From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

Ahead of us is a dangerous bit of desert, which is always infested by Turkmans; so, on setting out from Sadarabad, careful preparations were made for our passage across it. Our baggage and servants, &c., were all collected together, and massed in a close column outside the sarae. The gun was placed at their head, and protected by a score of matchlockmen, whilst the rest ranged themselves Indian-file on either side the column. The cavalry took up their posts on the flanks, front, and rear, and threw out advanced parties, who topped every rising bit of ground to scan the country ahead.

All the arrangements being completed, our trumpeter brayed out some hideous sounds, which of themselves were enough to scare the enemy, if the gun was not, and we proceeded, ourselves amongst the horsemen in advance of the gun. At a couple of miles, over a flat bare clay surface, we came to a rivulet crossed by a crumbling brick-bridge of very ancient appearance. This is Pul Abresham. Here there was a block in the passage. We had about a hundred camels, more than half the number of mules, and asses innumerable, for every matchlockman had his accompanying ulágh (beast of burden), and there were besides several others who had taken advantage of the opportunity to join our caravan. The bridge was narrow, and only a few could pass at a time; presently a few scattered horsemen were spied far away on the desert to the left. The news spread like wildfire. “Haste to the front!”—“Keep together!”—“Cross quickly!”—“Don’t lag behind!”—resounded on all sides from our escort. The bridge was abandoned to the camels and mules and asses, and horsemen pushed across the muddy stream on either side of it, and again formed up on the open ground ahead. Some horsemen had galloped on in advance to bring intelligence regarding those we had seen on the desert, and meanwhile the crowd in the caravan looked around watchfully in every direction, as if they expected a Turkman to start up from behind every bush that dotted the plain. The terror these well-cursed marauders inspire in the Persian breast is laughable, were it not for the reality of the cause. Men who bounce and brag of their prowess when they have hundreds of miles between them, pale and shiver in their shoes when they find themselves in a position where they may meet them face to face.

After a brief halt here, our horsemen on an eminence some way ahead were seen to dismount. On this our leader pronounced the road clear, and we set forward again. This tract has from time immemorial been infested by Turkmans of the Goklán and Yamút tribes, whose seat is in the valley of the Atrak. A country better adapted to their mode of warfare could nowhere else be found. The hill ranges to the north afford them an unobserved approach to their hunting-grounds. Arrived on them, they conceal themselves amongst the inequalities of the surface, finding water in some ravine, and pasture for their horses in the aromatic herbs and rich grasses that cover the hollows. Their scouts from the eminence of some commanding ridge, or the top of some of the innumerable mameloned mounds and hummocks that form the most striking feature of the country, watch the roads, and on the approach of a caravan or small party of travellers, warn their comrades, who dispose themselves for the attack. If they find the caravan is marching on the alert and with precaution, they act on the principle that “Discretion is the better part of valour,” and remain in their concealment; otherwise they proceed along the hollows to some spot where the road strikes across a bit of open ground, and so soon as their prey is fairly out on it, they sweep down upon them, and generally, I am assured, carry them off without resistance, for resistance, the Persians have learned, means death.

In conversation with one of our escort, I asked him why the Government did not make a great effort, and for once and all put an end to this constant source of trouble and loss? “Pul!” (money), he said, with a Gallic shrug of the shoulders; “our Government won’t spend the money. This is an old institution. Nobody put a stop to it before, and who is to do it now? The present arrangements meet all requirements. A guard starts twice a month to escort coming and going caravans between Mazinán and Shahrúd, as we now escort your party, and that meets all wants.” “Have you ever been attacked on this duty?” I asked. “Very seldom, and only when the Turkmans take the field in great force. They mostly attack small parties travelling without a guard, or sweep off the peasantry at work in their fields, or surprise a village at day-dawn.” “But are no arrangements made to protect these people?” “What would you have?” he replied. “Travellers have no right to move without a guard in a dangerous country, and the villagers have the protection of their forts.” “But surely the country would be better off if there were no Turkmans to harry it,” I said. “Of course it would; but we don’t hope for such good fortune from our Government. You people might do it, or the Russians might do it; but we can’t. People say the Russians are going to rid us of the Turkmans—God grant they may! and if they clear these pidr sokhta (burnt fathers) off the face of the earth, they will gain the good-will and esteem of all Persians.” “How,” I asked, “could the Russians rid you of the Turkmans?” “Russia is a great country, and very wealthy, and has a large army. What are the Turkmans to them? If they will only spend their money, they can do anything. People say they are going to conquer Khiva, and are making preparations for the campaign. So soon as they take Khiva, the Turkmans of Marv will also disappear.”

