[Gutenberg 43795] • Sketches of Central Asia (1868) / Additional chapters on my travels, adventures, and on the ethnology of Central Asia

REPRINT. **Special Description Note- This is not a print on demand edition. Care has been taken to enhance the legibility of the original text whenever possible. Martino Publishing follows the standards of traditional printing and quality is a primary concern. We distinguish ourselves from Print on Demand by our quality controls, paper quality and binding quality**. Hardbound. Octavo. viii, 444 p. Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1868. Vambery came from a poor Jewish family. He attendedthe village school in his native town until the age of twelve and showed a remarkable aptitude for learning languages. By the age of sixteen, he had a good knowledge of Hungarian, Latin, French, and German. He was also rapidly acquiring English, theScandinavian languages, Russian, Serbian, and other Slavic languages. In 1861 he received a stipend of a thousand florins, and in the autumn of the same year, disguised as a Sunnite dervish, and under the name of Reshit Efendi, he setout from Constantinople. His route lay from Trebizond on the Black Sea to Tehran in Persia, where he joined a band of pilgrims returning from Mecca, spending several months with them traveling across Central Asia (Tabriz, Zanjan, and Kazvin). He then went to Shiraz, through Ispahan, and in June, 1863, he reached Khiva. Throughout this time, he succeeded in maintaining his disguise as "Reshit Efendi," so that upon his arrival at Khiva he managed to keep up appearances during interviews with thelocal khan. Together with his band of travelers, he then crossed Bokhara and arrived at Samarkand. Initially, he aroused the suspicions of the local ruler, who kept him in an audience for a full half-hour. Vámbéry managed to maintain his pretences,and left the audience laden with gifts. Upon leaving Samarkand, Vámbéry began making his way back to Constantinople, traveling by way of Herat. There he took leave of the band of dervishes and joined a caravan to Tehran, and from there, via Trebizond and Erzerum, to Constantinople, arriving there in March 1864. This was the first journey of its kind undertaken by a Western European; and since it was necessary to avoid suspicion, Vámbéry could not take even fragmentary notes, except by stealth. He returned to Europe in 1864. That following June, he paid a visit to London, where he was treated as a celebrity because of his daring adventures and knowledge of languages. That same year, he published his Travels in Central Asia, based on thefew, furtive notes he was able to make while traveling with the dervishes. Returning to Hungary, Vámbéry was appointed professor of Oriental languages at the University of Budapest in 1865, retiring in 1905.