Prologue
Excerpted from My Journey Into the East: The Account of Christiaan Sutphen, Ambassador to Persia
I arrived in Delhi in January 1836, after a difficult journey across Nepalese controlled Orissa and Bihar. When the princely states of northern India began to collapse in the seventeenth century, the princes of Kathmandu snatched up their territories, and similarly they profited from the collapse of Tibet to expand all through the Himilayan Mountains. By territorial size they are a close second to their ally the Vijayanagarian Empire, but in strength they are far behind. From Kathmandu they exercise scant control over the Ganges basin, and the territory has poor roads often overrun by thugs and bands of dacoits. Fortunately, the weather was mild and dry, at least for India, and we made reasonably good time.
As we neared Cawnpore, the city that marks the farthest frontier of the Persian Empire, the whole landscape changed. The dirt track on which we travelled became a stone road, with all the vegetation and cover cleared away for a hundred yards on either side. Moreover, we passed caravans of traders moving without escort, as if they feared no bandits. We soon saw the reason; at least twice a day we saw a patrol of fifty men on horseback, wearing white turbans and green uniforms--by their complexion, dress, and carriage these were clearly no Indians. These were my first encounters with Persians.
At that moment I thought little of their appearance as men; I was most shocked by their level of soldiery. A European who has travelled in the east expects little of oriental troops. Some nations have yet, even to this day, to adopt the musket, and very few have gotten to the stage of issuing regular uniforms. The Persians however, seemed to be not only the superior of any Eastern force, but also any European of which I had heard. Like any well read person, I had heard of the crushing Persian triumph over Russia, which had shocked and amazed the courts of Europe--the strongest army in Europe, crushed by an eastern horde? It was unprecedented.
Now, on sight of these cavalrymen, I knew it was no fluke. They put my bodyguards to shame, and it was clear that any body of dacoits would find itself annihilated if it tried to ply its trade on the Persian roads.
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con't.
When we reached Delhi, it was still a journey of several hours to reach the city center and the offices of the governor. Delhi is today the largest city in the entire world, with over one million inhabitants, and it is perhaps also the most diverse. Its marketplace is the pulsing heart of South Asia's trade, and people of every description cram its streets. It was these crowds that slowed our progress. The sights, the sounds, and the odors that assailed me from every direction were overwhelming, and I retreated into myself and considered only my upcoming meeting with the governor.
As we neared the city center, the crowds thinned out. The palace of the governor and the other buildings of the provincial government stood out in this Indian city, as towering pyramids and elaborate stonework gave way to airy domes, arches, and minarets. Before the governor's palace was an immense open plaza, called the
Maidan Abbas II, after the Safavid Shah who conquered Delhi. When I arrived, there was in the center of the plaza a large part of the city garrison marshalled for inspection; perhaps 20,000 men stood in formation there, bayonets shining in the afternoon sun. Such was the scale of the
Maidan that these columns of men seemed small in comparison to the space. (I would later learn that every regional capital in Persia had such a plaza, though Delhi's was substantially the largest)
My passage through the city gates had been communicated to the governor, and upon our reaching the
Maidan Abbas II my bodyguards were joined by an honor guard of a dozen Persian cavalry. These were not the utilitarian troops who had patrolled the roads, but young noblemen liveried in clothes the like of which I had never seen, all trimmed in gold and jewels. They escorted me to the governor's palace, where I had my audience with the man himself.
I wish that I could say that after the grandeur of the city itself my meeting with the governor was equally exciting, but this would be an untruth. He was a rather small man, though very finely dressed and inhabiting a splendid audience chamber, and he had little to say but the usual platitudes of diplomacy. We spoke in Hindi, as indeed I would speak to them until I had learned Farsi, because that was the only language we had in common. In the end he excused himself for he was very busy. He told me that I would dismiss my sepoy bodyguards to return to their unit and that I would henceforth be escorted by one of his retainers and a body of Persian cavalry.
His retainer, or more accurately his secretary, was named Hashimel Daud, who was not Persian but a Pashtun of Afghanistan. As we left he told me that the governor was indeed very busy. In years past the Shahs had been weak, and it was the governors in the provinces and the advisors at court who truly ruled the empire. Mohammad Shah, however, had rebuilt his royal prerogative, and now the governor was fully occupied with conducting a census of the city. When I voiced my disbelief that a census of such a large city could be conducted, Hashimel told me that it was not only the city itself that the governor had this responsibility over, but the whole of Persian India from the Indus River to the borders with Nepal and Vijayanagar, within which undoubtedly subsisted tens of millions of souls. Despite this, the census would be completed, my guide told me, because Persian government was very good.
I spent the night in my extraordinarily well-appointed chambers dreaming of my meeting with the Shah. The governor of Persian India ruled an area greater in wealth, population, and extent than that of any crowned head of Europe save perhaps the Tsar of Russia, and still he scrambled like a stableboy at the beck and call of the Shah. How vast must Persia be, I thought.
In the morning before we departed, I asked Hashimel for a map of the domains of Persia; here I faithfully reprint it.
He traced with his finger the route we would take to Isfahan, from Delhi through the Punjab, up into the Hindu Kush and his Afghani homeland, thence to the fabled cities of Samarkand and Merv, and finally across the mountains and deserts of eastern Persia until at last we reached the Ali Qapu palace and the court of Mohammad Shah.
My trip out of Delhi was far faster than it had been coming inward. At the sight of my escort of Persian cavalry the sea of people parted, and in only a few minutes of riding we were once again in the open air and heat of northern India. We would cover many miles each day, with the clear weather and good roads, but when we reached the Hindu Kush the mountains would slow our pace.
On that first day of travel I asked many questions of Hashimel. He told me of how Pashtuns and Persians were separate peoples, and the differences between Shi'a and Sunni Islam--colored, I am sure, by the adherence to Shi'ism that he shared with the Pashtun people and the Shah himself--and he snickered all the while at my European ignorance of matters within Persia. To this I could say nothing in my defence; Persia was the most powerful nation in all the world, and still I was the first European in centuries to try to penetrate its mysteries.
