Around the Black Sea / Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania

by William Eleroy Curtis

The scarcity of maps in ancient times and the frequent changes in nomenclature in the countries of the East has caused interminable controversies as to the route of the great Macedonian, and the identity of many of the places which are associated with his achievements. Dr. Jackson, who has devoted his life to the study of Persian and Indian history, undertook to set things straight some years ago and has made several visits to Asia for that purpose. He is perhaps the highest authority in America on Persian affairs and has recently published a book of absorbing interest called “Persia, Past and Present.” A second book will treat of the Trans-Caspian country and other scenes of the achievements of Alexander in that part of the world.

Dr. Jackson tells me that he feels confident that he has established the fact that Alexander built the wall between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains. He has been convinced of this by certain inscriptions upon tablets attached to the wall, which attribute its creation to the first world conqueror. And they confirm a belief which is always cherished. But in his investigations in Baku, the Caspian oil district, he met with a surprise from which it is difficult to recover, concerning the age of the ruins of a temple of the fire worshippers a few miles from that city. It is supposed to have been erected in very ancient times by pilgrims who were attracted to the banks of the Caspian because of the naphtha springs that were burning along its western coast. It is one of the most striking and interesting of all the ruins in that country. Later comers supposed that these fires were natural and were worshipped from the earliest times. They built an imposing temple around them and with great ingenuity conducted the gas through pipes of cane sheathed with clay to the tops of towers erected over the gates and at the corners of the enclosure. These fires were kept up by Parsees from Bombay, descendants of the ancient fire worshippers of Persia, until early in the ’80s, when the owners of a concession from the Russian government to develop the oil deposit seized the place and built a refinery.

Dr. Jackson says: “I always supposed that this fire temple was built by Zoroaster or some of his followers, and was very much shocked when I discovered that it is a modern institution; although I still cling to the belief that it may have been a place of worship for the Persian fire worshippers from the earliest times.

“In a careful examination of the ruins of the temple at Surakhany, near Baku, I found seventeen inscriptions, some of them in excellent condition, and was able to make photographs of them all. Six of them are on the outside and fifteen on the inside of the walls, and they are all dated in the eighteenth century A.D., instead of the sixth or eighth century B.C., as I have always supposed. There is no question about it. The temple is not only modern, but it was built by Hindoo fire worshippers—Brahmins from the Punjab—survivors of the old Vedic worship. They were probably Hindoo merchants at Baku and were reminded of the faith and the forms of worship of their ancestors by finding these flaming springs. Furthermore, some of the inscriptions correspond very closely with those I have seen at Kanzra, in northern India.

“It has always been a mystery why there is no mention of this temple in ancient Greek and Roman accounts of the Caucasus and the Caspian country, which have frequent references to the burning springs of naphtha. Nor do any of the early Mohammedan writers mention the temple. The first we hear of it is about the beginning of the eighteenth century in a narrative of a London merchant named Hanmay, who went over to that country on a trading expedition and wrote a book about the Caspian Sea and the surrounding country. He describes the temple and the fires and gives some interesting information concerning both. Gibbon in his history describes the temple and says it was destroyed by Heraclius, the Christian emperor of Byzantium, in the seventh century, but that is not true.

“I have been able to locate most of the places identified with the campaigns of Alexander of Macedonia,” continued Professor Jackson, “and it has been an exceedingly interesting task.

“I have been able to trace back the history of the city of Derbent for several hundred years before Christ. Notwithstanding its location on the shores of the Caspian Sea, so far from what we generally assumed to have been the scenes of human activity at that period, it has had an important and busy place in history, and is frequently referred to by writers in ancient days. For example, Tacitus tells us that Alexander quartered his invalid soldiers there in 330 B.C.

“I have not been able to decipher the inscriptions upon the tablets I found in the temple of the fire worshippers at Surakhany. I cannot read the language in which they are written, and I don’t know anything about them, but one of these days we hope to make them clear.”

Señor Don Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, “chamberlain of the most high and puissant Lord Don Henry, third of that name, King of Castile and Leon,” who visited the court of the great Tamerlane, the emperor of Asia, at Samarkand as an ambassador in 1403, refers to the iron gates in the wall at Derbent. He speaks also of others in the mountains which separate China and Turkestan, where, he says: “There is a pass leading up by a ravine which looks as if it had been artificially cut, and the hills rise to a great height on either side, and the pass is smooth and very deep. In the centre of the pass there is a village, and the mountain rises to a great height behind. This pass is called ‘the gates of iron,’ and in all the mountain range there is no other pass, so that it guards the land of Samarkand in the direction of India. These ‘gates of iron’ produce a large revenue to the lord Timour Beg, for all merchants who come from India pass this way.

“Timour Beg is also lord of the other ‘gates of iron,’ which are near Derbent, leading to the province of Tartary, in the city of Caffa, which are also in very lofty mountains, between Tartary and the land of Derbent, facing the Sea of Bakou, and the people of Tartary are obliged to use that pass when they go to Persia. The distance from the ‘gates of iron’ at Derbent to those in the land of Samarkand is fifteen hundred leagues.