by Robert Byron
In the south-east corner of the middle court stands a domed pavilion, which is painted inside with gold flowers on a lapis ground. Attached to this painting Ferrier observed the signature of Giraldi, an Italian painter employed by Shah Abbas. This again I could not find.
On the way home the landau stopped at Takht-i-Safar, “the Traveller’s Throne”, a terraced garden all in ruins, whose natural melancholy was increased by the close of an autumn afternoon and the first whistle of the night wind. From the empty tank at the top a line of pools and watercourses descends from terrace to terrace. This pleasaunce of Hussein Baikara was built by forced labour; for when his subjects overstepped even his broad limits of the morally permissible, they had to help with the Sultan’s garden instead of going to prison. Up till the last century there was a pavilion here, and the water was still running; Mohun Lal mentions a great fountain, “which with its watery arrows fights with the top of the building”. What a phrase! But Mohun Lal, though he apologises for his English to the editor of the Bengal Journal, sometimes wrote very well. It would be hard to improve his description of Yar Mohammad, the then ruler of Herat: “He is a gloomy and decrepit prince; he excites the pity of mankind”.
A Hungarian has arrived here. He has just spent a month in hospital at Kandahar, and his stomach is still so deranged that he cannot eat. In fact he is starving to death. I gave him some soup and ovaltine which cheered him up and made him talk in bad French.
“Five years, Monsieur, I have been travelling. I shall travel five years more. Then perhaps I shall write something.”
“You like travelling?”
“Who could like travelling in Asia, Monsieur? I had a good education. What would my parents say if they saw me in such a place as this? It is not like Europe. Beyrut is like Europe. Beyrut I could support. But this country, these people… the things I have seen! I cannot tell you of them. I cannot. Aaaaah!” And overcome by the recollection of them, he buried his head in his hands.
“Come, Monsieur,” I said, giving him a gentle pat, “confide in me these terrible experiences. You will feel better for it.”
“I am not the type, Monsieur, who thinks himself superior to the rest of humanity. Indeed I am no better than others. Perhaps I am worse. But these people, these Afghans, they are not human. They are dogs, brutes. They are lower than the animals.”
“But why do you say that?”
“You don’t see why, Monsieur? Have you eyes? Look at those men over there. Are they not eating with their hands? With their hands! It is frightful. I tell you, Monsieur, in one village I saw a madman, and he was naked… naked.”
He was silent for a little. Then he asked me in a solemn voice: “You know Stambul, Monsieur?”
“Yes.”
“I lived in Stambul a year, and I tell you, Monsieur, it is a hell from which there is no way out.”
“Really. But you, since you are here, did you find a way out?”
“Thank God, Monsieur, I did.”
Herat, November 25th.—I ought to have left today.
It rained in the night and was still raining this morning. Nevertheless I packed, and sat in my room till twelve, when general opinion decided the lorry would not start. Having unpacked, I went to the Masjid-i-Juma.
Masjid-i-Juma means Friday Mosque. Every town has one. It corresponds to a parish church or metropolitan cathedral according to the size of the place, and is generally the oldest, and often the biggest building there. As in a European town, whose abbey or cathedral still proclaims the Middle Ages, while the rest has changed with the times, so in Herat this morose old mosque inside the walls growls a hoary accompaniment to the Timurid pageant of the suburbs. The glories of that pageant grew up overnight; they commemorate extraordinary individuals; they flowered and they fell. The Friday Mosque was old and ruined before the Timurids were heard of. It is less ruined now they are not heard of. For seven centuries the people of Herat have prayed in it. They still do so, and its history is their history.
I emerged from the gloomy labyrinths of the old town into a flagged court 100 yards long by 65 broad. Four ivans, vaulted open-fronted halls, break the four arcaded sides. The main ivan, on the west, is attended by two massive towers with blue cupolas. But for these, and a leaning umbrella-pine in one corner, there is no colour; only whitewash, bad brick, and broken bits of mosaic. A square pool reflects a mullah and his pupils, who pass all dressed in white. Silence and sunshine give peace to the worn pavement. It was peace I wanted. Curse the lorry and my doubts about the journey. I forgot them.
