Arminius Vambery, his life and adventures Part 2

I need not say that the instruction I imparted was highly profitable to myself. We did at first some French, but later on we glided from the French lesson into explanatory sketches of European life and European ideas. I told the Bey of our social, political, and scientific inst.i.tutions, decking them out, as a matter of course, in their brightest colours, for the European, during his first stay in the East, is always looking back with fondness to the West he has just left, and the very things he used to condemn look to him charming at a distance.

My information was almost always received with approval and admiration.

Turkey had just seen a good specimen of Europe in her Anglo-French allies who had come to her a.s.sistance against the Russians; the Turks were, therefore, eager to learn all the particulars having reference to the Western land, and if the descriptions of these excited now and then their envy, roused them to disapproval or called out their conceit, they were always listened to, and that with pleasure.

At the close of the lesson a well-prepared and abundant breakfast was always brought in, and I must own that from the very first the cooking of the better cla.s.ses in Constantinople had enlisted my gastronomic partiality. It frequently happened, too, that we started immediately after breakfast for a ride on horseback, my pupil making his calls in my company; in short, I pa.s.sed a considerable portion of the day in the society of Turks, and I used to return to Pera, that is, to European life, in the evening only.

My permanent stay amongst Turks dates, however, from the time when, at the recommendation of a countryman of mine, I was invited by Hussein Daim Pasha, general of a division, to enter his house as the teacher of his son, Ha.s.san Bey.

I removed my quarters from Pera to the charmingly situated row of houses at Fyndykly; there I got a separate room, and enjoyed for the first time the amenities of Oriental quiet and Turkish comfort. The life in a strictly Mohammedan part of the town, in the vicinity of a mosque, from whose slender minaret the Ezan resounded with gloomy melancholy, affecting my ears with its weird-like sounds; the grand prospect from my window taking in the sea near by, with its thousand crafts, and the magnificent Beshikash palace; and the dignified and patriarchal air which pervaded the whole house--were all things which had the charm of novelty for me, and which I can never forget.

The figure of the major domo (Vekilkhardj), a gray-bearded Anatolian, however, has perhaps made the deepest impression upon my memory. The good man was particularly indulgent towards me upon all occasions when I happened to sin against the strictly Oriental customs; he took great pains to teach me how to sit decorously, that is, with crossed legs; he taught me to carry my head and to use my hands with propriety, and how I should yawn, sneeze, and so forth. His attention embraced the merest trifles.

"You are, for the first time, in a large city; you have just entered polite society," he benignly said, "and you must learn everything."

Of course the old man looked upon me as a person coming from the land of "black infidelity," a land to which, in his opinion, decency, good manners, and morals were utter strangers, and he seemed to think that a stranger hailing from those parts needed to be educated quite as much as a Turkish peasant from the neighbourhood of Kharput and Diarbekir.

The pasha himself, my chief, was a much more interesting personage. It was he who afterwards became known as the leader of the celebrated Kuleili conspiracy, a conspiracy whose object was nothing less than the removal of Sultan Abdul Medjid and of all his grandees; the conspirators flattering themselves with the belief that all the causes of the decay of Turkey would be thereby extirpated, and that, with one stroke, the old and infirm Ottoman Empire could be restored to its ancient power.

I was an inmate of his house at the time when this notorious conspiracy was being hatched and the plans for its consummation formed. A mollah from Bagdad, by the name of Ahmed Effendi, a man of rare mental gifts, immense reading, ascetic life, and boundless fanaticism was the life and soul of the whole conspiracy. He had taken part in the whole of the Crimean war as a Gazi (a warrior for religion), bareheaded and barefooted, and clad in a garb whose austere simplicity recalled the primitive ages of Islam. His sword never left his lean loins, nor his lance the firm grasp of his clenched fist, either by day or by night, except when he said his prayers, five times a day. Through the snow, in the storm, in the thickest of the fight on the battlefield, during toilsome marches, everywhere could be discovered the ghost-like form of this zealot, his fiery eyes scattering flames, and always at the head of the division, under the command of my chief.

