Friday, February 27, 2015

Kate Jackson, Around the World to Persia (1918)


This is an excerpt from a letter were written by Kate Jackson, the wife of A.V. Williams Jackson, to her sister-in-law Mrs. William N. Pratt, of Savannah, Georgia, while she and her husband were on their way around the world as members of the American-Persian Relief Commission in 1918. In 1920, Jackson published her letters that are very interesting for their immediate nature, personal character and insights into unusual conditions in regions that the Jacksons had visited. 

Unfortunately the couple reached Georgia only at the end of their journey and therefore did not stay long here. Instead they proceeded to the Black Sea coastline where they boarded a British warship to return home.


Batum, 14 December 1918

[...] we reached Baku, and one of the British General's aides met us and took us to the hotel. There have been Turks, Bolsheviki and Armenians and Tartars, all fighting there, so the town was rather a sorry looking place; still it had pavements and at present was quiet, and I had the pleasure of walking, and sometimes, by myself, quite unusual after Persia. There Will had no time to walk with me, and it was so little fun having our servant go with me, I used to stay at home.

In Baku and the adjacent country, the Tartars and Armenians loathe each other. Last September, the Tartars massacred some twenty thousand Armenians as a return compliment to the Armenians who last March killed twelve thousand Tartars. One Armenian boasted of having killed sixty-six, but in a report of the Bishop, great stress was laid on the horrible cruelty of the Tartars and their fearful September massacre, while the Armenian massacre last Spring was called "the events in March "!

There is tremendous work to be done out here by the British and other Allies before certain parts of Asia are fit to live in. The British have some splendid men in Baku, their Chief, General Thomson who is only thirty-eight, being one of the best all-round specimens of manhood I have ever known. Will and I had tea with him and his staff the afternoon before leaving Baku. He sent his aides the next morning to put us on the train, and six Tommies, who to their intense joy are being allowed to go home, accompanied us as guards and servants. We had a car to ourselves and proceeded in most leisurely fashion expecting to come straight on to Batum; but the Government of Georgia begged us to stop over as their guests at Tiflis.

We arrived at Tiflis at 8 a. m. and found the town all decorated, as it was the first anniversary of the National Guard. We did not like red flags everywhere, but the more moderate natives assured us they were not as socialistic as they seemed. 

Tiflis is the Capital of Georgia and notwithstanding the fact the country became a part of Russia and was almost Russianized, the natives still retain their language and their love of country. They are crazy now to have a Republic, one of the many this war will produce, and they point with pride to the fact that Georgia is the only part of Russia where Bolshevism was kept out. They have also been Christians since the third or fourth century and one thing that impressed us all, is their great respect for women. As Dr. Judson says, they have a home life, something their Mohammedan neighbors lack. The Committee that took charge of us was composed of very pleasant people, among them a Prince and Princess of old lineage, a general who had been in the Russian army, a very attractive man, a doctor, etc. They gave us three delicious meals, rooms to rest in, and took us sight-seeing, finally bringing us to a train which carried only us, at 11 p. m.

We reached here, Batum, the next night and had to stay— such a hotel! quite the filthiest I have ever seen. We all slept on camp beds as a precautionary measure! Mr. Balfour has ordered a British man-of-war to take us to Taranto, and at daylight Dr. Post knocked at our door and said the boat would be ready for us in three quarters of an hour. We promptly got ready for the boat, which did not arrive till later and which cannot sail till to-morrow. We can scarcely wait till the time comes, and in the meantime, have cast many grateful glances at the Black Sea, the connecting link between us and home.


Sven Hedin, "The Black Sea" (1906) - Part 1

Sven Hedin (1865-1952) was a Swedish explorer, photographer and travel writer who had spent most of his career criss-crossing Asia and the Middle East. In 1905, he organized his fourth expedition to the Central Asia where he spent three years exploring the Central Persian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya.

Traveling to Tehran where his expedition was to embark from, Sven Hedin had several routes to choose from but decided to sail across the Black Sea to Batum where he would get on train to Tiflis before proceeding to Erivan, Nakitchevan, and Tabriz on his way to the Iranian capital. Yet Hedin reached the Georgian shores at a very auspicious time. In the wake of the Bloody Sunday massacre in St. Petersburg, tens of thousands of workers went on strike across the Russian Empire, protesting their wages and working conditions as well as expressing their discontent at the government's policies; the unsuccessful and bloody Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) only further exacerbated tensions.  Even in cities as distant from the Russian capital as Tiflis, Baku, and Batum, workers in large numbers went on strike on hearing of the massacre. The strikes were ultimately suppressed by the government forces but, by the time Hedin landed at Batoum, western Georgia remained the hot bed of revolutionary activities. The 1905 revolution revived the suppressed sentiments of the Gurian peasantry, which had already revolted  in the preceding three years. Better organized this time, the peasants expelled landlords and government representatives, established their authorities, and introduced radical reforms. Mounting a fierce resistance to the government forces, the Gurian rebels scored a series of victories in October-November, capturing Ozurgeti, Guria’s administrative center, in December 1905. Alarmed by their success, the Russian government diverted large forces of the regular Russian army, which entered Guria in January 1906. Despite their resistance, the Gurian revolutionaries were defeated and the ir revolt ruthlessly crushed. 

Remaining in Batumi throughout October-November, Hedin witnessed some of these events, which he recorded in his journal. His notes were published in volume XXII of "The Monthly Review," (edited by Charles Hanbury-Williams, London: John Murray) in January 1906. Hedin's observations reveal his staunchly conservative and monarchist sentiments, which in turn had been shaped by his great admiration for the German Empire.


The Black Sea! And stormy, tumultuous, and black it indeed was when I crossed it in the end of October [1905] on a Russian steamer from Constantinople, our route being via Sebastopol, Yalta, Kertch, Novorossisk, Poti, and Batum. And yet as compared with the tempests that were then raging amongst the peoples who dwell on the northern and eastern shores of that sea, its tumbling waves were even peaceful, hospitable, and friendly.

The [ship] Svatoi Nikolai (Holy Nicholas) which carried myself and a few other passengers, but a heavy cargo, to Batum, was tossed like a nut-shell on the waves as they ran mountains high. I should never have believed that the Kara Denis of the Turks and the Chernoye More of the Russians could be, if I may use a topographical expression, so deeply trenched. After putting some of our passengers ashore op the Crimea, by the time we reached Novorossiisk there were only three of us first-class passengers left—the Three Musketeers as we afterwards called ourselves, namely, Colonel Ileschenko from Van on the Persian frontier, a place lying south of Shusha, Consul Akimovitch, on his way to Bayazid, on the borders of Turkish Armenia and the Persian province of Azerbaijan, and myself. 

During the last stage of the journey we did not see much of each other. The sea ran so high that to get to the saloon required something of the skill of an acrobat. We preferred to keep the horizontal in our berths. Every time the vessel rolled, my outlook window, which was on the portside, dipped a couple of yards under the water, but when she went over to the starboard I caught glimpses, two or three cable-lengths away, of the outline of the shore and the forest-clad creek of the Caucasus, already in part capped with snow, and glittering in the sunshine.

In the roadstead of Sukhum-Kaleh [Sokhumi] we lay to for several minutes, whilst some sinewy Abkhasians came off in the boats to fetch a few bales and packages. One of these men climbed up on board and said something to a young woman who was traveling second-class. She burst suddenly into tears, and her grief was so violent and so self-abandoned, that all attempts to comfort her failed. Her husband had been shot in a disturbance. But she was only one of thousands upon thousands of Russian women who are made to weep in these days! Her wailings continued to echo distressingly and inconsolably through the fitful gusts of the tempest to the end of the journey.

