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ARABIAN HORSE IN HISTORY
John Lewis Burckhardt:
On The Road To Kingdom Come P
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ARABIAN HORSE IN HISTORY
John Lewis Burckhardt:
On The Road To Kingdom Come
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by Andrew K. Steen
For more than 2,000 years, rumors about the existence of a great west African watercourse, known as “The Black River,” intrigued geographers. It was said to flow south of the Sahara Desert, but no European had ever seen it. Sir Joseph Banks was president of England’s Association
for Promoting the Discovery of Africa, and was England’s most avid patron of exploring the Dark Continent. Banks’ organization was devoted to expanding knowledge of the African interior, but its primary goal was to locate the source of the mysterious, mighty “Black River” and to determine the region’s potential economic and commercial value.
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MUNGO PARK In 1795, the Association sent a Scotsman named Mungo Park to seek out the mythical river. Park and two servants started their journey from a village upstream from Bathurst (Gambia.) The three men came upon the river near Seou, on Africa’s western coast, and followed its course along one of its banks. As Park passed through the unexplored region, petty native chieftains robbed him of most of his possessions. Later, fierce Tuareg tribesmen captured Park and threatened him with death because he was not a Moslem. After four months of great privation, he escaped his captors with only his clothes, his horse and a pocket compass. Despite illness and great hardship, Park traced the course of the river 300 miles upstream A portrait of the explorer, Mungo Park, who was sent on to Bamako, Mali, where he was befriended by a Moslem a expedition by England’s Association For Promoting The slave trader who nursed him back to health. When Park Discovery Of Africa to find “The Black River.” returned to England around Christmas, 1797, having located the Niger (Black) River and determined its course, he learned that he had been given up for dead. As fate would have it, the next man Sir Joseph Banks Having established that the river flowed in an easterly engaged for the daunting assignment would never come direction, Park returned to west Africa in early 1805 within sight of the River Niger. This man was destined with 40 other Britons, with the goal of finding the river’s instead to become one of the first Europeans to penetrate source and exploring its course. Before Park headed and explore the Hedjaz region of the Arabian Peninsula. downriver, all but four of his party had perished, with 29 This adventurer not only would discover some of the succumbing to dysentery or malaria. Park persisted, only most stupendous monuments ever erected by ancient to drown the following year. Before his death, however, civilizations, but he also would have the distinction of he managed to send a guide back to Bathurst with a being the first European to write a detailed, truly factual record of his discoveries. In the ensuing years, little or account of the Arabian horse. no information was added to Park’s findings about the river or the lucrative network of caravan routes crisscrossing most of This adventurer not only Africa’s interior. One after another, Banks sent would discover some of the seasoned explorers on missions similar to Park’s, but each one died most stupendous monuments or went missing. Banks reluctantly concluded that to learn any more ever erected by ancient about the Niger, his best approach civilizations, but he also would would be from the east. His new plan was to travel from Cairo, have the distinction of being southwest through the Sudan or Libya with a caravan returning the first European to write a to Mali, where, he anticipated, he would find the headwaters of detailed, truly factual account the Niger. The success of such an enterprise demanded an astute, of the Arabian horse. seasoned traveler who was capable A sketch of John Lewis Burckhardt, of posing as a Muslim pilgrim, a native of Switzerland who truly was returning from a hajj to Mecca. “a stranger in a strange land.”
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THE ARABIAN HORSE
IN HISTORY
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND John Lewis Burckhardt was born in Lausanne in 1784 and grew up in Basil, Switzerland, in an environment steeped in erudition and culture. Houseguests to his parents’ home included such learned men as Goethe and Gibbon. Burckhardt’s father, a colonel in the Swiss Army, was a man of liberal views. When the French army overran Switzerland, he was imprisoned for a time by Napoleon’s puppet Helvetic Directory. John Lewis consequently developed a lifelong hatred for Bonaparte and a corresponding loyalty to Great Britain. From an early age, he showed signs of a gifted intellect. When his family went into exile, he was sent away to school in Gottingen and Leipzig, where he read Greek and Latin, and became f luent in French, German and English.
