The climate of Merv is detestable. In summer the temperature rises to 100 degrees, and the houses must be sealed hermetically between 8 a.m. and sunset. No punkahs mitigate the sweltering heat, and ice is tabooed on the ground that it increases the liability to fever. This latter is the bane of Merv, as it is of all irrigated tracts without subsoil drainage. In 1896 nearly 5000 of the population perished; and so high was the death-rate in the Russian garrison that it was in contemplation to remove the troops temporarily to healthier quarters. In no place are health-giving diversions more necessary, but such are unknown even to the younger officers. A respectable bag of the brilliant Central Asian pheasant may be made in the brushwood cover three miles from Merv. In India the environs of a military station are swept as bare of game as the Plaine de St. Denis by Parisian gunners. Polo is unknown, though the ground in all directions is suited to the noble pastime, and ponies can be picked up for £10 or £12. The scanty leisure left the young fellows by the absorbing round of duty is given up to billiards and dancing. Balls take place on Sundays at the Casino, an institution which takes the place of our messroom and club. It belongs to Government, and is maintained by subscriptions levied from all civil and military officers. At the entrance is a buffet covered with bottles and the usual components of the zakouska. Adjoining it is a restaurant, which offers an extensive menu at prices much below those of the railway refreshment-rooms and the miserable hotels. This opens on to a fine ballroom adorned with portraits of Tsars and Tsarinas past and present. Guests are received on their arrival by two members of the Casino committee, and make their way through a hall crowded with officers in undress uniform to the ballroom, at the upper end of which the great ladies of the place sit in state round a table covered with dishes of apples and bonbons. After making his obeisance, the visitor is free to enjoy himself—if haply he can secure a partner, for the dearth of the fair sex at Central Asian balls is more marked than in India. Mazurkas and cotillons are practised with a zeal which would perhaps be considered “bad form” at Simla; while the majority unable to participate in their ardent pleasures block the doorways and find solace in frequent adjournments to the buffet, which is always thronged with hosts only too willing to pledge their friends in rassades of vodka and fiery liqueurs. The close resemblance between Central Asian and Indian cantonments extends to the bazaars. The lines of small open shops, the dusty trees, the open drains, even the indescribable but never-to-be-forgotten odour, all are common to British and Russian possessions in the East. The trade of Merv is not confined to the permanent bazaar. A weekly market is held on a plain to the east of the town. The roads converging thither are thronged on Mondays with Turkomans riding double on their ill-fed ponies and two-wheeled Persian carts piled high with goods. The latter are exposed for sale in long lines of covered booths, where Hebrew, Persian, and Armenian vendors squat, surrounded by dried fruits, rice from Meshed, coarse beet-sugar from Russia, and rocky almond paste. The fruit would win a first prize at any English show. Nowhere are melons cheaper or more fragrant, apricots and grapes nowhere more choice. The cheap cutlery, trinkets, leather goods, and samovars are much the same as one sees in Russian markets west of the Caspian, but the prices are at least 100 per cent. dearer. The embroidery, shawls, and carpets for which Merv was famed have lost in value and quality since the Russian conquest. Vast is the concourse of Turkomans from all parts of the oasis at these weekly gatherings; but there is far less of the babel of sounds and the eager bargaining than is seen at Indian bazaars. It is in vast crowds that national spirit is unconsciously displayed. If that of Merv be reflected in the thousands of big-boned, slouching Turkomans in sheep-skin hats and flowing garments who flock hither to lay in their weekly supplies, then it is evident that their spirit has been crushed by conquest.
