Part 1

ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY

HIS LIFE AND ADVENTURES

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF

WITH INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER DEDICATED TO THE BOYS OF ENGLAND

Portrait and Seventeen Illustrations

London T. FISHER UNWIN 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1889

FIFTH AND POPULAR EDITION.

=ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY=: His Life and Adventures. Written by Himself. With Portrait and 14 Illustrations. Square Imperial 16mo, cloth extra, 6s.

"A most fascinating work, full of interesting and curious experiences."--_Contemporary Review._

"It is partly an autobiographic sketch of character, partly an account of a singularly daring and successful adventure in the exploration of a practically unknown country. In both aspects it deserves to be spoken of as a work of great interest and of considerable merit."--_Saturday Review._

"We can follow M. Vambéry's footsteps in Asia with pride and pleasure; we welcome every word he has to tell us about the ethnography and the languages of the East."--_Academy._

"The character and temperament of the writer come out well in his quaint and vigorous style.... The expressions, too, in English, of modes of thought and reflections cast in a different mould from our own gives additional piquancy to the composition, and, indeed, almost seems to bring out unexpected capacities in the language."--_Athenæum._

"Has all the fascination of a lively romance. It is the confession of an uncommon man; an intensely clever, extraordinarily energetic egotist, well-informed, persuaded that he is in the right and impatient of contradiction."--_Daily Telegraph._

"The work is written in a most captivating manner, and illustrates the qualities that should be possessed by the explorer."--_Novoe Vremya, Moscow._

"We are glad to see a popular edition of a book which, however it be regarded, must be pronounced unique. The writer, the adventures, and the style are all extraordinary--the last not the least of the three. It is flowing and natural--a far better style than is written by the majority of English travellers."--_St. James's Gazette._

*** _Over Eighty other English and Foreign periodicals have reviewed this work._

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN, 26, PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

CONTENTS. PAGE

PREFATORY NOTE xiii

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER xv

I.

EARLY YEARS.

Tutor and Waiter--Vacation Rambles--Literary Studies--Linguistic Studies 1

II.

THE FIRST JOURNEY.

At Galacz--A Storm at Sea--Penniless in Pera--A Teacher of Languages--Teaching a Turk--Hussein Daim Pasha--Ahmed Effendi 15

III.

LIFE IN STAMBUL.

My First Book--Seeking for an Ancient Dialect--My Friends' Opinion of my Journey--"Reshid Effendi" 34

IV.

FROM TREBIZOND TO ERZERUM.

At Trebizond--On the road to Erzerum 42

V.

FROM ERZERUM TO THE PERSIAN FRONTIER.

The Frontier of Kurdistan--Attacked by Robbers--Tales of Robbers--An Old Friend 47

VI.

FROM THE PERSIAN BORDER TO TEBRIZ.

On Persian Soil--The Bazaar at Khoy--The Seids 56

VII.

IN TEBRIZ

Study of the Shi-ite Sect--Holy Water--An Old Acquaintance--A Royal Investiture--An Overworked Embassy 64

VIII.

IN ZENDJAN.

A Persian Medico--A Persian Miracle-Play--Tragedy Appreciated 77

IX.

FROM KAZVIN TO TEHERAN.

The Atoning Procession 85

X.

IN TEHERAN.

Talking to Turks of Home--Social Contrasts in Asia 89

XI.

THE SALT DESERT OF DESHTI-KUVIR.

Choosing a Companion--Morning Prayer--The Desert of Devils--The Caravan of the Dead 94

XII.

KUM AND KASHAN.

The City of Virgins--The Tomb of Fatima--Kashan--Murder in the Desert 104

XIII.

FROM ISFAHAN TO THE SUPPOSED TOMB OF CYRUS.

The Pope of Isfahan--Movable Towers--Tales for Travellers--Gazelles in the Desert--Fars 113

XIV.

PERSEPOLIS.

Solomon's Throne--A Morning Reverie--Vandalism in Persia--Embracing the Pilgrims 125

XV.

SHIRAZ.

Fertility of Shiraz--A Linguist's Joke--Persian Cruelty--Saadi--Europeans Feasting in Persia--An Earthquake in Shiraz--Desolation 136

XVI.

PREPARATIONS FOR MY JOURNEY TO CENTRAL ASIA.

Chivalrous Dervishes--Scruples--Journey with Tartars--Committed to His Purpose 150

XVII.

FROM TEHERAN TO THE LAND OF THE TURKOMANS.

Description of the Caravan--Incognito Unveiled--Thieving Jackals--Unrequited Love--The Slave Trade 161

XVIII.

GOMUSHTEPE.

Receiving the Pilgrims--How to become a Dervish--Learning in the Wilds--Slavery--A Betrothal Feast--A Robber Chief 174

XIX.

