The Road to Oxiana (14 page)

The lyrical and less stately beauty of these minarets reflects the reign that produced it. Unlike Gohar Shad, Hussein Baikara is more than a name. His body at least is familiar. Bihzad drew it. Babur described it, and his amusements as well. He had slant-eyes, a white beard, and a slender waist. He dressed in red and green. Ordinarily he wore a small lambskin cap. But on feast-days he would “sometimes set up a threefold turban, wound broad and badly, and stick a heron's plume in it and so go to prayers”. This was the least he could do; for towards the end of his life he was so crippled with rheumatism that he could not perform the prayers properly. Like small people, he enjoyed flying pigeons, and matching fighting cocks and fighting rams. He was also a poet, but published his verses anonymously. To meet he was cheerful and pleasant, but immoderate in temper and loud-spoken. In love, orthodox and unorthodox, he was insatiable. He had innumerable concubines and children who destroyed the peace of the state and his old age. As a result “what happened with his sons, the soldiers and the town was that everyone pursued vice and pleasure to excess”.

Babur was not a Puritan. But the parties in Herat obliged him to get drunk. And in explaining how this happened, for the first time in his life, he reveals the effect of such an atmosphere on a young man's equilibrium. Nevertheless, looking back to Herat when he himself had become great, he still writes with deference, as one has seen a great age, and having learned how to live, has seen it vanish—like Talleyrand. The humanism of that age was the model of his life. His achievement in history was to replant it, and leave descendants to cherish it, amid the drab heats and uncouth multitudes of Hindosan.

The Mudir-i-Kharija tells me a lorry is leaving for Andkhoi in four days' time. This will mean finding another from there to Mazer-i-Sherif. He adds that the road from Turkestan to Kabul is excellent, and that the post-lorries are still running.

The Imperial Bank of Persia in Meshed gave me rupee drafts on its branch in Bombay to use in Afghanistan. This morning I went to change one with the Shirkat Asharmi, the newly established State Trading Company. No one in the office could read the draft or even its figures. But they took my word for its being worth 100 rupees, and after discovering, apparently by telepathy, the current rate of exchange in Kandahar, counted out 672 silver coins each the size of a shilling. These I took away in two sacks, plodding through the bazaar crowds like a millionaire in a cartoon.

Herat
,
November 24th
.—Local suspicion came out into the open today.

I have mentioned the Citadel of Ikhtiar-ad-Din on the north of the walls. It was built originally by the Kart Maliks of the XIVth century, presumably when they threw off their allegiance to the Mongols. The revival of Persian nationalism denoted by this act was short-lived. At the end of the century another wave poured out of Central Asia; the armies of Timur destroyed both the Karts and their castle. Later, Shah Rukh found he needed a castle. In 1415 he put 7000 men to the work of rebuilding the old one, and the political history of Herat has revolved round it ever since. It is now the seat of the Commander-in-Chief and garrison.

The north face consists of a massive rampart nearly a quarter of a mile long and bulging at intervals into
semicircular towers, of which the westernmost has a pattern of blue bricks set in its mud surface: an unusual combination of materials suggesting that this tower, if any, may date from Shah Rukh's restoration. When I had examined it, I walked back to the furthest corner of the walled parade-ground that separates the Citadel from the New Town, to take a photograph. This led me near to an artillery park of about twenty guns, which might have been mistaken, at a distance, for a dump of dismantled perambulators. I then went back to the hotel to fetch some chalks with which to copy a Kufic inscription at the bottom of the tower. Simultaneously, the old fellow appointed by the Mudir-i-Kharija to look after me went off to his lunch.

When he came back, I said we must return to the Citadel for the inscription. He replied that the parade-ground was shut.

“Shut, do you say? We were there an hour ago.”

“Yes, we were, but now it is shut.”

“All right, we will go tomorrow instead.”

“It will be shut tomorrow too.”

“In that case I shall go at once.”

And I set off at a fast pace, while the old fellow lumbered after me protesting. As I expected, the gate of the parade-ground was still wide open. But on a whisper from my attendant, the sentry fetched me out. I argued that the Governor himself had told me I could visit the Citadel. Never mind, said the old fellow, these were the Mudir Sahib's orders.

Back in the hotel I found the doctor. He was on his way to the Citadel, to attend the Commander-in-Chief. Half an hour later he returned with an officer, who said the Commander-in-Chief saw no objection to my copying the inscription. He would accompany me.

