Árminius Vambéry, his life and adventures

by Ármin Vámbéry

"Oh, sir, it is not so very long that thy sainted father, the pious Hadji, is dead," retorted the witty Persian.

The governor thereupon burst out laughing, and said: "Since thou findest it so hard to be reconciled to my relatives, I will pay thy debts for thee."

I occupied in Isfahan the same lodgings as my fellow-traveller, the singer of elegies. He found here ample opportunity to practise his art, and exhibited his performances several times during the day, at the bazaar and in the courtyards of the mosques. He yelled, bellowed, wept, indulged in the most heartrending lamentations, and could, at his pleasure, set going "the fruitful river in the eye" and shed a shower of veritable tears. But on returning home, after the day's hard work was over, the spirit of tragedy deserted him at once, and he gave way to the merriest and most rollicking humour. I went, in his company, amongst people of every kind and rather mixed societies, but he was a man commanding respect everywhere. He would at first sing a sacred song or two and then pass over to worldly ones; and although he wore a green turban in token of his descent from the family of the Prophet, he drank like a trooper.

The inhabitants of Isfahan are very proud of their city; they are rather conceited, and think themselves better than the rest of the Persians. The king and the royal family, with their Turkish soldiery, are dreaded and hated by them. They look upon the authority of Imam Djuma as superior to that of the king. Fabulous accounts are circulated about the immense wealth of that chief priest, who keeps a thousand lutis (strolling players) in his hire. These lutis spread amongst the people wonderful accounts of the chief priest's miraculous power, and it is they who scatter broadcast the vilest slanders concerning the royal family, for the king having power over everybody except the chief priest of Isfahan, the relations between him and Imam Djuma were never of the friendliest kind.

I passed two weeks in Isfahan and had an excellent opportunity to see the noteworthy sights and to observe all the classes of society in the town. We made arrangements with the same leader of the caravan who brought us to this place concerning the continuation of our journey, and almost the entire company met at the appointed time at a caravansary outside the town. We wasted three more days here, and I employed the time in making short excursions in the neighbourhood. MOVABLE TOWERS.Of the remarkable things I saw I will mention only the movable towers of Munare Djomdjom. The two towers are on the mosque of the village of Khaledan, about an hour's distance from Isfahan. They are about twelve feet high and stand about twenty paces apart. I stepped with my guide on the terrace, and upon his seizing hold of, and shaking with all his might, one of the towers, I became sensible of a motion like that caused by an earthquake not only in the other tower, but in the entire front of the building. This remarkable building, the secret of whose architecture has descended into the grave with its builder, has been considerably damaged by the frequent exhibition of its movableness. The Persians attribute the miracle to the saint reposing beneath it.

We left Isfahan at last, and proceeded on our way in the direction of the mountains lying to the south. Upon reaching an eminence I took another look at the endless mass of houses, gardens and ruins. Our caravan, which consisted of three divisions, two having joined us for our journey to Shiraz, now numbered above 150 animals and about sixty passengers, and even on this much-travelled road we were looked upon as a caravan of considerable size. The combining of the three caravans into one was caused by the fear of certain nomadic Persian tribes who were camped amongst the mountains to the right, and who were in the habit of attacking and plundering smaller caravans either from avarice or as a pastime. Only a few days had passed since a smaller caravan had been roughly treated by them. In the East, however, people are fond of inventing such stories. Many a time one is told, "At this place ten men were killed yesterday," "The day before, at another place, a merchant was set upon and robbed;" but the traveller need not take fright at these accounts, for he may be sure that the events related either happened ten years ago, or did not occur at all. Indeed our party of travellers had no need of the frightful stories with which they had been regaling each other on the eve of their departure to make their courage ooze out, for to a man they were remarkably deficient in that valuable article, the virtue of courage. Since the Persian in general is looked upon in all Asia as a most cowardly creature, who is scared to death by his own shadow, one may easily imagine the state of mind of a caravan consisting chiefly of pilgrims, merchants and mollahs. It was rather amusing to see them keeping close to, and crowding, each other in their fright, although we were only at a distance of two hours from the town. They were conversing in whispers as if a single loudly spoken word might have brought down upon them the most frightful calamities. One man who was conveying wine with which he had loaded four of his mules, was peremptorily made to leave our ranks at the instigation of a devout mollah, lest his sinful merchandise might bring bad luck to the entire company of the truly faithful. It was in vain the poor mule driver whiningly insisted that he had never tasted a drop of wine all his life, and that he was conveying this abhorred beverage to Bombay where the godless Frengis would drink it; in vain he swore by all the saints of the calendar he did not even know if the wine were red or white; he had to leave the caravan and keep a distance of a hundred feet between himself and it.