FROM GOMUSHTEPE TO THE BORDER OF THE DESERT.

Threatened by the Wild Boar--An Anxious Moment 187

XX.

IN THE DESERT.

Suspicion Aroused--A Pious Brother--Karendag Mountains--Little Balkan Mountain--Charm of the Desert--Thirst!--Hot Weather 192

XXI.

IN KHIVA.

An Army of Asses--Rest and Dread--Making a Friend--The Khan--A Lion in Khiva--Fierce Barbarism 213

XXII.

FROM KHIVA TO BOKHARA.

Intoxicated Dervishes--A Khivan Fair--Flying from Tekkes--Thirst and Despair--Among Slaves 233

XXIII.

IN BOKHARA.

Life in Bokhara--More Suspicions--Theology in Bokhara--The Slave Trade--The Road to Samarkand 244

XXIV.

IN SAMARKAND.

Tombs of the Saints--Ambition and Prudence--A Royal Cross-Examiner 254

XXV.

FROM SAMARKAND TO HERAT.

Taken for a Runaway Slave--A Scorpion Bite--Saved by Prayers--Redemption of Slaves--Exorbitant Tolls 263

XXVI.

IN HERAT AND BEYOND IT.

A City in Ruins--Yakub Khan--Freezing Weather 275

XXVII.

IN MESHED.

A Meshed Crowd--An Unceremonious Visitor--A Welcome--A Meshed Monument--Persecution of Jews--The Tomb of Firdusi 283

XXVIII.

FROM MESHED TO TEHERAN.

An Old Friend--Saddle _v._ Cushions--A Curious Phenomenon--Alone in the Desert--An Englishman--A Snug Berth--Confounding the Disturbers--Reputation without Foundation 297

XXIX.

FROM TEHERAN TO TREBIZOND.

The Discomforts of Civilization--Presented to the Shah--Persian Official Corruption--A Character--An Expensive Photographer 314

XXX.

HOMEWARDS.

Constantinople--London 325

XXXI.

IN ENGLAND.

Sir Henry Rawlinson--Sir Roderick Murchison--Lord Strangford--A Lion in London--At Burlington House--The Sorrows of Authorship 330

XXXII.

IN PARIS.

Napoleon III.--French Suspicions 343

XXXIII.

IN HUNGARY.

In Hungary 349

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR Frontispiece

PRESSBURG 3

PESTH--THE STARTING PLACE 11

GALACZ 17

THE BOSPHORUS 23

MOUNT ARARAT 57

CITY OF TEBRIZ 65

TRAVELLING IN PERSIA 97

TAKH-TA-RA-WAN 127

MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE TARTARS 151

A DERVISH FEAST 163

A LIGHT FOR THE COMPASS 197

THE KARENDAG HILLS 201

A WELL IN THE DESERT 209

AN ASININE ARMY 215

AUDIENCE WITH THE KHAN OF KHIVA 223

ROAD IN CENTRAL ASIA 229

SAMARKAND 255

PREFATORY NOTE TO FIRST EDITION.

The following pages contain a strictly personal narrative of my Travels and Adventures in Asia and in Europe. They make no pretence whatever to be a geographical and ethnological description of the actual Central Asia. Upon these points recent works have greatly added to the knowledge we possessed twenty years ago, when I performed my dangerous pilgrimage from Budapest to Samarkand. A _résumé_ of the various publications of Russian, English, French and German travellers in this region would have formed a separate book, but these have nothing to do with the variegated adventures of my own career, of which I here propose to give the first complete picture to the English reader.

ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY.

BUDAPEST.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

TO THE BOYS OF ENGLAND.

In presenting this narrative of my adventures in Europe and in Asia to the juvenile reader in England, I must add a few remarks which have not been embodied in the autobiographical reminiscences of this book. I must, in the first place, state that the desire to see foreign countries awoke in me at the tender age of six years. Playing with my younger comrades on the green before our village, I tried, with a crutch under my left arm--for I was lame--to run races with more lissome lads. Remaining usually far behind my rivals, and being jeered at by my comrades for my failures, I would go crying to my dear mother and bitterly complain of the shame which had befallen me. She used with all maternal tenderness to console me, saying, "Never mind that, my dear. If you grow older and stronger, you will beat them all by force of perseverance. I am sure you will yet be far in advance of them all." With firm reliance on the words of my good mother, I did not henceforth care very much for the scoffing of my playmates; I looked forward with great impatience to the time when I should be _in advance of them all_. With similar encouragements I was spurred on to my elementary studies, and, seeing that by dint of exertion I became one of the most industrious of students, I was fully prepared for the same success in physical competitions. But, alas! here I was to a certain extent disappointed, for my quick motion was generally hindered by the crutch, which I still used at the age of ten, not so much from necessity as from having become too accustomed to it to walk without it, but which I intended to lay aside as soon as possible. It was one day, whilst visiting the tomb of my father in the cemetery, that I made up my mind to walk without that troublesome instrument under my arm. Having thrown away the crutch, I walked, or I should rather say, I jumped, upon one leg a few paces, in order to try locomotion without a wooden support. It was a hard, nay, an exhaustive work; and, as the village was nearly a quarter of an hour's journey from the cemetery, I began to despair, and jumped back to fetch again the despised support. Having taken it in hand and being ready to start again for home, I suddenly felt an extraordinary agitation awakening in my breast; a desire for immediate ease was fighting fiercely with determined resolution, and it was only upon my remembrance of the good advice of my mother that the latter got the upper hand. In order to avoid any future temptation, I broke the crutch asunder, and using one half of it as a walking stick, I returned home, of course with great fatigue and nearly bathed in perspiration.

