myself. We did at first some French, but later on we glided from the
French lesson into explanatory sketches of European life and European
ideas. I told the Bey of our social, political, and scientific
institutions, decking them out, as a matter of course, in their
brightest colours, for the European, during his first stay in the East,
is always looking back with fondness to the West he has just left, and
the very things he used to condemn look to him charming at a distance.
My information was almost always received with approval and admiration.
Turkey had just seen a good specimen of Europe in her Anglo-French
allies who had come to her assistance against the Russians; the Turks
were, therefore, eager to learn all the particulars having reference to
the Western land, and if the descriptions of these excited now and then
their envy, roused them to disapproval or called out their conceit, they
were always listened to, and that with pleasure.
At the close of the lesson a well-prepared and abundant breakfast was
always brought in, and I must own that from the very first the cooking
of the better classes in Constantinople had enlisted my gastronomic
partiality. It frequently happened, too, that we started immediately
after breakfast for a ride on horseback, my pupil making his calls in my
company; in short, I passed a considerable portion of the day in the
society of Turks, and I used to return to Pera, that is, to European
life, in the evening only.
My permanent stay amongst Turks dates, however, from the time when, at
the recommendation of a countryman of mine, I was invited by Hussein
Daim Pasha, general of a division, to enter his house as the teacher of
his son, Hassan Bey.
I removed my quarters from Pera to the charmingly situated row of houses
at Fyndykly; there I got a separate room, and enjoyed for the first time
the amenities of Oriental quiet and Turkish comfort. The life in a
strictly Mohammedan part of the town, in the vicinity of a mosque, from
whose slender minaret the Ezan resounded with gloomy melancholy,
affecting my ears with its weird-like sounds; the grand prospect from my
window taking in the sea near by, with its thousand crafts, and the
magnificent Beshikash palace; and the dignified and patriarchal air
which pervaded the whole house--were all things which had the charm of
novelty for me, and which I can never forget.
The figure of the major domo (Vekilkhardj), a gray-bearded Anatolian,
however, has perhaps made the deepest impression upon my memory. The
good man was particularly indulgent towards me upon all occasions when I
happened to sin against the strictly Oriental customs; he took great
pains to teach me how to sit decorously, that is, with crossed legs; he
taught me to carry my head and to use my hands with propriety, and how I
should yawn, sneeze, and so forth. His attention embraced the merest
trifles.
"You are, for the first time, in a large city; you have just entered
polite society," he benignly said, "and you must learn everything."
Of course the old man looked upon me as a person coming from the land of
"black infidelity," a land to which, in his opinion, decency, good
manners, and morals were utter strangers, and he seemed to think that a
stranger hailing from those parts needed to be educated quite as much as
a Turkish peasant from the neighbourhood of Kharput and Diarbekir.
The pasha himself, my chief, was a much more interesting personage. It
was he who afterwards became known as the leader of the celebrated
Kuleili conspiracy, a conspiracy whose object was nothing less than the
removal of Sultan Abdul Medjid and of all his grandees; the conspirators
flattering themselves with the belief that all the causes of the decay
of Turkey would be thereby extirpated, and that, with one stroke, the
old and infirm Ottoman Empire could be restored to its ancient power.
I was an inmate of his house at the time when this notorious conspiracy
was being hatched and the plans for its consummation formed. A mollah
from Bagdad, by the name of Ahmed Effendi, a man of rare mental gifts,
immense reading, ascetic life, and boundless fanaticism was the life and
soul of the whole conspiracy. He had taken part in the whole of the
Crimean war as a Gazi (a warrior for religion), bareheaded and
barefooted, and clad in a garb whose austere simplicity recalled the
primitive ages of Islam. His sword never left his lean loins, nor his
lance the firm grasp of his clenched fist, either by day or by night,
except when he said his prayers, five times a day. Through the snow, in
the storm, in the thickest of the fight on the battlefield, during
toilsome marches, everywhere could be discovered the ghost-like form of
this zealot, his fiery eyes scattering flames, and always at the head of
the division, under the command of my chief.
