What the Portuguese slave traders and the Arabian ivory merchants are in Central Africa, that are the Turkomans in the north-eastern and north-western portions of Iran, indeed we may say in all Persia. Wherever nomad tribes live in the immediate neighbourhood of a civilised country, there will robbery and slavery unavoidably exist to a greater or less extent. The poverty-stricken children of the desert are endowed by nature with an insatiable lust for adventure, and frames capable of supporting the most terrible privations and fatigues. What the scanty soil of their native wilderness denies them, they seek in the lands of their more favoured neighbours. The intercourse between them, however, is seldom of a friendly character. As the plundered and hardly used agriculturist cannot, and dare not, pursue the well-mounted nomad across the pathless deserts of sand, the latter, protected by the nature of the country, can carry on his career of plunder and rapine without fear of chastisement. In former times the cities on the borders of the Great Sahara and of the Arabian desert were in the same plight. Even at the present day the caravans in the latter country are exposed to the greatest dangers. But Persia has to suffer from these evils to a still greater extent, as the deserts which form her northern boundary are the most extensive and the most savage in the world, while their inhabitants are the most cruel and least civilised of nomads.
The wars of hoary antiquity between the Iranians and Turanians, sung by the master singer of the Shah Nameh, "the Book of the Kings," seem to have had their origin in acts of violence perpetrated by the latter. It is true that the combatants of that period are represented in the poem as belonging to one and the same race, but we find that at the period of the expedition of Alexander the people of northern Iran called on the great Macedonian to afford them protection against their northern neighbours, whom they described as terrible beings of inhuman aspect--probably they were of the true Mongolian type, which differs widely from that of the Iranians. Alexander built a great wall from the Caspian Sea to the Kurdistan mountains. This immense work, however, did not come up to the expectations of its founder. Like the Great wall of China, built for a similar purpose, it could not permanently keep out the barbarians. Their impetuous fury burst through such feeble obstacles, and nothing could check their devastating, incursions except the energetic rule of some exceptionally vigorous sovereign, who instead of protecting his subjects by a stone wall, did so with a well-disciplined army. This is the case at the present day. The Turkomans and Œzbegs direct their forays according to the peaceful or disturbed state of the adjacent provinces, or the energy or indolence of their respective governors. During the disorders which attended the establishment of the Kadjarish dynasty, individual bands of Yomut Turkomans pushed their predatory incursions as far as the neighbourhood of Ispahan, although the greater number of them were serving under the banner of Aga Mohammed Khan. At the same period the Tekkes pressed forward on the north-east as far as Seistan. At the present day it is the two provinces of Khorassan and Mazenderan which suffer most. The Turkomans first of all inquire into the character and administration of a newly appointed governor, and if they find in him signs of cowardice or neglect of duty (which is often the case), they make repeated incursions with terrible speed on the defenceless province committed to his care. On the other hand, they hardly dare to show themselves in those places where a vigorous and active officer is at the head of affairs. At the time of my journey through Khorassan the roads were so safe that travellers could go alone through districts which were formerly so fraught with danger, that the largest and best appointed caravans could pass there only when accompanied by a body of troops and a battery of cannon. At that time the governor, Sultan Murad Mirza, kept the nomads in check. Every movement of theirs was reported to him by his spies, and, as soon as they showed themselves, they were attacked in their own haunts, and received severe punishment. In Astrabad, on the contrary, where a fool was entrusted with the administration, the neighbourhood was so unsafe that the Yomuts carried off Persians captive from the very gates of the town.