canker.ËË menced at both extremities; and a few versts of rails were hurriedly laid at Vladivostock to enable the C7,arevitch to perform the opening ceremony in the These remarks, which were not lightly or unadvisedly written, summer of 1891. 8 This line would be 160 miles long, and would, it is estimated, cost 1,200,0001. It is said that such a line, leaving the main railway at a station north of In the Russian Financial Estimates for 189 1, a sum of 100,0001. is allotted for theVladikavkas, might follow the Roki Defile through the Caucasus, pierce a tunnel preliminary expenses of construction. From Petrofsk toËË Baku, a further ex-less than five miles in length, and emerge, at a distance of 113 miles, upon Gori, tension, 220 miles in length, is also discussed. on the Tiflis Railway. But the cost would be enormous. |PPage_ I 82 ó e presumed to have been gained by Great Britain in the Karun Concession of 1888, Russia now put on the screw at the Persian Court ; and, among the stipulations of a secret agreement which has not been divulged, insisted upon the immediate completion of the Ashkabad-Kuchan road. The Shah did not relish the injunction, but was powerless to resist. General Gasteiger Khan was relieved of his office, it being variously alleged that he bad quarrelled with the, Governor-General of Khorasan, and that he had been found secretly corresponding with the Russians; and the contract was entrusted to the Malek-et-Tajar or Head of the MerchantsËË Guild at Meshed, who undertook to complete the work in a year at a cost of 13,0001., receiving in return a concession of the rest-houses, wells, and collection of tolls along the route. This was the situation when I travelled upon the road in the beginning of October 1889. Leaving Ashkabad in a southerly direction, the road strikes across the plain towards the mountains. It is of uniform width, RusBian twenty-five feet, and, although near the town it was full section of holes, yet the gradients, even in the steepest parts, are such as to render it easily available for the passage of artillery. At a distance of eight miles it reaches the foot of the hills and then winds up a lateral valley parallel to the axis of the main range of the Kopet Dagh. Later on an ascent in zigzags commences, leading, at a distance of fifteen miles, into a narrow mountain gorge, at whose bottom is a stony torrent bed, empty when I passed it, but evidently liable to a sudden rush of water in times of melting snow or flood. It must be economy rather than any practical object that has induced the Russians to cross and recross this torrent- bed, not by bridges, but by a rough stone causeway built through the channel itself, and already in many places broken up and swept away. A second series of zigzags leads, at about the FROM ASHKABAD TO KUCH.A-N 89 twenty-fiftli mile, into a desolate upland valley, across which the road runs in a dreary line until, again passink into the hills, it reaches the Russian village of Baj Girlia (literally, ËË Takers of the TollsËË), previously known as Andaii, at about one mile beyond |PPage_ which the crest is mounted that marks the boundary between Russian and Persian territory. Neither on the road nor at the frontier were there any Russian soldiers, though the Chief of the Staff at Ashkabad had presented me with an order for passing any Persian BAJ GIRHA that I might encounter. The fact is, Russia can afford to leave this portion of her Asiatic frontier absolutely unguarded, aggression from Persia b ËË eing out of the question, and none but Russians or natives going the other way. Near the end of the road, however, and at a short distance from the frontier, I found a large rectangular stone building in course of construction, which is, I believe, to serve the purposes of a guard- and rest-house combined. The Persian BaJ Girha, where there is a Custom-house at which dues are levied on caravans from Ashkabad, is a small village of mud |PPage_ 90 PERSIN huts, clinging to the hill side, at about two i-niles from the frontier down a valley ; and here it was that, stumbling along on foot with my bridle on iny arm, I fortunately struck my canip. A glorious moon, idealising the gaunt and soinbre landscape, had cheered iny solitary ride and guided me to my destination. There was not ail atom of verdure on the brown bleak hills; and not a sign or sound of life on the road except a rare caravan moving with music of camel-bells through the silence.. The mountain range through which -I had been passing, in whose spurs and branches I spent another two days before reaching ThK-Lichan, and in whose rugged eastern rainifications I B.rederwas to wander for the ten days followilig, is the eastern n Mountains prolongation of the great Elburz range that runs like a migbty rock wall along the entiVe northern border of Persia. Connected with the Caucasian system -upon the west, it follows at distances varying from ten to thirty miles the south coast line of the Caspian, throwing up on its way the prodigious peak of Demavend (19,400 ft.), until, temporarily arrested in the valley of the Gurgan beyond Astrabad, it assumes a new lease of vigour in the knotted mountain ridges that stand one behind the other like infantry files, with an axis pointing from north-west to southeast, in the middle district between the Tiirkoman plains and the northern skirts of the Great Persian Desert. Further on the connection is as distinct with the inisnamed Paropainisaii range above Herat, itself a western continuation of the tremendous Hindu Kush. In the region under examination, the border ranges on the north are known by the names of the Kuren Dagh and Kopet Dagh, whilst the main and still higher inland ridge, enclosing the valley of the Atrek on the south, bears the successive names of Ala Dagh -Ind Binalud Wall. The upland valleys concealed between these parallel barriers have an average elevation of 4,000 feet, and are dominated by peaks that claim an altitude of from 8,000 to 11,000 feet. It is said that in Khorasan alone there are not less than sixteen summits which answer to this description. Nothing can exceed the bleak sterility of their outward form. Unredeemed by any verdure but a stunted and scanty growth of juniper, watered by few springs, and with little, or no soi.1 upon the slopes, the grey limestone tells with frank and forbidding effrontery its remote geological tale. It, was not out of keeping with the chill and savage character of these hills that until the last decade they were FROM ASHKA.BAD TO KUCHAN 91 the chosen haunt of rapine and murder, the Turkomaii man-himters sweeping down like a flame through their sullen gorges, and falling with sword and musket upon the villages and flocks that presumed |PPage_ to survive their repeated devastations. It was said, when the Russians began to build the AshkabadKuchan road, that they contemplated in the future laying upon it Projected a line of rails-whether a railroad or a steam tramwayrailroad that should facilitate their connection with Meshed. As has been pointed out to me, however, by an English Engineer officer who has inspected the work, such cannot possibly be the case, the zigzags by which the ridges are surmounted being of a character with which, in their present condition, no railroad in the world could grapple; while the same may be said of many of the angles on the Persian section of the road between Baj Girha and Kuchan. It would be easy enough to lay a line of rails from Kuchan to Meshed, where the track would run upon a level plain. But no purpose would be served by such an outlay; and it is more probable, as will be pointed out later on, that, if Meshed is ËË to be brought into correspondence with the Russian railway system, it will be from the opposite direction. From Baj Girha there are two short marches, vid Durbadam and Imam Kuli, to Kuchan. The distance is said to be 12 farsakhs, nominally 48 miles. I reckon the stages, however, from Ashkabad as follows : Asbkabad to Baj Girha Baj Girha to Persian Do. PersianËËDo. to Imam Kuli Imam Kuli to Kuchan . Miles 30 2 21 23 Total 76 Between the frontier and Kuchan, the present camel and mule ~track does not follow precisely the same line as will the chauss6e. Persian The latter, it is understood, will make a d6tour by section of Aughaz, and will avoid other steep or difficult places. the road Nevertheless, I kept continually striking upon the incomplete works, small segments of the road being finished, others only marked out, and others again in the hands of the workmen. I met some hundreds of these in batches,ËË blasting the rocks, or building unsubstantial bridges, which will probably be destroyed by the first flood. A German engineer had been engaged to infuse I Their wages were about 61d. a day. |PPage_ 92 Durbadara andImam Kuli a little science into the proceedings, but he died a month later ; and if native engineering talent has since been thought sufficient, it is a poor look-out for the durability of the undertaking. The labourers I saw at work were engaged in the most leisurely fashion; and if the Malek-et-Tajar completes his contract in double the time specified I shall be very much surprised. Passing