It was quite natural that such a man should please Hussein Daim Pasha.
The acquaintance begun in the camp, had here grown into a sort of
relationship by consanguinity; for the lean mollah, who was walking
about barefoot in Constantinople, had the privilege of crossing even the
threshold of the harem, where, under the protection of the sacredness of
Turkish family life, unwelcome listeners could be most conveniently got
rid of. There was something in the appearance of Ahmed Effendi which
terrified me at first, and only, later, upon my allowing myself to be
called by my pasha, for the sake of intimacy, Reshid (the brave, the
discreet), came this terrible man near me, with some show of
friendliness; he probably concluding, from my having adopted this name,
that I was very near being converted to Islam. A very false inference!
But I did not destroy the hopes of the zealot, gaining thereby his
good-will, and getting him to give me instruction in Persian.
Ahmed Effendi allowed me even to visit him in his cell in the yard of
the mosque. And oh! how interesting were those hours which I spent,
sitting at his feet, with other youths who were eager to learn! It
seemed as if I had got hold of a fairy key unlocking, to my dazzled eyes
in one moment, the whole of Mohammedan Asia.
Ahmed Effendi had an astonishing, almost supernatural memory; he was a
thorough Arabic and Persian scholar, and knew a whole series of classics
by heart. I had only to begin with a line from Khakani Nizami or Djami,
in Spiegel's Persian Chrestomathy, and he would at once continue to
recite the whole piece to the end. Indeed he would have been able to go
on with his declamation for hours.
To this Ahmed Effendi I was indebted, more than to anybody else, for my
transformation from a European into an Asiatic. In speaking of my
transformation, I trust the friendly reader will not suppose, for one
moment, that a more intimate acquaintance with Asiatic modes of thought
had led my mind away from the spirit of the West. A thousand times, no!
Rather the reverse was the case. The more I studied the civilization of
Islam and the views of the nations professing it, the higher rose, in my
estimation, the value of western civilization.
III.
LIFE IN STAMBUL.
In the year 1860, I was, perhaps, the only European who had an easy and
uninterrupted access to all classes of Turkish society, and, probably,
saw at that time more of genuine Stambul life than any one before me.
And, surely, no one will find fault with me, if I recall now, in the
midst of my European life, with undisguised pleasure, the generous
hospitality I have met with, at the hands of the noblest Turks, in their
own houses. The easy affability of persons of high positions in the
State, the utter absence of all pride or over-bearing superciliousness,
are virtues, indeed, which would often be looked for in vain in our
civilized West. The stupid pomposity, ridiculous arrogance and pitiable
ignorance of certain aristocracies present a miserable picture, when
contrasted with the behaviour of the Asiatic grandees, whom it is the
custom to sneer at in Europe. The Oriental is particular about nobility
of blood only in the matter of his horses and sporting dogs, whereas,
with us, the select are boasting of such "animal advantages" that I
should like to know in what country of Europe an unknown stranger might
succeed, solely by dint of his eagerness to learn, in obtaining access
to the most distinguished circles, and gaining their good-will and
protection. With us, to be sure, there is no lack either of protectors
and patrons of exalted station, who assist the man of books and art, but
in this they never approach the intimacy and close friendship which
patrons bestow in the East upon intellectual pursuits. In Europe, the
possessors of long pedigrees, the owners of family trees with decayed
roots and worm-eaten bark, have frequently assigned to them the
leadership in society, but not so in Asia. The Arabs will boast of the
heroic deeds and generous actions of their ancestors, but not for their
own exaltation, as is the case in many countries of Europe.
In passing over to my literary pursuits, during my stay in Stambul, I
will only mention that I published, in 1858, a German-Turkish
dictionary, a small volume, of the imperfections and shortcomings of
which, I am by no means unaware; but it was the first that had been
written, and is, to this day, the only available one which a German
traveller, coming to Constantinople, can get. There were two main points
which I had principally in view in my studies of Turkish literature. I
had, in the first place, found, in the history of the Ottoman Empire, so
much that was of interest to the history of my own country, that I felt
impelled to make a translation of it. Through these translations, I
entered, at an early period, into relations with the Hungarian Academy.