I further learned from my informant, that the Turkmans of the Atrak valley raid all the country from Shahrúd and Samnán to Sabzwár and Nishabor, where they meet their brethren of Marv, the Takka, Sarúc, and Sálor Turkmans, who raid all the country between Mashhad and Herat up to Sabzwár, thus cutting off from Persia all that portion of the country to the north and west of the great salt desert of Káshán and Yazd, so far as security of life, liberty, and property is concerned.

But to return to our route. Pul Abresham, or the stream it bridges, marks the boundary between the districts of Sabzwár and Shahrúd. There is another bridge of the same name about thirty miles higher up the stream, on the direct road from Shahrúd to Mashhad, by Jájarm and Júwen; but being more dangerous, it is less frequented than this route.

The Pul Abresham river also marks the extreme north-west limit of the Afghan kingdom founded by Sháh Ahmad, Durrani. It flows south-east, and joining the Káli Shor, or Nishabor, and Sabzwár, is ultimately lost in the salt desert between Yazd and Káshán. Beyond the Káli Abresham, we crossed some low slaty ridges where they terminate on the desert, and traversing a gravelly plain thinly dotted with tamarisk bushes, rose up to the ridge on which the Abbasabad Sarae stands, and camped on some mounds under its walls, our escort filling the sarae.

Our next stage was twenty-two miles to Myándasht—route westerly, over a broken country thrown into little mameloned mounds, with hills on our right. At six miles we came to the Dahna Alhác, an easy defile winding between bare rugged hills of coarse brown trap. On our way through it, we met a caravan of pilgrims on their way to Mashhad, escorted by a military guard similar to our own. It was a curious spectacle, from the variety of costume and nationality and conveyance, all jumbled together in jostling confusion. We passed each other with mutual stares of wonderment, and I did not appreciate the novelty of the scene till it was gone from my sight. There were great shaggy camels bearing huge panniers, in which were cooped three or four veiled bundles of female beauty, rolling from side to side like a ship in a heavy swell. There were others mounted by wiry Arabs in their thin rope-turbans, or by thick-set Tátárs in their shaggy sheepskin caps, swaying to and fro with an energy that led one to suppose that the speed of the camel depended on the activity of their movements. There were pannier-mules bearing veiled ladies and their negress slaves, accompanied by their Persian lords, gay in dress and proud, on their handsome little steeds. There were quiet calculating merchants, with flowing beards and flowing robes, borne along by humble ponies as absorbed in thought as their riders; and there were sleekly attired priests, serene in their conscious dignity, comfortably flowing with the tide on their well-groomed and neatly caparisoned mules. There were others too, a mixed crowd of footmen and women, all dusty and hot, struggling on to keep pace with their mounted wayfarers. How many will lag behind and fall to the Turkman’s share? There are amongst these whole families emigrating in search of food and work: father and mother each bear an infant on their backs, and two or three of tender years trot by their side. There are tattered beggars, reduced by sheer want; and there are other beggars, the impudent, idle, and dissolute scoundrels who impose on the community by an ostentatious assumption of the religious character, through no other claim than that of their bold importunity, backed by noisy appeals to true believers in the name of God and Ali. Their trade pays, and they flourish in their rags and dissoluteness.

With this caravan came a courier with despatches from Tehran for Sir F. Goldsmid. He was a mission servant, and had been sent off from our camp at Birjand with letters for Mr Alison, the British Minister at the court of Persia, and was now returning with the tidings of his death on the 29th April. After a brief pause, during which “Ismáil,” for such was his name, greeted his old comrades all round with a kiss each on the mouth, we proceeded, and clearing the defile, halted for breakfast, and to read our letters and papers, at the dilapidated sarae of Alhác.