When we reached Poti the storm increased in violence. The sky was black as ink, and the rain beat violently on the deck and against the windows of the saloon. But we had only three hours more of it; at midnight the steamer "stamped " into the harbour of Batum. But what a landing! The rain pouring down in torrents, the night as black as pitch, not a street light visible, not a porter to be seen, no cabs or droshkies to be had, and, to crown all, the comforting intelligence that all railway traffic had ceased three days ago I In a word, we had dropped into the midst of the "great strike," which extended to labourers of every class, and was completely paralysing all commerce. 

By dint of the promise of a handsome reward, we induced two or three rough harbour loafers to help us with our luggage, and under cover of the darkness they guided us to the nearest " hotel." It was a veritable den of thieves, crowded with Georgians and all kinds of riff-raff. Our guides assured us that, if they were detected breaking the strike, they would be shot down without mercy, and, as we learnt afterwards, in so saying they did not exaggerate one bit .

I was bound for Teheran. But why in the name of wonder should the spirit of unrest, now so rife in Russia, choose just at that very time to visit the Caucasus? You may well ask. When I left Constantinople on October 25, provided with two extra passports from the Russian Ambassador, M. Zinovieff, who had formerly been in Stockholm, Russia was comparatively quiet, and the railways, at any rate, were running without hindrance. I had the choice of three routes—(1) Batum, Tiflis, Baku, Reshd, Teheran; (2) Batum, Tiflis, Erivan, Nakitchevan, Tabriz, Teheran; (3) Trebizond, Erzerum, Bayazid, Khoi, Tabriz, Teheran. The first of these I was quite familiar with, and wanted to avoid it. With regard to the third route, that starting from Trebizond, I had been told in Constantinople, by Dr. Martin, that at that season of the year it was practically closed in consequence of rain and snow and the swollen state of the rivers, and the Persian Ambassador, Mirza Riza Khan, who also had formerly been Minister in Stockholm, dissuaded me from making such a long and tiring journey across the mountains of Asia Minor. In consequence of this, and with the view of saving time, I decided to travel via Erivan; from Batum five days would bring me to Tabriz, and two weeks more to Teheran. But the fates had decreed otherwise. I was forced to waste two valuable weeks, and at the present moment I am writing on board an Austrian steamer bound for Trebizond. If I had travelled from Constantinople to Trebizond direct I should by this be in Bayazid.

But have these two weeks really been wasted? No. I have unexpectedly had an opportunity of witnessing at first hand, at all events, one small scene in the gigantic struggle for freedom which is now shaking Russia to her foundations, and which, it seems to me, is the prelude to a revolution of the most stupendous character. 

I hasten to say that Batum, so long as I remained within the town, was entirety cut off from all communication with the rest of the world, even from such places as Poti, Kutais, and Tiflis, all, comparatively speaking, in the same neighbourhood. All the telegraph lines were cut, the railways torn up, the postal service stopped. Thus for nearly two weeks I was without any news except what was brought by special messengers on horseback or by the boats from Russia, and that consisted of uncertain and contradictory rumours. It was for all the world like being shut up in a beleaguered town or being detained in compulsory confinement, surrounded by spies and brigands, in danger of one's life and loss of one's property. Not a day passed without murders and rifle-shots in our immediate vicinity. Hymns of mourning, white coffins, bareheaded drunken priests, weeping relatives, broadsides from the warships (four large ones and three small ones) in the harbour, patrols of Cossacks, mounted gendarmes, companies of infantry on the march—all armed to the teeth— these were the sights and sounds observable all day long from our windows.

Waiting is always trying to the patience; but to be tied hand and foot when you are dying to be in action is galling in the extreme. Yet these days passed rapidly enough—a continuously changing kaleidoscope of fantastic scenes, full of vivid contrasts, burning themselves in upon the memory.

After remaining one day the Holy Nicholas steamed back to Odessa, taking all her cargo with her, and the same thing happened to all the vessels which arrived subsequently, whether they came from Russia or from elsewhere. The losses must have run up to millions of roubles.

We spent the night in Versal's den, which was kept open in spite of wind and weather, so that every living creature inside it, men and animals alike, ran the risk of being dealt with as "strike-breakers." But early the next morning I made my way to the Hotel Frantsia, where I should, at any rate, have a roof over my head that was weatherproof. 

The hotel was closed and empty, the windows shuttered, and all the servants had run away, nobody being left except the landlord and two boys. However, I was given a room, though they told me I should have to look after myself. There was precious little to eat and drink, nothing but a little bread and wine and some cold sturgeon several days old. Meat was not to be had for love or money; to make a fire was forbidden, though the samovar might be heated morning and evening. There was not even water to wash one's hands and face in; all the sutchis or "water-men," who usually retail water about the streets, had, like everybody else, gone out oh strike, and I had to wash with the contents of mineral water bottles. It put me in mind of the privations of the Taklimakan [Desert in northwest China], except that now the sea echoed stormily in my ears.

In the Frantsia I found also a Georgian prince. The very first evening we became warm friends and supped together. He swore by all that was holy that he would guide me through the forests of Georgia and over the pass of Suram, and would bring me safe and sound to Tiflis; and a very good reason he had for saying so: he was himself a robber chief, and would have acted in collusion with the bandits. I thanked him politely for his kindly proffer, and was congratulated by my two traveling companions, who were certain I should very soon have been stripped of everything if I had accepted the man's guidance. No, there was nothing for it but patience— patience; but to be content to kick one's heels in such a miserable place as Batum one needed the patience of a saint.

The first day of our stay in Batum, namely, the last day of the month of October, we spent in trying to learn something of the position of affairs, and we soon became convinced that the strike was something different from an ordinary strike, however inflexible the discipline and vigour with which it was carried out; it was a political movement of a very serious character. The town lay as if in the stupefaction of sleep, and except for the reports of firearms the dreary cobbled streets, with their monotonous rows of ugly houses, were silent and empty, though at other times they are noisy enough with the rattle of carriages and freight wagons. All shops and offices were closed, shuttered, locked and barred. A Georgian who had sold food secretly by the back-door to some of his customers received a warning in writing from the strike committee that he had been condemned to death, and would be shot on the following day. The respectable citizens kept within doors; nobody ventured abroad except loafers, spies, and riff-raff. Not a single woman was visible, except such as belonged to the offscourings of the people. Public gatherings were forbidden, and it was only here and there that a small group of workmen was to be seen. Every carriage that appeared on the street was driven by a soldier, with his rifle close at his hand, and the occupants were invariably officers. The only folk on horseback were Cossacks, and they patrolled the town backwards and forwards in every direction. All the public buildings were guarded by military; the banks in especial were closely watched. Soldiers were always on guard outside the Hotel Frantsia.

Numbers of boys, ten to twelve years of age, prowled about the streets; to all appearance they wore the most innocent air, but in reality they were the spies of the strike committee, and reported everything they saw, particularly every breach of the committees regulations. Even the foreign consulates were kept closed, and it was only by back ways that one was able to get at the consuls; at all events, that was the case with regard to the two whom I visited. The merchant was unable to visit his office; if he did, he was at once reported by the boy spies, and might esteem himself lucky if nothing worse befell him than to have all his windows broken and himself get a good drubbing. In some cases he would be informed by letter that he had to pay such and such a sum of money in ransom for his life. To enter a bank was considered to be in the highest degree dangerous—you ran a risk of being robbed on your way home. Nevertheless, I went to the Tiflis Commercial Bank and got an advance on my credit note, and managed to reach the hotel unmolested.