It was quite natural that such a man should please Hussein Daim Pasha.

The acquaintance begun in the camp, had here grown into a sort of relationship by consanguinity; for the lean mollah, who was walking about barefoot in Constantinople, had the privilege of crossing even the threshold of the harem, where, under the protection of the sacredness of Turkish family life, unwelcome listeners could be most conveniently got rid of. There was something in the appearance of Ahmed Effendi which terrified me at first, and only, later, upon my allowing myself to be called by my pasha, for the sake of intimacy, Reshid (the brave, the discreet), came this terrible man near me, with some show of friendliness; he probably concluding, from my having adopted this name, that I was very near being converted to Islam. A very false inference!

But I did not destroy the hopes of the zealot, gaining thereby his good-will, and getting him to give me instruction in Persian.

Ahmed Effendi allowed me even to visit him in his cell in the yard of the mosque. And oh! how interesting were those hours which I spent, sitting at his feet, with other youths who were eager to learn! It seemed as if I had got hold of a fairy key unlocking, to my dazzled eyes in one moment, the whole of Mohammedan Asia.

Ahmed Effendi had an astonishing, almost supernatural memory; he was a thorough Arabic and Persian scholar, and knew a whole series of cla.s.sics by heart. I had only to begin with a line from Khakani Nizami or Djami, in Spiegel's Persian Chrestomathy, and he would at once continue to recite the whole piece to the end. Indeed he would have been able to go on with his declamation for hours.

To this Ahmed Effendi I was indebted, more than to anybody else, for my transformation from a European into an Asiatic. In speaking of my transformation, I trust the friendly reader will not suppose, for one moment, that a more intimate acquaintance with Asiatic modes of thought had led my mind away from the spirit of the West. A thousand times, no!

Rather the reverse was the case. The more I studied the civilization of Islam and the views of the nations professing it, the higher rose, in my estimation, the value of western civilization.

III.

LIFE IN STAMBUL.

In the year 1860, I was, perhaps, the only European who had an easy and uninterrupted access to all cla.s.ses of Turkish society, and, probably, saw at that time more of genuine Stambul life than any one before me.

And, surely, no one will find fault with me, if I recall now, in the midst of my European life, with undisguised pleasure, the generous hospitality I have met with, at the hands of the n.o.blest Turks, in their own houses. The easy affability of persons of high positions in the State, the utter absence of all pride or over-bearing superciliousness, are virtues, indeed, which would often be looked for in vain in our civilized West. The stupid pomposity, ridiculous arrogance and pitiable ignorance of certain aristocracies present a miserable picture, when contrasted with the behaviour of the Asiatic grandees, whom it is the custom to sneer at in Europe. The Oriental is particular about n.o.bility of blood only in the matter of his horses and sporting dogs, whereas, with us, the select are boasting of such "animal advantages" that I should like to know in what country of Europe an unknown stranger might succeed, solely by dint of his eagerness to learn, in obtaining access to the most distinguished circles, and gaining their good-will and protection. With us, to be sure, there is no lack either of protectors and patrons of exalted station, who a.s.sist the man of books and art, but in this they never approach the intimacy and close friendship which patrons bestow in the East upon intellectual pursuits. In Europe, the possessors of long pedigrees, the owners of family trees with decayed roots and worm-eaten bark, have frequently a.s.signed to them the leadership in society, but not so in Asia. The Arabs will boast of the heroic deeds and generous actions of their ancestors, but not for their own exaltation, as is the case in many countries of Europe.

In pa.s.sing over to my literary pursuits, during my stay in Stambul, I will only mention that I published, in 1858, a German-Turkish dictionary, a small volume, of the imperfections and shortcomings of which, I am by no means unaware; but it was the first that had been written, and is, to this day, the only available one which a German traveller, coming to Constantinople, can get. There were two main points which I had princ.i.p.ally in view in my studies of Turkish literature. I had, in the first place, found, in the history of the Ottoman Empire, so much that was of interest to the history of my own country, that I felt impelled to make a translation of it. Through these translations, I entered, at an early period, into relations with the Hungarian Academy.

