[575] Grodekoff found the burial-places full of murdered victims, the villages in ruins, and the fields out of cultivation (Marvin’s Merv, p. 207).
[576] O’Donovan, p. 182; Moser, p. 319.
[577] Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, pp. 82, 83. For an enumeration of the Turkoman clans the reader is referred to Marvin’s Merv, which is a mosaic of quotations from writers of different value. Petrusevitch is by far the most trustworthy.
[578] “Residence among these lawless tribes convinces me more than ever that there cannot be a worse despotism than the despotism of a mob. There is nothing, in my eyes, more pregnant with fatal consequences than the sway and power of an ignorant and uncivilised multitude governed by no other motives than its own maddening impulses” (Wolff’s Bokhara, p. 262).
[579] O’Donovan, Story of Merv, p. 220.
[580] Nūr Verdi Khān was one of those exceptional men, to be found in widely divergent societies, who acquire the commanding influence which all strong personalities must attain. His death, at the comparatively early age of fifty, just before the Russian invasion, was the death-knell of Tekke independence (Moser, p. 319).
[581] Wolff found a “Calipha,” or high priest, named `Abd er-Rahmān enjoying great influence at Merv in 1843. This was another case of force of character leading to the attainment of greatness (Bokhara, pp. 114, 115).
[582] Sardār is a Persian word signifying “head-man.” Tokma Sardār, who had commanded the garrison of Geok Teppe during the memorable siege by the Russians, visited O’Donovan at Merv soon after that event. “He was slightly under middle height, very quiet, almost subdued in manner, his small grey eyes lighting up with a humorous twinkle” (The Story of Merv, p. 178).
[583] The weapons were a long flintlock, laboriously loaded with the contents of a powder-horn and leather bullet bag, but the Tekke trusted chiefly to his sabre and a long murderous dagger, called pshak (Moser, p. 296).
[584] Moser, p. 324.