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0414	Innermost Asia : vol.2
極奥アジア : vol.2

thoroughly examined and described by a competent student of Near-Eastern art, Dr. E. Diez,
a mere reference will here suffice.¹

Memories of All the way to Farīmān and over much of the country beyond, it was easy to recognize traces
Turkomān of the ravages to which the peaceful Persian cultivators of this portion of Khorāsān had long been
raids,
subject, owing to the slave-raiding and plundering inroads of their Turkomān neighbours in the
north, before the Russian conquest of Trans-Caspia. The effects of this ancient scourge were
plainly visible, on the one hand in the limited extent to which the available fertile land, here largely
independent of irrigation, was actually under cultivation, and on the other in the many towers still
standing in the villages or scattered among the fields. They had served as places of refuge to be
hurriedly sought when Turkomān raiders, sweeping across hills and valleys, would make their
sudden appearance. It was accordingly with considerable interest that I welcomed, as a quasi-
historical relic of those raiding times, sturdy old Mīr Muḥammad, a Tekke Turkomān (Fig. 469),
who under orders from the Consulate joined me at Farīmān for a couple of marches. He was one
of some two dozen fellow tribesmen who, after the Panjdeh fighting of 1885, had thrown in their lot
with the British and left what became Russian territory. Along with six others among these exiles,
he was now employed as Dāk-rider to carry from Herāt the weekly Consular mail, which was being
sent there for Meshed through Afghān territory from the Indian railhead at Chaman. He had taken
part when young in many a chap or raid, and would readily talk of the 'bags' of slaves he had
helped to carry off and the long night rides that preceded such exploits.

Methods of The details I learned from him of the methods of carrying out these raids explained both the
Turkomān extraordinarily great distances over which the raiders travelled and the secrecy upon which their
raiding.
success depended. Rations for men and horses used to be carried by these raiding parties only for
the first three or four days required for the passage of that belt of hills on the border which owing
to its vicinity to the Turkomān grazing grounds was altogether uninhabited. Subsequently
supplies were obtained at prearranged points from Persian villages, which were spared on condi-
tion of maintaining absolute secrecy as to the raiders' movements, complete surprise being an
essential condition of success. This careful planning, combined with the exceptional fleetness and
staying power of the Turkomān breed of horses, makes it possible to understand such remarkable
feats as the famous raid that extended as far south as Sīstān and was rewarded with abundant booty.
It interested me to see, manifested in Mīr Muḥammad's quiet air of superiority, his pride in belong-
ing to a race which, for centuries, had inspired dread in the Irānīs. At the same time his fine,
wholly non-Mongolian, features illustrated clearly enough that thorough infusion of Iranian blood
which the whole Turkomān race has undergone, as have so many other Turkish invaders of Western
Asia. In my Turkomān's pleasant company I found it easy to realize that the 'Turanians' of
Persian epic tradition, the Tūiryas of Zoroastrian religious texts, may well have been essentially
of the same stock and speech as their settled neighbours cultivating the fertile oases of Irān, who
hated and feared them as their hereditary foes.

Semi- The next two marches took me by the pass of Kalla-mīnār ('the tower of skulls') across the hill
nomadic life range to the south. Its opposite slopes are occupied by Mongolian Hazāras and Balūch tribesmen,
of Hazāras
and Balūch. respectively. Their ways, still partly those of herdsmen, served to illustrate the slow process by
which the Persian population of settled cultivators has again and again managed to digest and
absorb invaders of originally nomadic character. The large valley of Bakhārz, through which we
then passed, receives plentiful water from the range to the south. The villages of Himmatābād,
Kala-i-nau, Abnia, which our route traversed on November 15th, lay all ensconced among orchards,
and looked more attractive than any that we saw on the way to Sīstān.

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国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト 『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

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国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