The Golden Road to Samarkand
CONSIDERED merely as a travel-book this old Spanish narra- tive, which gives a detailed and picturesque account of a 3,000 miles' land-journey from Trebizond to Samarkand and
back, ought to hold the interest of the general reader, and to students of Byzantine and Mohammedan history it will be found of very special importance. It is a contemporary nar- rative; quite obviously based upon a diary or copious notes, written by Don Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, who was sent ambassador to Timur the Tartar by Henry III. of Leon and Castile, apparently in the hope (shared by other sovereigns of Christendom) that Timur would relieve him of the duty of averting the Turkish menace to Europe.
The book contains some quantity of contemporary Byzan- tine history (Clavijo was detained five months at Constan- tinople in 1403, about a year after Timur's victory over the Turkish Sultan, Bajazet, at Angora, which gave a brief respite to the fast-tottering Byzantine Empire) and much more of the topography of Constantinople, as it appeared before the destruction wrought by its downfall in 1453 under Mohammed the Conqueror. Elaborate descriptions are given of the great and glorious Byzantine churches, of which Santa Sofia and the Church of St. John the Baptist now survive. The travellers (for there were three Spaniards on the embassy) also viewed in Constantinople quantities of sacred relics, including John the Baptist's arms, all of St. Gregory's body, Judas's sop, and the " gridiron on which the blessed Saint LawrenCe had been roasted alive."
The main interest of the book centres in Timur himself, in the intimate details of his court, in which Timur, at the age of seventy, his nobles and princesses alike vied with each other in wine-swilling and in the devouring of roasted horse and " knots of horse-tripe in balls the size of a fist," served up in golden trenchers. Clavijo in his fifteenth chapter gives a fine description of Samarkand, the town which now contains Timur's gorgeous tomb, and of his still renowned garden- palace of Dilkushis. The riches and splendour of the Tartar capital at that time were very great, for Timur during his conquests transferred to Samarkand the master-craftsmen of all nations : now, of course, the glory has departed. The book ends with an account of what befell in Armenia, Persia, and Samarkand itself on Timur's death in 1405, when the -usual succession of murders and intrigues ensued amongst the surviving members of his family, female as well as male.
As one turns the pages of this old chronicle—sober, precise, and hardly ever surrendering to the marvellous (except perhaps when Clavijo mentions that he saw the actual trenches which the Greeks dug before Troy)—one is once more struc.c with the unchanging character of the East. " Change the names of persons," writes Mr. Le Strange in his introduction, " and Clavijo's diary might almost pass for a book of travel of the present century." It is all here : the postal relay stations ; the nomads with their flocks of fat-tailed sheep and droves of camels and horses ; the mutton with force-meat dumplings and rice ; the abundance of luscious melons ; the villagers' mistrust of the soldiery and terror of the tax-gatherer ; the roadside semis ; the dervish with his howling, and a high- placed noble getting beaten soundly with sticks. Still might it be recorded (and it is often recorded) by modem travellers that the " Armenians are a people who are not greatly liked in these parts," and still over Sultaniyah towers the great green dome, just as Clavijo saw it five hundred years ago, which was built for the tomb of one of the descendants of the Genghis, who died in 1316 and whose body was thrown out on the roadside by Miran Shah, one of Timur's sons. Miran Shah was quite possibly slightly insane at the time ; anyhow, he was a " big fat man " who " suffers much from the gout," as is not surprising when we learn from Clavijo that the Tartar nobles first got drunk before they ate, and then washed down their Meals" of horseflesh and sheep's heads with draughts of fermented mare's milk and sugar, The mare's milk they drink still, and the wine is still plentiful in spite of the Bolshevik regime..
The translation, in strong quiet prose, enjoys the double advantage of having been the work of one who is both a Spanish scholar and has himself travelled over the greater part of Clavijo's land-route.
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