down the valley in a south-easterly direction from Baj Girha, the present route leads through stony hills and glens that reminded me strangely of the forlorn belt of country in Palestine that is crossed between Jerusalem and Samaria. A little further we entered a narrow defile, which was so steep that I was obliged to dismount and lead down my horse. Small watch-towers perched like eyries on the cliff tops, and a rudely constructed wall of stones built across the ravine, were reminders of the not yet forgotten days of Turkoman forays. At the end of the gorge we emerged upon a small circular plain, in which the village of Durbadam. takes advantage of the presence of a mountain stream, deriving therefrom both its raison dËËgtre and wherewithal of lite. A square enclosure with high mud walls and projecting towers at the angles was a sight with which I was to become daily if not hourly familiar later 01-1, and which was an elementary obligation of tactics imposed by the Turkomans, upon every village within a hundred miles of their border. At Durbadam. (14 miles) I spread a carpet in an orchard and lunched. Following the gorge by which the river Sharek enters the valley, and where the new road will cross the stream several times, and will be very liable to demolition by floods, we came into more open country, and passed the first of two villages known as Imam Kuli on the left. Hearing sounds of lamentation proceeding from a miserable hovel, and observing a circle of women and children weeping and bewailing outside, I went up and found that one of the natives of the village, a husband and a father, had been killed by a fall of rock, while blasting on the new roadway, in the gorge which I had just quitted. The dead body, naked, but covered with a sheet, lay with its feet in the doorway. I gave the poor creatures a few krans, as they looked miserably poor. Outside the village I passed a shallow gravelly trench dug by the roadside, where, amid a little cluster of stony mounds, the hapless victim was about to be laid to rest. At 3 P.m., in a wider opening of the valley, dignified by occasional clumps of poplar, I reached the main I FROM ASHKABAD TO KUCHAN |PPage_ village of Imam Kuli, built, aF; are all these Persian mountain villages, in tiers upon the hill side-a serie s of squalid mud terraces pierced by low holes for doorways. The headman of the village offered me his house, but I preferred the prospect of cold in a tent to the certainty of fleas indoors. Here I was met by a messenger from the Ilkhani or Chief of Kuchan, whose capital I was to visit on the morrow, and who had been apprised of my arrival. The emissary, an old gentleman with white beard most imperfectly dyed with henna, inquired at what hour I proposed to arrive at Kuchaii, as his master wished to give me a befitting reception outside the town. I gave him the rendezvous at noon. He suggested that I should spend an entire day at Imam Kuli-a solicitude on iny behalf which I found to be due to his own reluctance to make the return journey to Kuclian with sufficient speed to anticipate my arrival. I replied that-the irresistible attractions of Kuchan drew me on. As I started at seven oËËclock the next morning, a party of. pilgrims for Meshed, who had come from Resht, vid Uzun Ada and Zobaran to Ashkabad,1 passed out of the village on donkey back in Kuchan front of ine,-singing loudly in praise of Ali and Husein, and other saints of the Shiah calendar. I followed the main road o Lit of the valley, and then struck off to the south-west, taking a short cut over a rolling range of hills which constitute the watershed between the streams that drain north to the Atek and those that drain south to Kuchan. In a ravine on the left could be discerned the small villages of Kelat-i-Shah Mohammed, watered by a kanat or underground aqueduct, and further on Kelat-i-Mullammamud (Mullah Mahniud ?). There was no contrast o co our on the barren hills, even though they now became lower and more undulating, while their flanks had in parts been ploughed for grain. The landscape might have been draped in khaki, that excellent but unlovely material with which we clothe our soldiers in torridclimes. Zobaran (15 miles), though the name signifies plenty, did not by its appearance betray that it enjoyed plenty of anything but stones and dust. However, a tiny rill of clear water fed a I The Transcaspian Railway is very largely used by Mussulman pilgrims of both persuasions, making their way to or from the sacred shrines. For the Sunnis of Central Asia it supplies an agreeable abridgment of the long journey to Mecca, and is equally serviceable for that to Kerbela and Nejef. By the Persian Shiahs and the Mahometans of the West, it is enormously used on the pilgrimage to the shrine of-Imam Reza at Meshed. 93 |PPage_ 94 ó mer wife, a Turkoman woman, to death; and, moreover, he inherits in full measure the parental addiction to drink. . It is, I fear, as a drunkard that the old chief is best known to |PPage_ 102 English readers and has been commemorated by English writers. During the past twenty years be has been visited and interviewed His repu- by several Englishmen : by Colonel Valentine Baker in tation 1873, Captain Napier in 1874, Sir C. MacGregor in 1875, and Edniund OËËDonovan in 1880 ; I and by most of these authorities was found either drinking or drunk, or slowly recovering from the effects of drink, Kiichaii being noted for its white wine, and the Khan having a partiality besides for brandy, arrack, and any spirit that is sufficiently potent. General Grodekoff, who was despatched to Khorasan in disguise in 1880 by General Skobeleff, with the knowledge of the Shah, in order to purchase supplies for the Russian army then operating against the Tekke Turkomans in Transcaspia, was well aware beforehand of the propensities of the Kurdish chieftain, and in his official account of the mission entrusted to him very candidly avows the steps by which lie sought to inoratiate himself with his too convivial liost: Knowing that he was fond of liquor, we placed several bottles of wine, liqueurs, and vodka before him ; and in a very short time the Shuja had drunk several glasses of different wines, and then called in his singers and musicians. The men who came with him, his surgeon, and his favourites, Vali Khan and Ramzan Khan, drank themselves stupid, and a regular orgy began. Next day I went to see the Amir, and presented my documents to him. Bottles were already standing before him, and he explained that he was recovering from his intoxication. During our conversation be repeatedly partook of brandy, opium, hashish, and wine, and by noon was quite drunk. In the evening of the same day be invited us to a European supper, and again got intoxicated to the last degree.ËË Zn In the negotiations that followed, General Grodekoff was alternately impressed by the astuteness of the Ilkliani and disgusted by his habits. Once his editor writes:- A three daysËË sojourn in his society showed Colonel Grodekoff that the Amir was very much in possession of all his faculties - that lie was not to be deceived by our giving ourselves out as commission agents; and that, although lie was a drunkard, still lie saw and remembered everything. , The an ËË thorities on Kuchan are J. B. Fraser (1822), Journey into Khorasan, cap. xxii. and Appendix B, (Sir) A. Burnes (1832), 1ËËravels into Bokhara, vol. iii. pp. 74-81; Colonel Val. Baker (1873), Clouds in Me Past, pp. 277-278; Captain Hon. G. Napier (1874), 1 Diary of a, Tour in Khorasan,ËË Journal of the R. G.S., vol. xlvi. p. 87; (Sir) 0. MacGregor (1875), Journeyfltrouglb Khorasan, vol. ii. pp. 8388; E. OËËDonovan (1880), Ehe Merv Oasis, vol. i. cap. xxviii.; General Grodekoff (1880), The War in Turkontania (Russian), vol. iv. cap. xvii. FROM ASHKABAD TO KUCHAN 103 |PPage_ But on another occasion: To carry on business with him was more than difficult. One had to drink with him, to listen to his drunken speeches, to be present at his orgies, and still to be on one's guard not to show signs of disgust which, would at once have called forth the anger of the barbarian. Truly the world has produced few such brutes, as Colonel Grodekoff expressed himself in a telegram to General Skobeleff. It would appear, however, that the Khan has only perpetuated himself, and bequeathed to the estimable son whom I have before named, a taste which he had himself inherited from his father; for when Fraser was the guest of Reza Kuli Khan in 1822 he relates that he saw I the Khan and the whole court dead drunk! There is a certain fine continuity, therefore, in the family proceedings. It may be imagined that, knowing as much as I did about Amir Huseini Khan, my familiarity with whose antecedents would Two interË"Ëprobably have caused a severe shock to the old gentleman views had he been aware of it, I looked forward with some anxiety to my interview. Donning my frock coat, which I confess looked somewhat incongruous beneath a Terai hat, and my groloshes, and attended by as large a retinue of my own servants as I could muster,ËË I followed the escort of six persons who had been sent by the Khan to conduct me to his