The mosque was founded in 1200 by Ghiyas-ad-Din, son of Sam, of the Ghorid dynasty, who made Herat his capital after the break-up of the Ghaznavide Empire, and is commemorated in the bottom inscription of the Kutb Minar at Delhi. The arcades are his, intersecting corridors of pointed arches ten deep or more; also, I imagine, a Kufic legend in fancy brick over an arch in the north-east corner, which gives a clue to the original ornament. Near this stands Ghiyas-ad-Din’s mausoleum, a square annexe to the mosque, whose dome has entirely collapsed. There are graves among the rubble, but no stones or inscriptions.
This remained the royal mausoleum till the coming of the Timurids. Rulers of the Kart dynasty were buried here, and in the XIVth century they replastered the walls, incising the surface with squiggles to look like ye olde bryckeworke. They also put up an inscription round the inside of the main ivan, using a curious brambly Kufic which they seem to have borrowed from Ghazni in another fit of conscious antiquarianism.
Behind the main ivan, as might be expected, there used to stand a sanctuary chamber which became unsafe and was pulled down by Ali Shir Nevai in 1498. After the princes themselves, Ali Shir was the pattern of the Timurid Renascence, alike in his manners and his actions. He had stood by Hussein Baikara in his early days, and rose to fortune with him. But having neither wife nor children to stimulate ambition, he resigned power for the arts. “No such patron”, says Babur, “or protector of men of parts and accomplishments is known, nor has one such been heard of as appearing.” He rescued Hussein Baikara from Shi’ism; yet that he was of a rational mind is illustrated by his contempt for astrology and superstition. His fortune was devoted to public works. In Khorasan alone he built 370 mosques, colleges, caravanserais, hospitals, reading-halls, and bridges. He collected a vast library, which he placed at the disposal of the historian Mirkhond. “In music also”, Babur adds, “he composed some good things, some excellent airs and preludes.” The people of Herat held him in such esteem that commercial inventions were named after him, including a new saddle and handkerchief, as biscuits were named after Garibaldi. Among scholars he is remembered for his championship of the Turki language as a literary medium, and his defence of it against Persian ridicule. He died in 1501. Babur, five years later, stayed in his house.
Towards the end of his life, seeing the old Friday Mosque in ruins, and conscious of its historical importance, he got permission of the Sultan to restore it. The work was carried out in feverish haste, while he himself superintended it, with his robe tucked up and trowel in hand. On top of the arcades a screen-wall was added, pierced by arches corresponding with those below; and the surface of the two, as it faced the court, was unified by a coating of mosaic. Such at least was the plan. It was never completed, and survives intact only in the south-west corner. A new sanctuary was also built, and was embellished, according to Khondemir, with Chinese designs. This has entirely disappeared.
One other relic of the Timurids is preserved in the mosque: a bronze cauldron some four feet in diameter, covered with arabesques and inscriptions in relief. A similar cauldron was cast by order of Timur for the Mosque of Hazrat Yassavi in Turkestan City, where it still is.1 The one at Herat, which is kept in a hutch on the steps of the main ivan, finds mention in the descriptions of the Chinese embassies.
On Friday, February 21st, 1427, Shah Rukh suffered an attempt on his life in this mosque, and his escape was the salvation of the Empire for another twenty years. The same day o
f the week and the same spot have just witnessed the frustration of another plot to upset the existing government.
Two days ago officials of the Russian Consulate spread a rumour in the bazaar that the new king had been assassinated as well as the old, their purpose being to foment a disturbance in Amanullah’s favour. In this they reckoned without the Governor, who detests Amanullah, and having suppressed a mutiny in his interest a year ago, is respected by the troops accordingly. The Russians no doubt thought that if they cast their bait on a Thursday afternoon, on Friday the people would have leisure to swallow it. As it turned out, they swallowed the Governor’s instead. Addressing himself to the congregation in the Friday Mosque, Abdul Rahim Khan denied the rumour and assured them that in any case order would be maintained. The last announcement depressed them. They cared nothing for the king, but were looking forward to a riot in which they could prosecute their quarrels and loot the Shiah merchants. This delightful dream is now postponed till the spring.
