INTRODUCTION.
Towards the close of 1871, Major-General F. R. Pollock (now Sir Richard Pollock, K.C.S.I.) was deputed by the Government of India on a political mission to Sistan, and I was selected to accompany him. I left Peshawar on the 12th December, and joined him at Lahore, where our arrangements for the journey were made. In Sistan we joined Sir Frederick Goldsmid’s mission, and proceeded together to the Persian capital. Thence I returned to India with the camp and establishment taken with us.
It is not the purpose of this work to enter into any detail of the objects of the mission, nor in any way to refer to the political events connected with it—preceding or succeeding; and I have been careful in the following pages to avoid allusion to or discussion of the politics of the countries we visited, inasmuch as they are now the subjects of consideration to the several Governments affected by them, and are, besides, questions foreign to the nature of this publication.
But as it is seldom than Europeans have an opportunity of visiting much of the country embraced within the limits of the journey of this mission, I have thought that a popular account of our experiences would not be unacceptable to the British public; particularly since the region covered by our travels, apart from its own special claims upon our interest, is, I believe, destined ere very long to attract the most serious attention of European politicians and statesmen.
And this because the civilisation of the West is advancing with such steady progress towards the East, that it must sooner or later penetrate to the countries that have hitherto successfully excluded its influence. On the Asiatic continent, at least, its advance is from opposite quarters, at different rates of speed, and of very different characters. The highly organised and intricate system of European civilisation introduced into India, and now being consolidated within the limits of the British Empire there, though not without its advantages, has hardly produced a shadow of effect on the bordering countries lying beyond the region of its control. It stops short at, and with as clear a line of definition as, the natural boundaries of the peninsula. Cross the mountain barrier limiting the plains of India, and you pass at once from civilisation to barbarism, from order to anarchy, from security to danger, from justice to oppression. So much from the side of India.
From the opposite quarter advances the growing civilisation of Russia—a civilisation which, notwithstanding its elements of European science and art, is still but little raised in its general character above that of the countries it is so rapidly overspreading, and yet, by consequence, less opposed to the tastes and the requirements of their newly-conquered peoples. The steamer, the telegraph, and the railway add consolidation to the new rule in the annexed countries. Order and security are established within the newly-conquered area by a sharp and decisive though despotic military rule; whilst commercial enterprise is encouraged with the countries lying beyond, and fostered by Government patronage. So much from the side of Russia.
The region lying between the Russian conquests in Central Asia and the British Empire in India is now the barrier that separates these two forms of civilisation. It cannot always remain so. It must sooner or later succumb to the one form or the other; and for this reason it is that the region claims from us a more than ordinary interest, and, I may say, sympathy too, by way of reparation for the wrong we inflicted in the Afghan war—a wrong the fruits of which are yet abundant, as anybody who has served on our north-west frontier can testify.
The narrative contained in the following pages will, it is hoped, convey a correct picture of the general nature of the country included between the Indus and the Tigris, illustrate the chief points in the character of its peoples, and exemplify the state of the society in which they live. With respect to the last, I may here say, in anticipation, that tyranny and insecurity, oppression and violence, reign everywhere all over the country. It was our lot, on entering this region, to meet a caravan that had been attacked and plundered by tribes in revolt against their chief. It was my lot, on leaving the region, to meet another caravan that had been attacked and plundered by tribes in rebellion against their sovereign. And it was yet again my lot, before clear of the region in which we had successfully run the gauntlet through Brahoe and Baloch, Turkman and Hamadán, to be brought to bay by Arab robbers, from whom we escaped I know not how.
As the narrative is confined to a description only of the country actually traversed, it may be useful here to set before the reader a general view of the whole region lying between the valleys of the Indus and the Tigris, by way of introduction to the subject-matter of this book; and this because the region itself is as interesting on account of its peculiar physical characteristics as it is attractive on account of its varied historical associations.