The Ottoman historians are wanting, for the most part, in critical judgment, but the laborious and circ.u.mstantial completeness of their information frequently proves useful. It may not be generally known that the Turkish Sultans who, at the head of their destructive armies, made inroads into the South-eastern part of Europe, and against whom so many Crusades were preached, were constantly accompanied, at every step they took, by imperial historiographers, and have done more for Clio, the Muse, than many a truly Catholic prince of that time.

I had found, in the second place, in the course of my linguistic researches in the study of Eastern Turkish, a field which had been, at that time, barely cultivated, and devoted to it my full attention.

Besides the ma.n.u.scripts I got hold of in the various libraries, which were of great a.s.sistance to me in my studies, I frequented the _Tekkes_ (cloisters), inhabited by the Bokhariots, and provided myself, moreover, with a view to attaining to a thorough understanding of these works, with a teacher who was a native of Central Asia. Mollah Khalmurad, as my teacher was called, acquainted me with the customs and modes of thought of Central Asia. I used to hang pa.s.sionately on his lips when he was relating stories about Bokhara and Samarkand, and told of the Oxus and Taxartes, for he had travelled a great deal in his own country. He had already made two pilgrimages to the holy cities of Arabia, and possessed, to a high degree, the cunning and clearsightedness peculiar to every Asiatic, but particularly to the much-travelled Asiatic.

This perspicacity of theirs caused me to tremble for my life more than once during my wanderings as a dervish.

Apart from a scientific, I felt an engrossing national, interest in the study of the Eastern Turkish language, on account of the rich Eastern Turkish vocabulary to be met with in the Magyar language, my own beloved mother tongue.

Stambul life with all its attractions and interesting phenomena produced a feeling of weariness in me after a while. My frequent visits to Pera, my pa.s.sing, in less than half an hour, from the innermost recesses of Asiatic life to the turmoil of European stir and bustle, might have continued attractive to me, as giving me an opportunity for the comparative study of the two civilizations. But amongst the very men whom I happened to meet, in this Babel of European nationalities, there were some who fanned the fire within me, and who incited me, that had remained a thorough European in spite of an Orientalizing of several years, to the execution of the boldest feats. And did I require these urgings on--I, who, at the bare mention of the names of Bokhara, Samarkand, and the Oxus, was in a fever of excitement? Certainly not; their encouragement seemed to me only a proof of the practicability of my designs. Indeed, I was quite familiar with the literature of travel of that day, and the only misgivings I felt were on the score of the perils of the undertaking.

I had just been revolving in my mind the plan of a journey through Asia, when I was nominated, quite unexpectedly, corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy. This nomination was to be a reward for my translation of Turkish historical authorities, but it proved an all-powerful incentive, urging me on to the consummation of my plans for the future.

Considerable changes had by this time taken place in the political life of Hungary; and when, upon returning in the spring of 1861, after an absence of several years, I went to Pesth, in order to deliver my Academic address, it required but a gentle intimation on the part of the then President of the Academy, Count D., to procure me a travelling stipend of a thousand florins in bank notes, amounting to six hundred florins in silver. At home, of course, there were many sceptics who expressed their doubts as to the success of my undertaking. I was asked how I could accomplish such a long journey, with scanty means and a frail body. These gentlemen were not aware that travelling in Asia required neither legs nor money, but a clever tongue. I paid, however, but slight attention to such comments.

The "Academy" gave me a letter of introduction and recommendation, addressed to all the Sultans, Khans, and Begs of Tartary, and drawn up, for the surer enlightenment of the Tartars, in the Latin tongue! A ready gallows or executioner's sword, forsooth, this doc.u.ment meant, if I had produced it anywhere in the desert or along the Oxus. The then government, too, that is, the viceroyalty, were generous enough to furnish me with a pa.s.sport for my journey to Bokhara. I did not thwart those manifestations of good intentions, and left Pesth, after a stay of three months, for Constantinople, from which place I was to start, in the following spring, on my wanderings through the extensive regions of Central Asia.

