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eubSometimes I type in bits and pieces of books so I can grep for them later.
10
"Have you heard of Turcoman /chilik/? It's something like our essence. It means independence, even idleness, and hospitality and courage."
33
villages with old, despairing names such as `Dead-End' and `Cursed-by-God'
72 Samanid Bukhara
al-Khwarazmi, al-Biruni, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Rudaki
82 late Bukhara
[...] the emir's secret gold-mine [...] was unknown for years after the emirate's fall. Before their retirement, miners routinely had their eyes and tongues gouged out, and travellers were executed on the slightest suspicion that they knew where it was. Only in the 1960s did the Russians locate it and hurry it back into production.
83
Colonel Stoddart: "But to this court of touchy etiquette and childish vanities he brought no suitable gifts, and his letter ofintroduction was signed not by Queen Victoria but merely by the Governor-General of India. Nasrullah played with him like a cat."
"Captain Conolly, a romantic and lovelorn officer in the Bengal Light Cavalry [...] who first coined the phrase ‘The Great Game’"
both imprisoned, executed.
121
On 3 July 1881, a colony of German Mennonites, who had settled on the lower Volga to escape conscription in Prussia, heaped their belonging on to wagons and lumbered eastward on the orders of God. Descendants of Anabaptist farmers in the sixteenth century, they were pacifist farmers of fanatic simplicty, and refused allegiance to any government. In the end it was the khan of Khiva who offered them sanctuary.
134 the Oxus (Amu Darya)
"Three times within historical memory its enormous flood has wavered between the Caspian and Aral seas."
http://www.iras.ucalgary.ca/~volk/sylvia/OxusRiver.htm
Present-day back to about 1575 AD: both Jaxartes and Oxus rivers (the Syr Darya and Amu Darya) run to the Aral Sea, as they do today. Around 1575, the Oxus' course changed.
[...]
From 1575 to 1221 AD (the date of the Mongol invasion) the Oxus discharged into both the Caspian and the Aral Seas--usually the main branch ran to the Caspian, but during at least one period, a side branch also ran to the Aral.
[...]
The river changed its course in 1221 because the armies of Genghis Khan destroyed the great dam at Gurganj. Evidence: record of ibn al-Athir, xii, 257.
[...]
From the tenth century to 1221, the Oxus seems not to have flowed to the Caspian. However the records are vague and contradictory.
[...]
This plan of Seleucus' implies that the Oxus was known to discharge into the Caspian, else the whole project would fall to the ground. Hence, in the early third century BC the Oxus flowed into the Caspian.
148 Ulug Beg, grandson of Tamerlane
http://www.angelfire.com/nb/junbesh/Legends/Ulug-bek.htm
The Madrassah in the Registan in Samarkand is tiled in a sparkling pattern of stars -- for Ulug Beg is most famous for his observatory built in 1428, and opened the following year by his proud mother Gawhar-Shad.
[...]
It was unsurpassed in the world. The great round building was bisected north to south by a gigantic marble quadrant which was cut down deep into the ground for stability. Its sights were moved into position on brass rails. This enabled the most accurate star tables ever to be complied.
[...]
The attention of their ruler to science aggravated the religious extremists. These were to unite under Hodja Ubaidulla Akrar, leader of the Sufi Nakshbendi order. When Ulug Beg's father died, and Ulug Beg was now the ruler of the empire, Akrar persuaded Ulug Beg's son Abd-al-Latif to overthrow his father.
179 autobiography of Babur
great^3-grandson of Tamerlane, who later founded the Mughal dynasty.
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/orientalia/babur.htm
238 Shachimadan
Uzbek enclave within Kirghizstan
367
It was said that Tamerlane, passing east with his army, ordered every soldier to gather up one roch and pile it in the pass. Years later, on his return, each man took away his stone to Samarkand, and those that remained became a cenotaph to the fallen.
the Naqshbandi Sufi
http://www.naqshbandi.org/
http://www.naqshbandi.net/
‘pelmet’
10
"Have you heard of Turcoman /chilik/? It's something like our essence. It means independence, even idleness, and hospitality and courage."
33
villages with old, despairing names such as `Dead-End' and `Cursed-by-God'
72 Samanid Bukhara
al-Khwarazmi, al-Biruni, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Rudaki
82 late Bukhara
[...] the emir's secret gold-mine [...] was unknown for years after the emirate's fall. Before their retirement, miners routinely had their eyes and tongues gouged out, and travellers were executed on the slightest suspicion that they knew where it was. Only in the 1960s did the Russians locate it and hurry it back into production.