The land of the Medes and Persians, Magians and Zoroastrians, on the one side, and of the Scythians and Aryans, Buddhists and Brahmists, on the other—the kingdom of Cyrus and of Darius—the country of Alexander’s fame—the theatre of Arab conquest and Islamite growth—the scene of Tartar bloodshed and devastation, and the home ever since of anarchy and desolation—the hotbed of Mohammedan bigotry—the arena of Shia and Sunni hostility—and, towards the east, the bone of contention between Persian and Mughal—later still, the battlefield between Afghan and Persian—the prize of Nadír—the spoil of his successors—and now the possession of Kajar and Durrani, of Persian and Afghan, each jealous of other, and each claiming as frontier what the other possesses.
Such are some of the varied historical associations, past and present, of the region I shall now endeavour to describe in its physical character only—a region which, with the exception of its western portion, has long been a closed country to the European, and a jealously-guarded barrier against the civilisation of the age. The term of its isolation, however, is doomed; the time of its freedom draws nigh. For the force of Western civilisation is irresistible. Through it the enlightenment of the age must soon shed its lustre upon these benighted regions.
The Crimean war poured its light upon Turkey, and under its influence the “sick man of Europe” has become convalescent. His neighbour is now the “sick man of Asia.” He looks wistfully at the remedy of civilisation. Let us hope he may be persuaded to try it. But if Persia is the sick man of Asia, what shall we say of Afghanistan, shut up in his own barbarism, imbued to the core with fanatic bigotry, and steeped in the pride of nationality? Verily, he is very sick—sick unto death. And he knows it, yet he refuses, obstinately and suspiciously, the only remedy that can save his decaying constitution from dissolution. Is he to be left to his fate? or will the physician appear in good time and patch up his broken frame? These are questions for serious reflection, because the patient is our neighbour, and his fate cannot be a matter of indifference to us.
The region whose past history and present condition I have thus briefly alluded to is comprised within the fiftieth and seventieth degrees of east longitude, and the twenty-fifth and thirty-fifth degrees of north latitude. Its length is about twelve hundred miles, and its breadth about six hundred.
Its most characteristic features are its general elevation, and the fact that no river from its interior reaches the sea. It forms, in fact, a great elevated block, interposed between the basin of the Caspian and the low-lying valley of Turkistan on the north, and the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea on the south, and is bounded east and west by the valleys of the Indus and the Tigris respectively.
The area thus limited geographically, in contradistinction to its political boundaries, presents some remarkable physical peculiarities, which may be considered characteristic of the whole region. Its mountain system, its river system, its deserts, and its plains, all offer special features for notice.
Its mountains, girding it on all sides, shut it off from surrounding countries. By their internal disposition they divide the region into two distinct parts, and form a natural boundary separating three distinct races—the Persian, the Afghan, and the Uzbak.
Its rivers, owing to this internal disposition of the mountains, are directed in three different directions. Those of Persia mostly converge to the south-east of its territory; those of Afghanistan converge to the south-west of its territory; and those to the north of the mountain chain that separates these two systems, flow northward to the swamps, tracts lying between the lower course of the Oxus and the Caspian.
Its deserts, too, by the same internal disposition of the mountains, are divided into three distinct sets—those of Persia and Afghanistan, lying one on either side of the mountain range separating these two countries, and that of Turkistan, lying to the north of the same range, in the angle formed by the mountains that converge from east and west to produce it.
Its plains present greater variety in extent and direction and elevation, but are all alike in general character—equally arid, equally void of trees, and equally covered with pasture plants. All are more or less the resort of nomads with their flocks and herds, and some are peopled by fixed communities settled in villages.
I will now describe each of these points in the physical geography of this region separately, but time and space only permit of my doing so very briefly and in general terms.
As before indicated, the region between the valleys of the Indus and the Tigris is an elevated country, propped up on all sides by great mountain ranges.