This afternoon a horde of turbaned infants dashed into my room, one carrying a hammer, another a nail, another a chisel, and put some glass in the windows. I wish they had come earlier. The lorry must surely go tomorrow if it keeps fine.
A message arrived from the Hungarian to say he was ill. Last night he had been as white as a ghost. Now I found him flushed with fever and being sick. His only protection from the floor was a small mat, and his only covering a threadbare rug. I dosed him as best I could, gave him a blanket and said he must see the doctor. After half an hour’s argument in the kitchen, the doctor was sent for. The answer came back that he was asleep. I then went to see him myself, forced my way into his house with some trepidation lest his women should be without their veils, and persuaded him to come. He diagnosed the fever as malaria and said the patient must go to the hospital; in answer to which the patient called him an Indian fool and said he would not go to hospital. After three hours a man came to take him to the hospital. At the same moment orders arrived from the Mudir-i-Kharija that he must not go to the hospital until the doctor had written a formal note requesting his admission. I sent my old fellow to fetch this note. Then a Turk walked in to say that since the Mudir-i-Kharija had already left his office, no order of admission could be issued till tomorrow. I gave it up.
The Parsis say the Hungarian is absolutely without money, and that the Afghan authorities have to nourish and transport him at their own expense. He certainly bites the hand that feeds him. Apparently the British Legation in Kabul refused him a visa for India; quite rightly in the Parsis’ opinion, who, though they are no great loyalists, disapprove of “poor whites”. I have left him with a tin of soup-cubes and some cream cheese to help him on his journey back to Meshed.
Not knowing the Persian for hot-water bottle, I made the kitchen laugh tonight by asking for my khanum.
Herat. November 26th dawned cloudless and warm, an ideal day for the time of year. At nine o’clock I met the lorry driver, who said we should be starting at eleven. At eleven the lorry was loading petrol vats, and the driver’s assistant told me to be ready at one. At one I had my luggage brought down, to learn that we should not start today. The other passengers all went back to their villages yesterday, owing to the rain, and have not reappeared.
As I shall probably be here for the rest of my life (which won’t last long at this rate), I have had my room cleaned out. I must describe it, and indeed the whole hotel. Downstairs three large rooms with glass fronts give on to the street. The first is the kitchen, indicated by a pool of blood and a decapitated cock’s head on the pavement. The second and third are filled with marble-topped tables, and hung with European scenes painted on glass by an Indian familiar with the early numbers of the Illustrated London News. Here too are Seyid Mahmud’s desk, a cabinet gramophone on legs from Bombay, and a pile of Indian records. Adjoining the kitchen, an outside staircase leads up to a long corridor lit by skylights, which has rooms on either side. My room is at the back, where it avoids part of the coppersmiths’ din: a square box, with a ceiling of bare poles and laths, white walls, and a sky-blue dado. The floor is paved with tiles, whose interstices secrete a cloud of dust and straw; half of it is covered with a carpet, and half the rest with my bedding and waterproof sheets. Two Windsor chairs and a table draped in white American cloth are the furniture. On the table stands a vase of blue and white spirals adorned with a pink glass rose—the kind you win at hoop-la—in which Seyid Mahmud has placed a tight round posy of yellow chrysanthemums enclosing a ring of chocolate red ones enclosing a centre of yellow button daisies. A pewter basin and a graceful ewer enable me to wash on the bare part of the floor. My bedding consists of a green flea-bag, yellow sheepskin coat, and an Afghan quilt of scarlet chintz. Beside it, my lamp, Boswell, clock, cigarettes, and a plate of grapes are conveniently disposed on a despatch-case. The khanum waits to be filled. I have had a nail put in for my ties, another for my hat, and a third for my looking-glass. If the door and the window were not opposite one another, if the door would shut and the window had its full complement of panes, I should be comfortable enough. But the draught is like a storm at sea. All the refuse goes out of the window into the garden of the Municipality.