In 1807, at the age of 23, Burckhardt arrived in London. Like many other political expatriates, he soon adopted his new country as his spiritual homeland, avowing, “One can in our time breathe freely only in this country.” His first impulse was to serve England in some productive way, but he found no employment prospects in the Civil Service. He lived a Spartan existence, and only after months of privation and failed attempts was he introduced to Sir Joseph Banks. In May of 1808, after prolonged interviews, Burckhardt volunteered for the job. If he failed on the perilous mission, chances were good that he would die an unknown, somewhere in the Sahara Desert. However, should Burckhardt succeed, his future in England would be all but guaranteed. The Association was to fund every aspect of Burckhardt’s journey, which was expected to take
A depiction of a street in Cairo, Egypt, 1838.
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would hinge on a complete mental recalibration, so as to convincingly assume the guise and character of a Moorish trader. Leaving Malta in the company of three Tripoli merchants and their slaves, he embarked on June 9, 1809, via Rhodes, to the Levantine coast. His arrival at Suedieh brought Burckhardt his first great startle. His Cambridge Arabic and disguise did not fool anyone! His troubles worsened at Antioch, where a crowd besieged his vermininfested room, chanting ‘Infidel!’ Pronounced ‘ haram’ (unclean), Burckhardt was forced to eat, sleep and walk alone. To escape the ridicule and chastisement, he joined a caravan to Aleppo. ALEPPO AND THE BEDOUINS Realizing he had much to learn before he could even attempt to pass as an Arab, he abandoned his disguise in eight years. At a bank in Cairo, a small sum of money Allepo, where he remained for two full years, until was deposited in his name to buy camels and supplies his enunciation was flawless. He became so proficient for the expedition. He received a first allowance of that he translated Robinson Crusoe into the classical £70, promising to spend any excess monies on Arab vernacular, titling his translation Dur el Bahr (Pear manuscripts, which he pledged to ship back to the British of the Sea). After his first Museum. In preparation, year of study, Burckhardt Burckhardt began an began to leave the city to intense study of Arabic, “The Arabs almost exclusively ride visit Turcoman, Kurdish medicine and astronomy and Bedouin nomads. at Cambridge. He then their mares, and sell the horses to During his second year of sailed for Malta, where he study in Aleppo, he felt spent two more months townspeople, or ‘Fellahs.’ The price of confident enough to resume improving his language his disguise. This time, skills and accustoming an Arab horse in Syria ranges from however, he pretended to be a himself to Oriental dress. physician, in search of medical £10 to £120; this latter price is the He was not without humor: herbs and other remedies. Once, having told a group highest I have known.” He made excursions to of Maltese that he was an the Aeneze (Anazeh) and Indian Moslem, he was other Arab tribes, and he asked to speak some words accompanied them on their great desert migrations, but in Hindustani. Bluffing his way out of the predicament, did not live in their midst for long periods. He collected he rattled off some gibberish in Swiss German. Everyone most of his information from natives he met in coffee present sagely agreed that Hindustani was indeed a shops on the fringe of the desert. In this way he recorded barbaric language. more precise information about native customs, lifestyles Burckhardt’s complicated plan was to travel to the and their horses than had any earlier European. For elusive city of Timbuktu, from whence he would seek example, related to the prices they got from foreigners out the source path of the great river. His success The town of Anitoch in southern Turkey near the border of Syria, where Burckhardt was denounced as an infidel.