As for the economic strike, the railway men were demanding an increase in their wages to the extent of 40 per cent., namely, an advance from twenty-five to thirty-five roubles a month. And in conjunction with them the terrorists were labouring with remarkable—indeed, with irresistible—energy, and were cleverly making use of the general discontent to further their own ends for the dissolution of society. They were stirring up the people with revolutionary addresses in secret meetings. They declared that the Czar [Nicholas II] was already deposed and driven out of the country, and that [Finance Minister Sergei] Witte was President of the Russian Republic; the time was come for the people to take the power into their own hands; all property was going to be divided justly; the poor would get land and bread. Away with tyranny! Down with the rule of the autocrat! Down with slavery! Speeches of this character were cheered to the echo by the uncritical crowd, whose imaginations were feasting on the good things which the immediate future was to bring them. Every man you met on the street may be a leader of the terrorist party or an agent of the same. The passers-by looked at one another with suspicion. It was as though the entire inhabitants of the place lived in momentary expectation of something dreadful happening.

On the countenances of the more distinguished amongst the Caucasians—and they were mostly Georgians with fur caps and long coats and cartridge bandoliers slung across their shoulder—the prevailing expression was one of satisfaction. They were manifestly delighted at the serious difficulties against which the Russian authorities had to contend; they were clearly comforting themselves with the hope that the sway of the Russians over their formerly free Caucasia was now approaching its end.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

George F. Kennan, The Kennan Diaries (1936)


George Frost Kennan (1904 – 2005) was a highly influential American diplomat and historian,  who had played a crucial role in crafting the US foreign policy in the wake of the World War II. His writings inspired the Truman Doctrine and the U.S. foreign policy of "containing" the Soviet Union. 

After graduating from Princeton University in 1925, Kennan joined the newly formed U.S. Foreign Service. He first worked in Switzerland and Germany where he pursued studies in the Russian history and culture. In 1931 Kennan was assigned to the legation in Riga, Latvia, where he worked on Soviet economic affairs. Two years later he was assigned to the US Embassy in Moscow where he remained for five years, visiting various parts of the USSR and closely acquainting with the Soviet regime. In 1936 he paid a visit to Georgia, jotting down his perceptions into his journal that he had kept throughout his long career.  


Kutais and Tiflis were too much alike to be described separately. They are essentially oriental cities, cities of the Near East. Host sunshine, dust, overcrowding, intense street life, poverty, disease, and deceit seemed to be their main characteristics. 

The Georgians are a lazy, dirty, tricky, fiercely proud, and recklessly brave people. They never seem to work unless they have to. The Transcaucasus is the spiritual home of the drug store cowboy[*]. The streets are packed with loafers at all hours of the day. 

Transcaucasian filth is the filth of the Orient. Compared to it, Russian filths seems earthy and wholesome.

The Georgians claim to have acquired their trickiness from their dealings with the Armenians. However this may be (and to the outsider it seems an idle question), Tiflis and the entire Transcaucasus seem to be rampant with corruption, speculation, and crookedness. It is commonly believed that every cashier in Tiflis makes an average of two or three hundred rubles a month on the side, by crooked means. Many of the state funds flow into channels other than those for which they were allotted. Arrears in the payment of wages are a chronic evil which not even the best efforts of the state have been able to alleviate. The teachers seem to be the hardest hit in this respect.

The pride of the Georgian is well known. He looks down on all the neighboring races, with the possible exception of the Turk, for whom he has a certain respect as a fighter. The Armenian he hates virulently, and the Russian he holds in contempt.

Being an intense individualist, he has a typically romantic conception of honor and dignity. He will stand being cursed better than he will stand being laughed at. He considers that it is better not to live at all than to live with besmirched dignity. He is willing to fight at the suspicion of a sneer or a slight. As a result of this same individualism, he shows great daring and spirit in an individual, hand-to-hand encounter, but makes comparatively poor material for a military organization. The Caucasian military units (I understand there are two divisions of locally recruited troops stationed in the Transcaucasus) look sloppy in comparison with Russian units.

Although the Georgian nationalists do not like Stalin, they have every reason to be thankful to him. They are still the only remaining independent people of any importance in the Soviet Union. This is borne out by thousands of little indications: by the faces and behavior of the people, even by the number of loafers and beggars in the Tiflis streets.


The Georgians have never regarded themselves as having been conquered by the Russians, or as being a subject race. The Russians, in their view, simply bribed their princes and gained access to their towns. Russian soldiers, they told me, had never subjugated the country districts. At the present time, the Russians were only a tool in the hands of one faction of ambitious Georgians. To hell with them.

Since the [Sergei] Kirov murder [on 1 December 1934], Moscow’s grasp on the Transcaucasus has begun to tighten up. It is doubtful whether Stalin, in the face of the consolidation of his power and his economic successes in Russia, will be willing to tolerate much longer the laziness, the backwardness, the corruption, and the defiant, romantic nationalism of his compatriots.

Georgia will be a hard nut to crack. But Stalin’s nutcracker has cracked hard nuts before, and at the present moment it is stronger than ever. Outside observers who have had an opportunity to study Georgia at close range for a long time feel that this contraction of the Moscow nutcracker, when it occurs, will be the best thing that ever happened to the Georgians…


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[*] In the 1920s and 1930s, the term "drugstore cowboy" referred to a young man who loitered in or around a drugstore for the purpose of meeting women.

William Gifford Palgrave - Turkish Georgia (1867-1871) - Part 3

William Gifford Palgrave (1826-1888) was the British scholar, traveler and diplomat. Educated at the Trinity College (Oxford University), he spent his youth serving in the 8th (The King's) Regiment of Foot in India before joining a British expedition to the interior of Arabia, Syria and the Persian Gulf states. In the 1860s, Palgrave joined the British Foreign Office and was appointed consul at Sukhum-Kale (Sokhumi) in 1866. The following year he was sent to Trebizond where he remained for six years. In the 1870s-1880s, he served as a British consul in the Caribbean, the Phillippines and Bangkok before finishing his diplomatic career as Minister Resident and Consul-General to Uruguay.

In 1887, one year before his death, he reviewed notes that he had originally made during his travels and published a collection of travel essays. One essay, entitled "Turkish Georgia," reflected impressions of several journeys he had made in the late 1860s to the northeastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.



Of the process by which this numerous, amiable, and fairly intelligent population was severed from Christendom and incorporated into Islam, no record remains. This much is certain: that a hundred and fifty years ago, according to their own statement, and even later, I should think, judging by the comparative freshness of the church ruins in a climate where damp, heavy rains and snow, and a vegetation rivalling the luxuriance of Yucatan conspire to hasten the work of disintegration and decay, they were all Christians. It is equally certain that at the present day they are all without exception Mahometans. No compulsion, no invasion even, is either mentioned in history, or alluded to by tradition; and what is stranger still, no extension of the Turkish Empire was then taking place eastward; on the contrary, it was rather losing ground. Could the dread of Russian encroachment, first felt along the northern Georgian frontier about that time, have driven these tribes to seek closer alliance and protection with the Turks by means of religious union? Possibly their Christianity sat as lightly on them then as their Mahometanism does now. They themselves have a story that a very eloquent preacher and holy man came among them, and converted them all to Islam by his sermons. "Nonsense," said I to a young Georgian beg, who had told me the tale with a very creditable amount of gravity, "that can never have been the cause. You know as well as I do that no Christian becomes a Mahometan, or vice versa, except it be from fear of imminent danger, or hope of material advantage. In the absence of these, the finest sermons would convert nobody; and as to proofs and miracles, you are aware that they are as copious in Christian as in Mahometan story, or more." He laughed, and answered, "Of course there was some motive of the other kind, but of what it was we have no record left."

In fact, for about fourteen centuries, from the days of Chosroes and Justinian, down to our own time, this mountain group has resembled an island, round which the eddying waves of frontier war have raged almost without ceasing, but which they have never wholly overflowed. Byzantines and Persians, Turcomans and Byzantines, Turks and Persians again, Russians and Turks, have all fought around them, retreated, or conquered ; while they, secure in their almost inaccessible labyrinth of ravine and crag, have taken no more share in the strife around, than by making or repelling an occasional foray; and, when victory had declared itself for the one or the other of their belligerent neighbours, paying as little tribute and obedience as possible to their new suzerain, whoever he might be.