RUINS OF OLD MERV
The ruins of the ancient cities which successively bore the name of Merv stand in a dismal plain covered with tamarisk and camels’ thorn ten miles from the modern cantonments. The railway station whence they may be visited is called Bahrām `Alī, after an eighteenth century chieftain who held the neighbouring robber tribes under stern control, until his overthrow by Amīr Murād, the founder of the Bokhāran dynasty. Trim orchards and broad roads surround the halting-place, and on all sides may be seen huge piles of cotton awaiting transport. For Bahrām `Alī is the centre of the Tsar’s private domains, which have of late years received a plentiful supply of water from one of the old irrigation works now restored by imperial enterprise. Leaving this smiling oasis, one enters on a scene of desolation which can be matched only by the environs of Delhi. Like that vast tomb of empires, Old Merv is a series of ruined cities, each built of its predecessors’ materials.[682] The most recent is the citadel so stoutly defended by Bahrām `Alī in 1784. It is an irregular quadrangle of about 250 yards square, surrounded by a wall with circular towers of brick. Within, amid a mass of ruins, is a mosque with a cupola still standing, and in the courtyard of the citadel, at the north-east corner, are the remains of the founder’s palace, a quadrangle of three-storeyed buildings in fair preservation. Passing out of Bahrām `Alī by the eastern portal, one sees, a mile off, two arched recesses standing side by side, conspicuous by their ornamentation of blue enamelled bricks. In front of each is a tombstone of grey marble, showing extracts from the Koran in raised Arabic lettering. According to tradition, they cover the remains of two standard-bearers of the Prophet. Hard by is a fine vaulted well; and the group are the sole exceptions to the tale of ruin told by the heaps of crumbling bricks which stretch as far as the eye can see. The oldest of the ruined cities of the plain, called Giaur Kal`a, stood eastwards of these monuments. It was destroyed in the seventh century, when the Caliph `Omar’s lieutenants carried their creed through Central Asia by fire and sword. Giaur Kal`a is identified by its vast earthen ramparts, which have proved more durable than the bricks and mortar of a much later age. As in the case with Bahrām `Alī, there are the remains of a citadel at its north-eastern angle, from which an extended view can be had of the poor relics of vanished splendour. North-west of Giaur Kal`a are the only buildings of ancient Merv which continue to serve the purposes of man. They are a serai and mosque, which have clustered round the ugly tomb of a saint named Yūsuf Hamadāni. It contains the usual vaulted chambers for the accommodation of travellers, ranged in a square in which their goods and camels find standing room. Beyond it is the tomb of Sultan Sanjar, exactly in the centre of the site of the second of the towns which successively bore the name of Merv. It is said to have been modelled on that of Firdawsi near Meshed, but it closely resembles the great mausolea of Upper India. All are alike, quadrangular buildings topped with an echoing dome, which gives a sense of vastness and solemnity beyond anything that the “long-drawn aisle and fretted vault” can compass. Even in its ruin the splendid edifice shows feats of workmanship in brick and mortar which it would be difficult to imitate with all the appliances of modern science. The Sultan who sleeps below was the best of the Seljūk Turks; and, to judge from the abundance of offerings piled on the rude clay mound which covers his remains, he still lives in the hearts of the people. The noble work was seen in all its majesty by only two generations; for in 1221 the city of the good Sultan Sanjar was razed to the ground, with a fearful slaughter of the inhabitants, by Tulūy Khān, a worthy son of the ferocious Chingiz. Here the ground is strewn with fragments of pottery exhibiting strangely beautiful designs, iridescent glass and enamelled tiles; and no one can doubt that systematic researches would yield more substantial tokens of a buried civilisation. The source of the fabulous wealth of Old Merv stands revealed in the numerous irrigating channels with which the site is scored. This is the land where—
“——fairest of all streams, the Murga roves,
Amongst Merou’s bright palaces and groves.”[683]
The source of supply was an immense dam erected across the stream thirty-five miles southwards, called Sultān Band, the destruction of which 114 years ago by the Amīr Murād brought utter ruin on the oasis. The mischief wrought by that fanatic has already been, in part, repaired by the Russians; and the charming house of Colonel Kashtalinski, superintendent of the state domains, is embowered in gardens and orchards which will soon restore to this much harassed spot some share of its ancient prosperity.
