I was not at all loath to leave Persia; what charm could a longer sojourn in Iran have for me? A description of the political and social conditions of this land, already sufficiently well known even in those days, offered no special attraction to my literary vanity. True, the instructive and classical works of Dr. Polak and Lord Curzon of Kedleston had not appeared yet, but I could not have written anything absolutely new about Persia. In my intimate intercourse with the people of the land I was principally struck with the more intensely Oriental character of the Government and society, and all that I saw strengthened me in my conviction that Persia was at least a hundred years behind Turkey, notwithstanding the greater intellectuality of the people, and would certainly take longer to extricate itself from the pool of Asiatic thought. Of the West and Western culture they had but very vague notions in Persia. The young king, Nasreddin Shah, was instructed by his court physicians, Cloquet, Polak, and Tholozan, in many points of our Western culture, and he took a good deal of trouble to mould his surroundings upon their suggestions. The prudish conservatism of the Orientals, supported by the national pride and boundless vanity of the Persians—who, recollecting the age of the Sasanides and the glorious period of Shah Abbas II. always try to minimise the triumphs of our civilisation, or even hold it in derision—hindered all healthy and vigorous progress. Even the heads of the administration very seldom knew French. In my frequent intercourse with Mirza Said Khan, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, a native Persian of the old school, I often received amusing proofs of this ignorance and obstinacy. He lacked even the elementary knowledge of the geography and history of Europe, and all that I told him of the power and might of some of the European States was nonsense in his eyes, and he used to say reproachfully "If Europe is really so great, why does it want to enrich itself by commerce with Persia, and why does it force itself upon us?" Mirza Yahya Khan, the first adjutant of the king, who knew French and was somewhat enlightened by his travels in Europe, used to laugh aloud at the ignorance of the minister; but even he allowed the West but few prerogatives, and always boasted of the greater intellectual endowments and sagacity of the Persian people in general. With the scholars and literati I could not get on at all. Referring to their truly beautiful literature of antiquity, they used to speak with poetic ecstasy about the superiority and unequalled beauty of Eastern thought, and were especially proud of their philosophers. "If your thinkers are really so great and sublime," I was often told, "why then do you translate our Sadi, Hafiz, and Khayyám? We have no desire for your classics." These people are happy in their Persian microcosm, and I well recollect the disputations I used to have with the Akhondes (learned). These thickly turbaned priests struck me as being remarkably liberal-minded in religious matters. They spoke about Mohammed and his doctrine without any fanaticism, from a purely historical point of view, and did not appear shocked at the most daring hypothesis or suggestion, which surprised me very much, for amongst the Sunnites of Turkey and Central Asia such discussions would have been called blasphemous.

Looked at from this point of view Persia was highly interesting to me, and if I had not had my mind full of plans for travel I could perhaps have turned the advantage of my incognito to better account by a comparative study of individual Oriental nations. But it was no good, I was compelled to go forward; and while in this excited frame of mind I accidentally made the acquaintance, at the Turkish Embassy, of some Tartar pilgrims on their way back from Mecca to Central Asia. When I acquainted the members of the Turkish Embassy with my intention to travel in company with these frightful-looking people, half-starved, tattered zealots, covered with dirt and sores, one can imagine the surprise of those kind-hearted folks. The ambassador, Haidar Effendi, a particularly high-minded man and extremely tolerant in matters of religion, was quite upset about it. He threatened to use force; but when he saw that all his expostulations had not the slightest effect upon me, he did his utmost to minimise the danger of my undertaking. He called the leaders of the beggar-band before him, gave them rich presents and recommended me to their special care and protection; he also gave me an authorised passport, bearing the name of Hadji Mehemmed Reshid Effendi, with the official signature and seal. Seeing that I had never been in Mecca, and had therefore no legal right to the title of Hadji (pilgrim), this official lie may be viewed in various lights. But it saved my life, and I owe my success to it; for this pass, in the critical moments of my journey incognito, supplied the necessary documentary evidence. The official document bearing the Tugra (Sultan's signature) is at all times an object of pious veneration to the Turkomans. They recognise in the Osmanlis their brethren in the faith, and the simple children of the Steppes came from far and near to behold the holy Tugra, and after performing the prescribed ablutions, to press the sacred sign against their brow. In Khiva and in Bokhara, where the official sign was better known, it elicited still more respect. In fact, I may honestly say that I owe my success to this passport; and when one considers the magnanimous tolerance which must have prompted these Mohammedan dignitaries and representatives of the Sultan to describe a European and a freethinker as a Mussulman pilgrim, I think the deception may be condoned. An official of humane Christian Europe would scarcely have shown as much generosity to a Mohammedan! After Haidar Effendi, I found another kind friend in Dr. Bimsenstein, an Austrian by birth, who acted as physician to the Legation at Teheran. He seemed much concerned about me, but when he saw that even his fatherly advice was of no avail, and that