palace hard by. The fagade over the entrance gateway was in the form of a triple arch filled with elegant bas- reliefsËËin white plaster, made after. the fashion of an Italian villa, behind which a neat little kiosque rose above the roof. Passing through the gateway, which was filled with guards, I was conducted to the left into a large open court, about twice as long as it was broad, the lower end. of. which was divided into flower-beds, while above the middle was a hauz, one of those large tanks common to every Persian house of any pretensions, and so cunningly constructod that the, water just laps over the stone brim and trickles down into a channel outside. On the pavement beyond were standing some thirty individuals with their backs turned to the tank and their faces towards, the upper end, where I could see into an elevated aiwan or reception chamber, separated I It is a cardinal point of rersian* etiquette when you go out visiting to take as many -of your own establishment with you as possible, whether riding or walking on foot; the number of such retinue being accepted as an indication of the -rank of the master. |PPage_ 104 ó iny clumps |PPage_ of trees, which owed their existence to some stray watercourse or to a happily unchoked kanat.1 Of these villages we passed in I I shall have occasion so frequently to speak of kanat8, and they constitute so striking,and almost invariable a feature of the Persian landscape, that, for the benefit of those who have not seen them, I will describe what they are. A kanat (identical with the Beluch and Afghan kariz) is a wbterranean gallery or aqueduct conducting the water from its ËËparent springs in hill or mountain to the village where it is required either to promote cultivation or to sustain life. The process of construction is as follows. Experimental shafts are first sunk until a spring is tapped in the bi.-her ground. Then the labourer begins at the other~ end, where the water is required upon the surface, or at intervening points, and digs a trench or cutting, on a very slightly inclined plane, in the direction of the ËËspring. As he goes further and gets deeper underground, circular pits or shafts are opened from above, at distances of twenty yards or more, by which the excavated soil is drawn up to the surface and heaped round the mouth of the shaft. In time the subterranean tunnel reaches the spring, and the water flows down the nicely calculated slope to its destination. The sbaf ts are subsequently used to keep the gallery clear and free from obstruction. A village with any extent of cultivable soil is, therefore, as a rule, the apex from which radiate a number of kanat lines, often several miles in length, to the nearest mountain, the long succession of shafts resembling an array of portentous mole-hills thrown up one after the other across the plain. The water-way, however, is very easily blocked or choked -or in other ways impaired, whereupon the whole labour is repeated ab initio, two parallel kanat lines being often encountered within a few yar ds of each other, the earlier of which has been totally abandoned. It will easily be understood how dangerous are the open shafts of the latter. The d6bri8 round their summits gets washed in by the rain, so that nothing remains to mark the mouth of the pit; and many are the animals that have found a premature death by falling down. Their skeletons can sometimes be seen wedged half-way down the shafts. Riders and their horses have had the most extraordinary escapes, and the case is well known at Teheran of a gentleman who, while out hawking, suddenly disappeared from view, having dropped down a disused shaft, but was hauled up along with his horse without any damage to either. The kanat shafts are the favourite abode of bluerock pigeons, who, if the hands be clapped at one opening, will dart out of the next, providing shots that would puzzle even the professors of Hurlingham. In the account of his Persian travels, given by one of the Venetian Ambassadors, Signor Josafa Barbaro, over 400 years ago, occurs an interesting passage about the digging of kanat8, which was thus rendered into English in a quaint transla. tion of the sixteenth century: I Neere to the ryver they make a pitt like unto a well, from whense they folowe, diggeng by lyvells towardes the place they meane to bringe it to; so that it may evermore distende chanell wise; which chanell is deeper than the botome of the foresaid pytt, and whan they have digged about |PPage_ 116 succession Fathiabad, two miles from Kuclian; Sarkhan, seven miles; Tafirabad, a collection of low cubical domes, fifteen miles, and Daslitabad. Black goatsËË-hair tents scattered here and there showed that not all the Kurds had taken to sedentary life, but that some retained their nomad instincts ; while an occasional deserted village marked the site of a destroyed kanat or exhausted spring.. At Kelata,l about twenty-two miles from Kuchan, I dismissed the victoria, with instructions to go home on the morrow - and mounting my liorse, and leaving the high road to Meshed and the telegraph poles oil the right, continued for another eight miles on the level to Chamgir, a small village some way short of Radkan. As we rode along the plain, now quite destitute of vegetation, a lovely lake of water, the creature of the Eastern inirage, trembled and glittered on the horizon, and ever receded while we advanced. Towards evening the north-east hills, oil which the declining sun shone with full orb, acquired a startling glory with tints of rose and coral ; the opposite range, plunged in the shadow, was suffused with an opaline vapour that temporarily endowed it with almost ethereal beauty. Presently they both * relapsed., the one into a russet brown, the other into a cold and ashen grey. I camped in all orchard outside the village. At one of the lianilets which we had passed during the day I saw a decidedly primitive manner of threshing barley straw. A Primitive threshing-floor was prepared of trodden earth outside the threshing walls, and upon this Ë Ëthe straw was spread out; while a long wooden cylinder or roller, armed with big wooden spikes, like the barrel of a colossal musical box, and drawn by bullocks, was driven slowly round and round over the heaps. The result was that the straw was chopped up into small pieces, which constitute the kah, or fodder, that is the common food of horses and mules in Persia. This mode of,threshing and the implement employed are as old and unalterable as are most of the habits and utensils of the East. It is described at length by Chardin over two hundred years ago,2 and by even earlier travellers, and will doubtless be visible in remote hamlets two hundred years lience. XX. paces of this cbanell, than digge they an other pitt like to the first, and so frorn pitt to pitt they con4igh the water alongest these chanells whither they won,ËË But the system is older yet, for It is described by Polybius (lib. x. 25). 1 Kelata is the plural, and signifies a collection of villages or hamlets, each of which is usually distinguished by a separate title. 2 Toyages (ed.it. Laxigl6s), vol. iv, pp. 105-106. FROM KUCHAN TO KELAT-I-NADIRI 117 It is impossible to tire of the interest and humours of camp life. The traveller arrives first on his superior mount, and selects Camp life a favourable spot, beneath the protection of trees, and if |PPage_ ó passage having originally been foitified by that monarch, who was the grandson of Hulaku Khan, and is said to have retired to Kelat after being defeated on one occasion in battle by his uncle, Ahmed Khan.ËË A fine inscrip tion on a smoothed surface of rock upon the right-hand wall of the GATE OF ARGAWAN SHAH defile beyond the gate records this act of the sovereign. The present barricade is only a modern substitute for that which was built by Nadir Shah, and which, I do not doubt, was a far more substantial structure. I This monarch, called by the Persians Argawan Shah, but raore commonly spoken of as Arghun -Khan (1284-1290 A.D.), was the remarkable man to whom Marco Polo was sent by Kubla Kban from China in charge of a Tartar bride, who opened diplomatic intercourse with the sovereigns of Europe, including King Edward I., and who, like his father, Abaka Khan, was almost a Christian, and degraded the Mussulmans from all publio office. FROM KUCHAN TO KEI.AT-I-N.ADIRI 129 In the fond belief that all my previous fears had been groundless, I put my horse into the bed of the stream, and, accompanied Entrance by Ramzan Ali Khan, Gregory, and Shukurullah, also detected on horseback, rode through the central arch. No one appeared or challenged. I had time upon the other side to note the inscription of Argawan Shah, and to observe a round tower at the summit of an eminence commanding the entrance, and had already advanced about a hundred yards towards the houses of a village that appeared upon either side of the defile, when suddenly a terrific shouting was heard from the gate behind us, and a miserable soldier, still half asleep, and pulling his tattered cotton tunic about his shoulders, came running out, yelling at the top of his voice. Answering cries were heard; and