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for their horses, he wrote: “The Arabs almost exclusively ride their mares, and sell the horses to townspeople, or ‘Fellahs.’ The price of an Arab horse in Syria ranges from £10 to £120; this latter price is the highest I have known. Since the English at Baghdad and Basra purchase Arab horses which they send to India, the prices have risen considerably. The late Dutch consul at Aleppo, Mr. Masseyk, bought in 1808, above [sic] 20 of the finest Arab horses for Bonaparte, paying for each between £80 and £90.” Sleeping in filthy caravanserais with his abba as his blanket and taking his meals with the camel drivers, Burckhardt’s lifestyle increasingly became like that of a poor Islamic scholar. To enhance his disguise, he let his beard grow and devised methods of darkening his skin, aware that in many places, being unmasked as a European meant almost certain death. Moreover, a man who wrote things down was deemed a sorcerer or a “Frank” in search of treasure. The resourceful traveler devised clever ways to take notes without being caught, often hiding them in his turban. Once, he was captured by Syrian nomads, who stripped him of his clothes. Finding no money and assuming that he had swallowed it; they held him captive for two days, until nature took its course. Only when their reward was not forthcoming was he reluctantly released. At the bazaar in Hama, Syria, he studied an old wall and suspected that a block of stone inscribed with hieroglyphics had been taken from a much older edifice. The characters inscribed on the masonry were unknown at the time, but 50 years later, scholars identified them as Hittite. Burckhardt’s casual observation led to his later being credited as the first European to discover an artifact from that long-forgotten empire. After two and a half years in Aleppo, his transformation was complete. In June of 1812, clad as a poor traveler, he assumed the name of Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdullah and, purposely riding an unremarkable mare that would not ignite envy among the Bedouins he would meet, departed alone from Aleppo.
Arabian Horse Times • January 2009
The self-proclaimed Queen of the Desert, Lady Hester Stanhope.
THE QUEEN OF PALMYRA He hired a guide from a nearby village, and together they reached the western shores of the Sea of Galilee. After climbing Mount Tadmore, he returned to his lodgings at Tiberias, only to find that an Englishman, Michael Bruce, had commandeered them. Recovering from his surprise at hearing fluent English spoken by what appeared to be a Syrian peasant, Bruce took Burckhardt to the Spanish monastery at Nazareth to meet his eccentric English mistress. Hester Stanhope, the niece of English Prime Minister William Pitt, had once been the brightest star in London society, but she now lived
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A painting of Petra in Jordan by David Roberts (1839).
THE ARABIAN HORSE
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in a world of fantasy. When Burckhardt met her, she was preparing for a march to Palmyra, to which her entourage of 40 camels, and her generously bribed Bedouin bodyguard, would deliver her. At the famous ruins, she would be crowned the Queen of the Desert. The meeting of two such different personalities was not a success, as each took an instant dislike for the other. Burckhardt referred to her as “that evil woman,” and she reciprocated in a letter to a friend which stated, “Sheikh Ibrahim the traveler, after leaving me in Nazareth, went God knows where into the desert and discovered a second Palmyra.” Stanhope was referring to the ruins Ulrich Jasper Seetzen had searched for unsuccessfully, some three years before. THE DEAD CITY OF THE WADI MUSA Burckhardt first heard of Petra at the ancient crusaders’ castle near Shoubak, Jordan, where the local inhabitants spoke of a “dead city” in the Wadi Musa to the south. He remembered reading a passage from the works of early Christian bishop Euesebius, affirming that the tomb of the Biblical Aaron was near Petra, so his curiosity grew. What might lie in the wadi, or dry streambed, that ran between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba? Because the Wadi Musa lay far off the beaten track, Burckhardt had to persuade his reluctant guide to enter the dangerous quarter, a “region unknown to ancient and modern geographers,” on the pretext that he wished to sacrifice a goat on the tomb of Aaron. After a walk through a beautiful, red sandstone canyon known as the siq, the two men came upon Petra, the ancient capital city of the Nabataean kings of the Hellenistic age, 323 B.C.-31 B.C. Petra’s temples, amphitheaters and houses were carved from the face of the living rock. He later wrote: “The situation and beauty are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveler, after having traversed such a gloomy and subterranean passage.” However, when he tried to explore the extensive ruins, his guide stopped him, saying, “I see now that you are an infidel, who has some particular business amongst the ruins of the city of our forbears; but depend on it, we shall not suffer you to take out a single part of the treasure hidden herein.” Burckhardt, the first European to see the breathtaking marvel, was given full credit for its discovery. Risking his life traveling through those territories, at that time, in quest of knowledge of a lost culture, exemplifies Burckhardt’s determination and character. The ruins of Petra are today the region’s principal tourist attraction.