CHAPTER IX
Bokhārā, a Protected Native State
The 141 miles which separate Merv from the Bokhāran frontier were the costliest and the most depressing section of the Transcaspian Railway. It includes that terror of Russian engineers known as the Sandy Tract,[684] and no trace of cultivation is met with until the weary eye finds solace in the restful green which marks the course of the mighty Oxus. The border stronghold, Charjūy, crowns a hill to the south of the railway line, and bears in its rugged outlines a faint resemblance to Edinburgh Castle. The little town which nestles at its foot is garrisoned by a Russian force consisting of a battalion of Turkestān Rifles and a squadron of Cossacks. At Kerki, 110 miles up stream, three more rifle battalions and a regiment of Cossacks serve as a reminder of the power of Russia. The source of the Amū Daryā is Lake Victoria, a beautiful sheet of water embosomed in the Pamirs 15,600 feet above sea-level, which was visited by Marco Polo, and rediscovered in 1838 by Captain Wood of the Indian Marine.[685] The bed of the great river is 350 yards wide at the point where it leaves the hills at Khwāja Sālih, 90 miles north-west of Balkh; and 200 miles down stream it swells to 650 yards. The mean velocity is 3½ miles an hour, the average depth 9 feet, increasing to a maximum of 29 in August after the annual rains. The course of the Oxus in our day is north-westerly, and it discharges into the Sea of Aral above Khiva. The stream once before bifurcated at Kohna Urganj, 70 miles south of the great inland lake; and one branch flowed south-westwards, entering the Caspian by the Balkhan Bay. At some period in the fifteenth or sixteenth century the Khivans attempted to restrain the course by a dam, and so caused a diversion of the western channel, which can still be traced through the Turkoman Desert.[686] To restore it has been the dream of the Russians since the days of Peter the Great. Elaborate surveys have demonstrated that the operation is perfectly practicable; and those who advocated it urged with truth that the canalisation of the river would turn many thousands of square miles of desert into a garden. The railway has, however, won the day; and the only use made of the Amū Daryā by the Russian authorities is to support a steam flotilla. This service was inaugurated in 1887,[687] and is now carried on by steel-built steamers drawing 2 feet of water, and carrying 200 tons of cargo. Its chief value lies in the means it gives for the transport of troops and munitions of war, for the river is navigable up to the Afghan frontier, 700 miles from its mouth. The Amū Daryā, however, cannot be made to serve the needs of commerce, for the channel is constantly shifting, sand-banks are thrown up and disappear in a few hours, and the navigating officers are in the hands of native pilots, who divine obstructions by observing the colour of the water. We have already described the great viaduct which spans the Amū Daryā near Charjūy. It is admittedly but a make-shift, and will soon be replaced by a girder bridge. The traveller glances uneasily at the current swirling round the slender piers, and feels inwardly relieved when his train has crept safely to the opposite bank. On either side of the line there now stretches a dead level of parched-up loam, broken here and there by hillocks covered with the outlines of some ancient citadel. There are many of these Central Asian Pompeiis, deserted owing to the failure of the water-supply, or overwhelmed by the ever-encroaching sand. Mosques, market-places, and palaces stand as they did centuries back, but the narrow streets show no signs of human life. But the desert yields again to cultivation, and the train speeds through fields of cotton and millet, overshadowed by splendid trees. The fair domains irrigated from the river Zarafshān have been reached, and its centre, Bokhārā the Noble, comes into view. A canon of Russian policy ordains that the European quarters shall be placed at a considerable distance from the great cities. Thus the effect of sudden waves of fanaticism, which are always to be feared in Mohammedan countries, is lessened, and time is given to organise defence. The railway station is eight miles by road from the capital, and is the centre of a Russian town called New Bokhārā. Its broad thoroughfares are destitute of trees and flowers, for nothing will grow in this ill-chosen site. Among many mean buildings of the bungalow type are some with architectural pretensions—a handsome residency, built by M. P. Lessar during his term of office as representative at the Bokhāran Court, a palace in a hybrid Byzantine style lately erected for the Amīr, the new buildings of the Imperial Bank, and the offices of the 3rd Railway Battalion. The Russian quarter already numbers 6000 inhabitants, and is daily growing in importance at the expense of its older rival. The highway leading to the latter passes through a country which is evidently much subdivided, and cultivated with extreme care. The fertile belt is watered by distributories from the Zarafshān,[688] which passes Samarkand and pours a flood of wealth into Bokhārā’s lap. These canals are popularly attributed to Alexander the Great and Tīmūr, heroic figures which serve as a spur to the imagination of poets and professional story-tellers throughout Central Asia. They are, in point of fact, the inevitable result of the natural conditions encountered. The soil in Bokhārā is either a