On the east, it is separated from the valley of the Indus by the Sulemán range, which continues southwards to the sea-coast in the Hala mountains that separate Balochistan from Sind. To the northward it connects, through the Sufed Koh of Kabul, with the Kohi Baba of Hindu Kush. This range contains within its ridges many fertile valleys and small plains, all of which drain eastwards to the Indus. To its west lies the high tableland of Ghazni, and Kandahar and Balochistan.
On the west, it is separated from the valley of the Tigris by the range of the Zagros mountains, which northwards, through the hills of Kurdistan, unite with the Armenian mountains. To the southward it extends by the mountains of Laristan and Khuzistan to those forming the southern boundary of this region. The declivity of the Zagros ranges toward the west. The mountains in this direction drop at once to the plains below, and, viewed from them, look like a huge buttress wall propping up the tableland of Persia.[1]
On the south, it is supported against the coast of the Arabian Sea by the Mushti range of Balochistan, on the one hand, and upon the littoral of the Persian Gulf by the chain of mountains connecting the Balochistan range with that of Zagros, on the other. To the east these mountains support the interior tableland of Afghanistan, against the low rugged hills of the sea-coast, by the hills and valleys of Makrán; and to the west, by the hills of Laristan and Fars, they unite with the Zagros range, and support the elevated interior of Persia against the low-lying shore of the Persian Gulf. This range is pierced by many passes up to the interior, and encloses numerous fertile and well-watered valleys.
Towards the north, it is separated from the valley of the Oxus and low plains of Turkistan by the Hindu Kush range on the side of Afghanistan, and from the basin of the Caspian by the Alburz range on the side of Persia.
This northern boundary presents some special features. The two great ranges approaching from the east and west bend southwards to meet in the vicinity of Herat, whence they project across the whole country, dividing the region into the two kingdoms of Persia and Afghanistan, and separating each from the intermediate region to the north—the country of the Turkmans and the Hazara, with other cognate Uzbak tribes. Thus the Hindu Kush, west of Kabul, sends off two principal ranges separated by the Hari Rúd, or river of Herat. The southern of these ranges is called Syáh Koh, and breaks up into the mountains of Ghor, which, extending south of Herat, join the Khorassan mountains emanating from the Alburz range, and form the watershed between the hydrographic systems of Afghanistan and Turkistan. That is to say, all the streams to the north of the Syáh Koh range flow to the valley of the Oxus, or to the low swampy tracts of Marv and Tajand, between the lower course of that river and the Caspian, whilst all the streams to its south flow to the Sistan basin, the receptacle for all the drainage of Afghanistan west of Ghazni.
And so from the opposite direction. The Alburz range west of Mashhad sends off a succession of lofty offshoots, snow-topped in midsummer, that traverse the northern highlands of Khorassan in a direction from north-west to south-east, and enclose between them a number of elevated plateaux, such as those of Nishabor, Sabzwár, Turshíz, and Tabbas, that all drain westwards into Persia. The principal of these offshoots is the Binaloh range of mountains. It separates the plain of Mashhad from that of Nishabor, and towards the south-east connects with the high mountains of Záwah and Bákharz, north of Herat. This range forms a watershed between the drainage converging on to the great salt desert of Persia on the one side, and that flowing to the swamps of Tajand and Marv on the other.
Between Záwah and Tabbas the chain of mountains is interrupted by a narrow arm of the salt desert called Kavír, which at Yúnasi projects eastward on to the plain of Kháf and Ghorian. But it is continued onwards by spurs from Bákharz which connect with the mountains of Ghazn on the one side, and with those of Ghor on the other, a little south of Herat. Here the Ghazn valley drains into Afghanistan, and onwards south the two ranges proceed in parallel lines, a strip of desert waste intervening, till they mingle in the Sarhadd mountains, through which they connect with the great southern mountain border of this region—the border previously described as extending from the Sulemán range across Balochistan and the southern provinces of Persia to the Zagros range on the west.