I now kept my eyes off the artillery park in order not to embarrass him. But my fancy lusted after it. I held the secret of a formidable armament, capable of
withstanding, or worse, expediting, an advance of the Soviet army on India. I saw myself earning the V.C. and probably a seat in the Cabinet, by reporting its existence.

It was interesting to discover, from personal experience, how spies find their vocation.

There is a cab-rank outside the parade-ground. As we came out, two young horses reared forward, dragging no gossamer chariot but a thundering blue landau blazoned with the royal arms of Persia and quilted inside with sky-blue satin. Seated in this equipage, the old fellow and I drove out to the shrine of Gazar Gah, which stands on the first slopes of the mountains to the north-east of the town.

Everyone goes to Gazar Gah. Babur went. Humayun went. Shah Abbas improved the water supply. It is still the Heratis' favourite resort, and their greatest pride in face of visitors. There are three enclosures. The first contains a grove of umbrella-pines and a decagonal pavilion of two storeys for picnics. The second is surrounded by irregular buildings; in the middle is a pool shaded by mulberries and rose bushes. The third is oblong in shape and filled entirely with graves, among which is that of the Emir Dost Mohammad. At the further end rises a tall arch in a wall eighty feet high, an ivan properly called, whose interior mosaic shows Chinese influence. In front of this, beneath an old ilex tree, lies the tomb of the saint. Its headstone, of white marble, is inscribed with his history, to which legends have been added.

Khoja Abdullah Ansari died in the year 1088 at the age of eighty-four, because some boys threw stones at him while he was at penance. One sympathises with those boys: even among saints he was a prodigious bore. He spoke in the cradle; he began to preach at fourteen;
during his life he held intercourse with 1000 sheikhs, learnt 100,000 verses by heart (some say 1,200,000) and composed as many more. He doted on cats. Shah Rukh conceived a particular devotion for him, and rebuilt the shrine in its present form in 1428. This was the period of the Chinese embassies, which may account for the patterns in the ivan. Later in the century some of the lesser Timurids, for whom there was no room in the Mausoleum, were buried here. Khanikov noted five of their tombs, including that of Mohammad-al-Muzaffar, brother of Hussein Baikara, whose inscription, rejecting funerary platitudes, informs posterity that he was murdered by his cousin Mohammad, son of Baisanghor. In the cells that line the side arcades I found one royal tomb of black stone, even better carved, on three different planes, than the Stone of the Seven Pens. I could not identify the others.

In the south-east corner of the middle court stands a domed pavilion, which is painted inside with gold flowers on a lapis ground. Attached to this painting Ferrier observed the signature of Giraldi, an Italian painter employed by Shah Abbas. This again I could not find.

On the way home the landau stopped at Takht-i-Safar, “the Traveller's Throne”, a terraced garden all in ruins, whose natural melancholy was increased by the close of an autumn afternoon and the first whistle of the night wind. From the empty tank at the top a line of pools and watercourses descends from terrace to terrace. This pleasaunce of Hussein Baikara was built by forced labour; for when his subjects overstepped even his broad limits of the morally permissible, they had to help with the Sultan's garden instead of going to prison. Up till the last century there was a pavilion here, and the water was still running; Mohun Lal mentions a great fountain, “which with its watery arrows fights with the top of the
building”. What a phrase! But Mohun Lal, though he apologises for his English to the editor of the
Bengal Journal
, sometimes wrote very well. It would be hard to improve his description of Yar Mohammad, the then ruler of Herat: “He is a gloomy and decrepit prince; he excites the pity of mankind”.

A Hungarian has arrived here. He has just spent a month in hospital at Kandahar, and his stomach is still so deranged that he cannot eat. In fact he is starving to death. I gave him some soup and ovaltine which cheered him up and made him talk in bad French.

“Five years, Monsieur, I have been travelling. I shall travel five years more. Then perhaps I shall write something.”

“You like travelling?”

“Who could like travelling in Asia, Monsieur? I had a good education. What would my parents say if they saw me in such a place as this? It is not like Europe. Beyrut is like Europe. Beyrut I could support. But this country, these people… the things I have seen! I cannot tell you of them. I cannot. Aaaaah!” And overcome by the recollection of them, he buried his head in his hands.

“Come, Monsieur,” I said, giving him a gentle pat, “confide in me these terrible experiences. You will feel better for it.”