presently there poured out of the wall, which was really a gate-tower and had casements on the inner side, a motley band of half-clad individuals, for the most part in rags, though an occasional button with the Lion and Sun upon it, and one pair of blue trousers with a red stripe, showed that I was in the presence of some of the serbaz or regular infantry of the King of Kings. As I did not want to begin with a fracas, and as the soldiers |PPage_ were clearly doing their duty, although they had been within an Colloquy ace of letting me slip through unobserved, I halted and with the we entered into conversation. At first they were very guard violent and tried to pull back our horses. But when I represented that I had no intention of going further without leave, they became calmer. I inquired for the officer in command. There did not appea r to be such a person. I next asked where was the Khan of Kelat. The reply was, given that he was at his village, two miles away. Accordingly I despatphed Shukurullah (as a Persian and therefore free from suspicion), with a soldier mounted on the same horse behind him, to the Khan, to tell him who I was, and to request permission to pass through Kelat and out on the other side; or, if this could not be granted on his own responsibility, then to telegraph to Meshed. While the Persian was away I remained in the rocky gateway conversing with the soldiers. It was bitterly cold, for the sun Attitude of would not strike the chasm for some hours, so I bought the serbaz Some brushwood and lit a fire. When they heard that I was an Englishman they seemed disposed to be more friendly; for they said that if I had been a Russian they would have shot me |PPage_ J 130 ó through Meshed which the stream, coursing in rapid zigzags between the walls, occupied the whole of the slender space between. Above the lower slopes the cliffs rose in craggy magnificence to a sheer height of 1,000 or 1,500 feet. This ravine equalled in savage splendour anything that I had seen even during the past week of astonishing scene ry ; and I could not help thinking that if those who rave about the Alpine passes, set though they be in the incomparable framework of snow and ice, could travel to this unvisited corner of Asia, even their senses would be bewildered by I Jmryzey tltrougk K7wrawn, vQl. ii. pp. 44,49. |PPage_ 142 PERS1A FROM KUCHAN TO KELAT-I-NADIRI 143 so amazing a succession of natural phenomena, each one of w hich of communication from valley to valley. These gorges are would attract a stream of pilgrims in any better-known land. frequently of almost inconceivable abruptness and grandeur. At this point we finally left the mountains and debouched on Each one presents a score of positions of absolute impregnability; to the eastern continuation of the, same plain from which I had and I do not suppose that more savage mountain scenery, in zones Scenery of diverged a week before at Radkan. The moment, there- below the snow line, exists anywhere in the world. The base of North- fore, is an opportune one for casting an eye in swift these defiles seldom admits more than a torrent bed blocked with eastern Khorasan retrospect over the country and surroundings in which I enormous boulders, and the walls are frequently vertical to a height had been travelling since I entered Persia, and which embrace theËË of from 500 to 1,000 feet. The higher mountains rarely display least known and yet most typical characteristics of North-eastern even the scantiest vegetation, being sterile, stony, and forbidding Khorasan. I summed up my impressions, without, h ËË owever, to a degree, though the loftiest peaks are majestic with splintered describing my journeys, in the ËËTimesËË in these words outline, and occasionally some astonishing natural phenomenon ËËAfter leaving Kuchan, I struck eastwards through the moun-is encountered, like the southern wall of Kelat. Cultivation is tains, and spent eight days in wandering about amid the mountain almost wholly confined to the valley bottoms, and is there depenvalleys of this rugged and almost inaccessible corner of Khorasan. dent upon precarious streams and watercourses dug therefrom Being hampered by a camp and mules, I was limited to about to the arable plots. Each village is like an oasis in a brown twenty-five miles a day, but even so succeeded in traversing about desert; and the squalid mud huts, with their fringe of green 200 miles of this interesting and rarely visited country. The poplars and orchards, present an appearance almost as refreshing names of most of the villages are not upon any English map, and to the wayfarer as the snuggest of English homesteads. only a few larger or more notable localities, such as the famous The ordinary beasts of burden in these mountain villages are stronghold of Kelat-i-Nadiri, are known to European ears. It is very small grey donkeys, camels being only seen: when belonging astonishing how difficult it is in these parts to procure reliable to a caravan, and a horse being.beyond the means of the Animal information about anything, most of all about that which should and human poorer people. The and hill slopes provide a slender life be best known-liamely, the distance between adjoining placesËË. i herbage that sustains large flocks of black sheep and Afarsakh, nominally about four miles, is the sole unit of measure- goats, which are met with every-where, guarded by big dogs. |PPage_ ment, but, judging by my own experience, it may mean anything Mutton is consequently cheap and abundant. Rude wooden from two to five. The commonest thing is to be told that a place Ploughs unshod with iron are drawn by yokes of black oxen; but is half a farsalch distant-a term which, being used to imply any cows and milk are not to be met with in every village. Fowls fraction less than the whole farsa7ch, may describe a distance of abound, and can be always bought for about 3d. apiece. The either one mile or three miles and a half. The scenery through valley of Ku.chan revels in every kind of fruit, but further north which I travelled, and which may be said to extend over the whole I was not able to procure any. Rice appeared to be the staple of North-eastern Khorasan, is singularly uniform in its character- food of the peasantry. These struck me as a fine and masculine istics. A series of lofty mountain ridges, with an axis inclined race, and as a very different type from the Persian of the towns. from north-west to south-east, run parallel to each other at varying They spring for the most part from a different stock, being not of distances, the intervening hollows being in the more northern Iranian, but of Turkoman or Turkish origin, and are far more like parts deep gorges admitting little more than a torrent bed at their the Uzbegs or Tartars in appearance than the Persians. They wore bottom, while further south they widen into valleys watered by sheepskin bonnets on their heads, not unlike those of the Turkomountain streams and dotted with villages, and eventually into mans, but less lofty in the crown, canvas bound round their legs broad, rich plains, such as that of Kuchan to the north and with thongs, and big loose shoes of untanned cowhide similarly Nishapur to the south of the Binalud Kuh mountains. Transverse attached.ËË The women were everywhere visible, but, as a rule, ravines cut these ridges, often at right angles, and provide a way carefully concealed their features, not with a veil, but with the, |PPage_ 144 FROM KUCHAN TO KELAT-I-NADIRI 145 upper cotton garment drawn over the lower part of the face. My horse, I sped as quickly as I could over the intervening Such as I saw were prematurely old and ugly, the melancholy law plain. of the East.ËË Nobad Geldi and I weregalloping in front, and the old redIn extension of what was here said, I may add two other tailed charger was showing the best of his speed, when, ceasing observations upon the peculiar orograpby of the country. In the to hear the clatter of the rest of the party behind me, I Accident first place the dividing lines between the watersheds are to the turned round to see what had befallen. At a distance Physical cavalcade pecu- seldom the highest ranges or crests ; illustrations of which of 200 yards Gregory's horse was lying on its back, liarities phenomenon I noticed in the case both of the dividing furiously kicking its heels in the air. Its load la scattered in y line between the Atek or Transcaspian and Kuchan drainage, and every direction on the ground. The unhappy Armenian was again of that between the Kucban and Meshed drainage -*i.e. the slowly extracting himself from under the horse and ruefully streams that run respectively to the Caspian and the Heri Rud. rubbing his knee. Ramzan Ali Khan, also on foot, and covered Secondly, the rivers, instead of pursuing a course parallel to the with dust, was seen careering over the plain after his horse, which axis of the mountain ranges, or, in other words, running down the was disappearing in an opposite direction. It appeared that deep valleys between them, and then turning the corner where the Gregory's animal, overtired, and unable,ËËwith its heavy load, to saddle