The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk - Chs. 5-9

Chapter 5: All Roads Lead to India

• "The glittering riches of India have always attracted covetous eyes" - 69

1. 500 BC - Darius of Persia

2. 300 BC - Alexander the Great of Macedonia

3. 997-1026 AD - Mahmoud of Ghazni (part of Afghanistan), 15 raids

4. 1175-1206 AD - Mohammed of Gor (northern Pakistan), 6 invasions

5. 1398 AD - Tamerlane's troops sack Delhi

6. 1526 AD - Babur the Turk invades from Kabul, establishes Mogul Empire

7. 1739 AD - Nadir Shah of Persia

• "Were it even possible for an enemy to succeed in constructing a fleet of materials conveyed, at vast trouble and expense, from the interior of Syria, or the shores of the Mediterranean...there is no harbour which could protect such a fleet from the attack of our cruisers." - John Kinneir, British risk assessor of sea invasion - 71
• "All roads ultimately led through Afghanistan, whatever [overland] route an invader came by." - 73
• "Unlike Wilson, Kinneir was not fully convinced that Tsar Alexander was planning to seize India: 'I suspect that the Russians are by no means desirous of extending their empire in this quarter; it is already too unwieldy, and may probably, ere long, crumble into pieces from its own accumulated weight.' He considered Constantinople a far more likely target for Alexander's ambitions." - 74

Chapter 6: The First of the Russian Players

• September 21, 1819: Captain Nikolai Muraviev sets off across the Karakum Desert in a caravan to attempt to win over the Khan of the Turcomans at Khiva - 79
• December 13, 1819: Muraviev returns to the eastern side of the Caspian Sea after the Khan agrees to send envoys to Tiflis, Georgia - 86
• Muraviev's "journey was destined to mark the beginning of the end of the independent khanates of Central Asia." - 88

Chapter 7: A Strange Tale of Two Dogs

• "It was in the course of the second of three long journeys he [William Moorcroft] made in search of these horses -- this one to the Kailas region of Tibet -- that something happened which gave birth to an obsession that haunted him for the rest of his life....he was greeted by two strange dogs which he knew at once to be of European origin....The two dogs had once belonged to [Russian] soldiers....From then until his death in 1825, Moorcroft was to deluge his superiors in Calcutta with impassioned warnings about Russian intentions in Central Asia." - 90
• "What Moorcroft did not realise was that their many months in Ladakh spent trying to negotiate with the Chinese across the mountains [for access to Bokhara through Chinese Turkestan to avoid the current conflict/civil war in Afghanistan] had been pointless almost from the start. For the artful [Mehkti] Rafailov...had successfully poisoned the minds of the senior Chinese officials against them" - 98

Chapter 8: Death on the Oxus

• "If the British did not get their hands on Afghanistan first, he [Moorcroft] warned, then the Russians almost certainly would." - 99
• February 25, 1825: after proceeding through the Khyber Pass and travelling north along the Oxus River, "Moorcroft and his companions were able to make out in the distance the unmistakable line of minarets and domes which they knew were those of Bokhara, the holiest city in Muslim Central Asia." - 101
• "It was hoped that these ['lavish gifts, including guns and furs, watches and European porcelain'] would create an appetite among rich Bokharans for more such goods. For the Russian factories...were becoming desperate for new markets. The home market was too small and impoverished to absorb the rapidly growing volume of goods being produced, while their British rivals, using more sophisticated machinery, were able to undercut them in both Europe and America." - 102
• "To St. Petersburg the Great Game was as much about commercial penetration as about political and military expansion" - 102

Chapter 9: The Barometer Falls

• "Both Tsar and Shah had looked upon the Treaty of Gulistan, which the British had negotiated between them in 1813, as no more than a temporary expedient which would allow them to strengthen their forces prior to the next round." - 109
• November 1825: Governor-General Yermolov sends troops to occupy a disputed territory between Erivan and Lake Sevan that was not addressed in the Treaty of Gulistan - 109
• "Not only was St. Petersburg embroiled on the side of the Greeks in their struggle for independence against the Turks, but at home, especially within the army, it was facing serious disorders following the sudden death of Tsar Alexander in December 1825....Abbas Mirza decided to strike the Russians while they were off their guard. Suddenly and without warning a 30,000-strong Persian force crossed the Russian frontier" - 110
• "The original purpose of the pact between London and Teheran had, so far as the British were concerned, been the protection of India from attack by an intruder marching across Persia...the pact contained an escape clause....they were only obliged to go to the Shah's assistance if he were attacked, and not if they were the aggressor....Thus was Britain able to wriggle off the hook, for the second time in twenty-two years." - 111
• "Under the terms of the peace treaty it had been agreed that Armenians living in Persia might, if they so wished, return to their homeland now that it had become part of the Russian Empire, and was therefore under Christian rule." - 112
• "If the Ottoman Empire were to break up, with Russia occupying Constantinople and commanding the straits, a scramble would follow among the major European powers, including Britain, France and Austria, for what was left. Not only might a general European war result, but with British and French bases in the eastern Mediterranean, Russia's flank would be permanently threatened. It would be altogether safer to let the Sultan keep his ramshackle empire intact, even if he were to be made to pay for the privilege." - 115