The Ottoman historians are wanting, for the most part, in critical
judgment, but the laborious and circumstantial completeness of their
information frequently proves useful. It may not be generally known
that the Turkish Sultans who, at the head of their destructive armies,
made inroads into the South-eastern part of Europe, and against whom so
many Crusades were preached, were constantly accompanied, at every step
they took, by imperial historiographers, and have done more for Clio,
the Muse, than many a truly Catholic prince of that time.
I had found, in the second place, in the course of my linguistic
researches in the study of Eastern Turkish, a field which had been, at
that time, barely cultivated, and devoted to it my full attention.
Besides the manuscripts I got hold of in the various libraries, which
were of great assistance to me in my studies, I frequented the _Tekkes_
(cloisters), inhabited by the Bokhariots, and provided myself, moreover,
with a view to attaining to a thorough understanding of these works,
with a teacher who was a native of Central Asia. Mollah Khalmurad, as my
teacher was called, acquainted me with the customs and modes of thought
of Central Asia. I used to hang passionately on his lips when he was
relating stories about Bokhara and Samarkand, and told of the Oxus and
Taxartes, for he had travelled a great deal in his own country. He had
already made two pilgrimages to the holy cities of Arabia, and
possessed, to a high degree, the cunning and clearsightedness peculiar
to every Asiatic, but particularly to the much-travelled Asiatic.
This perspicacity of theirs caused me to tremble for my life more than
once during my wanderings as a dervish.
Apart from a scientific, I felt an engrossing national, interest in the
study of the Eastern Turkish language, on account of the rich Eastern
Turkish vocabulary to be met with in the Magyar language, my own beloved
mother tongue.
Stambul life with all its attractions and interesting phenomena
produced a feeling of weariness in me after a while. My frequent visits
to Pera, my passing, in less than half an hour, from the innermost
recesses of Asiatic life to the turmoil of European stir and bustle,
might have continued attractive to me, as giving me an opportunity for
the comparative study of the two civilizations. But amongst the very men
whom I happened to meet, in this Babel of European nationalities, there
were some who fanned the fire within me, and who incited me, that had
remained a thorough European in spite of an Orientalizing of several
years, to the execution of the boldest feats. And did I require these
urgings on--I, who, at the bare mention of the names of Bokhara,
Samarkand, and the Oxus, was in a fever of excitement? Certainly not;
their encouragement seemed to me only a proof of the practicability of
my designs. Indeed, I was quite familiar with the literature of travel
of that day, and the only misgivings I felt were on the score of the
perils of the undertaking.
I had just been revolving in my mind the plan of a journey through Asia,
when I was nominated, quite unexpectedly, corresponding member of the
Hungarian Academy. This nomination was to be a reward for my translation
of Turkish historical authorities, but it proved an all-powerful
incentive, urging me on to the consummation of my plans for the future.
Considerable changes had by this time taken place in the political life
of Hungary; and when, upon returning in the spring of 1861, after an
absence of several years, I went to Pesth, in order to deliver my
Academic address, it required but a gentle intimation on the part of the
then President of the Academy, Count D., to procure me a travelling
stipend of a thousand florins in bank notes, amounting to six hundred
florins in silver. At home, of course, there were many sceptics who
expressed their doubts as to the success of my undertaking. I was asked
how I could accomplish such a long journey, with scanty means and a
frail body. These gentlemen were not aware that travelling in Asia
required neither legs nor money, but a clever tongue. I paid, however,
but slight attention to such comments.