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UPPER EGYPT He arrived in Cairo on September 1, 1812. There, he vainly sought a caravan bound for Fezzan, in southern Libya, from whence he could travel to Timbuktu. He soon learned that none would be heading to those regions for at least a year. Waiting, he spent his time living as a poor student of the Koran, conversing with scholars in the el Azhar Mosque and making protracted journeys up the Nile, beyond Aswan. He journeyed into the hitherto uncharted Nubian Desert. Along the way, he repeatedly came upon ancient architectural remains of the Egyptian Pharoahs, the Coptics, and the Metroitic Kingdom. As he traveled south, he began hearing of a place the natives called Ebsambel. He learned more about the site’s location, and first approached the Ebsambel ruins from above, only then realizing that he had discovered a spectacular temple, almost buried by the red desert sands. Today that temple, Abu-Simbel, ranks among the world’s most significant ancient ruins.
“The situation and beauty are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveler, after having traversed such a gloomy and subterranean passage.”
During his return to Cairo from Upper Egypt, Burckhardt encountered another European adventurer named James Silk Buckingham, who was reputedly a confidence man and trickster. Buckingham afterward described the raggedy traveler thusly; “He was dressed in the commonest garments, as an Arab peasant or small trader... with a coarse shirt, loose white trousers, and a common calico turban. He had a full dark beard, was without stockings, wearing only the slip-shod slippers of the country. Having a fairer complexion and lighter eyes than the Egyptians, few would have suspected him to be a Swiss, as he really was, but took him to be a native of Antioch or Aleppo.” To his credit, Buckingham later founded the Athenaeum Journal, a London newspaper depicting the exploits of many famous Orientalists.
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Back in Cairo, Burckhardt learned that there would be still further delays in obtaining passage with a caravan traveling toward Timbuktu. He resolved to visit Mecca, aware that the title of “Haji” (one who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca) would greatly enhance his chances of achieving his long-sought goals. SHENDY AND THE SLAVE MARKET He joined a caravan at the slave-trading village of Assiut, where, as he put it, “the manufacture of eunuchs took place.” The caravan proceeded deep into the barren waste of the Sudan, and on to Shendy, home of one of Arabia’s largest slave markets. Every year, some 5,000 captured Africans passed though its crumbling, sunbaked mud portals. At Shendy, he bought a slave girl for $16 and joined a caravan composed of 100 pilgrims, their 300 slaves, 200 camels, and 30 horses, all bound for Yemen. At the port of Suakin, he was arrested by the Emir and was only released after showing his firman, or edict, from Mohammed Ali. He and the caravan members then embarked for Jeddah aboard a say, a craft which is 35-feet long and nine feet across. Not unexpectedly,
Abu-Simbel, one of the world's most significant ancient ruins.