To the Osmanlee Sultan, the "Padishah" of the Mahometan world, so long as he was content to rule them after their own fashion, that is, through the medium of their own born chiefs and begs, the Georgian Muslims were at first attached with proper neophytic fervour. Of this they gave repeated proof during the many wars, or, one might almost say, the one long war, which from the close of the last century to the middle of this, burned or smouldered along the land-line, and ended by giving the entire Southern Caucasus, with its fair plains adjoining, to Russian dominion. All this time the Mahometan Georgians further on the south and west kept up a guerilla warfare, less ferocious, but hardly less persistent, than that maintained by the Circassian tribes on the east and north. But when the Ottoman Government changed its type from semi-feudal to bureaucratic, and administration merged in mere organized fiscal extortion, with the governing Pashas and other Stamboolee officials for its agents, the old spell of loyalty was broken, and Georgian eyes are now more often and more longingly turned to Tiflis than to Constantinople.

Indeed, without a degree of provincial tact which a pseudocentralised government can hardly be expected to possess, this state of things was, sooner or latter, inevitable. From the noblest beg to the meanest peasant there is hardly a Georgian who has not relations, or at least clansmen, under Russian rule across the frontier, with whom he is in constant correspondence of visits made and returned, and from whom he learns the transterminal existence of a state of prosperity and progress which he cannot but feel contrasts bitterly with the poverty and ignorance to which he himself, the Osmanlee subject, is condemned. For, in spite of frontier-guards, passport regulations, and military "cordon," mutual intercourse between Russian Georgia and Turkish Gurjistan is constant and intimate; nor does difference of creed, or, officially speaking, of nationality, much impair the sympathy of a common origin, "Blood is thicker than water" with the clansmen of Asia Minor as with the clansmen of the Scottish Highlands. It is amusing enough to see, as I often have, a Russianised Georgian, in big clumsy boots, long-skirted coat, and dirty forage-cap, enter the rickety but carpeted divan ;of a Mahometan kinsman, who in the much more picturesque, but less civilized-looking dress of Asiatic fashion, rises to embrace him. It is Burns's Caesar and Luath over again; and there is no want of cordiality or respect on either side.

Meanwhile the attachment of the peasantry—the devotion would be an exact word—to their own hereditary chiefs or begs, though shorn of their feudal rank and mulcted of their ancestral lands, is strong as ever; indeed, the measures taken by the Ottoman Government to weaken it, have had a contrary effect, by supplying a new tie between nobles and people—that of common dissatisfaction. Both classes have certainly a sufficiently long list of grievances against their black-coated Stamboolee masters, whose conduct is such that it can often be only explained by a settled determination to alienate the affections of these frontier tribes, and to drive them straight into the arms of Russia, who, for her part, is ready enough to receive them.

A Georgian beg, one of the most influential in the land, and chief of an important border clan, had, after much brave guerilla fighting against the Russians in '55 [1855], at last thrown himself, with several of his followers, into the besieged fortress of Kars, and did his duty manfully in its defence. When, after the events with which all are familiar, the place surrendered to famine, the beg—I purposely abstain from names—and his men became, of course, prisoners of war with the rest. Thus they remained four or five days; but when the time came for marching the captured garrison off to Tiflis, or other secure places in the Caucasus, the Georgians were simply and unconditionally set free; the Russian general declaring, with a polite generosity that might have been a useful lesson to some other generals nearer home, in a more recent war, that his hostilities regarded the regular troops only; and that the beg and his clansmen being irregular, he held them non-combatants, like any other peaceable inhabitants of the Turkish Empire, and consequently not liable to the penalties of war. With this he dismissed them, disarmed of course, but not even under parole, to go home, or wherever else they might think best.

The policy, as well as the humanity of this conduct is evident enough; but it is difficult to perceive either the humanity or the policy of the Turkish Government, which, as soon as the war was over, rewarded the beg's services by a fine and imprisonment, on the ground that he must have been in treasonable correspondence with the Russians, otherwise he would not have met with such lenient treatment at their hands.

"Upon my word," said the beg to me, "had I been minded to betray the country to the Russians, I should have had no need of underhand doings: for there was not a man among the villagers who did not wish it, and I do not think the Turks could have done much to hinder us just then. But after all," he continued, "I have reason to be more satisfied with the Turks than with the Russians ; for the former, at least, by shutting me up in prison, paid me the compliment of showing that they considered me a person of some consequence; whereas, I never felt so small in my life as when the Russian general told me to go free, without doing me the honour of sending me under guard to Tiflis, and evidently implied that he did not care either for my having fought against him, or whether I might not fight again in the future."

Let us pay this very same gentleman—nobleman I mean— a visit, and see how he lives in the meanwhile.

It is mild summer, and the beg has left his winter residence in the thick woods, some twelve miles distant from the Russian frontier, and has gone, as his wont is, to pass the hotter months of the year under canvas amid the mountain pastures beyond the pine range, where at the height of between eight and nine thousand feet above the sea—his winter house is at the moderate elevation of four thousand—he looks after his numerous herds, and holds a kind of open court, much frequented by all the chiefs from the districts around, far and near. We, his visitors, are a large party, begs, aghas, and "delikans," or "wild-bloods," i.e. dashing young bachelors, some pure Georgian, others halfGeorgian, half-Turcoman, by race. As we ride up the steep grassy slopes I notice, at a height of more than seven thousand feet, where even the July air blows keenly, and where no peasant now would venture to winter it from October to April, the ruins, or traces rather, of two large villages, and a stone church, an indication amongst, I regret to say, many similar, that the climate of these regions—as, I believe, of some other longitudes—has gradually but notably cooled during the last few centuries; though whether from a general diminution of solar heat, according to Professor Thomson's alarming theory, to culminate in the realization of Byron's ghastly dream, or whether owing to some transpositions of land and sea in our Northern hemisphere, to take Lyell's more consolatory view of the matter, I do not pretend to decide.

At last we have reached the top; the brisk air, so different from that of the heated valleys below, has in a manner intoxicated our horses, who, instead of showing weariness after so hard a climb, are squealing, neighing, rearing, bounding; it is all the riders can do to hold them in. Before us spreads a wide undulating table-land; it reaches for miles and miles away, till it slopes off eastward into Russian Georgia, and westward sinks in the hollow of Showshet, where dwell the loveliest but not the austerest women, and the handsomest but not the most virtuous men of Georgian race. Far north, its downward dip is clothed with forest to the fever-stricken coast of the Black Sea. But right in front of us is a tent, large and black, with three or four smaller tents on a row behind; these are evidently for women, attendants, and domestic life, while the large one is the "salamlik," or general parlour, of the beg himself. Close by a little granite ridge cuts knife-like through the turf; and from under it wells out a spring of water, crystal clear and icy cold.

The beg, whose ancestral possessions equal in extent Lincolnshire at least, and whose word even now, let who may be the official governor, is law over the whole frontier land, rises and comes forward to greet his guests. What a splendid head he has. I have seen something of the kind among the demigods of Greco-Roman sculpture. Advancing age has deprived his form of the supple activity which gave it a grace remarkable even among Georgians in youth, but has hardly diminished his passion for horsemanship and every form of bodily exercise. To this he adds a degree of mechanical skill that a trained workman might envy. For one friend he himself, unassisted, manufactures a beautifully-wrought sabre, blade, and hilt; for another a pair of pistols; for a third a silver-mounted clarionet. Then he sets to work on the construction of a sailing-boat, and when it is finished, sails it on a cruise of discovery all over the great mountain lake of Childer, close by, sounding everywhere to determine what the real depth of the water, commonly said to be unfathomable (but he found it, as he told me, twenty-seven fathoms at most), may be; and whether the traditional city, said to be submerged beneath, is really there. Besides these amusements come farming, building, planting, sheep-breeding, cattle-tending, horse-rearing, and even—in which he has done wonders—road-making: and yet, various as these occupations are, the result falsifies the common saying about such attempts, 1 by proving him master, not of none, but of all. Lastly, he is—be the nominal Governor of Osmanlee creation who he may—the ultimate tribunal of appeal throughout the whole eastern half of Gurjistan; the arbiter of disputes, director of councils, social and political head of the little nation.

