The Journals of Edward Stirling in Persia and Afghanistan 1828-1829

The travels of Edward Stirling during the years 1828 and 1829 were overlooked by his contemporaries and remain virtually unacknowledged up to the present. Yet his achievement was remarkable. In an age when large portions of the earth's surface still remained unexplored Stirling, accompanied by a single servant, travelled overland from Bushire in the Persian Gulf to Tehran, thence to Mashhad in Eastern Persia and through unexplored areas of what is now Northern Afghanistan to Khulm, then via Bamiyan to Kabul, Lahore and back to India. His route through Afghanistan lay through some of the most inhospitable country in Asia, and the crossing of the high passes of the Turkistan and Hindu Kush mountains was performed not in high summer, but at the onset of wìnter. It was a journey fraught with danger for a European, or firingi, for as an unbeliever, or kafir, he could expect little mercy at the hands of local rulers and, far worse, the Turkman slave-traders, who regarded «spoiling the Egyptians» as a legitimate pastime. Since Stirling travelled in disguise from Mashhad, as well as passing himself off as a Muslim, had he been discovered he would either have been killed or sold as a slave to the Bukharan slave market. [...]