[Transcriber's note]
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book.
Section titles which appear with the odd page numbers in the original text have been placed before the referenced paragraph in square brackets.
[End transcriber's notes]
TRAVELS IN CENTRAL ASIA
LONDON
PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.
NEW-STREET SQUARE
DERVISHES AT BOKHARA.
TRAVELS IN CENTRAL ASIA
BEING THE ACCOUNT OF
A JOURNEY FROM TEHERAN ACROSS THE TURKOMAN DESERT ON THE EASTERN SHOREOF THE CASPIAN TO KHIVA, BOKHARA, AND SAMARCAND
Performed In The Year 1863
BY ARMINIUS VÁMBÉRY
MEMBER OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF PESTH,BY WHOM HE WAS SENT ON THIS SCIENTIFIC MISSION
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1864
TO
MAJOR-GENERAL
SIR HENRY RAWLINSON, K.C.B.
THE INVESTIGATOR OF THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST, AND YIELDING TONONE IN HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE PRESENT CONDITION OF CENTRAL ASIA,
In Token Of Admiration And Gratitude
THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE DEDICATED
A. VÁMBÉRY.
PREFACE.
I was born in Hungary in 1832, in the small town of Duna Szerdahely,situated on one of the largest islands in the Danube. Impelled by aparticular inclination to linguistic science, I had in early youthoccupied myself with several languages of Europe and Asia. The variousstores of Oriental and Western literature were in the first instancethe object of my eager study. At a later period I began to interestmyself in the reciprocal relations of the languages themselves; andhere it is not surprising if I, in applying the proverb 'nosceteipsum,' directed my principal attention to the affinities and to theorigin of my own mother-tongue.
That the Hungarian language belongs to the stock called Altaic is wellknown, but whether it is to be referred to the Finnish or the Tartaricbranch is a question that still awaits decision. This enquiry,interesting [Footnote 1] to us Hungarians both in a scientific and{viii} a national point of view, was the principal and the movingcause of my journey to the East. I was desirous of ascertaining, bythe practical study of the living languages, the positive degree ofaffinity which had at once struck me as existing between the Hungarianand the Turco-Tartaric dialects when contemplating them by the feeblelight which theory supplied. I went first to Constantinople. Severalyears' residence in Turkish houses, and frequent visits to Islamiteschools and libraries, soon transformed me into a Turk--nay, into anEfendi. The progress of my linguistic researches impelled me furthertowards the remote East; and when I proposed to carry out my views byactually undertaking a journey to Central Asia, I found it advisableto retain this character of Efendi, and to visit the East as anOriental.
[Footnote 1: The opinion consequently that we Hungarians go to Asia to seek there those of our race who were left behind, is erroneous. Such an object, the carrying out of which, both from ethnographical as well as philological reasons, would be an impossibility, would render a man amenable to the charge of gross ignorance. We are desirous of knowing the etymological construction of our langu