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most of the 90 pilgrims, merchants, slaves and crew soon became seasick, but not Burckhardt, who enjoyed his Red Sea cruise. The crafty traveler disembarked on the beach about a mile from Jeddah to avoid paying a tax or duty for his slave. He and his slave girl arrived in Jeddah, only to find that the letter-of-credit he had bought in Cairo 18 months earlier had expired. At this point he was almost penniless. Ill with a high fever, his only aid came from a Greek ship’s captain who took Burckhardt’s slave girl to the marketplace and sold her for 48 Spanish dollars, three times the price Burckhardt had paid for her. With that money, he bought a new set of clothes and dressed as if he were an Egyptian gentleman of reduced means. Exploring Jeddah in his new guise, he discovered that the port was not only a haven for ships from Arabia, but also for vessels from Egypt and India, where heavy duties were collected for transporting pilgrims to and from Mecca. Jeddah’s commerce centered around its more than 30 tobacco shops and as many coffee houses. Its marketplace was crowded with money dealers, tailors, sandal-makers, barbers, sweetmeat vendors, copper kettle makers, and a multitude of beggars, from throughout the Muslim world, who had come to Jeddah for the annual haj. BACKGROUND ON THE WAHABYS The militant Wahabys (Wahhabi) movement, which was centered in the Nejd, reached the apex of its power in 1803 with its conquest of Medina and Mecca, the Holy Cities of Islam. Since these cities were officially part of the Ottoman Empire, the Sublime Port in Constantinople would not tolerate the religious sect’s occupation. Vast distances and the impenetrable Great Nefud Desert, which separates Turkey and Syria from Arabia, made the Turks unable to attack the Wahabys from the north. They instructed the Viceroy of Egypt to invade the Wahaby stronghold from the Red Sea’s more accessible coast. In 1811 the first expeditionary Egyptian army sent against the Wahabys met with ignominious defeat. The second foray was
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THE ARABIAN HORSE
IN HISTORY
A painting depicting one of the perils of traversing the desert—a sandstorm.
somewhat more successful. It took the Egyptian army, commanded by Mohammed Ali’s incompetent but honest son, Touson Pasha, two years to recapture Mecca and Medina. Accompanying the Egyptians to the Hedjaz were about a dozen so-called “renegades”—men who had been taken prisoner at Rosetta and given the choice of converting to the Islamic faith or be put to death. Among their number were the Scotsman Donald Donald and drummer boy Thomas Keith. The latter accepted the faith of Allah and changed his name to Ibrahim Aga. His transformation was so complete that Touson Pasha briefly appointed him governor of Medina. Ibrahim Aga, nee Thomas Keith, was killed leading a cavalry charge in the Nejd in 1815. MOHAMMED ALI In 1814, Mohammed Ali was in residence at his summer resort near Taif, in the mountains east of Mecca, preparing a new campaign against the Wahabys. This group of conservative Islamic extremists’ power still threatened Ottoman authority. Although Mohammed Ali’s army had recaptured Medina and Mecca, and Jidda and Taif had surrendered without bloodshed, Ottoman control was not completely restored to the Holy Cities. The leader was determined to inflict a conclusive defeat on his enemies. He planned an attack on the Wahabys’
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desert stronghold at Diriyyah, vowing to raze the fortress to the ground. Mohammed Ali arrived personally to win the support of the Bedouin tribes, while he prepared for the inevitable: another counterstrike at Mecca. Burckhardt wrote letters to his various sponsors, and to his bank in Cairo, but knew he could not expect a reply from them for at least four months. In this difficult predicament, he decided to seek aid from Mohammed Ali, whom he had met in Cairo. Having had dealings with Mohammed Ali’s son Ibrahim Pasha in the Sudan, Burckhardt wrote: “Having therefore already had some money dealings with the Pasha, I thought that I might now endeavor to renew [his acquaintance] in the Hedjaz, and the moreso, as I knew that he had formerly expressed rather favorably of my person and pursuits.” Fortunately for Burckhardt, his luck began to change. He wrote to Bosari, Mohammed Ali’s personal physician, whom he had met in Cairo, asking if the Pasha would accept his outdated letter-of-credit. Before Burckhardt received Bosari’s reply, Touson Pasha’s doctor, Yahiya Effendi, having heard of his plight, advanced him 3,000 piastres against a bill-of-exchange that was payable in Cairo. Shortly thereafter, a summons from Mohammed Ali, along with a new suit of clothes, and 500 piastres for traveling expenses, arrived in Taif for him. His journey would continue.
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