My preparations, which took me another six months, had eaten up nearly one half of the six hundred silver florins, and consisted, chiefly, in visits to places, where travellers and pilgrims from Central Asia congregated and could be met with. These people, who were, for the most part, poor, I remunerated as well as I could, for every piece of information and for every hour of conversation that I got from them; for I must observe, here, that already, at the outset, I was tolerably well acquainted with the colloquial language of the countries on the Oxus.

Indeed, I may add, that many a quarter of a town and region in the distant Mohammedan East was as familiar to me, from hearsay and reading, as is the capital on the Seine to a European who has been a reader of French novels for many years.

Very remarkable and, at times, very amusing was the manner in which my worthy Stambul friends looked upon my preparations for far-off Turkestan. A journey prompted merely by a thirst for knowledge is characterized by the modern Mohammedans as, to say the least, eccentric; for the days of Masudi, Yakut, Ibn Fozlan and Batutah have pa.s.sed away, ever so long ago. But if any one purposes to undertake a journey through inhospitable, barbarous and dangerous countries, they declare such an enterprise a piece of sheer madness. I can very well recall how these effeminate Effendis shuddered, and the look of unspeakable pity they bestowed upon me, when I was expatiating, with the most intense satisfaction, upon my pa.s.sage through the deserts. "Allah Akillar" (G.o.d lend him reason), was the pious wish they were all muttering. A person who will voluntarily leave the delightful Bosphorus, give up the comfortable life at the house of a Turkish grandee, and resign the charms of sweet repose, must be, to their thinking, a madman.

And, yet, these good people were deeply concerned to smooth my rough path, and to r.e.t.a.r.d the certain destruction before me, as much as lay in their power. Persia was to be the first country on my route, and as a Turkish amba.s.sador, together with his suite, had been residing, for years, at Teheran, and the then plenipotentiary of the Sultan, Haidar Effendi, happened to be a friend of the family of my patron, I received, in addition to the official recommendation of Aali Pasha, a collective letter from all the relations and acquaintances of K... Bey, commending unhappy me, in the warmest terms, to his protection. I obtained also firmans, addressed to the authorities on my route through Turkish territory, in all of which I was mentioned as the traveller Reshid Effendi. Of my European descent, of the aims and purposes of my journeyings, not the slightest mention was made in these doc.u.ments, and all I had to do was to act up to the letter and spirit of their contents; indeed I could do little else if I wished to pa.s.s myself off as a genuine Turk and Effendi from Constantinople.

So much for the practical portion of my preparations. As to the mental condition I was in, I need not say that the nearer the moment of my departure approached the stronger became my longing, the more agitated became my mind. What I had dreamt of as a child, mused upon as a youth, and what had haunted my eyes, Fata-Morgana-like, during my wanderings through the literatures of the Occident and Orient, I was to attain at last, and feast upon it my own bodily eyes. When pa.s.sion thus, like a mighty wave, is rolling in upon us, we turn a deaf ear to the voice of reason and prudence. All I could dread, after all, was bodily want, the fight with the elements and injury to my health; for, at that time, the thought of failure, that is, of death, never entered my mind. And now I ask my friendly reader, what vicissitudes, what privations could I undergo, which I had not already been subjected to by the hard fate of my youth? I had been starving up to my eighteenth year, and want of necessary clothing had been the order of the day with me, since my earliest youth. I had learned to know the whims and foibles of mankind, and found that man in the rude Asiatic garb was nearly the same as man in the civilized European dress; yea, I had met at the hands of the former so much more pity and kindness, that the frightful picture of these barbarians, as drawn by our literature, was far from disheartening me. Only one thing might be taken into consideration, with reference to the undertaking I had on hand, that, after having already tasted the sweets of affluence and repose, I was about to venture anew upon a life of misery and struggles. For I had done well, quite well in Constantinople, during these years. I had comfortable quarters and a luxurious fare, and there was even a saddle horse at my disposal, and thus the only thing that may be said in my praise, is that I exchanged all these, of my own free will, for the beggar's staff. But good Heavens! where could we not be led, if spurred on by ambition? And what is our life worth if ambition is not known, does not exist or has been blunted? Wealth, distinction and dignities are gaudy toys which cannot amuse us very long, and of which sound common sense must tire sooner or later. The consciousness, however, of having rendered to mankind in general a service ever so slight, is a truly n.o.ble and exalting one; for what is there more glorious than the hope of being able to enrich even by a single letter the book of intellectual life lying open before us?

