Proceedings of the
Royal Geographical Society (Great Britain)
Norton Shaw, Francis Galton, Clements Robert Markham,
William Spottiswoode, Henry Walter Bates, John Scott
Keltie
Published by, 1879
The Road
to Merv. By Major-General Sir H. C. RAWLINSON, K.O.B.
(Read at
the Evening Meeting, January 27th, 1879.)
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in. length, and containing an area
of about 150 square miles, is surrounded by a ridge of
precipitous rocks, from 50 to 60 miles in circumference,
and rising to a height of 1500 feet above the general
level of the country. Captain Napier, who thoroughly
examined the fort and described it in full detail (see
Royal Geographical Society's Journal, vol. xxvi. p. 75),
says that “it can only owe its origin to some
violent convulsion of nature, acting upon a limited area
with sufficient force to elevate and distort the whole
surface. Even so the wonderful completeness and
uniformity of the chance disposition of the mountainous
masses forming the barrier, is beyond all conception, a
phenomenon probably without parallel, and of which the
most accurate drawings could alone convey any distinct
impression."
From the Kelat Hills there is also a
short cut across the desert to Merv, distant about 120
miles, but we are told that it is quite impracticable to
the march of an army, though the Tejen stream supplies
water at the end of the first caravan stage.*
I must repeat, then, that if Merv is
ever attacked by a Russian column from the Caspian, the
troops will, in my opinion, have to operate along the
high road leading north-eastward from Serakhs. f The road
from Serakhs to Merv measures something over 100 miles,
and the distance is usually performed in six marches. The
desert is here " a level, hard, flat surface,"
according to Burnes, quite different from the sandy plain
between the Murghab and the Oxus, and Blocqueville, who
accompanied the Persian expedition against Merv in 1860,
mentions that water can be laid on this road for a
considerable distance by damming up the Tejen stream and
digging a small canal along the line of route. There are
also wells of brackish water, and cisterns, more or less
ruined, at all the halting-places. In fact, although this
interval between Serakhs and the Murghab River is part of
the great Turkmen
Steppe, and is no doubt badly supplied with water, it has
never proved any real impediment to the march of an army.
In 1860 a large Persian force, well supplied with
artillery, and carrying provisions for three months, with
an immense quantity of baggage, crossed the desert
without difficulty in the middle of summer, and it
- Ibn Dusteh, who wrote
early in the tenth century, says that the Herat River,
after irrigating the land at Serakhs, took the
name of Khuihk-Rud, or "dry river," and
was lost in the sand at a place called AI-Ajumeh,
or “the maraheg," between Serakhs and
Abiverd. In the time of Yacut (A.D. 1225), the
stream hardly reached as far as Serakhs, the
inhabitants of that town being dependent on wells
for their drinking water in summer.
- Although the name of
Serakhs is not found under that or any similar
form in ancient geography (the Siroc of Isidore,
near Nissa, being certainly a different place),
yet it is no doubt an ancient city, being
ascribed in Persian tradition to the same age as
Nissa and Abiverd. Its present name was probably
given to it by the Turanian tribe, which occupied
it during the Sassanian period, and whose ruler,
according to Biruni, had the family title of
Zahiyeh, a name which calls to mind the ZaOos of
the Kadphises coins, the distinctive title of the
Kozoul or Kujur tribe.
| JBOC Notes: Today
there are two Serakhs one on each side of the
river which is the border between Iran and
Turkmenistan. to draw the distinction the one in
Iran is called Serakhs and the one in
Turkmenistan is spelled Serahs. Serakhs is an
important point of foreign commerce for Iran
since is Iran's most important railway. Iran does
most of it's trade with America by air through
Dubai and much of its non-oil trade by rail
through Sarakhs. As a small aside or all of his
bluster and bravado against Iran trade with Iran
and te US increased substantially over the
Clinton years. |
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