The "Academy" gave me a letter of introduction and recommendation,
addressed to all the Sultans, Khans, and Begs of Tartary, and drawn up,
for the surer enlightenment of the Tartars, in the Latin tongue! A ready
gallows or executioner's sword, forsooth, this document meant, if I had
produced it anywhere in the desert or along the Oxus. The then
government, too, that is, the viceroyalty, were generous enough to
furnish me with a passport for my journey to Bokhara. I did not thwart
those manifestations of good intentions, and left Pesth, after a stay of
three months, for Constantinople, from which place I was to start, in
the following spring, on my wanderings through the extensive regions of
Central Asia.
My preparations, which took me another six months, had eaten up nearly
one half of the six hundred silver florins, and consisted, chiefly, in
visits to places, where travellers and pilgrims from Central Asia
congregated and could be met with. These people, who were, for the most
part, poor, I remunerated as well as I could, for every piece of
information and for every hour of conversation that I got from them; for
I must observe, here, that already, at the outset, I was tolerably well
acquainted with the colloquial language of the countries on the Oxus.
Indeed, I may add, that many a quarter of a town and region in the
distant Mohammedan East was as familiar to me, from hearsay and reading,
as is the capital on the Seine to a European who has been a reader of
French novels for many years.
Very remarkable and, at times, very amusing was the manner in which my
worthy Stambul friends looked upon my preparations for far-off
Turkestan. A journey prompted merely by a thirst for knowledge is
characterized by the modern Mohammedans as, to say the least, eccentric;
for the days of Masudi, Yakut, Ibn Fozlan and Batutah have passed away,
ever so long ago. But if any one purposes to undertake a journey through
inhospitable, barbarous and dangerous countries, they declare such an
enterprise a piece of sheer madness. I can very well recall how these
effeminate Effendis shuddered, and the look of unspeakable pity they
bestowed upon me, when I was expatiating, with the most intense
satisfaction, upon my passage through the deserts. "Allah Akillar" (God
lend him reason), was the pious wish they were all muttering. A person
who will voluntarily leave the delightful Bosphorus, give up the
comfortable life at the house of a Turkish grandee, and resign the
charms of sweet repose, must be, to their thinking, a madman.
And, yet, these good people were deeply concerned to smooth my rough
path, and to retard the certain destruction before me, as much as lay in
their power. Persia was to be the first country on my route, and as a
Turkish ambassador, together with his suite, had been residing, for
years, at Teheran, and the then plenipotentiary of the Sultan, Haidar
Effendi, happened to be a friend of the family of my patron, I received,
in addition to the official recommendation of Aali Pasha, a collective
letter from all the relations and acquaintances of K. . . Bey,
commending unhappy me, in the warmest terms, to his protection. I
obtained also firmans, addressed to the authorities on my route through
Turkish territory, in all of which I was mentioned as the traveller
Reshid Effendi. Of my European descent, of the aims and purposes of my
journeyings, not the slightest mention was made in these documents, and
all I had to do was to act up to the letter and spirit of their
contents; indeed I could do little else if I wished to pass myself off
as a genuine Turk and Effendi from Constantinople.
So much for the practical portion of my preparations. As to the mental
condition I was in, I need not say that the nearer the moment of my
departure approached the stronger became my longing, the more agitated
became my mind. What I had dreamt of as a child, mused upon as a youth,
and what had haunted my eyes, Fata-Morgana-like, during my wanderings
through the literatures of the Occident and Orient, I was to attain at
last, and feast upon it my own bodily eyes. When passion thus, like a
mighty wave, is rolling in upon us, we turn a deaf ear to the voice of
reason and prudence. All I could dread, after all, was bodily want, the
fight with the elements and injury to my health; for, at that time, the
thought of failure, that is, of death, never entered my mind. And now I
ask my friendly reader, what vicissitudes, what privations could I
undergo, which I had not already been subjected to by the hard fate of
my youth? I had been starving up to my eighteenth year, and want of
necessary clothing had been the order of the day with me, since my
earliest youth. I had learned to know the whims and foibles of mankind,
and found that man in the rude Asiatic garb was nearly the same as man
in the civilized European dress; yea, I had met at the hands of the
former so much more pity and kindness, that the frightful picture of
these barbarians, as drawn by our literature, was far from disheartening
me. Only one thing might be taken into consideration, with reference to
the undertaking I had on hand, that, after having already tasted the
sweets of affluence and repose, I was about to venture anew upon a life
of misery and struggles. For I had done well, quite well in
Constantinople, during these years. I had comfortable quarters and a
luxurious fare, and there was even a saddle horse at my disposal, and
thus the only thing that may be said in my praise, is that I exchanged
all these, of my own free will, for the beggar's staff. But good
Heavens! where could we not be led, if spurred on by ambition? And what
is our life worth if ambition is not known, does not exist or has been
blunted? Wealth, distinction and dignities are gaudy toys which cannot
amuse us very long, and of which sound common sense must tire sooner or
later. The consciousness, however, of having rendered to mankind in
general a service ever so slight, is a truly noble and exalting one; for
what is there more glorious than the hope of being able to enrich even
by a single letter the book of intellectual life lying open before us?