Thus I felt and thus I thought, and in these feelings and thoughts I found the strength to submit to trials and hardships a thousandfold greater than those I had been subjected to hitherto.

Such were the conditions of my life, under which I left the peaceful harbour of Constantinople for my voyage to the Black Sea. Unaccompanied by any friends or parents, I bade farewell to the Golden Horn and to the Bosphorus as to the place where I enjoyed so many agreeable days of useful preparation for my future career. As our good ship turned towards the Asiatic sh.o.r.e, I ventured only to look with a furtive glance towards the West, uncertain whether I should see it again in my life!

IV.

FROM TREBIZOND TO ERZERUM.

The boom of cannon, sounds of music and shouts of joyous welcome greeted us, as our ship was approaching the harbour of Trebizond. This solemn reception was not intended for me, the future dervish, who was setting out, beggar's staff in hand, to roam through an extensive portion of cla.s.sic Asia. The ovation was meant for Emir Muhlis Pasha, the newly-appointed Governor of Trebizond, who had been our fellow traveller from Constantinople to this place. The people, very likely, indulged in the hope that he would bring in his train a happier state of things than they experienced, and relief from past misery, but they were, in all probability, doomed to be disappointed in him, as they had been disappointed in his numerous predecessors before.

Trebizond, the ancient capital of Mithridates, presents a rather fine appearance, when looked at from the sea. Upon closer inspection, the city proves finer, by far, than most of the Turkish sea-towns. Muhlis Pasha, whose acquaintance I had made at Constantinople, proffered me his hospitality, during the whole of my stay in that town. I mounted one of the horses held in readiness on the sh.o.r.e, joined the pasha's retinue, and proceeded with the festive procession towards the governor's palace, lying to the south. Our troops pa.s.sed, highly pleased, through the thronging crowds. The pasha caused some small silver change to be scattered amongst the populace. There was a great rush and eager scrambling for the coins, and the lucky ones were loud and voluble in the expression of their grat.i.tude. I remained only three days in Trebizond. I employed this short time in the purchase of the necessary travelling requisites, in the hiring of a horse--in short, in supplying myself with everything needful for those adventurous wanderings through Turkey and Persia which I was about to undertake. I resolved to keep up the part of an Effendi as far as Teheran, but thereafter I wished to pa.s.s myself off only as a Kiatib, a humble scribe who might appeal to the hospitality of the authorities. My entire luggage consisted of a _khurdjin_ (carpet-bag), containing a couple of shirts, a few books, some trifles, two carpets, one to be used as a mattress, the other for a covering, a small kettle, tea service and cup. The pasha repeatedly pressed upon me the offer of an escort by two _kava.s.ses_ (policemen), not so much as a matter of safety as from considerations of display, customary in these parts. I declined his kind offer with thanks, and in the company of an Armenian _surudji_ (an owner and driver of horses), left the Turkish seatown on the 21st day of May, 1862, wending my way towards the mountains stretching to the east.

