Research 3: Arminius Vambéry

Originally posted 23 May 2011

Arminius Vambery, a Hungarian traveller in the 19th Century, visited Central Asia and met many Turkmen. I encountered his name early on in my research and read his travelogue Travels in Central Asia. It’s an interesting text. He travelled at the time I’m actually writing about, making his observations potentially very useful. That said, he travelled with men and is a man, and I’m writing about women – there’s an obvious limit to his usefulness. Not to mention the casual racism, which is twinned with genuine (it seems) affection for many of his fellow travellers.

There are plenty of little details I took from this text, some simply interesting, others useful to my story.

• When minding the sheep, the woman/man will shout to discourage wolves.

• In the desert: “the bleaching bones of man or beast that has perished, collected by every passerby in a heap, to serve to guide the march of future travellers”.

• Hadjis (pilgrims to Mecca) bring various items back from the regions they have passed through, such as dates from Medina and combs from Persia. Trade in these items, as well as alms (for Hadjis are respected by their fellow Muslims), sustain them on their long journeys. They also acquired merchandise along the way to sell, with items like glass beads being a particular draw for the nomad girls. (It seems that almost always where Vambéry encountered women/girls, it was among the nomads.)

• A village/town might move in the summer, to higher ground where the heat was more bearable.

• Speaking of: “Village is here called Aul or Oram; it does not correspond with our idea of a number of continuous houses, but a district where people belonging to one aul encamp and dwell in a scattered manner about their meadows and lands.” Hello, useful snippet.

• Various ruins attributed to Alexander.

• Wonderful detail of a river: “It is fabulously rich in fish at about 4 or 5 geographical miles from its mouth, so that its waters appeared almost coloured by them, and are in summer hardly drinkable. After I had only twice used it for washing, my hands and face acquired a strong fishy smell.”

• And a wonderful description of a market: “All were on horseback, sellers as well as buyers; it was extremely droll to see how the Kirghis womn, with their great leathern vessels full of kimis [fermented mares' milk], sitting on the horse, hold the opening of the skin above the mouth of the customer. There is adroitness in both parties, for very seldom do any drops fall aside.”

As always, I have plenty more written in my notebook.

There are several things that Vambéry’s book raises which I did not see elsewhere.

The first is the danger of travelling in this region as a Westerner. Vambéry, for his own safety, must pretend that he is a Hadji originating in Istanbul (Roum), who is travelling through the region out of interest; several times he meets people who have met Westerners, and who suspect his ruse. He kicks up a fuss, feigning offense and quoting from the Quran to prove his story true, and fortunately for him he gets away with it. At one point, he mentions other travellers who haven’t fared so well.

The second is slavery. According to Vambéry, many Turkmen households possessed at least one Persian slave, and the trade was widespread. He saw them for sale in markets and encountered them inside yurts; for a while he journeyed with two who had bought their freedom and were fleeing south. I think I haven’t seen this mentioned elsewhere because a lot of my sources deal with the 20th Century. (English-language sources about 19th C Turkmen people are so very scarce.) I don’t really know what to do with it. Should my character’s family have slaves? It’s hard to say exactly how they fit into the family/yurt dynamic, as Vambéry spends most of his time in the non-domestic sphere. I know my reluctance also comes from my dislike for the whole notion of slavery. I’m inclined to have no slave in the family’s yurt for the story, but I’m still mulling it over; I might change my mind for the novel. Hrrm.