rich yellow loam or sandy waste, and the latter is ever encroaching. The rainfall is scanty; and, but for the help of irrigation, mankind would long since have given up the incessant struggle for existence. Nowhere in the world are the contrasts between desolation and plenty more startling. A caravan approaching the capital finds itself, after weary months spent in the sands, suddenly surrounded by waving crops, and trees laden with luscious fruit, while its ears are greeted by the ripple of water. The mechanism by which this wondrous change is effected would excite the derision of a European engineer. The surveyor lies prone upon his back in the direction from which he wishes to bring water, looks over his forehead, and notes the point when ground is last seen. This rude substitute for the theodolite involves a great deal of misplaced labour, but its results are as marvellous as those of the Egyptian irrigation department. The precious fluid is brought from the mountains in canals, carried round spurs, and crossing ravines in pipes, which, like those of our old London water companies, are often mere hollow trees. When the plain is reached the gradient is very slight; and so tenacious is the soil that streams 30 feet in breadth are restrained by banks 3½ feet high and 3 feet broad at the base. The whole adult village population are the labourers, their only implements being a clumsy hoe, the lap of their long flowing robe, and a hurdle of plaited branches. The administration of the canals is on a popular basis. The superintendents, called “aksakāls,” are elected by the cultivators; and every village has its own “mīrāb,” who watches over the repairs and distributories, and is remunerated by a fixed proportion of the harvests. In years of plenty the task is an easy one; but it is far otherwise at the critical weeks which precede the spring melting of the snows. Every drop of water is then worth its weight in gold, and it must be so divided that each plot may get its just proportion. Complications, too, occur owing to the privileges which certain villages enjoy by royal grant or immemorial prescription, and by the absence of any satisfactory method of measuring discharges.[689] The Russians have shown wisdom in leaving the canals in native hands in the territory administered by them. In Bokhārā, of course, there has never been any question of introducing reform. The Bokhāran cultivator manures his fields heavily after harvest, and until they receive the life-giving water. In the city streets, old men and boys may be seen gathering every particle of refuse; and, in spite of the constant supply, the hungry soil is still unequal to the incessant demands upon it. Then the task of preparation begins. The fields are turned up lengthways and again transversely by a plough clumsily built of wood, its share only being tipped with iron. A pair of oxen can plough rather more than one acre during the cool hours between midnight and 9 a.m.[690] The soil is then manured and drenched with water. Spots which show effervescence, that curse of irrigated soil,[691] are dug up by hand and dressed with lime picked out of the ruins which abound in these ancient seats of population. The harrow, a plank two feet wide studded with iron nails, is next passed over the sodden soil in two directions. The enumeration of the crops thus raised would be as tedious as Homer’s catalogue of men of war. The stand-by of the poor is juwārī (holcus sorghum vel saccharatum), a species of millet which yields two hundredfold of coarse grain. Cotton is amongst the most lucrative; and a vast impetus has been given to its growth by the railway, which carries the raw material to Russian mills. Wheat, barley, and pulse are also staples, and the vine is made to produce a heady fluid, like immature sherry, by Armenians and Jews, who have the monopoly of a manufacture forbidden to true believers. The entire cultivated area of Bokhārā is not much in excess of 8000 square miles, and the population which it maintains is at least 2½ millions. Thus the price of land is high, and it is much subdivided.[692]
When viewed from a height the country resembles a huge shawl of a specially intricate pattern. The eight miles of dusty road which separate the capital from the Russian quarter run through fields which are exact replicas of those of Upper India, and the parallel extends to the villages of flat-roofed houses with wooden verandahs, and the shops displaying piles of sticky sweetmeats. The traveller’s progress is impeded by rows of ponies tethered in the narrow streets. In Bokhārā everyone rides. The poorest can afford the hire of a moiety of a donkey, and beggars on horseback excite no remark. The approach to the city is lined with the gardens in which Bokhāran citizens delight. They are walled in or sheltered from the wintry blast by rows of silver poplars. A quadrangular pond marks the centre of four paths at right angles connected by smaller ones, and overshadowed by fruit trees which are a mass of tender hues when spring showers bring out the blossom. Flowers are few: the rose, the blue iris, sunflower, and poppy well-nigh exhaust the list. The cultivation of fruit is well understood. The melons have a more delicate aroma than those of any Eastern country. Dried apricots are known in India as the “Ālū-i-Bokhārā”; and every variety of fruit familiar to the European palate is to be had in a perfection and at prices which would excite wonder in Covent Garden.