Thus I felt and thus I thought, and in these feelings and thoughts I
found the strength to submit to trials and hardships a thousandfold
greater than those I had been subjected to hitherto.
Such were the conditions of my life, under which I left the peaceful
harbour of Constantinople for my voyage to the Black Sea. Unaccompanied
by any friends or parents, I bade farewell to the Golden Horn and to the
Bosphorus as to the place where I enjoyed so many agreeable days of
useful preparation for my future career. As our good ship turned towards
the Asiatic shore, I ventured only to look with a furtive glance towards
the West, uncertain whether I should see it again in my life!
IV.
FROM TREBIZOND TO ERZERUM.
The boom of cannon, sounds of music and shouts of joyous welcome greeted
us, as our ship was approaching the harbour of Trebizond. This solemn
reception was not intended for me, the future dervish, who was setting
out, beggar's staff in hand, to roam through an extensive portion of
classic Asia. The ovation was meant for Emir Muhlis Pasha, the
newly-appointed Governor of Trebizond, who had been our fellow traveller
from Constantinople to this place. The people, very likely, indulged in
the hope that he would bring in his train a happier state of things than
they experienced, and relief from past misery, but they were, in all
probability, doomed to be disappointed in him, as they had been
disappointed in his numerous predecessors before.
Trebizond, the ancient capital of Mithridates, presents a rather fine
appearance, when looked at from the sea. Upon closer inspection, the
city proves finer, by far, than most of the Turkish sea-towns. Muhlis
Pasha, whose acquaintance I had made at Constantinople, proffered me his
hospitality, during the whole of my stay in that town. I mounted one of
the horses held in readiness on the shore, joined the pasha's retinue,
and proceeded with the festive procession towards the governor's palace,
lying to the south. Our troops passed, highly pleased, through the
thronging crowds. The pasha caused some small silver change to be
scattered amongst the populace. There was a great rush and eager
scrambling for the coins, and the lucky ones were loud and voluble in
the expression of their gratitude. I remained only three days in
Trebizond. I employed this short time in the purchase of the necessary
travelling requisites, in the hiring of a horse--in short, in supplying
myself with everything needful for those adventurous wanderings through
Turkey and Persia which I was about to undertake. I resolved to keep up
the part of an Effendi as far as Teheran, but thereafter I wished to
pass myself off only as a Kiatib, a humble scribe who might appeal to
the hospitality of the authorities. My entire luggage consisted of a
_khurdjin_ (carpet-bag), containing a couple of shirts, a few books,
some trifles, two carpets, one to be used as a mattress, the other for a
covering, a small kettle, tea service and cup. The pasha repeatedly
pressed upon me the offer of an escort by two _kavasses_ (policemen),
not so much as a matter of safety as from considerations of display,
customary in these parts. I declined his kind offer with thanks, and in
the company of an Armenian _surudji_ (an owner and driver of horses),
left the Turkish seatown on the 21st day of May, 1862, wending my way
towards the mountains stretching to the east.