11 - 17 October 2001
Issue No.555
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 11 - 17 October 2001 Issue No.555 |
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A mild affair with bandits
The Valley of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels, Freya Stark, New York: Modern Library Paperbacks, 2001, pp292
Jane Fletcher Geniesse, who wrote her biography as well as providing the introduction to the present work, has called Freya Stark "a passionate nomad;" while there is truth in the description, the explorer was gifted with wit and insight as well. When The Valley of the Assassins was published in 1934, it was an instant success, bringing fame to its author, whom Lawrence of Arabia described as "a gallant creature." There is no disputing Stark's audacious and ambitious character. She revelled in exploring far-away places where no Western woman and few Western men had ever ventured. She first came to public attention when, penetrating the lair of the Druze in the Syrian mountains, she almost created a diplomatic incident with the French. This attempt gave her a taste for more forays into forbidden areas and in 1931 she set out to discover Luristan, deep in the heart of Persia's uncharted territory.
Hujjat Allah with Stark's mule and saddle-bags
Stark claimed that she had intended only to have fun and that she had first been inspired by a gift from "an imaginative aunt who for [her] ninth birthday sent a copy of the Arabian Nights." She learned Arabic with the help of a Syrian missionary living nearby and at the first chance set out alone for the Middle East. "I must admit that... I travelled single- mindedly for fun. I learned my scanty Arabic for fun, and a little Persian -- and then went for the same reason to look for the Assassins' castles and the Luristan bronzes," she wrote.
Intrigued by the Assassins ever since she had encountered the Syrian Druze, Stark assumed that the two groups were somehow connected. Back in London after her Syrian adventure, she spent time at the British Library, where she learned about the origins of the Assassins and their religious beliefs. She also found out that in Persia, "secure in the heights of the Elbruz Mountains south of the Caspian Sea, the so-called Old Men of the Mountains -- also known as the Lords of the Alamut after the location of their fortress -- had perpetuated the faith and targeted its enemies." One can wonder if Stark would have set off in the same manner to pay a visit to the Taliban and try to meet Osama Bin Laden. Those, however, were different times; international terrorism had not yet raised its ugly head.
Undaunted by the difficulties of the proposed expedition, not really sure of the location she sought, Stark resolved to explore the Assassins' domain, armed with Marco Polo's Travels, memories of lurid Crusader tales gleaned from her readings at the British Library, and few worldly possessions. Inspired by her trip to the Druze mountains, she relied on the proverbial hospitality of the mountain people for the bare necessities of her sustenance. She had planned to take only one guide for company but the Persian authorities sternly insisted on augmenting her sparse party with a couple more guards. Part of her account relates the various ways in which she tries to lose her unwelcome cortege.
She felt that she needed to be alone in order to properly confront the shadowy character of Hassan-e-Sabbah, the first Lord of the Alamut and founder of the cult, who had inspired his recruits with hashish so that they became known as the "hashishiyyin" (sic -- the term hashashin gave the English and French assassin). He and his reputed garden had completely captured her imagination.
With such an exciting programme, one is primed to read on, fully expecting to follow Stark into a world of barely averted dangers and incredible situations. Instead, the reader is guided gently into a scantily populated region of incomparable beauty where the traveller is hardly ever in danger graver than that of being caught by the local police and having to curtail the adventure abruptly. Stark makes light of the new maps she is drawing up for British Intelligence and the accurate account she is preparing for the Royal Geographic Society. Yet when she returns after several months in her beloved mountains, her work is considered so valuable that she is knighted by the Queen of England.
As she trots along on her mule, however, accompanied by Hujjat Allah (whom she refers to as the Refuge of God), she seems to have little on her mind except admiring the scenery. Atop the most arid mountain or down the most mosquito- infested swamp, her main worry is finding a chicken for dinner. She has discovered that she does not like living by bread alone and the normal diet of the mountain people she meets includes little else. Still, she consistently passes over the discomfort, deprivations and sheer physical exhaustion with a shrug and a witty remark. More importantly, Stark knows how to see and understand with an open heart and mind: "When we reached some little trickle of water oozing out of the hillside among kingcups, the Refuge of Allah filled his black felt cap like a round bowl and offered it as the ballad knight his helmet. Black hair fell about his ears and made a wild frame for his high shaven forehead and brilliant eyes and meeting eyebrows. The tight blue cotton jerkin, a dirty old sash wrapped over it round the waist, a leather wallet behind for a knife and the quaint black caps like overgrown skull caps, made these men look as if they belonged to some fifteenth century picture.