dips, prefer to pierce the ranges almost at right angles to keep the pace at which we were going, had stumbled and fallen their previous course ; Nature having provided for that purpose on the top of Gregory; anathat the Afghan, dismounting in order transverse fissures and (rashes through the very heart of the rock, to extricate his colleague, had received a kick on the head which 7 which they could never have forced for themselves, and which do knocked him over. All was soon right again, and, leaving the not betray the symptoms of aqueous detrition, but must rather slow movers to follow at their own pace, I pushed on. At five have been caused by extreme tension at the moment of original I s fro the town we came to a massive high-backed bridge, Mi e in elevation. of eleven arches, spanning the slender current of the Keshef Rud.1 Once upon the plain, we passed in quick succession the villages The bridge, which is called Pul- i-Shall (King's Bridge), looked of Anderokh and Rezan, which appeared to revel in an abundant ridiculously out of proportion to the attenuated volume of theËË water supply and in a wide area of cultivation. Far Approach stream, which was only about twenty-five feet in width, and was to Meshed away on the southern side of the expanse the mountains barely moving. The , ramps of the |PPage_ bridge had originally been behind Meshed could be seen, broken up into detached ridges, I but in common with all good work in paved with big cobbles, with sharp and serrated points. I strained my eyes to catch in Persia, these had for the most part disappeared, and the ruined the distance the glint of the golden cupola and minars -of the k legs than to e them. causeway was better adapted to brea sav holy Imam. Slowly the mist curled upward, as though a silken Continuing for a mile, we reached the enclosure of the tomb window-blind were being delicately raised by cords; and first a of Khojah (or KhwaJali) Rabi, a holy man who is variously reported sparkle, and then a steady flash, revealed at a distance that must as having been the personal friend and the tutor of Imam still. have been from twelve to fifteen miles the whereabouts of Tomb of KhojahReza, and whose body, in order to be near that of his the gilded dome. Though my emotions were not those of the Rabi sainted companion, was interred in -this spot. The devout pilgrim who had very likely travelled hundreds, perhaps tomb is surrounded by a garden, in which there is abundance of thousands, of miles to see the hallowed spot, though I did not breaktrees, and which is entered by a lofty gateway containing rooms into wild cries of ËËYa Alil Ya Husein, and though I did riot tear This river, (Keshef, old Persian Eash Tortoise) called also Ab-i-Mesbed off fragments of my dress and suspend them upon the nearest bush,(Water of Meshed) and sometimes Kara Su (Black Water), rises in the Cbashmehaccordin g to the formula of the pious Shiah, I yet looked with i-Gilas, a marsh between Chinaran and Radkan, and, collecting the drainage of the interest of one who has heard and read mueb from afar upon the Meshed Valley, passes by the gorge of Ak Derbend (White Defile) to Pul-ithe famous city which I was approaching; and, putting spurs to Khatun (Lady's Bridge), on the Russian frontier, where it joins the Heri Rud, and in conjunction with the latter forms the Tejend. |PPage_ 146 FROM KUCHAN TO. KELAT-1-NADIRI 147 in arched recesses. From the surroundings it was evident that it is a favourite holiday resort of the people of Meshed, being indeed the only place of any attractiveness in the environs of the city. Thinking that the building also contained a mosque, and was, therefore, of an ecclesiastical character, I did not attempt to enter it, but merely took a photograph from the outside. I heard afterwards that, as with other tombs, any one can visit it who will. The present building is not the original mausoleum, but, as the inscription says, was raised by Shah Abbas the Great on the remains of the earlier structure. A second restoration was now in course of execution; for the building was enveloped in a scaffolding, and workmen were replacing the blue tiles on the exterior of the dome, most of which had peeled off and dis -,appeared. MacGregor spoke of the tile-work, in 1875, as better than any in Persia. But of this, too, a great deal had vanished; and what had once been a magnificent circular frieze below the spring of the dome now existed only in segments and patches. Hard by is buried the father of Agba Mohammed Shah (the founder of the reigning dynasty), Fath Ali Khan Kajar, who incurred the hostility of Nadir Shah, and was beheaded by his orders. Soon the road passed between dusty emrthen walls and over small ditches, the uniform suburbs of the cities of the East. The Entrance long line of the city wall now appeared, projecting to Meshed towers connected by a curtain, and defended by a shallow ditch. Passing through the gateway, where a shabby guard sprang, to his feet and presented arms with an ostentatious rattle of his musket, we rode for nearly half- an hour through the blank and unlovely alleys that constitute four-fifths even of the proudest Oriental capital; and after crossing the Khiaban, or central avenue of Meslied-more about which will belong to my next chapterpulled up at a low door, over which a large painted shield displayed the insignia of the British Government and indicated the residence of Her Majesty's Consul-General and Agent of the ViceroyËËof India. In a minute's time I was shaking hands with Colonel Charles Stewart. The march from Kardeh to Meshed is called eight farsakhsl but is not in reality more than twenty-four miles. Accordingly, the route from Kelat to Meshed is as follows: Kelat-i-Nadiri to Vardeh Vardeh to Kardeh Kardeh to Meshed Total 20 Approximate disFarsakhj Itance in miles |PPage_ 5 7 8 20 26 24 70 SUPPLEMENTARY ROUTES TO AND FROm KELAT KELAT To DEREGEZ (vid Archingan 70 miles). Col. Val. Baker (1873), Clouds in the East, pp. 210-229; (Sir) 0. MacGregor (1875), Journey througA Xhorasan, Vol. ii. pp. 63-75. KELAT TO MEsHED (vid Kanegosha and Karategan), two alternative route&. (Sir) C. MacGregor (1875), Journey throuyk Khora8an, Vol. ii. Appendix IL |PPage_ 148 . CHAPTER VII MESHED Some reverence is surely due to the fame of heroes and the religion of nations.-GIBBON, Decline and 1411 of the Roman -Empire. MESHED has in the course of the past half-century been visited and described at greater or less length by several Europeans, among Previous whom Englishmen have been in the ascendant, in merit chroniclers as well as in numbers. I append a catalogue of their of Meshed names and publications,ËË so tha ËË t the reader may know whither to refer for such information as he may desire about particular periods or individual men. If I add one more to the list of these chroniclers, it is because 1 aspire not to replace, but to supplement their labours. 1 shall, as far as possible, avoid the repetition of what has been better said by them, believing implicitly in reference to the original source where that is feasible. But it will be within my power both to correct certain errors into which they have fallen, and to impart greater verisimilitude to the picture I J. B. Fraser (1822), Journey into _Khgragan, cap. xvii.; Lieut. A. Conolly (1830), a,-erland Jourwj to India, vol. i. cap. x.; Dr. J. Wolff (1831 and 1844), Travels and Adventures and Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara; (Sir) A. Burnes (1832), Travels into Bokhara, vol, iii. cap. xiv.; J. P. Ferrier (1845), Caravan Journeys, cap. ix.; N. de KhaDikoff (1858), 3Umoire mir la Partie miridionale de PA8ie Centrale, pp. 97-108; ~Ve8hid, la Cittil santa e il suo Territorio; E. B. Eastwick (1862), Journal of a Diplomate, vol. ii. pp. 200-233; A. Vamb6ry (1863), Life and Adventures, cap. xxvii.; Neine Wanderungen und.Erlebnisse in Persien; Captain H. C. Marsh (1872), Ride through Islam, pp. 98-112; Seistan Boundary Commission (1872)-(i.) Col. Euan Smith, Bastern, Per8ia, vol. i. pp. 357-366 ; (ii.) Dr. H. W. Bellew, From the Indus to the Tigris, pp. 360-368; Colonel V. Baker (1873), Cloudg in the East, cap. x.; (Sir) C. MacGregor (1875), Journey through Khorasan, vol. i. pp. 277-end, with a plan 9f the city, p. 284; J. Bassett (1878), Persia, the Land of the Imams, pp. 221-235; E. OËËDonovan (1880-1881), The _21ferv Oasis, vol. i. cap. xxviii-xix., vol. ii. cap. xxx.; P. Lessar ( 1882), Pete?