the prospect of a martyr's death did not frighten me, he called me into his dispensary and gave me three pills, saying, "These are strychnine pills. I give them to you to spare you the agonies of a slow martyr's death. When you see that preparations are being made to torture you to death, and when you cannot see a ray of hope anywhere, then swallow these pills; they will shorten your agony." With tears the kind-hearted man gave me the fateful globules, which I carefully hid in the wadding of my upper garment. They have been my sheet-anchor, and many a time when in moments of danger I felt the little hard protuberances in the wadding, I have derived comfort from them. My valuables consisted of a silver watch, the face of which had been transformed into a Kiblenuma, i.e., a compass, or more correctly, an indicator or hand to show the position of Mecca and Medina, and a few ducats, hidden between the soles of my shoes, which I only had occasion to extricate twice during the whole of my journey. "Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator." So I was safe against the greed of my fellow-travellers and any other robbers. I wore my very oldest Persian clothes, and in every respect made myself as much as possible in outward appearance like my beggarly companions. So I started on my adventurous expedition with a cheerful mind, and turning my back upon Teheran, the last connection with European memories, I set my face towards the Caspian Sea.

And now in the evening of my life,—the glow of enthusiasm vanished, and heart and head cooled down almost to freezing-point,—looking back upon this wild folly of my younger days, I cannot but condemn the whole affair as absolutely unjustifiable and opposed to all common sense. The first part of my plan and its execution were not matters of calculation and premeditation, but a leap in the dark, a rushing forward at random. I quite forgot to consider whether my physical strength would hold out in the unusual struggle, and whether with my lame foot I should be able to get over large distances per pedes apostolorum. Also I had not sufficiently taken into account the suspicion of Central Asiatic tyrants, and forgot that Bokhara was not only a hotbed of hyperzealous fanaticism, but also of the most consummate villains in the world. I had not the faintest idea that I should be watched day and night by numerous spies, reporters, and officious hirelings, who followed me in the lonely Steppes, in the bazaars, the streets, the mosques, and the convents, and took note of every word, every movement of mine. I never thought that my European features would at once attract attention among the masses of pure Ural-Altaic and genuine Iranian type, and form a permanent suspicion against me; and least of all did I think that, notwithstanding my versatility, my well-tempered nervous system, and my experience in the morals and customs of Islam, prying eyes were always busy trying to look through my incognito. I had had no idea of the fiendish cunning and subtilty of the Bokhariots, and the frightful crudeness of the Osbeg court at Khiva. How could I have known all this, seeing that these countries and people, cut off for centuries from the other Islamic States, and perfectly unknown to Western nations, still continued in the stage of ancient almost primitive culture and ignorance, and had nothing in common with the civilisation of the Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Arabs, with whom I was familiar? With every step I took into this strange world my astonishment and surprise and also my fear grew. I realised that I had entered into a perfectly strange and unknown world of ideas, that I had undertaken a most risky thing, that my former experiences would avail me nothing here, and that I had to gather up all my strength to escape the dangers on all sides. The preservation of my incognito was a tremendous mental and physical exertion. As for the former, I could not and dare not relax for one moment during the whole of my journey; by day or by night, asleep or awake, alone or in company, I had always to remember my rôle, be ever on my guard, and never by the slightest mistake or neglect betray my identity. I used mostly at night, when all were asleep round me, to practise certain grimaces and contortions of eyes and face, I tried to imitate the gesticulations which in the daytime I had observed from my travelling companions; and so great is human adaptability to foreign customs and habits that within two months I was in fashion, manners, and speech a faithful copy of my Hadji companions, and in the eyes of ordinary Turkomans passed for a regular Khokandian or Kashgarian. Of course my poverty-stricken and dirty appearance greatly assisted the delusion. In the seams and cracks of the face sand and dirt had collected, and formed quite a crust, which could not be removed by the prescribed ablutions, for the simple reason that as we were often short of water in the Steppe, I had to take refuge in Teyemmun, i.e. (a substitute), washing with sand. My beard grew rugged and coarse, my eyes rolled wilder, and my gait in the awkward full garments, perhaps also because of my frequent and long rides, had become as unwieldy, waddling and uncomfortable as if I had lived from early youth with Mongol and Turkish tribes. I cannot and need not hide the fact that at first these physical discomforts were very irksome to me, and cost me many a pang. To dip one's fingers into a pot of rice, which for want of fat is cooked with tallow-candle, and in which the Tartars plunged their filthy, wounded fists, cannot exactly be described as one of the most pleasurable methods of feeding, nor is it a treat to spend the night squeezed in among a row of sleeping, snoring beggars. Both are equally undesirable, but when in these predicaments I recalled the sufferings and privations of my early life, the comparison made me realise that the European mendicant has much the advantage over his Central Asiatic comrade, for the sufferings of hunger, thirst, and vermin are far worse in Turkestan than they ever could be in Europe.