Begs and not-begs, noble, gentle, or simple, we are seated in the tent; its hangings are of silk, beautifully embroidered, and still bright in colour, the youthful labour of the chief's aunt, who died a few years since at the respectable age of ninety, or thereabouts. Coffee is served round for form's sake; then wine, spirits, and a sort of fruit-luncheon appear; and with a remark that "a tent is liberty-hall, and there is nothing to hinder our enjoying ourselves as we choose," the beg sets the example of jollity in word and deed. In rush half-a-dozen children, four boys and two girls, one of the latter a real beauty, their ages between fifteen and five; these are the younger ones of the beg's numerous family; the elder sons are looking after the farms elsewhere. The biggest of the boys here present, a fair, curly-headed lad, takes up at his father's orders a book of Persian poetry, and begins translating it off into fluent Turkish: I hope the version is a correct one; if not, I cannot rectify it. Two other pretty boys perform a clarionet duet, on instruments of their father's making, selecting an English air—at least they tell me it is one—in my honour; while the smallest imp turns somersets, stands on his head, and goes through other gymnastic feats. The girls sit on their father's knees, or tease such of the guests as they are familiar with. Other visitors drop in, some on business, some on amusement; the day goes merrily by. But before the last slant sunbeams have died off the height, a huge wood fire is lighted before the entrance of the tent, a necessary precaution against the keen cold outside; a plentiful supper is served, and drinking, with talk and music, resumed till midnight. Georgian Mahometanism is not very deep in the grain; besides, the event, coming sooner or later, of Russian annexation, has already cast its shadow before.

Yet our host, and several others now under the same canvas fought bravely, and adventured freely the lives which many of their kinsmen lost, on the Turkish side, fifteen years ago. Now not one of them would draw a sword. "We mean to look on and enjoy the fun," say they, when questioned as to the part they would take were another war to break out between the empires. Perhaps this might not really prove their line of conduct, if put to the test, for men do not always keep to what they have forecast when the crisis actually comes; but there is no doubt that these words do very correctly sum up their present feeling.

Indeed, it would be hard to say why they should think or feel differently. The Ottoman Government has taken away their past, and offers them no hopeful future. Besides, how abstain from comparing their own condition with that of their kinsmen on the other side of the frontier close at hand? The contrast is suggestive and seductive in one.

"Well, about myself I do not care so much," says the beg, as after long talk we sat, surrounded by horizontal sleeping figures in the red glare of the heaped wood embers by the door; "my career has pretty well wound itself up; but what on earth am I to do with these boys of mine? The estate is not much, hardly enough as matters go for the elder ones; the rest would become mere peasants, no better than those around them. Trade? That is not in our line; we know nothing about it; besides, there is none here of any kind. The army? The navy? You know what the average run of officers is in the Ottoman service; besides, my children, because they are mine, would be ill looked on, suspected, kept back in every way. How even am I to give them a decent education? Where put them to school? At Constantinople? I would rather see them dead than exposed to the chance, the certainty, of the taint of Osmanlee vice in that city. And if not at Constantinople, where? You will allow," he concluded, with a kind of laugh, "that the position of a Georgian noble in the Turkish Empire is a pleasant one, very."

As with the chiefs, so with the people, in their degree. And it is for this reason that I have dwelt somewhat at length on the fortunes, ways, and words of an individual; because, with no great modification, they are not merely personal, but general; and one may, to a certain extent, be taken as sample of all.

The Georgians are fond of agricultural labour of every kind, and skillful at it; and with a temperate climate, averaging that of central Italy, and a fertile soil, there is nothing—except the fatal administrative blight, that renders all landed property in Turkey unproductive and almost valueless—to hinder Gurjistan from rivalling or even excelling the corn-bearing fruitfulness of Imeritia and the gardens of Kutais. But what most distinguishes them is their skill in handicraft. Guns, pistols, swords, daggers, embroidery, silver-work, the staple articles of manufacture among a semi-barbarous people—for all these Georgia holds the first rank in the Anatolian market; and the primitive simplicity of the tools employed enhances the cunning of the worker's hand. Pity that it should not oftener occupy itself with more useful objects; but this defect, rightly understood, is not so much attributable to the artificers as to their surroundings. On the other hand, for trade and commerce the Georgians show no aptitude, not even for shopkeeping; and the few shops—I do not think there are two hundred, all told, throughout the villages—in Gurjistan are invariably kept by strangers, mostly Armenians, who come for a few summer months of speculative profit, and then go away again.

Nor have they—and this is of good augury for their prospects of civilisation—any turn for a pastoral life; their flocks and herds are indeed numerous enough on the grassy mountain slopes, but they are invariably tended by hired Koordes. The Georgians have many of the instincts of a settled, none of those proper to a nomad race.

Social, fond of dress and show, of song and dance, of gatherings and merry-makings, of drink, too, and, I regret to say, of gambling, they are but indifferent, though proselyte Mahometans, and the Islamitic "revival," so marked in its increasing intensity among the Arab, the Indian, and, to a certain extent, among the Turkish and Turcoman races, has little or no existence in Gurjistan. Perhaps too they feel the eventuality of reunion under Russian sway to their Christian kinsmen across the border, too near a probability to allow of much zeal for, so far as they in particular are concerned, the decaying fortunes of Islam. "We ourselves shall live and die Mahometans, but our children may become whatever suits them best," is a common saying among them. It is also, so far as I know, peculiar to them among Muslims; certainly, I never heard the like of it elsewhere. The few Mollas, Muftis, and the like in Gurjistan villages are, like the shopkeepers from without, generally from the more serious sea-coast of Lazistan, or the bigoted neighbourhood of Trebizond.

Of Georgian morality, in the strict sense of the word, "Least said" is, I fear, "soonest mended." Little indeed, among a people so situated, could be looked for, and little is to be found. While the men are habitually out in the fields, or clambering the tall beech-trees to look after their favourite bee-hives—the honey of Gurjistan is first-rate—niched high up in some forked branch among the pale green shades, the women at home have it all their own way, and it is too often the broad one. Not rarely, too, these what we may charitably term faults, coming in collision with justly aroused jealousy, result in tragic crime. Many instances, needless to repeat here, were told me. In one village an entire family had been exterminated: in another, the brothers of the faithless wife, after fatally avenging the family disgrace, had turned brigands. This feature of Georgian character has, however, not only its black, but, such is human nature, its brighter side; a rank weed crop may give hope of a fruitful soil beneath; a polished marble slab more often covers dry bones only.

Besides, law there is none to speak of, and every man, every man-child even, is armed. Schools, too, except a very few—a dozen at most throughout the whole breadth of the land—of the most primary kind, do not here exist, and there are no teachers in Gurjistan but Need and Passion, no lessons taught but the spade, the sickle, the loom, the forge, the knife, and the overloaded gun. As for Government—the official or Ottoman Government, I mean—it recognises no obligation towards its Georgian subjects, except that of taxing them, and collecting their taxes; a difficult task the last, it must be allowed, in mountains like these, where armed collectors have generally to be sent for the work, a work from which they do not always return.