I relate this incident in order to prove to the young reader that a resolute will is able to accomplish even seemingly impossible things, and that, through persisting in our decisions, we nearly always reach the goal of our desires. With the motto, "Forwards and never backwards!" I, a lame man, destitute of all name, was able to see distant countries in Asia, and to visit such places and peoples as I was anxious to know from the time that I first read of them. For we Hungarians are, as you must know, Asiatics by descent; our ancestors came thousands of years ago from the East to the banks of the Danube, and it is very natural that with us a voyage to Asia is connected with a good deal of national piety.

To Englishmen travels in Asia have another kind of attraction. To one, that continent is the cradle of our holy religion, the ancient seat of civilization; to another, it is a region for adventure, or the far country where he may satisfy his curiosity by witnessing habits and customs so different from his own. To the vast majority of Englishmen Asia is a field for commercial and industrial enterprise, where a noble and grateful task awaits the European, and where a holy duty may be fulfilled.

Now I can assure my young friends in England that Asia is worth seeing and studying. There are many, many features in the character and the social life of the Asiatic which deserve our admiration, although there are also others which will rouse our compassion and instigate us more greatly to love our own country and to cling the more closely to our own religion and institutions. What will strike us most is the difference of opinion and of view we meet at every step in the interior life of the Asiatic. It is not only his physical appearance, his dress and language, his food and habitation, but also his manner of thinking, nay, his mode of walking sitting and lying, which will seem strange to our eyes, and offer to us a spectacle such as we are unaccustomed to in our European world. Of fine scenes, of queer looking towns, of wonderful buildings and old monuments I will not speak at all, but I will repeat what I said before: "A journey to Asia is quite worth the trouble involved in it."

It would be indeed unfair should I conceal from you the fact that travelling in the interior of Asia does not at all belong to the class of enterprises called pleasure trips or vacation tours; for it involves a good deal of trouble and fatigue, of privation and suffering. A man brought up under better circumstances and accustomed to lead a comfortable life must be prepared to nourish his body on the most incredible food, to front all inclemencies of weather, and, what is most difficult, to renounce his notions of cleanliness. Of course a European is only gradually trained for such an extraordinary life of hardships; it is only by getting gradually from bad to worse that we are able to withstand the most trying situations; and if, reading the following pages, you should be astonished at what I went through and what I had to suffer, please to note that in spite of the great poverty in which I spent my childhood my task would not have come to a successful end if my progress from Hungary to Central Asia had not taken place gradually and after a temporary sojourn in the countries I had to pass on my way. Well, the preparation was certainly lengthy and wearisome, but in spite of that preparatory school the whole undertaking was extremely hazardous, and my sufferings were really such as could hardly be described. The account, which you will read in the following pages and all that I have written, contains scarcely the half of the adventures I went through in Europe and in Asia, and ought to be taken only for the outlines of a career I intend to sketch, but will not publish in my lifetime.

I do not need to add that I do not repent at all of having spent the best portion of my life in visiting different Asiatic countries, and of having been an eye-witness of many strange and highly interesting customs and habits of men. The joy and in most satisfaction which I felt whilst looking on the scenes for which my earliest juvenile fancy longed, that same joy I derive now from the recollection of those bygone adventures, and I feel really happy in unfolding the delightful and variegated picture of my former life. Should my young readers in England find an enjoyment in these pages, and should I have succeeded in imparting to them any knowledge of the distant Asiatic world, I shall feel certainly the more happy; for, according to the Oriental, to receive is only a single pleasure, but to give is a twofold one.

ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY.

BUDAPEST.

I.

EARLY YEARS.