What I had to suffer from this last evil, the lice, which multiply in the most appalling manner in Central Asia, passes all description, and, objectionable as the subject may be, I must try to give some idea of the manner in which I endeavoured to rid myself of this pest, if only for a short space of time. With the Dervish the catching of these insects forms part of the toilet, and is also looked upon as a kind of after-dinner enjoyment. One begins by using the thumb-nails as a weapon of defence against these intruding guests; and the picture of various groups engaged in search and slaughter was sometimes intensely ludicrous. In the second stage of the cleansing process the garment under treatment is held over the red-hot cinders, and the animals, stunned by the fierce heat, die a fiery death with a peculiar crackling noise. If this auto-da-fé is not procurable, the garment is strewn all over with sand, and exposed to the scorching rays of the sun. The vermin are thus invited to exchange their lower cooler quarters for the upper warmer ones, and once there they can easily be shaken off. When neither fire nor sand is available the garment is placed near an anthill, and the troublesome insects are left to the mercy of the ants, who soon make their way into the smallest crevices and apertures and carry off their prey. Curiously enough, this pest is far worse in winter than in summer, for when, on my journey between Herat and Meshed, I lay huddled up in one corner of my bed, these creatures, always in search of heat, collected wherever the heat of my body was greatest, and no sooner had I turned from the right on to the left side, than these detestable animals at once instituted a formal migration and took possession of the heated portion of my body. Now I understood for the first time why in the Jewish Holy Scriptures the plague of lice is mentioned second after that of the water turned into blood. Next to this plague I suffered much from the fatigues of the journey. First of all there was the scorching heat on the plain of the Balkan mountains up to the Khiva oasis, where the thermometer, as I learned afterwards from the reports of Colonel Markusoff, rises fifty and fifty-two degrees Réaumur, and where the lack of drinkable water causes the traveller unheard-of sufferings. One inhales fire, so to speak, the skin shrivels visibly, and one is almost blinded by the vibrations of the air. From eight o'clock in the morning till three or four in the afternoon it is like being in a baker's oven, and the torture is aggravated when one has to sit huddled together and cross-legged in the Kedjeve (or basket) on the back of a camel, stinking of sweat and sores. Sometimes, when the poor beast could go no farther through the thick sand, I had to climb down from my perch and go for long distances on foot. On account of my lame leg I had to lean on a stick with my right hand, and on one of these tramps my right arm became so terribly swollen that I suffered great pain for several days. Apart from these inconveniences, I enjoyed excellent health, which rather surprised me, as the half-baked bread freely mixed with sand, the best we could make in the Steppes, was apt to be somewhat indigestible. So much for the magic effect of an outdoor life and the excitement of an adventurous expedition!