Of these two parallel ranges, that formed by the projections from the Ghor mountains extends in detached ridges running mostly north and south. They enclose amongst them the valleys of Sabzwár or Isapzár, and Anartarrah, and drain to the Sistan basin by the Harutrúd or Adraskand, as it is also called. The range passes to the west of the Sistan basin, of which it forms the boundary in that direction, under the name of Koh Bandán, and ultimately joins the Sarhadd mountains.
The other range, joined by the spurs from Bákharz, is an extensive and elevated mountain tract, enclosing numerous plateaux and valleys, that all drain to the Khusp river, which flows on to the salt desert. The general direction of the range is from north to south, with spurs projecting east and west. It connects through the hills of Nih and Bandán with the Sarhadd mountains.
The mountain barrier thus formed by the emanations from Alburz is the natural geographical boundary between Persia and Afghanistan, north and south across the length of their conterminous frontiers. It forms a wide mountain region called Irani Khorassan, or Persian Khorassan, and abounds in populous and fertile valleys, full of fruit-gardens and running streams. Its climate is variable, and its winters severe; but on the whole it is a very salubrious region, and is everywhere easily traversed by practicable passes among the hills.
Its inhabitants are a very mixed community. In the southern districts they are mostly Ilyats, from different stocks, with some Persians settled in the principal towns, and all under the rule of local chiefs of Arab descent. In the central districts,—Tún, Tabbas, and northern parts of Ghazn,—there are many Baloch and Tartar families mixed up with the general population. To the north of these, in Záwah and Bákharz, the people are mostly Karai Tartars and Hazárah Uzbaks; and in the northern districts, Nishabor, Sabzwár, Burdjnurd, Khabúshán, &c., they are entirely Kurds.
From the above description it will be seen that the Hindu Kush and Alburz ranges combine to form the Khorassan mountains that separate Persia from Afghanistan; that Herat, and the country north of their point of junction, is geographically separated from both, and connected by its hydrographic system with the valley of the Oxus; that in the vicinity of Herat the continuity of the Khorassan hills is interrupted, south of Bákharz, by an arm of the salt desert of Persia; and also that, with Herat as a centre, the three divergent mountain ranges—viz., those of Alburz, Ghor, and Ghazn—separate three distinct peoples—the Persians, the Afghans, and the Turkmans, with Uzbaks and other cognate tribes.
I draw attention to this last point, because the natural configuration of the country explains the facility with which, from time immemorial, the predatory tribes of the lower Oxus valley have been enabled to harass the Persian frontier unchecked with their annual marauding inroads and slave-hunting expeditions, and because also history has marked out this locality as the point of ingress towards the east for all northern invaders; for Herat towards the north, and with it Mashhad, is open to both Khiva and Bukhára.
The mountain barriers that I have mentioned as geographically bounding the region lying between the Indus and the Tigris, have by their interior disposition determined its hydrographic system in a remarkable manner, on either side of the great Khorassan range separating Afghanistan from Persia.
The Sulemán range, as already mentioned, is a wide mountain tract, enclosing within its hills many valleys and hills which all drain eastwards to the Indus. Its declivity is towards the east, whilst to the west it slopes gently on to the elevated plateaux of Afghanistan.
To the north, this range connects with the Sufed Koh east of Ghazni, and at this point commences that great watershed that separates the drainage of the Indus from that of the Helmand. It runs in a southerly direction, inclining to west as far as the Bolán and the tableland of Calát, whence it strikes westward towards the Mushti range, separating the great desert of Balochistan from Makrán.
To the north of this watershed, Sufed Koh connects through the highlands of Ghazni with the Kohi Baba of Hindu Kush. From this range starts the Syáh Koh of Hazárah, which stretches west to Herat, and forms the watershed between the valley of the Oxus on the north, and the Sistan basin on the south. From Herat it extends southward by Sabzwár and Bandán to Sarhadd, where it joins the western spurs of the Mushti range, and thus completes the circle of the hydrographic system of Afghanistan.
