Page 4 - Journal of the Cenral Asian Society (1960)

06 SOME EARLY TRAVELLERS IN PERSIA
SOME EARLY TRAVELLERS IN PERSIA AND
THE PERSIAN GULF
By Sir A. T. Wilson, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., C.M.G., D.S.O.
From Alexander’s time until the present day, Persia and Arabia have
been the theme of innumerable histories and works of travel; no
countries so sparsely visited by WeBtera folk have been responsible
for Buch a steady stream of books. A bibliography of Persia compiled
in 1877 by Moise Schwab includes some 1,770 separate books, and
probably as many more have been’ written since that date.
Those writers who in recent times have dealt with South Persia
and the Persian Gulf—with which I propose more particularly to deal
in this paper—have been for the most part competent observers and
careful historians, who, to quote the seventeenth-century editor of
Tavernier, were
“ sufficiently imbued with all due knowledge of sciences, languages,
geography, and precedent travellers’ maps and books, without all
which common travellers cannot conceive so soon and so orderly, nor
reap so much benefit for themselves or others."
We have been relatively immune in the South from that class of
authors, anathematized by Lord Curzon in his “Persia and the Persian
Question," “who rush through a country, either not having read what has
been written by better men before, or reading it only in order to plagiarize
and reproduce it as their own, and who misunderstand, misspell, and
misinterpret everywhere they go." Such authors have for many years
past found Bcope for their activities along the main roads in Persia,
and, during the war, in Mesopotamia, but the arid shores of the Persian
Gulf and the almost equally forbidding mountain ranges of South
Persia have seldom inspired the globe-trotter to.perpetuate in print his
own misconceptions or to inflict upon the reading public his jejune re­
flections or his fatuous comments upon matters beyond his grasp.
The first Western traveller in the Persian Gulf of whom we have
any knowledge is Nearchus, the Cretan admiral of Alexander, who in
326-5 b.c. navigated a fleet of rowing-boats from the mouth of the Indus
to Ahwaz. His “log" has come down to us through Arrian, who
embodied much of it in his “ Indica," or Indian history, written at the
beginning of our era. To take a fleet of rowing-boats along the
Baluchistan and Persian coasts would be considered an almost impos­
sible feat to-day, but it was accomplished, and successfully.
After much difficulty and after several encounters with the
69
AND THE PERSIAN GULF
aboriginal tribes on the Mekran coast, they sighted the massive heights
of Masandam Peninsula.
“ When Onesicritus viewed this promontory, he gave orders that
the fleet should steer directly thither; but Nearchus opposed him, and
declared that Onesicritus must have a shallow memory if he did not
remember for what purpose the fleet was ordered to pass those seas.
He then assured him that the above-mentioned voyage was not under­
taken because the king was unable to convey the whole army safe home
by land, but because he had fixed a resolution of viewing the situation
of all Bhoros, havens, and islands ; of searching the bottom of all
gulfs and creeks, and having an account given him of all maritime
places, and which countries were fruitful and which barren and unin­
habited. . . He was afraid, as that promontory stretched itself so
much to the southward, that by sailing round the point they might fall
upon some sandy, barren and sunburnt region." *
But the'achievement of Nearchus was but an incident in the epic
campaign of Alexander, who forged the first links between East and
WeBt, and thereby left an indelible mark on the world’s history.
“Alexander was never defeated, never checked or baffled; what
general can show such a record after a score of battles ? And withal
a champion while a general. Napoleon used his sword once as
generalissimo; Alexander was first in a breach, first in a charge,
wounded a dozen times, himself the leader of every desperate expedi­
tion. Half of it was mad recklessness, the other was set purpose;
professional armies were new as yet, and the machine needed animating
with a personal feeling if it were to Bubmit to the labours which
Alexander designed for its endurance. Remembering the impression­
able nature of a veteran army, can we wonder at the passionate love
evinced on the Acesines and the Tigris? And there is no more touching
Beene in history than was enacted In that chamber at Babylon when
the scarred veterans of fifty battles, who had mutinied for one more
look at their idol, filed in silenbb before the dying king, speechless but
able to look recognition and raise a hand when a well-remembered face
went by. It would absolve Arrian for many sins that, without a word
of rhetorical declamation on such a theme, he has only repeated the
simple story of the royal diary concerning the illness and death at
thirty- two of the conqueror and pacificator of half the world.
“ But there must be reason in hero-worship; let no one think it a
miracle that Alexander conquered the Persian Empire: a far meaner
general could have done it as surely, if at more cost, and perhaps only
accident has robbed Agesilaus of some of the fame of Alexander.
“ It was much that Alexander conquered, and it was more that he did
it at incredibly small expense of life; but it was most that he left every
province as much his own behind him as if he had spent all his thirty
years in its administration. ‘This is his highest honour, and his
* Arrian*8 “ Indica.”