It is easier to pull down than to build up, to destroy than to restore. Latter-day Sultans have broken the links, clumsy ones it must be admitted, yet effective, which bound society together under the semi-feudal authority of the local begs, and have substituted nothing but tax-gatherers and tithe- collectors in their stead. Only in out-of-the-way frontier districts like Gurjistan, far from Constantinople, and almost inaccessible to the official Effendee tribe, something of the old administration yet lingers on, powerless for good, powerful for evil. Shorn of lands, wealth, title, and except what the habitual respect of the peasants may still secure him, position, a Georgian beg is much too weak to compel order, though often strong enough to excite disturbance; enforce the law he cannot, break it he can, and does. Hereditary rivalries, village feuds, robberies, kidnapping, murders, all have here, as chance or circumstance may direct, almost unrestrained scope; the Ottoman or Stambool Government cannot put them down, and there is no other authorised power left to do it. In fact, when one wanders through these thicket-tangled paths, deep glens, lonely denles, and dark forests, one wonders, not that deeds of violence and blood are sometimes done, but that they are not more frequent; not that Gurjistan travelling is considered venturesome, but that it is possible.

This is, however, chiefly among the natives themselves; a stranger has little to fear, a European least of all. The hospitality given—and it is always to be had for the asking—in one hamlet usually implies a kind of safe-conduct as far as the next, and so on to the end of the journey; and European wayfarers in particular are covered with the aegis of a salutary fear of after-inquiries, and penalties all the more dreaded because unknown.

In fact, during my long rovings in Gurjistan proper, my own personal experience only records one adventure of the robber or brigand class; I mean, in which I fell in with such. It was in the Ajarah region, the wildest corner of this wild land; and if I record it, I do so because the situation, though it was not exactly pleasant at the moment, was intensely picturesque; so picturesque, indeed, as almost to neutralise any disagreeable sensations that the incident might otherwise have caused.

The valley was such a lovely one; high mountain walls towering up to the sky in a mass of fir and beech above, and thick undergrowth below, all in the fullest, brightest leafage of summer, but now darkening with the first transparent shadows of a calm summer evening, and the rapid twilight of the South. The path, narrow and rough, led alongside of a torrent, till it came to a corner round a jutting mass of rock, where another large and deep mountain stream crossed it from the right, while between precipice and water a clump of huge walnut trees spread out their wide branches, and deepened the gloom of the glen. A spot of exquisite beauty; but one in which it would be awkward to fight, and impossible to try running away.

We had yet half an hour or so to go before we could reach the village where we intended halting for the night; but, enchanted with the scene around, I was riding slowly, with an armed attendant, a Trebizondian, in front, and a couple of negroes, with a native peasant, to bring up the rear. Just as we turned the rock, the thought struck me, "What a splendid post for an ambush!" and at the same instant my horse—a Turcoman bay—started, snuffed uneasily about him, and would have stopped; I urged him forward, but with difficulty. Suddenly two men, dressed in country cloth of that vandyke-brown colour which of all others is the least distinguishable at a distance among open-air objects, started up right in front, each presenting a shining long-barrelled gun, while two others simultaneously appeared, like toy figures set loose by a spring, from among the bushes alongside, and a third pair as promptly took post on the further bank of the torrent opposite, thus making six long guns, and all levelled, not to mention knives and pistols, of which each man had a pretty little arsenal in his girdle.
One of the men, a fine tall young fellow, as indeed they all seemed, came up to my Trebizondian guard in advance, and took hold of his bridle; another approached me, but observing that I put my hand on a knife in my belt, fell back; perhaps he thought I was going to draw a pistol, which would certainly have been the better weapon, but in fact I had none about me. However, the Trebizondian had, only he was too much frightened to use it, and, like a fool and a coward as he was, began to parley. This of course encouraged the would-be robbers, who now closed in, and matters began to look serious, when my two negroes, who now came up from behind the rock, perceiving that something was wrong, spurred forward, one with a pistol in hand, the other with a large drawn knife, and shouted out so savagely, that the Georgians, taken by surprise, fell back. We were now four—five indeed, reckoning our peasant guide, but he, though armed, seemed inclined to keep out of the way, a friendly neutral, of all characters the most provoking to combatants. However, three of us had arms ready, and appeared to be inclined to use them; the Trebizondian, too, began to pluck up heart, and grow fierce. Hereon our assailants gave it up, and retired into the thicket, leaving the ford open. That they might better see how little account we made of them, I called to them to stop, and asked how far it was yet to such and such a village, and whether we were on the right way. Two of them turned round, with villainously sulky faces, then thought better of it, and saying, "All right, not far on," hurried off after their companions. By this time night was setting in, and in a few minutes more it was quite dark. Fortunately some peasants of the hamlet having heard somehow or other of our approach, came to meet us with flaring pine-torches, and piloted us to our lodgings, which else we might have had some difficulty in finding.

"It was all a mistake; if the lads had known who you were they would never have meddled with you," was the apologetic remark of our host that night. I think he was right: anyhow, though I remained a fortnight more scrambling up and down the Ajarah glens, and fell in with plenty of armed peasant bands, none of them again formed themselves into so scenic a group as that which gave such a peculiarly Georgian character to that wild valley in the still summer twilight.

Too much stress, however, should not be laid on defects which are accidental in a people, and the result rather of circumstances than of inherent disposition. An ill-governed frontier will seldom be found free from brigandage; nor can much respect to law be expected where law is, in a general way, equally unpromulgated and unenforced. To revert, not for proofs sake, but illustration, to a simile already employed, the very abundance of the weed-growth in the Georgian character seems to warrant the hope of a fruitful and better crop, were the soil properly tilled and guarded. Something of the kind—much, indeed, by comparison—has already taken place in the neighbouring and kindred Russo-Georgian provinces of Imeritia and Gourul. And could the great and kindly historian of the 'Decline and Fall' have added personal acquaintance with the inhabitants of Turkish Gurjistan to historical research, he would, I think, while confirming the epithet of " handsome," have, with me, effaced, or at least qualified, that of " worthless."

Indeed, though certainly little disposed to close with the invitation—one so often made in half-savage countries, and to me always most melancholy, because like the vague clutch of the drowning man at less than a straw—to remain and take up my abode among them, yet when I quitted the Georgians and their land it was with something of regret, and more of pity. Fortune has used them hardly in the past, and their future is at best doubtful. In 'Prometheus Unbound' Shelley's Asia is hopeful as fair; and the fairest of her children ought, were the noble day-dream of the poet anything but a dream, to be of right the most hopeful also. But truer, I fear, though sadder is the Spirit that speaks by the same voice in a later dream that has, for the Ottoman Empire in Asia as in Europe, a much wider application than the "Hellas " of which it bears the name.

Oh cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die? 
Cease! drain not to the dregs the urn 
Of bitter prophecy! 
The world is weary of the past— 
Oh might it die or rest at last. 

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Auguste Wahlen, Illustrations de Moeurs (1844)

A selection of illustration from Auguste Wahlen's Illustrations de Moeurs, usages et costumes de tous les peuples du monde (Brusseles, 1844). Some drawings are clearly copied from Jean-François Gamba's Voyage dans la Russie méridionale (published in 1826)


Georgian woman

Mingrelian




Imeretian prince



Circassian


Circassian


Circassian


Armenian merchant

Young Armenian woman


Domenico Sestini, Lettere del signor abate Domenico Sestini... (1778)

Domenico Sestini (1750-1832) was Italian scholars who spent much of his life traveling across Europe, the Balkans, and the Levant to pursue his numismatic research. While staying in Constantinople in the summer of 1778, Sestini wrote a number of letters that were later published in his "Lettere del signor abate Domenico Sestini..." The letter of 31 August 1778 is particularly interesting because Sestini describes Turkish epithets for the various peoples. Original Italian text can be accessed here, pages 104-108.


When the Turks wish to offend the Hebrews, they call them Cifud, a word corrupted from Jahud, which properly signifies a Jew. 