With the exception of the drainage of the Ghazni river, which collects in the Abistada marsh, and the drainage of the Calát tablelands, which flow to the desert north of the Mushti range, all the rivers within the area indicated flow towards the Sistan basin, at the south-western extremity of the Kandahar plain, though they do not all reach it. All the rivers and rivulets from the eastward and southward flow to the stream of the Helmand, whilst those of Sabzwár and Ghor flow in separate streams, all to meet in the Sistan basin. So it is in the Afghanistan half of the region; and a similar system, though on a much less extensive scale, is found to hold in the Persian half. Thus all the streams between the Alwand range of Hamadán on the west, and the Alburz on the north-east, converge to the south-east corner of the Persian tableland, where they expand themselves on the surface of the great salt desert north of Kirmán. At least, such is the case if any reliance is to be placed on the statements of my Persian informants, whose testimony I am willing to believe from my own observations as to the general course of the streams and the lie of the land; for I have not seen this shown on any map. The river Khusp of Birjand, the Yúnasi river, the Kál Shor of Nishabor and Sabzwár, the Kál Abresham and others on to Tehran, all flow direct on to the salt desert, and the streams crossed on the road from Tehran to Hamadán all flowed in the same direction.
The great salt desert of Persia, called the Daryáe Kabír, or “the vast sea,” extends all along the western side of the Khorassan hills, from Nishabor in the north to Kirmán in the south, and sinks to its lowest level in the latter direction, opposite to the Sistan basin, on the other side of the intervening mountain range. So that the water systems of the two countries converge towards each other, and at some remote period probably formed lakes or swamps on either side of the mountain range dividing them, where it joins the great southern border of the region.
The water system of the country, to the north of this dividing range, belongs to the hydrographic system of Turkistan, and is beyond the limits of the region I am describing. Its rivers all flow towards the lowest part of the desert tract lying between the lower course of the Oxus and the Caspian, and there end in the swamps of Tajand and Marv. The principal of these streams are the Murgháb, the Hari Rúd, and the river of Mashhad. With the exception of the Helmand and Farráh Rúd in Afghanistan, none of these streams always reach their destination. They only do so in periods of excessive flood; usually their waters are dissipated by evaporation, absorption by the porous soil, and by diversions for purposes of irrigation, long before they can reach their terminal receptacles.
The deserts of this region between the Indus and Tigris are in a measure connected with its water system. They present vast tracts of elevated sandy wastes, perfectly void of water and vegetation except on their skirts. Each division of the region has a desert of its own. That of Persia has been before mentioned as stretching north and south across the eastern portion of that country. The desert of Afghanistan extends east and west across the western half of its southern border, from the highlands of Calát to the mountains of Sarhadd, south of Sistan. It is called the Regi Sistan or Regi Balochistan—the sands of Sistan or Balochistan—and extends from the Mushti range of mountains on the south up to the plain of Kandahar on the north, where it ends in a high coast of desert cliffs. This elevated border is called chol, or “dry land,” and forms a belt ten or fifteen miles wide, on which is found a rich winter pasture for the cattle of the nomads who here make their winter quarters.
There is also a desert tract to the north between the Caspian and Oxus; but it differs from the deserts of Persia and Afghanistan in an important particular. Its surface is a firm gravel, broken into undulations, and covered with a more or less rich pasture of aromatic herbs, and water is found in some of the hollows on its surface.
The plains of this region are all elevated plateaux of greater or less extent, and more frequently the latter. They are all covered with excellent pastures of rich aromatic herbs and hardy plants, and are the natural home of the asafœtida and wormwood, and, in the more elevated tracts, of the rhubarb. Most of them are watered by brisk little hill-streams, or by those artificial subterranean conduits called kárez, and are more or less populous; villages, fruit-gardens, and cultivation following the course of the streams, and nomad camps covering the pastures during the summer months.