And yet all these physical sufferings were light as compared with the mental and nervous strain I underwent. Every look, every gesture, every sign, no matter how innocent, and even in the circle of my most intimate friends, I viewed with apprehension, lest it might contain some hidden allusion to my incognito. I tried to hide my anxiety behind the mask of exuberant hilarity, and generally managed to lead the conversation on to some irrelevant subject. But I found out afterwards that these harmless folks never dreamed of unmasking me. In their absolute ignorance of Europeanism they had never for a moment doubted the genuineness of my Effendi character. Fortunately, precautionary measures were only necessary when I was in a town, in Bokhara or Samarkand, for amongst the country folks and the nomads, the latter of whom had never seen a European face to face, they were quite superfluous. The successful preservation of my incognito among these simple children of Nature made me indulge in the wildest flights of fancy. I remember one mad idea, the impracticability of which did not at all strike me at the time, but which must now seem ridiculous to everybody, even to myself. I had reached the height of my reputation with the Turkomans of the Gorghen and the Atrek. They looked upon me as a saint from distant Rum (the west); young and old flocked round me to receive a blessing, or even a sacred breath, as a preservative against diseases. One day an old greybeard, who had spent his whole life in plunder and murder, discreetly advanced towards me, and in all earnest made me the following proposition: "Sheik-him (my Sheikh)," he said, "why do you not place yourself at the head of a great plundering expedition? Under your blessed guidance we might organise an attack on a large scale into heretic Shiite (Persia). I am good for 5,000 lances; steeled heroes and fiery horses could do much with Allah's help, and assisted by a Fatiha (prayer) from you." Now the reader will naturally suppose that I treated this proposal as a huge joke. Nothing of the kind. The words of the old Turkoman wolf did not sound at all absurd to me; they only required a little consideration. I thought of the unexampled cowardice and state of confusion of the Persian army, and knowing the wild impetuosity, the rapaciousness, and the audacity of the Turkomans, one of whom was a match for ten Persians, the thought flashed through my brain, "Stop, why not undertake this romantic exploit? All the way from Sharud the Persian frontiers are exposed; 5,000 Turkomans can easily take the field against 10,000 Persians and more. And where will the Shah find so many soldiers all in a hurry? In Teheran I shall find some adventurous Italian and French officers who will probably like to join me. In any case an attack upon the capital can be successfully accomplished, and who knows, I might possess myself of the Persian throne if only for a few days!" The fact that it would be no easy matter to keep 5,000 Turkomans within the bounds of discipline, and that in the face of European politics my success would at best be but a midsummer night's dream—all this troubled me not one whit; so deeply had I plunged into the atmosphere of mediæval life around me, and so far did my heated fancy carry me back into the regions of past ages!

In places where my incognito had to stand the test with people who, on their journeys through India and Turkey, had come into contact with Europeans, I had the hardest battle to fight, and was often in great danger. There I was not treated with the humble reverence and admiration which is due to a foreign Hadji and divine. On the contrary, they questioned me about my nationality, the aim and object of my journey, and even the fittest and readiest answers could not banish their suspicion and doubt. In this respect my adventure with the Afghan on the journey to Khiva will ever remain vivid in my mind. He was a Kandahari who, during the British occupation of 1840, had escaped the English criminal law; he had spent some time in the Afghan colony on the Caspian Sea, and afterwards had wandered about for many years in Khiva. He would insist that, in spite of my knowledge of the languages of Islam, I was a disguised European, and therefore a dangerous spy. At first I treated him with every possible mark of respect and politeness; I flattered his vanity, but all in vain. The scoundrel would not be taken off his guard, and one evening I overheard him say to the Kervanbashi (head of the caravan): "I bet you he is a Frenghi or a Russian spy, and with his pencil he makes a note of all the mountains and valleys, all the streams and springs, so that the Russians can later on come into the land without a guide to rob you of your flocks and children. In Khiva, thanks to the precautions of the Khan, the rack will do its part, and the red-hot iron will soon show what sort of metal he is made of." Never to move a muscle under such amiable discourses, or to betray one's feelings by any uneasy expression in one's eye, that mighty mirror of the soul, is, in truth, no easy task. I managed, however, to preserve my cold indifference on this and similar occasions; but one evening, during our passage through the Steppe, the Afghan was quietly smoking his opium pipe in the night camp. By the glimmer of the coals on his water-pipe I met his dull, intoxicated gaze, and a diabolical idea took possession of me. "This man is planning my destruction, and he can effect it; shall I throw one of my strychnine pills into his dish of tea, which he is even now holding in his shaky hand? I could thus save myself, and accomplish my purpose." A horrible thought which reminds one of Eugene Aram in Bulwer's novel. I took the pill from the wadding of my cloak, and held it for some time between my fingers close to the edge of the dish. The deadly silence of the night and the opium fumes which held this man under their spell seemed to favour my devilish scheme, but when in my distraction I gazed upwards and saw the brilliantly shining canopy of heaven, the magic beauty of the stars overmastered me; the first rays of the rising moon fell upon me—I stayed my hand, ashamed of meditating a deed unworthy of a civilised man, and quickly hid the fateful pill again in the lining of my Dervish cloak.