The Persians are insulted by tKizil-Basce, or red heads because these people really wear a red cap, which is their kalpak
he words

They ridicule the Armenians, by giving them the epithet of bogh-gi, that is “night-men” [i.e. men who collected/removed the waste] in because during a war, which laid waste their country, that is to say the environs of Erzerum, about one hundred years ago, some Armenians betook themselves to flight, and sought shelter at Constantinople. As this nation were poor and miserable, and knew not how to subsist, they began at first to follow the meanest occupations, cleaning the common sewers to procure bread. By industry and economy they at length amassed some money, with which they completed a fund; and by this means were enabled, in time, to quit their vile and contemptible employment. Several of their body became very rich by trade, and it is affirmed, that, for sixty years past, the Armenians have not exercised the nightly office. It appears, that if their chiefs had united, by the intervention of their patriarch and their bishops, the latter might have forbid them to follow such a profession, however wretched their condition, because they were continually insulted, and which sometimes still happens. For these reasons, the Armenians never use their own language, for the most part speaking Turkish, to conceal their origin.

The Georgians are called Beit-gi, that is to say, eaters of lice, because these people are much tormented by these vermin; it is said that while sleeping, they angrily pick lice and use their teeth to crush them since they unable to employ their nails in the dark. 

The Turks call the Tartars and the Scythians Lesce-yeigi or eaters of carrion, because they really eat the flesh of their dead horses. 

The Indians, who live like missionaries and preachers, and who consequently always beg, are, perhaps, not very improperly called Dilengi, or beggars. 

The Arabs are called Siccian-yeigi, which signifies rat-eaters. The Turks also name them Akylsiz or fools, men without judgment.

The Greeks, who are the rajas of the Turks, that is to say their subjects, receive a very humiliating epithet, that of Boinuz Siz Coyun or [in Italian] Becchi-scornati, which means goats with broken horns because they were so easily subdued when their empire was attacked.

The people of the continent are despised here and the Turks give them the epithet of Arabagi that is to say, carters and carriers. For the most part they live in the country, and keep some of those carriages called, in the Turkish language, araba: some use them for giving people an airing, and others for transporting provisions. 

The Turks ridicule the Albanians by calling them Giergi, which signifies sellers of lungs because they go through the streets carrying long sticks on their shoulders, to which the intestines of sheep are suspended, and exposed for sale 

The Moldavians are also despised, and distinguished by the epithet of Bogdani-nadan, that is to say, inhuman. And the Bulgarians, and the Serbians, are called Haidud, meaning robbers.

The Ragusans are styled as giausus, that is to say, spies. 

The Bosniacs [inhabitants of Bosnia] are called Potur, or the highway assassins. 

The Russians are distinguished, but very improperly by the epithet Rusimen Kius, which signifies a worth-less soul.

The Turks insult the Poles by calling them Fodul Ghiaur, that is men very vain, conceited with themselves, unfaithful, and arrogant. 

The Germans are characterized by the words Gurur Kiafir or haughty blasphemers, because the Turks find the German language harsh and disagreeable to the ear… 

To the Venetians they apply  the epithet of Balik-gi, that is to say  the fishers, because their city is built in the middle of the sea. 

The Italians, and all the Franks, are styled  Firengh hezar rengh, or people of many colours, on account, perhaps, of their manner of dressing, but in another, and more true, sense - as deceivers.

The Turks call the French Ainegi, that is to say, cunning and deceitful.

The DutchPeinirgi, which signifies cheese-mongers because they bring a great quantity of that article to Constantinople; 

The English are called sciokagi or cloth manufacturers because those people transports to the Levant abundance of all kinds of drapery goods.

The Spanish are distinguished by the epithet of Tembel, that is to say, lazy.

The inhabitants of the Morea, and all the islands of the Archipelago, are derided by the word Tausciani, which means hares because when the Turks seized not only the Morea but also the different islands in the Archipelago belonging to the Venetians, the terror of the inhabitants was so great that they did not make any resistance, and fled to the mountains like hares.

Generally speaking, all nations who do not profess the Mahometan religion are continually despised and insulted by the Turks, who give them the denomination of ghiaur or unfaithful.



Jehoshaphat Aspin, Cosmorama (1826)

In 1826 Jehoshaphat Aspin published Cosmorama: A View of the Costumes and Peculiarities of All Nations (London, 1826) which mapped various peoples and countries around the world.


Aspin  (the pseudonym of the unknown female author) was a popular writer in Britain who had written a number of children's books on history, geography and astronomy. The Cosmorama proved to be quite popular in Britain and was reprinted in the mid-1830s.

In describing various countries and peoples, Aspin relied on existing travelogues to create short essays that introduced English-speaking adolescents to far-away lands and peoples. The author often focused on peoples' resemblances to other nations, thus highlighting connections that, in author's mind, would help reader retain information. 

Aspin's essays on Georgia are noteworthy not as much for their factual details as for what they taught young English-speaking adults about the Georgians (and the Mingrelians) in the early 19th century.



THE GEORGIANS

These people occupy a great part of the southern declivity of the Caucasus ; and are in many respects similar to the Circassians in their customs and manners. They make a profession of Christianity; but it is not certain to what particular creed they are attached, nor what forms of worship they have adopted.

The Georgians are in general tall, well proportioned, and elegant in shape; and their language is soft, harmonious, and expressive; but their minds, unrestrained by education and virtuous habits, are depraved and vicious.

The dress of the Georgians nearly resembles that of the Cossacks, though men of rank frequently appear in the Persian costume. They usually dye their hair, beard, and nails, of a red colour; and the women do the same to the palms of their hands. In the streets, women of rank always appear veiled; and there it is deemed indecorous in any man to accost them. It is, likewise, reckoned uncivil in conversation to inquire after the wives of any of the company.

Punishments in criminal cases are in this country of the most cruel and terrific nature; fortunately, however, they are not frequent, as well because delinquents can easily abscond into neighbouring districts, as because the princes are more enriched by confiscations of property, than by the tortures of the accused.

The clergy are paid liberally, not by the living, but by the dead. At the death of a Georgian, the bishop requires one hundred crowns, for performing the funeral rites; and this extravagant demand must be satisfied, though the widow and children of the deceased be ruined by it, which is frequently the case.


THE MINGRELIANS

These people, seated in the ancient country of Colchis, between the Black Sea and Mount Caucasus, are generally handsome; the men strong and well made, and the women very beautiful: but both sexes are very depraved. They sell their children; or, if they can find no purchasers, put them to death, when they have difficulty in bringing them up.

The bread used by the superior classes is made of wheat, barley, or rice; and, when eating, they sit cross-legged upon a carpet. The lower orders, for want of bread, eat a kind of paste made of a plant, called gom ; and they sit upon a mat, or bench.

The nobility exercise an absolute power over their vassals, even to the deprivation of life, liberty, and estate. Their arms are bows, arrows, lances, sabres, and bucklers.

The Mingrelians call themselves Christians; but both their clergy and laity are utterly ignorant of the Christian doctrines, and their service is intermixed with Jewish and Pagan rites. They never eat pork, nor drink wine, without making the sign of the cross; and their monks and nuns, who abstain wholly from animal food, pay no other regard to religion or morality than a strict observance of the fasts prescribed by the clergy, which is considered as an atonement for every other neglect of duty.

The archbishop of Georgia derives a great revenue from his flock; for, besides seven hundred vassals, bound to furnish him with the necessaries and luxuries of life, he raises money by the sale of the children of his wretched dependants, as well as by visitations of his dioceses. In the latter, he levies heavy contributions on the bishops and inferior clergy,who, in their turn, plunder the people, sell the wives and children of their vassals into slavery, and commit the most flagrant crimes. They also, for money, pretend to foretell future events, and to recover the sick by appeasing the evil genius by which the patient is harassed. The dignitaries of the church are clad in scarlet; the inferior clergy are distinguished from the laity by the length of their beards, and by their high round caps, which are also common to their inferiors. Among the idols, with which their churches are filld, those of St. George and St. Grobas engage their principal attention: to the latter, they have attached such ideas of terror, that they lay their offering at a distance before it, lest, by approaching too near, they should incur the wrath of the in-dwelling power.