-mann's Mittheilungen, 1884, viii.; Lieut. A. C. Yate (1885), Travels ivitA the Afghan Boundary Commission, cap. x. Prior to this century the descriptions of Meshed are short and scattered. But an interesting account of the city in 1741 is to be found in Voyage de l7nde a1rekke, by Abdul Kerim, pp. 48, 70-74, trans,lated into French by M. Langl6s. MESHED 149. by bringing it up to date. The fixed residence of an official representative of the Qu I een in Meshed is alone sufficient to mark an epoch in its history |PPage_ I may dismiss with the briefest notice the rudiments of knowledge about the holy city. dom or Witness and fame are alike due to the fact that History in the ninth century A.D. the hol Imam Reza, son of Imam usa an hth of the twelve Imams or Prophets, were here interred. Rumour relates, but apparentTy without -any very certain foundation, that, having incurred the jealousy of the Khalif Mamun (son of the renowned Harun- erRashid), whose capital was Merv, the saint, then residing at the. city of Tus,ËËfifteen miles from the modem Meshed, was removed at his orders by a dish of poisoned grapes; although another tradition represents the holy father as having comfortably died in his bed, or whatever was the ninth century equivalent thereto, at Tus. Whichever be the truth, the body of the departed prophet was interred in a tower in the neighbouring village of Sanabad, where also (a curious corollaryto the story of the murder) lay the remains of the Khalif's father, the illustrious Harun. Sanabad gradually became an object of religious attraction and worship, and Ibn Batutah, who travelled hither about 1330 A.D., found the mosque of the Imam in existehce, and highly revered .2 In 1404 the courtly Spanish Ambassador, Don Ruy Gonzalez di Clavijo, passing Meshed on his way to the Court of Timur at Samarkand, left a similar record.3 Shah Rukh, the youngest son of Timur, subsequently embellished the. mausoleum; while his wife, Gowher Shad, erected the magnificent mosque which still exists alongside. Mashhad is the locative n6n. of the root s~ ~~, to witness. 2 -that I the Meshed of El Reza is a large and well-peopled city, abounding in fruits. Over the Meshed is a large dome adorned with a covering of silk and golden candlesticks. Under the dome, and opposite to the tomb of El Reza, is the grave of the Calif Harun-el-Rashid. Over this they constantly place candlesticks with lights. But when the followers of Ali enter as pilgrims they kick the grave of El Rashid, but pour out their benedictions over that of El Reza.ËË It is clear from the above that in the fourteenth century. Meshed was as much a place of Sunni as of Shiah pilgrimage. 2 1 Imam Reza lies buried in a great mosque in a large tomb, which is covered with silver gilt. On account of this tomb the city is crowded with pilgrims, who come here in great numbers every year. When the pilgrims arrive, they dismount and kiss the ground, saying that they have reached a holy placeËË (Hakluty Society edition). |PPage_ 150 It was not, however, till the accession of the Sefavi dynasty, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, that Mesl~ed, as it had now for long been designated, became a centre of world-wide renown. Having established the Shiah heresy as the national creed, it was in the highest degree n ecessary for the new occupants of the throne to institute soine shrine which should divert the flow of pilgrimage and money from Mecca, and appeal to the enthusiasm of the entire Shiah community. Just as Jeroboam set up the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, in order to divert the Israelitish pilgrims from Jerusalem, so the Shahs Ismail, Tahmasp, and Abbas loaded the mosque of Imam Reza with wealth and endowments, visited and sometimes resided in the city,ËË and loft it what it has ever since remained, the Mecca of the Persian world. It does not indeed rank first among Shiah shrines; for just as Ali (son-in-law of the Prophet and in succession to him, accordil~g_to the Shiah canon, the true leader of the faith) and his son, the martyred Husein , are superior in holiness even to the, Imam Reza, so their tombs at Neief (61- Meshed Ali) and KerbelL_Ljj~ superior sanctity to the shrine of Meshed. But Nejef and Kerbela, are both situated on Turkish-i.e. on alien-soil; and unpatriotic would be the soul that, while paying its devotions to those sacred spots, did not also bum with th e desire to behold and to offer its prayers at the religious centre of Iran, and to kiss the railings of the Imam's grave .2 The situation of Meshed, however, so near the confines of Turan, rendered it liable to constant inroad and attack, and in common with all the border cities of Khorasan it has had a stormy and eventful history. In the reign of Shah Abbas (A.D. 1587) it was once taken and sacked by the Uzbegs. It suffered severely during the Afghan invasion of Mahmud. But it revived under the patronage of the conqueror Nadir Shah, who, although after his accession to the tl~rone lie eschewed and endeavoured I Abbas the Great is said, upon one occasion, as a proof of his piety, to have walked with his court the entire distance from Isfahan to Meshed, while the Astronomer Royal measured the distance with a string, and returned the total as 199 farsak7ts and a fraction. 2 1 asked a Shiah sevid of Kerbela the pzdeLin which the Holy-Places of the Moslem faith are _-s ~ccA by his persuasion, and his answer was as follows (1). Mecca, (2) Medina, (3) Nejef, (4) Kerbela, (5) Kasimcin, near Baghdad, (6) Meshed, (7) Samara, on the Tigris, (8) Kum. But a Persian Shiah would rank Meshed after Kerbela. Thej~11&Eftm~ ~etg_Mccca confers the title Haii. that to Kerbela Kerbelai. and to Meshed Me8h0di. A MESHED |PPage_ 161 forcibly to expunge the Shiah faith,ËË yet often held his court at Meshed, restored and beautified the sacred shrine, and built in the city a tomb both for himself and for the son whom he had blinded in a fit of jealous passion. After his death, Meshed remained in the possession of his blind grandson, Shah Rukh, under whose infirm rule its population, harried by almost yearly invasions of the Uzbegs, sank from 60,000 to 20,000, until at the end of the century he was deposed and tortured to death by the brutal eunuch Agha Mohammed Khan Kajar, the founder of the reigning family of Persia. During the present century Meshed has several times been in rebellion against the sovereign power, having inherited a detestation of the Kajars, recurrent outhreaks of which have necessitated more than one punitive expedition; but along with the rest of the kingdom it has now passed in peaceful subjection into the hands of Nasr-ed-Din. Meshed is surrounded, as are all Oriental towns of any size, by a mud wall with small towers at regular distances, and projecting bartizans at the angles. The wall was originally nine feet thick at the bottom and four feet thick at the top, besides having a parapet one foot in thickness, but is now in a .state of utter disrepair. There was formerly a small ditch or Pusse-braye, below the rampart, with a low parapet on the crest of the counterse.arp, and a broader ditch beyond. But the process of decay has merged these structural features in a common ruin, and in most parts they are not to be distinguished from each other. The circumference of the *walls has been variously calculated at four, four and a half, and six.miles; but any calculation is difficult, owing to the irregularity of the plan.2 They are pierced by five gates: the Bala Khiaban, or Upper Avenue, and the Pain Khiaban, or Lower Avenue Gate, at the two ends of the main street; the Naugan, Idgah, and Sarab. The ark or citadel, my visit to which I shall presently relate, is situated on the south-west wall .3 1 The attempted restoration of the Sunni creed by Nadir Shah was an act of policy, intended to reunite the Mussulman world from Tabriz to Delhi under the sceptre of a single monarch. ~ 2 MacGregor's plan (vol. i. p. 284), which was made by Col. Dolmage, is the only one that I know, but is not thoroughly accurate. Eastwick, in riding round the walls and describing the plan of the city, seems, by some strange error, to have reversed the points of the compass, turning north into south and east into west. . 3 For the geographical position of Meshed, vide a paper by Major.T. H. Holdich in the Froceedinys of the -R.G.S. (New Series), vol. vii. (1885) pp. 735-738. Size and PlEm of the city ó eir visit are pressed upon them, in the shape of the local manufactures of the. city, of amulets and trinkets, and of turquoises engraven with sentences from the Koran. The most remarkable feature, however, about this section of the parallelogram is that, belonging to the Imam, it is holy ground, and consequently affords an inviolable sanctuary, or bast, to any malefactor who succeeds in - entering its precincts. Some writers declare that even Christians, Jews, and Guebres (the Persian |PPage_ name for the Parsis) are permitted to use it for the same purpose; but this I elsewhere heard denied. To a Mohammedan, however, it is a safe refuge from his pursuers, with whom, from the security of his retreat, he can then make terms, and settle the ransom which is to purchase his immunity if he comes out.