The continuance of my dangerous position eased my task in some respects, and custom makes many things bearable. Practice had taught me to sit still for hours, immovable like a statue, perhaps just moving my lips as if in silent prayer, while the spies sent to Bokhara to find me out, freely discussed my identity, and speculated upon the enigma of my nationality and my faith. The danger of growing red or pale, or of betraying my internal struggle by a look, had long since ceased for me. I had so thoroughly accustomed myself to my character of pseudo-Dervish, that the emotions connected with the pious demeanour of those individuals came quite spontaneously to me. When my companions of the Steppe consulted the oracle of stones or sticks about the issue of our dangerous campaign through the Khalata desert, I stooped down as curious as the rest, and watched the configuration of the stones or sticks as anxiously as the superstitious natives. They had even assigned to me a greater power of divination than to any of the others, and hearkened diligently to my explanation. When, arrived at the grave of the native saint, Bahaeddin, near Bokhara, we performed the customary prayers, I could hold out with my fellow-travellers from eight in the morning till late at night. I prayed, sang, shouted aloud, groaned, and raved in pious contrition with the best of them. I wonder even now whence I procured the uninterrupted flow of tears which I shed on those occasions, and how I could play my part in this comedy for hours together without betraying the slightest emotion or perturbation. I must confess that Nature has endowed me with a fair dose of mimicry, a quality which Napoleon III. once in a conversation commended me for. From my earliest youth I had learned to imitate the outward expression of various kinds of people; thus I had accustomed myself to wear alternately the mask of Jew, Christian, Sunnite, and Shiite, although any form of positive religion was objectionable to me. I believe, however, it was not so much my mimetic faculty as the instinct of self-preservation and the consciousness of ever-present danger which enabled me to bring my venturesome experiment to a satisfactory end. The fear of death is at all times a hideous beast, which glares at us and shows its teeth, and although one may get used to its presence in course of time, and even become blunted and hardened, yet this monster, fear of death, never quite loses its influence over us, and if we are blest with a strong nervous system, we can in the face of it do almost impossible things.

It would lead me too far were I to dwell here upon some of the exciting and critical incidents of my incognito, examples of which have been given in my earlier works. It has often been laid to my charge by conscientious critics that I have been too reserved, too brief, in the accounts of my travels. So, for instance, the learned Jules Mohl writes[1]: "M. Vambéry est un voyageur singulièrement modeste, qui ne raconte de ses aventures que ce qui est indispensable à son histoire, et l'impression que donne son ouvrage est, qu'il ne raconte pas tout ce qui lui arrive." In my Sketches of Central Asia I have entered a little more into details, but even they are far from exhaustive. The compass of an autobiography is likewise too small for this. Self-glorification does not please me, and where I have occasionally been a little more circumstantial in my narrative, it has been for the purpose of lessening the surprise which my incognito travels called forth in Europe, by showing the reasons for and the natural effects of certain things. Many well-disposed critics even have doubted the verity of some of my experiences, which to the European pur sang are simply incredible. But those who have read the story of my childhood and early youth, who realise that up to my eighteenth year I hardly ever knew what it was to have enough to eat, that I went about insufficiently clothed and exposed to miseries of all sorts, will not see in my adventures anything so very marvellous. From a very early age I have had to act contrary to my inner convictions; in religion, in society, in politics, I have often had to pretend in order to attain my object. Nothing is more natural than that when in Central Asia I had to fight with want and distress, with perplexities of every form and shape, I should come out victorious. No European before me has ever attempted to assume the incognito of a mendicant friar, for Burckhardt, Burton, and Snouck Hurgronje in Mecca, Wolff and Burnes in Bokhara, and Conolly in the Turkoman Steppes, travelled as Asiatics with plenty of means, or in an official character. Few, no doubt, have had such bodily fatigues to bear, but few, perhaps none, of my colleagues have gone through such a hard school in their tender childhood. The conventional modesty of scholars and writers has always been irksome to me, for virtue in the garb of a lie is disgusting. I speak quite openly and honestly when I say that my adventures in Central Asia will appear little remarkable if regarded as the continuation of my experiences in Turkey and Persia on an intensified scale; and these latter, again, were in form and character closely allied to my struggles and trials as a little Jew boy, a mendicant student, and a private tutor. I have often been asked how I could bear the constant fear of death, and if I were not sometimes overcome by the thought of certain destruction. But one can accustom one's self to a life in constant fear of death as well as to anything else. It has disturbed me only when the crisis came all too suddenly, and I had no time to collect my thoughts and plan means of escape. Such was the case when, in the Khalata Steppe, I was near dying of thirst, and being in a high fever I swooned. Then, again, at the time of my audience with the Emir at Samarkand, one of the court officials touched the nape of my neck, and remarked to his companion, "Unfortunately I have left my knife at home to-day," which may have been quite a casual remark. On the whole I have preserved my equanimity, nay, even my cheerfulness, in the most critical moments, for high-spirited youth does not easily give way to despair; it has a store of confidence which only disease or age can diminish.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Journal Asiatique, March-April, 1865, p. 371.