When my father died in 1832 I was but a few months old. My mother was poor, very poor indeed. By marrying again, however, she fondly hoped she might be enabled to give her helpless and fatherless orphans a better bringing up. But in this expectation she was sadly mistaken. Our stepfather, although a very excellent man, did but very little towards relieving the pressing needs of our small household. In due time, too, our family circle got fresh additions; the number of the little ones who stood in need of food and clothing was increasing. The consequence was that our parents, in their solicitude for the welfare of the smaller children, turned the older ones adrift to seek the best way they could their own livelihood as soon as they were supposed to have attained an age ripe enough to take care of themselves.

My turn came when twelve years old. My mother then thought I had reached a period of my life when I ought to look after myself. Although I had been afflicted since my birth with a lameness from which I began to suffer when three years old, and which compelled me to carry a crutch under my left arm up to the time my mother declared me to be of mature age, I was yet, on the whole, a tolerably hearty and healthy boy. The simple fare, often barely sufficient to still the cravings of hunger, the exceedingly scanty clothing allowed to me, and my want of familiarity with even the meanest comforts of life had, already, at this early stage of my life, hardened my body, and inured it to the most adverse climatic conditions.

I had then been attending school for about three years; and as my teachers were lavish in their praises of my extraordinary memory, enabling me to learn by heart, with great ease, almost anything, even passages in Latin which I did not understand at all, I thought of going on with the pursuit of my studies, in order to become a physician or lawyer,--the two professions which, at that time, were considered in the rural parts of Hungary as the goal of the most exalted ambition of an educated man.

My mother, too, had some such future in view for me, but inexorable poverty stood in the way of all such ambitious schemings. I had to stoop lower, much lower indeed. I was apprenticed to a ladies' dressmaker. When I had got so far as to be able to stitch two pieces of muslin together, a feeling overcame me that Dame Fortune had something better in store for me than stitching away all my life long. I soon left the shop of the ladies' dress artist, and was engaged by the inn-keeper of the village to be the private teacher of his only son. I was to initiate him into the mystery of reading, writing and arithmetic. But my duties did not end there; I had to perform, besides, such unusual offices as the cleaning of the boots of the family on Saturday evenings, and occasionally waiting on thirsty guests, and handing them a glass of wine or whiskey.

There was, undoubtedly, some slight incongruity between my tender age and the position of a teacher, nor was it easy for one who stood in sore need of instruction himself to impart it to another,--and, indeed, the master of the house did not fail to remind me of this anomaly by a treatment anything but in keeping with the dignity of my position as the mentor of his son.

But I received even worse treatment at the hands of the young master--my pupil. The lad was two years my senior, and on one occasion, when carried away with my pedagogic zeal I had given him a severe reprimand for his rude doings, he, nothing loth, fell on me and would have given me a sound thrashing but for the timely appearance of his mother.

My tutorship proved thus a school of hardship for me; but I bravely persevered until I could carry away with me from the Island of Schütt, where I had spent the first years of my childhood, the large sum of eight florins, which represented my net earnings. With this sum I hastened to St. George, in the vicinity of Pressburg, in order to begin there my studies at the gymnasium.

The money I had brought with me was just sufficient to purchase me the necessary books, and kind and charitable people helped me on in many other ways. Seven different families each gave me one day in the week a free meal, adding to it a big slice of bread for breakfast and another for luncheon. I also got the cast-off clothes of the wealthier schoolboys. By dint of application, and owing, perhaps, to the quick and easy comprehension which was natural to me, I succeeded in passing my examination at the first Latin class, as the second at the head of the class. My whole heart was in my studies; I was soon able to speak Latin with tolerable fluency; my professors remarked me and showed me some favour, which greatly assisted me in my struggles.

I passed, also, at St. George my examination in the second Latin class, successfully. My fondness for roving gave me no rest. I began to long for a change and was particularly desirous of going to Pressburg, where there were schools of a higher grade. I therefore left St. George, although I had my livelihood almost assured there, and the year 1846 saw me, at the age of fourteen, within the walls of the ancient City of Coronation.

There began anew my struggling and striving and desperate exertions to support myself. It became clear to me from the very first that, as buildings became taller and crowds larger, the difficulty of making acquaintances was increasing and the interest of others in my fortunes was diminishing. I remained here, for three years, now in the capacity of a servant, and then teaching she-cooks, chambermaids, and other individuals thirsting for knowledge. Every stone of the pavement of that beautiful little town on the blue Danube, could it but speak, might tell some sad tale of misery which I endured there. But youth is able to bear anything and everything!

I continued my studies, undaunted by want and privations, and was steadily advancing towards the object I had proposed to myself; at the end of the first term of school I was reckoned amongst the best scholars. In recalling these sad days, I never cease to wonder at the never-failing cheerfulness and the high spirits which were my constant companions throughout and helped me through all the adversities of life. My sturdy health aided me in the good fight and did not allow my good-humour to desert me.