On the death of their friends, these people, in common with the Georgians, abandon themselves to inordinate grief; but at the interment, they wash it all away with copious potations. Their chief cause of concern, however, arises from the surrender, which the bishop requires, of all the moveables of their departed relative, whether they consist of horses, arms, clothes, or money. This right, on the death of a bishop, devolves upon the prince; who, assuming the clerical character for the occasion, seizes at once on the accumulated spoil which the defunct priest had collected by the plunder of his subjects.


Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Georgians and Smallpox Inoculation

Smallpox was the bane of existence in the 18th century Europe, claiming tens of thousands of lives annually and leaving hundreds of thousands seriously affected, most with disfiguring scars. Yet, inoculation has long been successfully practiced in some parts of Asia and the Caucasus; contemporaries argued that one of the reasons for why men and women from the Caucasus were renowned for their beauty was that they were inoculated as children in parts of their bodies where scars would not be seen.  Inoculation came to Europe at the beginning of the 18th century. European travelers in the Ottoman Empire frequently remarked observing or hearing about inoculation practices among the Georgians. 


In 1713, an Italian Doctor, Emanuel Timonius (Timoni), who resided in Istanbul, sent a lengthy letter describing inoculation practices in the Ottoman capital. The letter was extracted and translated for the Royal Society of London by English physician John Woodward in 1714: 

"The writer [Timonius] of this ingenious Discourse observes, in the first place, that the Circassians, Georgians, and other Asiatics, have introduced this practice of procuring the Small-pox by a sort of inoculation, for about the space of forty years, among the Turks and others at Constantinople.

That though at first the more prudent were very cautious in the use of this practice; yet the happy success it has been found to have in thousands of subjects, for these 8 years past, has now put it out of all suspicion and doubt; since the operation having been performed on persons of all ages, sexes, and different temperaments, and even in the worst constitution of the air, yet none have been found to die of it; where at the same time it was very mortal when it seized the patient the common way, of which half the affected died. This [Timonius] attests from his own observation."

[For a complete account click here]

Timonius' letter was later cited by various publications and writers, including The Historical Register: Containing an Impartial Relation of All Transactions, Foreign and Domestick (1717), which noted that "the Circassianis , Georgians , and other Asiaticks , have introduc'd this Practice [inoculation] to the Ottomans," and The Philosophical Transactions (vol.5, 1731). In 1722, physician John Crawford repeated this claim in his book "The Case of Inoculating the Small-pox Consider'd":

"I shou'd think, however, the Experience of Time immemorial among the Georgians and Circallians, of forty Years at Conftantinople, where Timoni assures us it has been practic'd with happy Success, join'd to what we have had at Boston, and even among ourselves, should not seem so slender."

In 1755, the Royal Society of London sent a list of questions, prepared by Dr. Maty, to James Porter, the British ambassador in Istanbul, asking for more information on the Ottoman practice of inoculation. The following year the Royal Society of London published an interesting report based on the information supplied by James Porter. The report mentions inoculation practices among the Georgians:

"Since the reception of this memoir, Dr. Maty has received another letter from the same gentleman, in which he finds some new facts tending to clear up the accounts relating to the practice of inoculation among the Georgians. These he hopes will not be unacceptable, as they come from a person equally able, by his universal knowledge and distinguished station, to procure the best informations, and willing, for the good of mankind, to communicate them in the most obliging and candid manner.

Constantinople, May 17, 1755.

I am now to correct the report of the Capuchin concerning inoculation in Georgia. One of their physicians, a most ignorant fellow, who lives by his profession here, avers [affirms] that, among those who follow the true Georgian rites, not Romanists [Catholicism], the practice is common. It has its rife from mere superstition. He tells us, "That the tradition and religious belief of that people is that an Angel presides over that distemper, that therefore, to show their confidence in him, and to invite him to be propitious, they take a pox from the sick person, and, by a scarification, they insert it in one in health, generally between the fore-finger and thumb. It never misses its effect, and the patient always recovers. To attract the Angels good-will more effectually, they hang the patient's bed with red cloth or stuff, as a colour most agreeable to him. He has been assistant to this practice, and declares it to be common." From "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London," volume 49 (1756)

That same year, 1755, physician Charles Perry published "An Essat on the Smallpox," in which he observed:

"The Practice of Inoculating, though but of late Years introduced amongst us, and though hitherto, it is not an establish'd Thing, but is only approved and practised by, particular Parties and Sets of People; yet it brought with it from Turkey (the Country whence we received it) a high Sanction and Authority: For though the Turks don't practise it, at least but very seldom among themselves, yet amongst the Armenians, the Georgians, the Mingrelians, and the Circassians, as also among the Greeks, it has been of general Use from Time immemorial, at least from so remote a Time, that I could never justly and rightly learn when or in' what era the Practice of in commenced, or was first introduced and instituted."


Thirteen years after this publication, "The Critical Review or Annals of Literature," the famed English journal edited by Tobias Smollett and featuring articles by Samuel Johnson and David Hume, published several papers exploring the practice of inoculation. 

"The 17th paper contains a short account of the manner of inoculating the smallpox on the coast of Barbary, and at Bengal, in the East-Indies, extracted from a memoir written in Dutch, by the reverend Mr. Chais, at the Hague, by M. Maty, M.D. Sec. R.S. His is a subject of so interesting a nature to mankind, that it cannot be too much investigated. 

We accordingly find it renewed in the 20th article, which is an account of inoculation in Arabia, in a letter from Dr. Patrick Russel, physician at Aleppo, to Alexander Russell, M.D. F. R.S. preceded by a letter from Dr. Al. Russell, to the earl of Morton, F. R. S. 

We mention the universality of this practice, which extended through Arabia, and the Eastern countries, the rather as many well meaning, but misinformed Christians in Great-Britain, Ireland, and other parts of his Britannic majesty's dominions, imagine, that inoculation is a kind of nostrum; that the practice of it tempts Providence, and, in short, that it is what they call a new-fangled discovery, not warranted by Scripture or the Christian religion.

[…]

For these several years past, very few slaves have been brought from Georgia. From what I could collect among those already here, who remember any thing of their own country, inoculation was well known there: I have seen several old Georgian women, who had been inoculated, when children, in their fathers' houses.

In Armenia, the Turkoman tribes, as well as the Armenian Christians, have practiced inoculation since the memory of man, but, like the Arabs, are able to give no account of its first introduction among them…

The Jews at this place [Syria] absolutely reject inoculation; partly from scruples of a religious kind, and partly from the distrust of its success. At Bagdat [Baghdad], Bassora [Basra], and in Palestine, having acquired a more favorable opinion of an operation which they see so often performed with success, they have got the better of other scruples, and join in the practice with their neighbors.

In the different countries above-mentioned, inoculation is performed nearly in the same manner. The Arabs affirmed, that the punctures might be made indifferently in any fleshy part: those I have had occasion to examine, have all (a very few excepted) had the mark between the thumb and the forefinger. 

Some of the Georgians had been inoculated in the same part, but most of them on the forearm. 

Of the Armenians some had been inoculated in both thighs; but the greatest part (like the Arabs) bore the marks upon the hand. 

Some of the Georgian women remembered, that rags of a red color were chosen in preference for the binding up the arm, a circumstance of which I have been able to discover no trace among the Arabs."

From The Critical Review or Annals of Literature (London, 1769), pp. 81-89.

In 1796, the Encyclopædia Britannica (volume 9, p. 246) published a lengthy article on inoculation, noting practices from around the world, including among the Georgians who "insert the matter on the fore-arm... The Armenians introduce the matter on the two thighs."