"They were wild and simple and peaceful. They had not yet reached the point of sophistication where the miraculous is separated from everyday life, and were ready to believe anything in the vast and strange world. So they must have been when the philosopher of Rei tried his tricks upon them and gave them the dream of Paradise in exchange for their lives."
Even when Stark faces death from an acute malaria attack, she exhibits no self-pity or fear, but accepts her almost certain demise with a bon mot. Her description of the people who extend help then is often humourous, but never devoid of a deep and sincere compassion. She places her life in the hands of a young Iranian doctor who, luckily is holidaying in his native village, and who eventually cures her, although she has great doubts about the doses of camphor and quinine he lavishes upon her. She survives for days on a diet of brandy and egg whites. Once recovered, her gratitude is immense. She even finds affection in her heart for the sergeant who tries unsuccessfully to stand in the way of her continuing enterprise. Sickness has not discouraged her: there is still one high peak she has to explore before calling it a day.
As she goes on her merry way, climbing mountains, descending into valleys astride her faithful mule, drawing her maps, collecting bronzes (and, occasionally, ancient human skulls) and generally acquiring unusual wisdom, she draws the reader irresistibly into her tale and gains his undivided attention. The long descriptions are delightful rather than tedious; and the fact that "nothing really happens" makes the forbidding Valley of the Assassins rather more attractive.
Reviewed by Fayza Hassan
'Scented with artemisia': travels in Afghanistan
Afghanistan, at the centre of Central Asia, has long been a meeting point of civilisations. Conquered by Alexander the Great in the 4th Century BC, but already an object of fascination for the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus hundreds of years earlier, the country subsequently hosted the "Silk Roads" trading routes that connected the Mediterranean to China from antiquity to the late Middle Ages. Buddhist civilisation from India to the south left its mark on Afghanistan in the shape of the many statues and artefacts that until recently were collected in the Kabul Museum and of the monumental statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan, destroyed by the Taliban earlier this year.
The Arabs entered Afghanistan in the 7th Century AD, converting the region to Islam and integrating Afghanistan into a Muslim empire and cultural and trading zone that stretched from the Pyrenees in the west to the banks of the Indus River in the east in what is now Pakistan. Afghanistan, subsequently conquered by the Turks, the Mongols and later still the Persians, successfully resisted the Russian armies that brought its northern neighbours into the Russian empire in the 19th Century, as it did the British forces that wished to integrate the country into what was then British India.
Historians and travellers have long been fascinated by Afghanistan, the Arab traveller Ibn Battuta including the country in his famous Travels in the 14th Century. The British traveller Wilfred Thesiger, author of well-known works on Iraq and on Arabia, visited Afghanistan six centuries later and wrote of his travels there in his Among the Mountains: Travels through Asia (re- issued 2000). In the mountainous Afghan terrain, Thesiger wrote, "we climbed steadily up a succession of small valleys, planted with wheat and clover, which divided the steep hillsides from the river. Despite a general impression of emptiness, we saw many small villages flanked by poplars tucked away in the valley depths below the bare, stony hillsides. Apart from a few willows and tamarisks, these poplars were the only trees I saw anywhere.... [However], the air on the mountainsides, indeed in the whole country, was scented with artemisia."
Of his travels in Afghanistan Ibn Battuta writes, in an English version by the British Orientalist H A R Gibb: "From Herat [in western Afghanistan], we journeyed to the town of Jam, which is of middling size in a fertile district. Most of the trees are mulberries, and there is a good deal of silk there. This town derives its name from the saint and ascetic Ahmad al-Jam, to whose descendants it now belongs."
"Another reason for our [later] halt was the fear of snow, for on the road there is a mountain called Hindukush [Hindu Kush], which means 'slayer of Indians,' because the slave boys and girls who are brought from India die there in large numbers as a result of the extreme cold and the quantity of snow. We stayed until the warm weather had definitely set in, and crossed the mountain by a continuous march from before dawn to sunset. We kept spreading felt cloths in front of the camels for them to tread on so that they should not sink in the snow."
"We traveled on to Kabul, formerly a vast town, the site of which is now occupied by a village inhabited by a tribe of Persians called Afghans. They hold mountains and defiles and possess considerable strength, and are mostly highwaymen. ... From Kabul we rode to Karmash, which is a fortress belonging to the Afghans, lying between two hills where they intercept traffic on the road.... From here we entered the great desert which extends for 15 days and can be traversed only in one season of the year, after the rains have fallen in Sind and India, that is at the beginning of July.... We reached the River Indus on the night that the new moon of Muharram of the year 734 [12 September 1333] rose upon us. From this point the intelligence officials wrote to India informing the king of our arrival and giving him all the details concerning us. Here ends the narrative of this journey. Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds."
Reviewed by David Tresilian
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