83
Colonel Stoddart: "But to this court of touchy etiquette and childish vanities he brought no suitable gifts, and his letter ofintroduction was signed not by Queen Victoria but merely by the Governor-General of India. Nasrullah played with him like a cat."
"Captain Conolly, a romantic and lovelorn officer in the Bengal Light Cavalry [...] who first coined the phrase ‘The Great Game’"
both imprisoned, executed.
121
On 3 July 1881, a colony of German Mennonites, who had settled on the lower Volga to escape conscription in Prussia, heaped their belonging on to wagons and lumbered eastward on the orders of God. Descendants of Anabaptist farmers in the sixteenth century, they were pacifist farmers of fanatic simplicty, and refused allegiance to any government. In the end it was the khan of Khiva who offered them sanctuary.
134 the Oxus (Amu Darya)
"Three times within historical memory its enormous flood has wavered between the Caspian and Aral seas."
http://www.iras.ucalgary.ca/~volk/sylvia/OxusRiver.htm
Present-day back to about 1575 AD: both Jaxartes and Oxus rivers (the Syr Darya and Amu Darya) run to the Aral Sea, as they do today. Around 1575, the Oxus' course changed.
[...]
From 1575 to 1221 AD (the date of the Mongol invasion) the Oxus discharged into both the Caspian and the Aral Seas--usually the main branch ran to the Caspian, but during at least one period, a side branch also ran to the Aral.
[...]
The river changed its course in 1221 because the armies of Genghis Khan destroyed the great dam at Gurganj. Evidence: record of ibn al-Athir, xii, 257.
[...]
From the tenth century to 1221, the Oxus seems not to have flowed to the Caspian. However the records are vague and contradictory.
[...]
This plan of Seleucus' implies that the Oxus was known to discharge into the Caspian, else the whole project would fall to the ground. Hence, in the early third century BC the Oxus flowed into the Caspian.
148 Ulug Beg, grandson of Tamerlane
http://www.angelfire.com/nb/junbesh/Legends/Ulug-bek.htm
The Madrassah in the Registan in Samarkand is tiled in a sparkling pattern of stars -- for Ulug Beg is most famous for his observatory built in 1428, and opened the following year by his proud mother Gawhar-Shad.
[...]
It was unsurpassed in the world. The great round building was bisected north to south by a gigantic marble quadrant which was cut down deep into the ground for stability. Its sights were moved into position on brass rails. This enabled the most accurate star tables ever to be complied.
[...]
The attention of their ruler to science aggravated the religious extremists. These were to unite under Hodja Ubaidulla Akrar, leader of the Sufi Nakshbendi order. When Ulug Beg's father died, and Ulug Beg was now the ruler of the empire, Akrar persuaded Ulug Beg's son Abd-al-Latif to overthrow his father.
179 autobiography of Babur
great^3-grandson of Tamerlane, who later founded the Mughal dynasty.
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/orientalia/babur.htm
238 Shachimadan
Uzbek enclave within Kirghizstan
367
It was said that Tamerlane, passing east with his army, ordered every soldier to gather up one roch and pile it in the pass. Years later, on his return, each man took away his stone to Samarkand, and those that remained became a cenotaph to the fallen.
the Naqshbandi Sufi
http://www.naqshbandi.org/
http://www.naqshbandi.net/
‘pelmet’
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 08:44 am (UTC)i have, however, read _in siberia_ (or, to be more accurate, started to read it), and his siberia bore so little resemblance to the siberia that i visited last year that i had to put it down. (i ended up sending both _in siberia_ and _the lost heart of asia_ back to amazon for a refund; first time i've ever done that.)
it seems as if what i saw, helped by my father who had been there ten years before, was how far these people had come, and as if all colin thubron can see is how badly they're doing.
anyhow. enough ranting. i hope that his other books are not prone to this, or at least don't anger you in the way this one angered me.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 11:58 pm (UTC)Another oddity is that he spends an awful lot of time considering whether these nations (circa 1994) would go the route of Islamic government, and comforting himself that the answer is "no". Is this because he thinks they'd be a threat to him if they did? If I lived there, I'd see Uzbekistan-style government as a more pressing problem.