The sun had already risen pretty high. I advanced, at a slow pace, along the highway, extending to about an hour's walking distance from the city, and then losing itself in the deep gorge of a valley. My Armenian companion, Hadjator, reminded me that in getting near the valley we should soon lose sight of the sea. I stopped on the height, for a few moments, to give a farewell look to it. However stormy and rough at times, it was just then lying as calm and peaceful before my eyes as the water of a lake. I felt at this moment but faint forebodings of the trials and dangers lying in wait for me; but faint as they were, they sufficed, as I gazed upon the dark, endlessly-stretching waves of the Euxine, to affect me most deeply. There, at my feet, was Trebizond; I could clearly discern the whole harbour, and as I caught sight of the Austrian ship in which I had come, the flag on the masthead beckoning a farewell to me, a feeling of deep melancholy took possession of my whole being. For six mortal hours on that day I continued, without interruption, my march on horseback. They were a miserable six hours.

Although nature was very charming and beautiful all around me, it did not prevent me from feeling extreme weariness in all my limbs. To travel on horseback is in the beginning a rather painful thing, but it is infinitely more so if one is obliged to hire the horse one rides from a surudji. These men employ their animals, chiefly, in the transportation of luggage, and the horses have, in consequence, such a jostling gait that their riders must ache all over upon descending, and they are so indolent, besides, that one must make good use of one's hands and feet to make them move on. Near Kopri I put up at a _khan_ (an inn). I had to sleep, nomad fashion, on the ground, but, owing to my excessive fatigue, sleep would not come to my eyes. The place was swarming with horses and mule-drivers, of whom some would scrub their animals, or cook, others sing, and others again chat. It seemed to me as if all this din had been especially got up to disturb my slumbers. I rose into a sitting posture, where I had been lying, and sadly reflected upon the fatigues to come.

After a short nap, I was called by my Armenian. "Bey Effendi," he said, "I think you must feel rested from the fatigues of yesterday's march.

Our road to-day will be harder; you will not be able to sit comfortably in the saddle in the mountains of Trebizond, and you will therefore do better to walk up, leisurely, to the top, before it gets warmer." I left my couch at once and followed the steep mountain path. I could not help wondering at the mules' toiling up the steep height and reaching the top, with their heavy loads, whilst, to me, on foot, without any inc.u.mbrance, the ascent was most painful. On our way we met a long line of overloaded mules, descending amidst the wild screams of their Persian drivers. It is a rare sight to watch them advancing, with the utmost care, without any accident, upon the slippery path cut into the rock, scarcely two spans wide, flanked by the bottomless abyss. And yet it is a very unusual thing for a mule to be precipitated into the abyss yawning along the path. If ever it happens it is in winter. The danger is greatest when two caravans happen to meet face to face. In order to avoid such an encounter, big bells, heard at a great distance, are used by them, warning the caravans to keep out of each other's way.

The continuously steep ascent lasted over four hours. There is hardly a worse road in all Asia; yet this is the only commercial road which connects Armenia with Persia, nay Central Asia with the West. During the summer hundreds of thousands of these animals are traversing this route, going and coming, loaded with the products of Asia and the manufactures of Europe.

I was indebted to my t.i.tle of Effendi for quieter sleeping quarters at the tolerably crowded Khan at our next station. Before retiring to rest I took the advice of Hadjator, and bathed in salt water those parts of my body which were sore with my riding exertions; the sensation was at first a stinging one, but sitting in the saddle next day was not quite so uncomfortable as before.

Upon reaching the third station, on the 23rd of May, two Armenians joined me. One of them began to speak first French, and then English with me. He was a merchant from Tebriz, who had spent several years in England on matters of business, and was now returning to his native town. We became quite intimate after a while, and his society was all the more agreeable to me as he knew very well the route on which we were to travel together for a considerable time. Three days after that, upon leaving the Khoshab Bunar mountains and descending, we met a Shiraz caravan on our way. I was struck by the shape of the tall hats of the men running into a point. They were gaily stepping alongside of their mules, loaded with the produce of their native country, and I was delighted to hear the songs of Hafiz sung by the leader of the caravan, the youths who were following him joining in chorus every now and then.

These were the first Iranian (Persian) words which I heard from the natives themselves. I wished to enter into a conversation with them, but they did not deign to reply. Singing they toiled uphill on the rough road, because, as I was afterwards told by my guide, the animals march more cheerfully at the sound of singing.