Travels in Central Asia

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TRAVELS IN CENTRAL ASIA

LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE

[Illustration] DERVISHES AT BOKHARA.

TRAVELS IN CENTRAL ASIA

BEING THE ACCOUNT OF

A JOURNEY FROM TEHERAN ACROSS THE TURKOMAN DESERT ON THE EASTERN SHORE OF 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 TO NONE 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 a particular inclination to linguistic science, I had in early youth occupied myself with several languages of Europe and Asia. The various stores of Oriental and Western literature were in the first instance the object of my eager study. At a later period I began to interest myself in the reciprocal relations of the languages themselves; and here it is not surprising if I, in applying the proverb 'nosce teipsum,' directed my principal attention to the affinities and to the origin of my own mother-tongue.

That the Hungarian language belongs to the stock called Altaic is well known, but whether it is to be referred to the Finnish or the Tartaric branch 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 moving cause of my journey to the East. I was desirous of ascertaining, by the practical study of the living languages, the positive degree of affinity which had at once struck me as existing between the Hungarian and the Turco-Tartaric dialects when contemplating them by the feeble light which theory supplied. I went first to Constantinople. Several years' residence in Turkish houses, and frequent visits to Islamite schools and libraries, soon transformed me into a Turk--nay, into an Efendi. The progress of my linguistic researches impelled me further towards the remote East; and when I proposed to carry out my views by actually undertaking a journey to Central Asia, I found it advisable to retain this character of Efendi, and to visit the East as an Oriental.

[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 language, and therefore seek exact information from cognate idioms.]