“I am not the type, Monsieur, who thinks himself superior to the rest of humanity. Indeed I am no better than others. Perhaps I am worse. But these people, these Afghans, they are not human. They are dogs, brutes. They are lower than the animals.”

“But why do you say that?”

“You don't see why, Monsieur? Have you eyes? Look at those men over there. Are they not eating with their hands? With their
hands
! It is frightful. I tell you, Monsieur, in one village I saw a madman, and he was naked… naked.”

He was silent for a little. Then he asked me in a solemn voice: “You know Stambul, Monsieur?”

“Yes.”

“I lived in Stambul a year, and I tell you, Monsieur, it is a hell from which there is no way out.”

“Really. But you, since you are here, did you find a way out?”

“Thank God, Monsieur, I did.”

Herat
,
November 25th
.—I ought to have left today.

It rained in the night and was still raining this morning. Nevertheless I packed, and sat in my room till twelve, when general opinion decided the lorry would not start. Having unpacked, I went to the Masjid-i-Juma.

Masjid-i-Juma means Friday Mosque. Every town has one. It corresponds to a parish church or metropolitan cathedral according to the size of the place, and is generally the oldest, and often the biggest building there. As in a European town, whose abbey or cathedral still proclaims the Middle Ages, while the rest has changed with the times, so in Herat this morose old mosque inside the walls growls a hoary accompaniment to the Timurid pageant of the suburbs. The glories of that pageant grew up overnight; they commemorate extraordinary individuals; they flowered and they fell. The Friday Mosque was old and ruined before the Timurids were heard of. It is less ruined now they are not heard of. For seven centuries the people of Herat have prayed in it. They still do so, and its history is their history.

I emerged from the gloomy labyrinths of the old town into a flagged court 100 yards long by 65 broad. Four ivans, vaulted open-fronted halls, break the four
arcaded sides. The main ivan, on the west, is attended by two massive towers with blue cupolas. But for these, and a leaning umbrella-pine in one corner, there is no colour; only whitewash, bad brick, and broken bits of mosaic. A square pool reflects a mullah and his pupils, who pass all dressed in white. Silence and sunshine give peace to the worn pavement. It was peace I wanted. Curse the lorry and my doubts about the journey. I forgot them.

The mosque was founded in 1200 by Ghiyas-ad-Din, son of Sam, of the Ghorid dynasty, who made Herat his capital after the break-up of the Ghaznavide Empire, and is commemorated in the bottom inscription of the Kutb Minar at Delhi. The arcades are his, intersecting corridors of pointed arches ten deep or more; also, I imagine, a Kufic legend in fancy brick over an arch in the north-east corner, which gives a clue to the original ornament. Near this stands Ghiyas-ad-Din's mausoleum, a square annexe to the mosque, whose dome has entirely collapsed. There are graves among the rubble, but no stones or inscriptions.

This remained the royal mausoleum till the coming of the Timurids. Rulers of the Kart dynasty were buried here, and in the XIVth century they replastered the walls, incising the surface with squiggles to look like ye olde bryckeworke. They also put up an inscription round the inside of the main ivan, using a curious brambly Kufic which they seem to have borrowed from Ghazni in another fit of conscious antiquarianism.

Behind the main ivan, as might be expected, there used to stand a sanctuary chamber which became unsafe and was pulled down by Ali Shir Nevai in 1498. After the princes themselves, Ali Shir was the pattern of the Timurid Renascence, alike in his manners and his actions. He had stood by Hussein Baikara in his early days, and rose to fortune with him. But having neither
wife nor children to stimulate ambition, he resigned power for the arts. “No such patron”, says Babur, “or protector of men of parts and accomplishments is known, nor has one such been heard of as appearing.” He rescued Hussein Baikara from Shi'ism; yet that he was of a rational mind is illustrated by his contempt for astrology and superstition. His fortune was devoted to public works. In Khorasan alone he built 370 mosques, colleges, caravanserais, hospitals, reading-halls, and bridges. He collected a vast library, which he placed at the disposal of the historian Mirkhond. “In music also”, Babur adds, “he composed some good things, some excellent airs and preludes.” The people of Herat held him in such esteem that commercial inventions were named after him, including a new saddle and handkerchief, as biscuits were named after Garibaldi. Among scholars he is remembered for his championship of the Turki language as a literary medium, and his defence of it against Persian ridicule. He died in 1501. Babur, five years later, stayed in his house.