TALES FOR TRAVELLERS.Next day we arrived at Kumisheh, which is near to the dangerous place about which we had heard so many frightful stories. About an hour before our departure my Arab friend, the sacred singer, thought that this was a fitting moment to collect about him the whole company and to chant one of his elegies, in order, as he said, to invoke the prophet's protection on our perilous journey, but in reality that a few coins might wander from the pockets of the deeply affected faithful into his own. The rawzekhan's proposition was immediately acquiesced in. The Persian is prepared at any moment to lament the death of his favourite prophet, particularly of the martyred Hussein; and it does not give him the slightest trouble, though the moment before he may have been in the merriest of moods, to shed copious tears in listening to the singer's elegy. The songster from Bagdad was soon surrounded by the whole company, and he hardly came to the end of the fourth canto of his morning song, when there arose such a wailing and weeping as if the nearest relation of every one of the listeners were lying stark dead before him. The performer usually seizes this moment to rise, tear away his dress from his breast, and to exclaim, clenching his fists: "O ye true believers, behold thus I shall strike my breast with penitence and pity for poor Hussein, yes, for Hussein!" His last words are repeated by all the men of the company; gigantic fists are soon pounding away at stalwart chests, frequently keeping in the pounding such excellent time as to resemble the regular tramp of an approaching troop of horsemen. A pious fellow happened to observe that, with Sunnite perverseness, I did not thump my chest with sufficient violence, and having attentively listened to the sound produced by my fist and not finding it hollow enough, he furiously exclaimed: "Look at this Sunnite dog; he does not consider our Hussein worthy of more powerful strokes on his breast. Just wait; I shall show him how to strike his breast." With this he approached me with his uplifted fist of iron. If he had struck me I should, probably, have had reason to remember it all my life; but thanks to the kind offices of my friends, particularly the Seid, the matter proceeded no further. A friend of mine held his arm back in the nick of time, quieting him by saying: "Let that Sunnite be! though he do not strike his breast in this life, Azrail (the Angel of Death) will beat it all the more for him in the next world."

We safely left the place alleged to be dangerous without having come to harm, and the caravan, now considerably relieved, proceeded on their journey towards Yezdekhast. The country around us became more and more flat; the desert, in the centre of which the celebrated city of Yezd is situated, extending to the east. The sun had already risen high when we passed through the arid grass-covered plain, its level stretch being interrupted only here and there by gently undulating ground. GAZELLES IN THE DESERT.I had been informed by my companions that the country abounded in game and especially in gazelles. And, indeed, in looking steadily at a dark dot in the distance, I soon discovered it to be a whole herd of these timid creatures of the desert, who scent the approach of a caravan from afar and fly from them with the swiftness of a bird. I had some difficulty at first in recognizing the gazelles at a distance, the colour of their fur resembling that of the sun-dried grass of the plain; and when my companions called out "The ahuan, the ahuan!" (The gazelles, the gazelles!), I could see nothing, until my eyes became accustomed to distinguish their white hind parts from the dry grass. Just as with us the hare is supposed to be the embodiment of timidity, even so the gazelle is looked upon in the East as the hare's counterpart in this particular. A herd of above a hundred gazelles is seized with a panic at the sudden rising of a bird, or the mere stirring of a leaf. If the hound but approaches the gazelle, it throws itself upon its back with its legs up and looks at one with such a pitiful expression out of its lustrous melancholy eyes, that one cannot help feeling for the poor dumb animal. As my eyes were following the flight of the gazelles, I suddenly caught sight of a mirage rising in the south-east. These deceptive illusions of the air are by no means of infrequent occurrence in the Persian plain. Although they do not equal in grandeur similar atmospheric phenomena in the great desert of Turkestan, yet, even in that fainter form, they never fail to strike the imagination of the traveller. As I was gazing upon the floating forms and buildings, it seemed to me as if they were the same which had delighted my eyes years ago on the great plain of the beautiful Hungarian Alföld (Lowland). Then, too, leaning against the tall pole of a well, I was gazing at the far-stretching plain which, panting and thirsting, was "dreaming of the sea." The mirage recalled my own beautiful country, so far off, and when suddenly a rising cloud of dust concealed the fairy spectacle from my view, it seemed to scatter my day-dreams to the winds.

The province of Fars begins beyond Yezdekhast, and its inhabitants differ from the Persians as much, I should say, as the Neapolitans do from the inhabitants of Northern Italy; their complexion is darker, they are more vivacious, their feelings are more excitable, and they are more quickwitted. The greater portion of the inhabitants make a living by the caravans that are passing through their country. Shulghistan, our first station in Fars, is noted for the tomb of a saint, supposed to be the son of Imam Zein ul Abedin. Of this tomb it is told that, some time ago, it had been attacked by enemies, who were all struck blind upon entering the sanctuary. A blind beggar at the gate of the tomb was shown as one of the sacrilegious band, who desired to end his days repenting. I was sufficiently interested to wish to hear the account from the lips of the blind beggar himself, and questioned him about this occurrence; but he admitted to me that his blindness proceeded from other causes, and that he had never been connected with a band of robbers. Yet he willingly passed himself off for an evil-doer punished by God in order to get his share of the alms distributed by the devout.

In leaving Shulghistan we were joined on our way by a horseman of distinguished appearance, followed by a number of servants, whose place of destination was the same as ours. He seemed to be mustering closely the members of the caravan, as if trying to make up his mind whom he should choose for his associate during the journey. FARS.After a while he approached me with the friendliest salutation. I soon found out that he was going to visit the governor of Fars, by orders of the Shah, in order to collect last year's arrears, amounting to 50,000 ducats. The Shah had been repeatedly urging the remittance of the sum, but it was never sent. The Khan was now ordered by the Shah to send the unremitting governor to prison for a few days; and should this punishment fail to produce the desired effect to withdraw for a couple of days his kallian (water-pipe) from him. This peculiar method of collecting debts is by no means rare in Persia. The Khan was a person of refinement and culture; he was very tolerant, and to him Sunnite or Shi-ite was the same thing. He saw in me the most travelled and experienced man in the caravan, and had therefore joined me, of which I was all the more glad, as it had procured for me a very agreeable fellow-traveller. When we arrived at our next station, Abade, we took a lodging together, and also took our meals together.