I caught my breath just now as I stepped into the moonlit corridor. Four rifles menaced my stomach, aimed by four ghostly figures cloaked in white, who were squatting in the room opposite. I could see the glitter of their eyes in the dark beneath their dim white turbans. Four others had their backs to me and their rifles pointing out of the window. No doubt it was just a pleasant evening party. But the Muntazim-i-Telegraph had been croaking again this morning about the coming upheaval, and I wondered for a moment if Amanullah had actually arrived.
One monument here is even older than the Friday Mosque. Writing in the tenth century Mukadasi describes the Bridge of Malan, saying it was built by a Magian. For a thousand years it has carried the traffic to and from India over the Hari river. Today it still has 26 arches—there were 28 in Khondemir’s time—and room for two lorries abreast. The arches are of different shapes, and since one or two generally collapse every year in the spring floods, the bridge must have been rebuilt many times over. But the piers probably rest on the old foundations.
The town is worth seeing from the south. As we drove back from the river in the blue landau, its grim grey battlements commanded plain and villages as though cannon were still in the future. There are three walls. The topmost is eighty feet high, and defended by a line of towers. The other two are pierced by a network of loopholes. Below them lies a broad reed-grown moat. Constantinople has the same system on the land side, except that there it is of stone, and here of mud.
On the road along the moat we met three gentlemen taking the air behind a high-stepping pony. They were seated on top of one another in a tiny brown governess cart, which bristled with enough weapons for a baronial hall.
Karokh (4400 ft.), November 28th.—Instead of packing this morning, I settled down to read. The ruse succeeded: at one o’clock the lorry left. I nearly missed it.
A wide macadam road runs due east up the valley of the Hari river, on its way over the mountains to Bamian—though it has yet to arrive there. Thirteen miles down this, at the village of Pala Piri, we turned up a narrow track to the north. “Ra Turkestan, Ra Turkestan”, cried the passengers in chorus. The road to Turkestan! It sounded too good to be true.
The next twenty miles involved repeated crossings of a river in a ravine, whose gradients, or rather the absence of them, showed that a motor can be as good as a mule if driven with enterprise. At half-past three we stopped for the night. A shrine stood near the road, screened by a grove of umbrella-pines, whose sweet smell has reminded me of the Pinetum at Ravenna. How vivid those memories of Italy remain! I might have been a dentist, or a public man, but for that first sight of a larger world. The inner court is planted with the same trees; korhju they are called. At the top of the avenue stands a demure arch, whose tin cupolas flashed us welcome from a distance. This marks th
e tomb of a Sheikh-al-Islam who was killed—beheaded they say—while fighting the Persians in 1807. His son Abul Kasim erected the shrine, and planted the trees, to his memory.
A range of buildings separates the two courts, in which we were allotted an upstairs room. The other passengers, who are soldiers, at once took advantage of this to exchange their uniforms for turbans, long coats and loose trousers. Disturbed by the rain of puttees and tunics, I ensconced my bedding on a balcony, and was unrolling it when a procession of portly middle-aged gentlemen entered the court below. Taking off their gowns and turbans, they stopped before a cleft tree, and each in turn tried to squeeze himself through it. Those that succeeded, I was told, might expect salvation hereafter. They were in a minority.
“Do you happen to have any arak with you?” whispered the gate-keeper when they had gone.
He led me up the avenue to the tomb. As I stood on the roof of the arch, watching the cranes wheel overhead and a ruddy glow suffuse the horizon of snow-covered mountains, another procession, portlier still, began to approach. At its head strode a lordly figure in black top-boots and a green quilted gown, beneath whose vast turban a white beard projected horizontally over a chest as big as a pouter pigeon’s. “The Hazrat Sahib”, vouchsafed the gate-keeper, “comes to greet Your Excellency the Frankish traveller.”