In Balochistan, these plateaux rise in steps one above the other between the hills up to the tableland of Calát. North of this they fall in steps to the Kandahar plain, which itself sinks towards the south-west to the Sistan basin. In Persia they rise in a similar gradation from the shores of the Persian Gulf and basin of the Tigris up to the tablelands of the interior, where they sink again gradually to the lowest part of the salt desert in the south-east portion of the country.
Such, in general terms, are the main features of the region between the Indus and the Tigris. Its climate, as may be imagined, is as varied as the surface of the country. It partakes of the temperate character of an Alpine climate in the northern mountain tracts, whilst in the lower desert tracts it equals in heat the torrid plains of India during the summer months. But in winter it is everywhere cold; in the mountain regions rigorously so, whilst on the wide plains and deserts it is equally severe by reason of the strong north winds that sweep the country for months.
On the whole, the climate, with its many variations, may be considered salubrious and favourable to life. Its inhabitants certainly are physically amongst the finest of the human race, notwithstanding the inferior fare and barbarous mode of life that are the lot of a large proportion of them, in Afghanistan particularly. In this country the signs of departed prosperity and plenty are everywhere met with. From Ghazni westward, all along the valleys of the Tarnak and the Helmand, down to the basin of Sistan, the whole country is covered with the ruins of former cities, obliterated canals, and deserted cultivation—all assigned to the devastation of the Tartars under Changhiz and Tymúr in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The country has never recovered the havoc created by these curses of the human race. Since the destruction of the Arab rule overthrown by them, the country has known no stable government, and has been a stranger to peace, order, and prosperity alike. But it has within itself all the material elements of prosperity. What it wants are a firm government and a just rule. With these once more established over it, there is no reason why the country should not again recover its former state of prosperity and plenty. Its mountains contain a store of unexplored treasure, and its plains an only half-developed wealth.
Of its inhabitants I need add little here, as to describe them fully would fill a volume. Suffice it to say, that those of Persia and Afghanistan alike contain representatives of various Tartar races thrown into this region by the successive waves of invasion from the north, as well as representatives of earlier known peoples pushed on into it from the south-west, mixed up with the ancient inhabitants of the land. Thus in Persia, with the ancient inhabitants, who are mostly settled in the large towns and cities, are found various tribes of Mughals, Turks, and Kurds, together with Arabs, Armenians, and Jews. A fourth of the population, which may be estimated at six millions, consists of wandering tribes, generically known as ilyát, a term which signifies “the tribes,” and corresponds with the úlús of the Afghans. In the ilyát are comprised all sorts of tribes, Arab and Ajam, that is to say, of Arab origin and of Persian or foreign origin, or, in other words, tribes who have come into the country at different times from the west and from the north.
In Afghanistan, with its province of Balochistan, both included in the country of Khorassan, are the original Tajiks of Persian origin, the Afghans or Pukhtúns (the dominant race), and the Hazárah of Tartar invasions, together with Kazzilbash Mughals, and Uzbaks and Turks of various tribes, Hindkis and Kashmiris, and others of Indian origin, all in the northern tracts. In the southern are Brahoe and Baloch, of different origin and diverse speech; the Dihwár or Tajik, of Persian race and tongue, and a mixture of different tribes, such as Jats of Sind, Hindus of Shikárpúr, and a few mongrel tribes of nobody knows where.
In our passage through the Brahoe country I collected the material for a concise grammar and vocabulary of that language. It will be found in the Appendix. I had hoped to have been able to add similar grammars and vocabularies of the Baloch and Sistan dialects; but the adverse circumstances of our sojourn in these countries prevented my acquiring a sufficient knowledge of their languages, and I find that the data collected are much too scanty to permit of my making the attempt, though, from what I did gather, I believe both are closely allied to the Persian.