On the Road to Oxiana

In August 1933, Robert Byron embarked on a journey to Afghanistan, which would eventually take him 10 months to complete, to explore the history and beauty of Islamic architecture. In 1937, he published a diary-style travelogue titled The Road to Oxiana, narrating his impressions, many of which remain astonishingly topical 90 years later.[1] [2] His route took him from Venice and Cyprus through Palestine, Syria, and Iraq to Iran (Persia), where he traveled extensively, and on into Afghanistan. After having crossed the Khyber, he finished in British India, returning to England by boat in July 1934.

Here is a quote regarding Palestine, which in 1933 faced an increasing immigration by Jews:

“Last year permission was given for 6000: 17,000 arrived, the extra 11,000 by frontiers which cannot be guarded. Once in Palestine, they throw away their passports, and so cannot be deported. Yet there appear to be means of supporting them. They have enterprise, persistence, technical training, and capital. The cloud on the horizon is Arab hostility. To a superficial observer it seems that the (British) Government, by deferring to the susceptibility of the Arabs, is encouraging their sense of aggrievement, while obtaining none of their goodwill. The Arabs hate the English, and lose no opportunity of venting their ill-manners on them.”

Does that not sound eerily familiar in various aspects? The political tensions currently disrupting the area have been present for a century.

In Jerusalem, while praising the King David Hotel, today still belonging to the Leading Hotels of the World, as “the only good hotel in Asia this side of Shanghai,” he is least impressed by the Christian monuments of faith: “Set in this radiant environment, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre [sic] appears the meanest of churches. Its darkness seems darker than it is, its architecture worse, its cult more degraded.” These judgments are still shared by most contemporary visitors.

The same is true for his characterization of Tel Aviv:

“If Tel Aviv were in Russia, the world would be raving over its planning and architecture, its smiling communal life, its intellectual pursuits, and its air of youth enthroned. But the difference from Russia is, that instead of being still only a goal for the future, these things are an accomplished fact.”

Damascus is called “the East in its pristine confusion.” Here, Byron practices haggling about the price of almost everything and admires the Omayad Mosque despite its state of beginning decay. The Iraq of today also gets a rather bad press:

“It is little solace to recall that Mesopotamia was once so rich, so fertile of art and invention, so hospitable to the Sumerians, the Seleucids, and the Sasanids. The prime fact of Mesopotamian history is that in the XIIIth century Hulagu destroyed the irrigation system; and that from that day to this Mesopotamia has remained a land of mud deprived of mud's only possible advantage, vegetable fertility.”

When entering Persia (the country has been called Iran—land of the Aryans—only since 1935), Byron experiences the tough regimen of Reza Shah Pahlavi who had become Shah in 1925, following a turbulent military and then political career. At that time, he was still vigorously pursuing nation-building, trying to transform the country into a modern Persia by centralizing the government, supporting industry, and improving the infrastructure, including building of a trans-Persian railway system with American and European help. Meanwhile the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), firmly in British hands, was digging for oil. Reza Shah also reformed the education, medical, and legal systems, diverting power away from the Shiite clergy. The mullahs never forgot and finally took their revenge in 1979, overthrowing his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been declared crown prince at the age of 6 and succeeded his father after his abdication following the Anglo-Soviet (!) invasion in 1941.

At Persepolis, Byron encountered the renowned German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld who was about “to be turned out of his own country by the Nazis.” Although he got into a dispute with him regarding the right to take pictures of the excavations, Byron acknowledged his enormous scientific achievements, disapproving, however, of his “attitude of German authoritarianism.”

In Afghanistan, the Eton- and Oxford-educated Englishman is impressed by the attitude of the people:

“Hawk-eyed and eagle-beaked, the swarthy loose-knit men swing through the dark bazaar with a devil-may-care self-confidence. They carry rifles to go shopping as Londoners carry umbrellas… In a country where the law runs uncertainly, the mere appearance of force is half the battle of ordinary business… They expect the European to conform to their standards, instead of themselves to his, a fact which came home to me this morning when I tried to buy some arak; there is not a drop of alcohol to be found in the whole town (Herat). Here at last is Asia without an inferiority complex.”

Maybe the Russian and American governments should have read this before trying to mold Afghanistan according to their (differing) values.

Byron had to return from Herat to Persia because of the outbreak of winter, coming back in April 1934. From Herat, he travels to Mazar-i-Sherif and on through ancient Balkh to fertile and green Kunduz—names only too familiar to German soldiers. He then crosses the Hindu-Kush, visiting the caves and giant Buddhas of Bamian, which were destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001. While not particularly fond of the bulky if impressive statues, he describes the delicately adorned canopies of their niches in great detail, which are now lost forever. The last stop in Afghanistan is Kabul, and the Khyber Pass finally brings him to Peshawar in British India, now Pakistan.

This journey was a considerable adventure at that time. Today, despite our modern means of transport and infrastructure, it is absolutely impossible to undertake because of the difficult political situation in practically all of the visited countries. We must therefore read The Road to Oxiana with gratitude because it gives us an impression of a historically immensely important region that shaped our world of today but which is momentarily lost to most. Sadly, the book also proves one more time that, whereas mankind could learn from history, it stubbornly refuses to do so.

Oxiana, in case you wondered, means the land along the river Oxus, marking the northern border of Afghanistan, with what are now Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan on the ulterior shore. Today the river is called Amu Darya, turns northwest in Turkmenistan, back into Uzbekistan, and finally drains into what is left of the Aral Sea—another vanishing world.

Publication History

Article published online:
05 March 2024

• References

• 1 Byron R. The Road to Oxiana. London:: Macmillan & Co;; 1937
• 2 Byron R. The Road to Oxiana (with an introduction by Colin Thubron). London:: Penguin Classics, Penguin Group;; 2007