ËË The idea of sanctuary is of course familiar to the Oriental mind, and is embodied in the Cities of Refuge of the Pentateuch. Nor should it excite the indignant surprise of the English reader, seeing that in our own country and capital at no very distant date a similar refuge for debtors existed in the famous Alsatia between Blackfriars, Bridge and Temple Bar, which also had an ecclesiastical foundation, having originally been the precincts of the Dominicans or Black Friars. The Bast at Meshed is so emphatically the property of the Imam, that any animal entering its limits is at once confiscated by the authorities of the shrine.In Persia the idea of bast seems, it is difficult to say why, to have a threefold localisation : (1) In sacred buildings or mosques (compare the ËË horns of the altarËË in the Jewish tabernacle) ; (2) in the stabies or at the tails of the horses belonging to the sovereign or members of the royal family; (3) in the neighbourhood of axtillery-e.g. in the Meidan-i- Tapkhaneh, or Gun Square, in Teheran, and particularly in contact with the big gun which stands outside the palace. Chardin (edit. Lan&s, vol. vii. p. 369) says, two centuries ago, that it applied to the tombs of great saints, to the gateway of the Royal Palace at Isfahan, and to the kitchen as well as the stables of the KiDg. The selection of the royal stables and horses as an especial sanctuary would appear to be due to the extravagant attention that has always been paid, in a country where there are superb breeds of horses, and where every man is a horseman, to this part of the establishment of the sovereign. There is a Persian saying that I a horse will never bear him to victory by whom its sanctity has been infringed;ËË and Malcolm (vol., ii. cap. xxiii) quotes a Persian MS., which attributed all the misfortunes of Nadir Mirza, the grandson of Nadir Shah, to his having put to death a fugitive who bad taken sanctuary in the royal stables. The MS. adds these interesting particulars: I The monarch or chief in whose stable a criminal takes refuge must feed him as long as he stays there; he may be slain the moment before he reaches it or when he leaves it; ËËbut while there, a slave who has murdered his master ~;nnot be touched. The place of safety is at the horse's head, and if that is tied up in the open air the person who takes refuge~ is to touch the head-stall.ËË In later times, the tail, though perhaps more venturesome, appears to have been as much fraught with protection as the bead. |PPage_ 156 . At the end of the bazaar of the Bast, a lofty archway, rising high above the adjoining wall, leads into the Sahii, or principal 2. The court, of the Holy Buildings. This is a noble quadrangle, Sahn 150 yards long by 75 yards wide, flagged with gravestones of the wealthy departed,.whose means have enabled them to purchase this supreme distinction, and surrounded by a double storey of recessed alcoves. In the centre of this court stands a small octagonal structure or kiosque, with gilded roof, covering a fountain which is supplied by the main canal, and surrounded by a stone channel constructed by Shall Abbas. The water of this fountain is used for purposes of ablution by the pilgrim as he enters. Upon the four sides the walls between and above the recesses are faced with enamelled tiles; and in the centre of ~each rises one of those gigantic portals, or aiwans (archways set in a lofty rectangular frame), which are characteristic of the Arabian architecture of Central Asia. These arches are embellished with colossal tiles, bearing in Kufic letters verses from the Koran. An inscription on the southern aiwan says that it was built by Shah Abbas II. in A.H. 1059. The lower bands of Kufic characters on all the aiwans were., we learn from a similar source, added in A.H. 1262. Upon the summit of the western aiwan rises a cage, very rashly assumed by Eastwick to be made of ivory, from which the muezzin gives the call to prayer.ËË The eastern aiwan is that which leads to the Holy of Holies, the tomb-chamber of the Imam; and its special character is indicated by the gilding with which its upper half is overlaid. An inscription upon it -says that it was finished by Shah Sultan Hugein in A.H. 1085 ; and some later verses record that it was gilded by Nadir Shah in A.H. 1145 with the gold that had been plundered from India and the Great Mogul. The Sabn contains two minarets, which, according to descriptions, and from what I myself saw from the roof of a bazaar within the Bast, do not appear to be placed in analogous positions on either side of the main entrance. The older minaret, built by Shah Ismail or Shah Tahmasp, springs from the mausoleum itself. When Fraser was here on his second visit in 1834, it had been I so shaken or damaged, that for fear of its falling they had taken it down.ËË It was afterwards rebuilt. The second or larger minaret was erected Chardin says that the reason why these cages were constructed for the Inluezzins in Pensia was the fear lest from the summit of the minarets they should see too much of female life in the courts of the neighbouring houses. MESBED 157 by Nadir Shah, and rises from behind the opposite gateway. - The upper part of these minarets is in each case overlaid with gilded copper plates, and is crowned with the cage4ike gallery that is |PPage_ common to the Persian style. The sun flashes from their radiant surface, and in the distance they glitter like pillars of fire. And now we approach the chief glory of the whole enclosure, the inosque and sepulchre of the immortal Imam. I say immortal advisedly, for the theory upon which the shrine and the vast system dependent upon it subsist is that the sainted Reza still lives, and responds miraculously to the petitions of his worshippers. The Hazret, as he is called-i.e. His Highness, -is the host of his guests. He supplies their bodily wants while they remain within his domain; and equally he answers their prayers, and furthers their spiritual needs. It is open to any pilgrim to consult him, and Delphic responses are easily forthcoming in return for a suitable fee to one of the attendant priests. From time to time also the rumour goes abroad that some astonishing miracle has been effected at the shrine of His Highness. The cripple has walked, or the blind man has seen, or some similar manifestation has occurred of god-like effluence.ËË The tomb itself is preceded by a spacious chamber, whoseËË marble floor is overlaid with rich carpets. Above it, to a height of seventy-seven feet, swells the main cupola, whose gilded exterior2 I This is no new thing, for, 200 years ago, the French missionary, Father Sanson, narrates and mercilessly analyses the same phenomena. I Shah Abbas has made this tomb famous by a great many false miracles he caused to be pr actised there; for, placing people there on purpose who should counterfeit themselves blind, they suddenly received their sight at this sepulchre, and immediately cryËËd out, Ë Ë A miracle; Ë Ë he procur*d so great a veneration for this tomb of Imam Reza that most of the greatest lords in Persia have desirËËd to be buryËËd in this mosque; and to which they give great legacies.ËË Nadir Shah, on the other band, had a most intense contempt for these manufactured miracles. Vide a story related by Malcolm, History, vol. ii. p. 51. 2 A very interesting passage occurs in the narrative of Chardin (edit. Langl6s, vol. iii. p. 228), who, being in Isfahan in the reign of Shah Suleiman in 1672, went to the house of the King's goldsmith to see these very gilt plates being made as tiles for the dome of Imam Reza, which bad just been destroyed by an earthquake. In the English translation of Lloyd (vol. i. p. 237) it appears as follows: I These plates were of brass (no-cuivre, i.e. copper) and square, 10 inches in breadth and 16 in length, and of the thickness of two crown pieces. Underneath were two Barrs 3 inches broad, solderËËd on crosswise, to sink into the Parget (i.e. plaster) and to serve as cramp irons to fasten the tiles. The upper part was gilt so thick that ËËone would have taken the tile to be of massif gold. Each tile took up the weight of 3 Ducates and a quarter of gilding, and 8. Mosque of Imam Reza |PPage_ 158 MESHED 159 marks the sacred spot to the advancing pilgrim, and gladdens his weary eyes from afar. The walls of this chamber are adorned with a wainscoting of kashi-i.e. enamelled tiles, above which are broad bands of Arabic writing in the same material. There is a hum of voices in the building; for servants of the shrine are heard reading aloud from the KoraD, seyids are mumbling their daily prayers, greedy mullahs are proffering their services to the new arrivals; and many are the exclamations of pious wonder and delight that burst from the bewildered pilgrim, as, after months of toil and privation in the most cheerless surroundings, there flash upon his gaze the marbles and the tile work, the gold and the silver, the jewels and the priceless offerings of the famous shrine. Encrusted within and without with Vold I it isËË ËË savs Vamb6rv, who himself saw it, ËËunqiiestionabv the richest tomb in the whole Ts-lamiteworld. _~61_thouvh_-si_n_cethe date-of its has been several times plunde fretted work of the interior still contain an incalculable amount of treasure.The walls are adorned with thi~_r_arest ~trinkets aWd an ai -of diamonds, there a sword and shield jewels: here grette, studded with rubies and emeralds, rich old bracelets, large massive candelabra, necklaces of immense value.