Read Online The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia by Peter Hopkirk - Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Hopkirk
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all this, Christie had encountered another hazard as he and his small party approached the Afghan frontier. Not long after leaving Nushki he had been warned by a friendly shepherd that thirty armed Afghans were planning to rob him, and were at that moment waiting in ambush in a gully some distance ahead. To add to Christie’s discomfort, the storm which had been brewing as he rode out of Nushki now broke with a vengeance, soaking everyone to the skin, as well as their possessions, and forcing them to seek what little shelter they could find in that barren landscape. It was hardly an encouraging start to an unimaginably lonely assignment. But by the following morning the storm had passed, and so too, it transpired, had their foes. Nonetheless the fear of raiders in this lawless realm was a perpetual trial to both Christie and Pottinger, as it would be to all subsequent players in the Great Game.
In the hope that it might offer him some protection against bandits, Christie decided to abandon his horse-dealer’s guise and adopt that of a pious hadji, or Muslim pilgrim returning from Mecca. In his account of his journey he does not go into details, but this transformation appears to have been conducted with the help of an Indian merchant to whom he bore a secret letter, and between the signing off of one escort and the acquisition of another. His new cover, however, was not without its own problems and dangers, and he soon found himself embarrassingly out of his depth when a mullah engaged him in a theological discussion. He managed to avoid exposure by explaining that he was a Sunni Muslim and not, like his interlocutor, a Shiite. Christie must have been an exceptionally resourceful individual for at one point he managed to obtain a forged laissez-passer, purportedly from the tyrannical local khan and bearing his genuine seal. With the aid of this he ensured himself a warm welcome from the khan of the neighbouring region who even entertained him in his palace.
By now Christie was within four days of his goal, the mysterious city of Herat which only one other living European had dared to visit. It lay on Afghanistan’s frontier with eastern Persia, astride the great network of trans-Asian caravan routes. Its bazaars displayed goods from Khokand and Kashgar, Bokhara and Samarkand, Khiva and Merv, while other roads led westwards to the ancient caravan cities of Persia – Meshed, Teheran, Kerman and Isfahan. But to the British in India, fearing invasion from the west, Herat possessed a more ominous significance. It stood on one of the traditional conqueror’s routes to India, along which a hostile force could reach either of its two great gateways, the Khyber and Bolan Passes. Worse, in a region of vast deserts and impenetrable mountain ranges, it stood in a rich and fertile valley which – or so it was believed in India – was capable of provisioning and watering an entire army. Christie’s task was to discover the truth of this.
On April 18, four months after he and Pottinger had sailed from Bombay, Christie rode through the principal gateway of the great walled city of Herat. He had abandoned his disguise as a holy man and had reverted to that of a horse-dealer, for he carried with him letters of introduction to a Hindu merchant living in the town. He was to remain there for a month, taking careful notes of all that caught his soldier’s eye, or ear. ‘The city of Heerat’, he observed, ‘is situated in a valley, surrounded by lofty mountains.’ The valley, running from east to west, was thirty miles long and fifteen wide. It was watered by a river which rose in the mountains and ran the length of the valley which was intensively cultivated, with villages and gardens stretching as far as the eye could see. The city itself covered an area of four square miles, and was surrounded by a massive wall and moat. At its northern end, raised up on a hill, was a citadel built of baked brick, with a tower at each corner.
In the hope that it might offer him some protection against bandits, Christie decided to abandon his horse-dealer’s guise and adopt that of a pious hadji, or Muslim pilgrim returning from Mecca. In his account of his journey he does not go into details, but this transformation appears to have been conducted with the help of an Indian merchant to whom he bore a secret letter, and between the signing off of one escort and the acquisition of another. His new cover, however, was not without its own problems and dangers, and he soon found himself embarrassingly out of his depth when a mullah engaged him in a theological discussion. He managed to avoid exposure by explaining that he was a Sunni Muslim and not, like his interlocutor, a Shiite. Christie must have been an exceptionally resourceful individual for at one point he managed to obtain a forged laissez-passer, purportedly from the tyrannical local khan and bearing his genuine seal. With the aid of this he ensured himself a warm welcome from the khan of the neighbouring region who even entertained him in his palace.
By now Christie was within four days of his goal, the mysterious city of Herat which only one other living European had dared to visit. It lay on Afghanistan’s frontier with eastern Persia, astride the great network of trans-Asian caravan routes. Its bazaars displayed goods from Khokand and Kashgar, Bokhara and Samarkand, Khiva and Merv, while other roads led westwards to the ancient caravan cities of Persia – Meshed, Teheran, Kerman and Isfahan. But to the British in India, fearing invasion from the west, Herat possessed a more ominous significance. It stood on one of the traditional conqueror’s routes to India, along which a hostile force could reach either of its two great gateways, the Khyber and Bolan Passes. Worse, in a region of vast deserts and impenetrable mountain ranges, it stood in a rich and fertile valley which – or so it was believed in India – was capable of provisioning and watering an entire army. Christie’s task was to discover the truth of this.
On April 18, four months after he and Pottinger had sailed from Bombay, Christie rode through the principal gateway of the great walled city of Herat. He had abandoned his disguise as a holy man and had reverted to that of a horse-dealer, for he carried with him letters of introduction to a Hindu merchant living in the town. He was to remain there for a month, taking careful notes of all that caught his soldier’s eye, or ear. ‘The city of Heerat’, he observed, ‘is situated in a valley, surrounded by lofty mountains.’ The valley, running from east to west, was thirty miles long and fifteen wide. It was watered by a river which rose in the mountains and ran the length of the valley which was intensively cultivated, with villages and gardens stretching as far as the eye could see. The city itself covered an area of four square miles, and was surrounded by a massive wall and moat. At its northern end, raised up on a hill, was a citadel built of baked brick, with a tower at each corner.
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