The face of Manchuria, Korea, & Russian Turkestan

by E. G. Kemp

On our arrival there we saw the truth of what we had been told, that Bokhara was not a place where Europeans could stay, for there are only small caravanserais and no hotel, but there are some Russian buildings outside the city walls, including a fine bank. The old walls enclose a large city, but as we made our way through its narrow streets we were struck with the absence of population, such a striking contrast from Samarkand. At the gate were Sart guards and a row of fixed bayonets hung on the wall of the guard house. Here we were no longer in Russian territory, for the province of Bokhara, 100,000 square miles in extent, cuts like a wedge through Turkestan, and is a vassal state of the Russian Empire. It only boasts two cities of importance, Bokhara and Khiva, and is ruled by the Amir. The Government is a hereditary despotism, with absolute power of life and death. Russia, however, keeps a jealous eye upon its affairs, and when two native missionaries (under the auspices of the Swedish Mission) had been working there some time ago, the Russian authorities insisted upon their being sent out of the country. Since then no mission work is allowed to exist, for it is hardly possible to call by such a name what is being done by the Orthodox Church, its work aiming rather at political than spiritual results; at least so we were told by a Russian lady. It has no definite mission as in Siberia for the Mohammedans. I met this lady in the street, and she stopped me to inquire if I happened to be Miss C.; she had been asked to look out for her, the only address furnished being “Central Asia.” She proved to be a Red Cross nurse, travelling in Central Asia with the object of doing work for the Bible Society, and ascertaining what opening there was for mission work. Her nationality and right of entrance into all Government hospitals gave her special facility for doing this, and she found the people quite friendly and inclined to talk on religious topics, but the officials stood in the way. The Russian Consul told her frankly he didn’t like missionaries, but he admitted that he knew none and could give no grounds for his objection.

Bokhara “the Noble” has always been the centre of religious influence since Islam first conquered it about A.D. 709 (Arabian invasion), and to-day it boasts a rigid adherence to the letter of the Koran, surpassing that of any other place. Before the Arabian invasion Central Asia was Christian. The Nestorian Church had established episcopal sees in Merv and Samarkand as early as the fifth century, and the whole country had practically adopted Christianity. After it had become Moslem the Mongols swept down upon it in the thirteenth century. “In Bokhara, so famed for its men of piety and learning, the Mongols stabled their horses in the sacred precincts of the mosques, and tore up the Korans to serve as litter; those of the inhabitants who were not butchered were carried away into captivity, and their city reduced to ashes. Such, too, was the fate of Samarkand, Balkh, and many another city of Central Asia.”[8] The Moslem faith, however, survived the storm. When the Arabian Mohammedan leadership had become weakened about the middle of the eleventh century it passed into the hands of the Turanians, and they now showed their power by winning their conquerors over to Islamism in a singularly short space of time.

As one strolls through the streets of Bokhara to-day, one sees and hears nothing but Mohammedanism. The civil administration is entirely in the hands of the religious orders, and the madressahs, with the exception of El Azhar at Cairo, are the most important in the world. There are said to be 365 madressahs, but in reality there is not a third of that number. The dates of some of these are 1372 (Abdullah’s), 1426, 1529, 1582; and the Empress Catherine of Russia founded one in the eighteenth century. Vambéry says that nowhere in the East had he found the Moslems so punctilious about the externals of religion, even to repeating their prayers stark-naked for fear their clothes should have been defiled in any way without their being aware of it. Their ruling principle is “man must make a figure; no one cares for what he thinks!” We saw the shockingly dirty tanks where so much religious washing goes on, and they were revolting beyond words. The text of Islam says that where there are more than 120 pints of water it is “blind,” that is to say the dirt gets lost in it. Consequently you see people washing out their ears, noses, and mouths in the filthiest tanks adjoining mosques before reciting their prayers, which they do at least five times a day. The consequence of this is that the inhabitants constantly suffer from tapeworm, which the French call by the more pleasing name “solitare.”

A large part of the population of Bokhara belongs to the religious orders, and are known as Ishans, Mullahs, and Reis. They belong to the Sunnite faction, and have an utter abhorrence of Persian Moslems, who do not belong to that sect; they maintain the same standard of religious asceticism as that of the Middle Ages, and are prepared to fight just as in those days. It is hard to realise that they are utterly untouched by modernism, and the barbarism of Bokhara is unspeakable. Needless to say, we did not visit the prison—descriptions of it can be read in every book dealing with the place, but it does not bear thinking of when we remember that Englishmen were literally rotting away there, “masses of their flesh having been gnawn off their bones by vermin in 1843” (Wolff). The citadel has no less hideous tales to tell: indeed Bokhara is one of the most degraded places on the face of the earth according to all accounts.

“Thou wilt to Bokhara? O fool for thy pains,

Thither thou goest to be put into chains.”

Mesnevi.

Vambéry’s description of what he saw only half a century ago leaves no room for doubt on this subject. He heard the robes which were to be awarded to successful soldiers described as “four-head,” “ten-head,” or “twenty-head” robes, and seeing no such design on them inquired the meaning of the term. For all answer he was taken to see the arrival of the conquerors; they had women captives tied to their saddle bows as well as great sacks. These were filled with human heads, and each man in turn had these hideous trophies counted, and the number placed upon the official list to be the measure of the reward he should receive. The lot of the slaves is a terrible one, and slavery still exists, being a thing wholly approved and sanctioned by the Koran. The law of Harem is observed with the utmost stringency, and women of the upper class are kept closely secluded. If a girl is allowed to go out at all, she must not only be veiled, but must put on the appearance of age and decrepitude, walking with a stick on tottering footsteps. Although not compelled to do so as in the case of women, the men also cultivate assiduously the art of a special step, which is known as the “Reftari khiraman”: their poets describe it as the swaying of a cypress in the wind, but to us it appears as an ungainly waddle. David Cox was clever enough to make the dogs bark in his sketches, but I, alas, cannot make my man waddle!

The law of Islam prohibits drunkenness, but “the number of beng eaters (beng is a drug made from cannabis Indica) is greatest in Bokhara and Khokand, and it is no exaggeration to say that three-fourths of the learned and official world, or in other words the whole intelligent class, are victims to this vice. The Government looks on with perfect indifference while hundreds, nay thousands, commit suicide.... The few hints we have thrown out are sufficient to show the abyss of crime to which an exaggerated fanaticism degrades mankind” (Vambéry’s “Travels in Central Asia”). Bokhara is still the same to-day, the most fanatical and the most corrupt city in Asia, though outwardly to the eye of the casual stranger clothed with the respectability that its European masters exact.