ËË Well may the worshipper, as he enters, bow his head till it touches the ground, before he approaches the main object of his devotion, the sepulchre it-self, At different times the tomb has been surrounded with railings of gold and silver and steel. The first of these was originally set The up by Shah Tahmasp, but was in part dismantled and Prophet's plundered by the grandson of Nadir Shah. The last was tomb the gift of Nadir himself. - Three doors lead to the, shrine, one of which is of silver, another of gold plates studded with precious stones, the gift of Fath Ali Shah; the third being covered with a carpet sewed with pearls. Upon the railings round the tomb are hung silver and wooden tablets with appropriate forms came to about 10 crowns value. They were ordered to make 3,000 at first, as I was told by The Chief Goldsmith, who was overseer of the work,ËË I By none more than those who should have been responsible for its safety. The two sons of the blind Shah Rukh and grandsons of Nadir Shah in particular could not keep their avaricious hands from the shrine which their grandfather bad bonoured and embellished. Nasrullah Mirza pulled down part of the gold railing round. the saint's tomb, and Nadir Mirza took down the great golden ball, weighing 420 lbs., from the top of the dome; while both brothers freely plundered the lamps, carpets &c., inside. of prayer and inscriptions. I Before each of them a little group of the devout is posted, either to pray themselves or to repeat the petitions after the leader of their common devotions. This they do with cries and sobs, as though thus to open to themselves the gates of eternal bliss. It is indeed a singular and sublime |PPage_ J s spectacle to see how these rude sons of Asia kiss with unfeigned tenderness the fretwork of the grating, the pavement, and especially the great padlock which hangs from the door. _Dly the priests and the sevids are uninfluenced ~y these feqling~_of devqtioi~. Their onlv concern is with the -Dence which they may collect. They force their way everywhere among the devout, nor do they retire till by felicitations or other good offices they have obtained the desired mite. When the pilgrim, filled w-ith awe, walking backwards, has at last left the building, he has earned for himself tho honorary title of Meshedi, a title which he has inscribed on his signet and his tombstone, and which he ever after prefixes to his name as an agnomen.ËË In the absorption consequent upon visiting the mausoleum of the Imam, the pilgrim probably recks little of the dust of the Other famous Harun-er-Ra-shid, which reposes beneath a sar tombs cophagus hard by. Nor, perhaps, will he think much of the tomb of Abbas Mirza, the son of Fath Ali Shah, and wrand father of the present monarch, which also stands beneath the sacred roof. Other tombs and chambers, moreover, there are opening out of the principal shrine, but of minor importance, and these may be dismissed without further notice. I now come to a very prevalent error which it is desirable in the interests of truth to expose. It was started by Mr. Eastwick Europeans in 1862, when he claimed for himself that he was who have ËËthe only European that ever went into the mosque of seen the shrine Imam Reza at Meshed, certainly the only one that entered as a Enrop~an.ËË I And it has been repeated and aggravated by the new edition of the ËËEncyclopoedia Britannica,ËË which says (vide article on Meshed) : I Eastwick was the only European before OËËDonovan who penetrated as far as the parallelogram.ËË Both of these claims are quite without justification. Before the time of Eastwick, Fraser in 1822 went into the shrine and into the tomb chamber itself, and after more than once repeating the Moslem confession of faith and giving the mullahs to understand that be I Journal of a Dil)loniate, vol. ii, p. 229. |PPage_ 160 PERSIN XESIIED 161~ was a convert to Islam -(a most questionable proceeding on his looked through into the great quadranole.1 This is an achievement part), was allowed to sit for two days in one of the alcoves of the which might, I think; be effected without risk at the present time. Sahn, in order to make a drawing of its interior.ËË Conolly in 1830 A European who found his way into the Bast, particularly by some visited. all the chambers of the mosque but that containing tli6 other than one of the two main entries, might without much tomb itself, and walked daily in the Sahn, where, thou gli recognised, difficulty succeed in reaching the gates of the Sahn. He might be lie was free from insult.2 Burnes in 1832) on his return journey stared at or followed or mobbed, but lie would probably not be from Bokliara, went into the Sahn, but did not think it prudent to attacked. It would be a different thing were he to enter the 13 go beyond, his -ËËJudgment conquering his curiosity. Ferrier in sacred precincts themselves;. though I am one of those who 1845 did exactly the same .4 Fraser, returning to Meshed in 1884, incline to the opinion that in these respects the fanaticism of after the occupation of the city by the army of Abbas Mirza, with Orientals is apt to be exaggerated. In the interests, however, not which were several English officers, found ËË the Sabn open to all merely of personal safety, but of the reputation of his nationality, Europeans,ËË but in a state of grievous dilapidation that was after- which might suffer from detection, it would be foolhardy in a wards repaired.,ËË All these were before the date of Eastwick's foreigner to make the attempt. I was myself conducted over the visit. But when we come to Eastwick himself, we are surprised to roofs of the bazaars to a spot, I believe, within thei Bast, where I could find not only that he did not o into the mosque, in the true sense see the sacred buildings very well, and was from eighty to a hundred 9 0 of the term, at all, but that he did not even go so far as the more yards distant from,the mosque of Gowher Shad, which adjoins cautious of his predecessors in crossing the Sahn. He was intro- that of Imam Reza, and to which I next turn. If I must claim duced by the Muta-vvali Bashi, or Chief Guardian of the. shrine, by for myself any special distinction, it is the modest one of being a door from the back into one of the recessed alcoves that surround the first English Member of Parliament who has entered the walls the Sahn, where he sat and gazed at -what was passing below. He of Meshed, so far as my know- ledge extends. went no further, and lie even went there unawares.6 The second mosque is behind that of Imam Reza, but is situated Continuing the narrative since his day and down to that of obliquely to it. Like the othe , it has a large court, with two r OËËDonovan, we find that in the year following (1863) Vamb6ry, on storeys of recessed compartments all round, with soaring 4. Mosque |PPage_ the return from his heroic voyage as a mendicant dervish to of Gowher tile-COVered aiwans, and with two great ungilt but tile Shad Bokhai a and Samarkand, entered the mosque and visited the tomb encircled minarets. On the main fagade is aii inscription chamber in the character which he had go long and successfully saying that it was erected in the reign of Sha Rukh in A.H. 821. h worn. About the same time Colonel Dolmage, an English officer A similar panel on the southern aiwan records its reconstruction by in the service of the Shah,ËË who superintended a powder factory Sultan Husein in A.H. 1087. Fraser, who visited it, thought Shah near Meshed, penetrated into the interior under the auspices of the 4- this mosque ËËby far the most beautiful and magnificent that be had I Hissam-es-Sultaneb, then Governor-General of Khorasan. Finally, 1: seen in Persia;ËË and Vamb6ry, speaking of its main archway, said: when we come to OËËDonovan in 1880, we find that he did not rl~ It was long before I could determine whether I should award the even enter the Sahn, but claims from a doorway outside to have palm to this gate or to those two in Samarkand and Herat which are Journey into K7iorasan, pp. 472, 511. il of the same style ; for it is certain that they all date from the reign of Overland Journey to India, vol. i. p. 288. e work of the same architect. It Travels into Bokhara, vol. iii. p. 70. Cararan Journeys, p. 126.Shah Rukh, if indeed they were not th A. Winter's Journey, vol. ii. p. 211. is possible that the Madrasseh Khanym in Samarkand, as also the Jour?zal of a Diploniate, vol. ii. pp. 224-229. Musallah in Herat, were more luxurious and magnificent, but I can 7 Colonel, originally Doctor, Dolmage was an Englishman who, after servinhardly believe that they were ever more beautiful. 9 as a veterinary surgeon in the Crimean War, came out to Persia and entered the service of the Shah. ËË He subsequently died at Teheran. It was his plan of Meshed Gowher Shad's mosque hardly, at the present day, sustains s that appeared in MacGregor's book, having been purchased by the latter officer, this reputation from the outside, though evidently its kashi is for a few krans. 217w3ferv Oasis, vol, i, cap. xxix. |PPage_ 162 superb. The dome, which is larger and loftier -than that of Imam Reza, is covered with tiles of blue, green, and orange patterns, which have peeled off in places. Entrance is found by one of the archways in the principal Sabn to a mazlresseh, or religious college, which was erected by Other the munificence of one Mirza Jafir, a wealthy Persian buildings merchant who had made a fortune in India; a