The main overland trade between Europe and the East is carried on through Arzrum. But few goods are on sale there; they are not displayed, something Tournefort also observed, who writes that in Arzrum a sick man may die from the impossibility of obtaining a spoonful of rhubarb, while whole sacks of it are to be found in the city.65
I know of no expression more meaningless than the words “Asiatic luxury.” This saying probably originated in the time of the Crusades, when poor knights, having left the bare walls and oaken chairs of their castles, saw for the first time red couches, multicolored rugs, and daggers with flashy gems on their hilts. Nowadays we might say “Asiatic poverty,” “Asiatic swinishness,” and so on, but luxury is, of course, proper to Europe. In Arzrum you cannot buy for any amount of money what can be found in a grocer’s shop in any little country town of Pskov province.
The Arzrum climate is harsh. The city is built in a hollow that is over 7,000 feet above sea level. The surrounding mountains are covered with snow for a great part of the year. The land is treeless but fertile. It is irrigated by many springs and crisscrossed everywhere with aqueducts. Arzrum is famous for its water. The Euphrates flows two miles from the city. But there are a great many fountains everywhere. Beside each of them hangs a tin dipper on a chain, and the good Muslims drink and cannot praise it enough. Timber is supplied from Sagan-loo.
In the Arzrum arsenal we found a great many old weapons, helmets, cuirasses, swords, rusting there probably since the time of Godfrey.66 The mosques are low and dark. Outside the city there is a cemetery. The tombstones usually consist of posts adorned with stone turbans. The tombs of two or three pashas are distinguished by a greater fancifulness, but there is nothing refined about them: no taste, no thought…One traveler writes that of all Asiatic cities, in Arzrum alone did he find a clock tower, and it was broken.
The innovations undertaken by the sultan have not yet penetrated to Arzrum. The troops still wear their picturesque eastern garb. Between Arzrum and Constantinople there is rivalry, as there is between Kazan and Moscow. Here is the beginning of a satirical poem composed by the janissary Amin-Oglu.67
Stambul is praised now by the giaours,
But tomorrow with an iron heel,
Like a sleeping snake, they’ll crush it,
And off they’ll ride—and leave it so.
Stambul dozes in the face of trouble.
Stambul has renounced the prophet;
There the truth of the ancient East
By the cunning West is clouded.
Stambul for the sweets of vice
Betrays both sabre and devotion.
Stambul forgets the battle’s sweat
And drinks wine at the hour of prayer.
There has died the faith’s pure fire,
In graveyards there the women walk,
They send old crones out to the crossroads
And to the harems bring back men,
While the bribed eunuch lies there sleeping.
Not so is Arzrum in the mountains,
Our Arzrum of the many roads;
We sleep not in shameful luxury,
We dip no disobedient cup
In the wine of depravity, noise, and fire.
We fast: and from the streams of sober
Holy water we quench our thirst;
In multitudes both swift and dauntless
Our horsemen into battle fly;
Our harems are inaccessible,
Our eunuchs incorrupt and stern,
And our women sit there peacefully.
I lived in the seraskir’s palace, in the rooms where the harem used to be. For a whole day I wandered through countless passages, from room to room, from roof to roof, from stairway to stairway. The palace seemed to have been looted; the seraskir, intending to flee, took with him all that he could. The couches were stripped, the rugs removed. When I strolled around the town, the Turks beckoned to me and showed me their tongues. (They take every Frank for a doctor.) I was tired of it and ready to pay them back in kind. My evenings I spent with the intelligent and amiable Sukhorukov; the similarity of our pursuits brought us together. He told me of his literary intentions, his historical research, once embarked upon with such zeal and success. The limited nature of his wishes and expectations is truly touching. It will be a pity if they are not realized.68