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk - Ch.2

Chapter 2: Napoleonic Nightmare

• "There were two schools of thought. One argued that he would advance overland through Syria or Turkey, and attack India from Afghanistan or Baluchistan, while the other was convinced that he would come by sea, setting sail from somewhere on Egypt's Red Sea coast." - 24-5
• the East India Company "had found itself drawn reluctantly and expensively into the vacuum created by the disintegration of Mogul rule in India, and therefore increasingly involved in government and administration." - 25
• August 1, 1798: Admiral Horatio Nelson finds the French Armada of 40,000 soldiers east of Alexandria, Egypt, traps the fleet, and destroys all but two ships (26)
• January 24, 1801: after failing to convince Napoleon to join him, Tsar Paul I orders the Don Cossacks to attempt an overland invasion of India, through mainly unknown terrain; Paul told the Cossack leader, "You are to offer peace to all who are against the British....All the wealth of the Indies shall be your reward." - 28
• March 23, 1801: Tsar Paul I is assassinated and his son Alexander soon sends a messenger to stop the Don Cossacks - 29-30
• September 1801: Tsar Alexander annexes the independent kingdom of Georgia; "although Persian feelings ran high, actual hostilities did not break out between the two powers until June 1804, when the Russians thrust even further south, laying siege to Erivan, the capital of Armenia, a Christian possession of the Shah's." - 32
• "Early in 1804, informed of what happened [involving the British neglecting to assist Persia against Russian incursions]..., Napoleon approached the Shah, offering to help him drive back the Russians in return for the use of Persia as a land-bridge for a French invasion of India." - 33
• May 4, 1807: the Shah of Persia "signed a treaty with Napoleon...in which he agreed to sever all political and commercial relations with Britain, declare war on her, and allow French troops the right of passage" - 33
• "Fears of a Franco-Russian attack on India had brought home to those responsible for its defence how little they knew about the territories through which an invading army would have to march. Something had to be done quickly to remedy this, for all the treaties in the world would not stop a determined aggressor like Napoleon." - 36

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk - Forward to Ch.1

Foreword

• "a succession of ambitious Tsars and ruthless generals crushed the Muslim peoples of Central Asia and occupied their lands. Fearing that the Russians would not stop until India too was theirs, the British sent young officers northwards through the passes to spy on them. At times the Great Game spilled over into Afghanistan, Persia, China and Tibet" - xv

Prologue

• 1807: "intelligence reached London which was to cause considerable alarm to both the British government and the [East India] Company's directors. Napoleon Bonaparte, emboldened by his run of brilliant victories in Europe, had put it to Paul's successor, Tsar Alexander I, that they should together invade India and wrest it from British domination" - 2-3
• "diplomatic missions were dispatched [by the British] to the Shah of Persia and the Emir of Afghanistan, through whose domains the aggressor [Russia] would have to pass, in the hope of discouraging them from entering into any liaisons with the foe." - 3
• "Indian hill men of exceptional intelligence and resource, specially trained in clandestine surveying techniques, were dispatched across the frontier disguised as Muslim holy men or Buddhist pilgrims. In this way, often at great risk to their lives, they secretly mapped thousands of square miles of previously unexplored terrain with remarkable accuracy. For their part, the Russians used Mongolian Buddhists to penetrate regions considered too dangerous for Europeans." - 5
• "The Afghans, Moscow found too late, were an unbeatable foe." - 7

Chapter 1: The Yellow Peril

• 1206: "The dreadful Mongol whirlwind had been unleashed on the world...by an illiterate military genius named Teumjin, formerly the unknown chief of a minority tribe, whose fame was destined shortly to eclipse even that of Alexander the Great. It was the dream of Genghis Khan, as he was to become known, to conquer the earth, a task which he believed he had been chosen by God to carry out. During the next thirty years, he and his successors almost achieved this. At the height of their power their empire was to stretch from the Pacific coast to the Polish frontier. It embraced the whole of China, Persia, Afghanistan, present-day Central Asia, and parts of northern India and the Caucasus. But more important still, and particularly to our narrative, it included vast tracts of Russia and Siberia." - 12
• "taking advantage of its reduced circumstances and military weakness, Russia's European neighbors began to help themselves freely to its territory. The German principalities, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden all joined in....Crushed thus between their European foes to the west and the Mongols to the east, the Russians were to develop a paranoid dread of invasion and encirclement which has bedeviled their foreign relations ever since." - 13
• "If Catherine [the Great] failed to add either India or Constantinople to her domains, she nonetheless took a number of steps in that direction. Not only did she win back from the Persians the Caucasian territories which Anne had restored to them, but she also took possession of the Crimea, that last surviving stronghold of the Mongol empire." - 21
• "To conquer India we must first make ourselves masters of Egypt." - 22, Napoleon Bonaparte

Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy

Chapter 7: The Pahlavis and the Revolution of 1979

• "The Pahlavi monarchy was an odd kind of monarchy, with no real roots in tradition. It was established only after Reza Khan had failed to set up a republic." - 222
• "As in Turkey, the shah set up a language reform to remove words not of Persian origin, and to replace them with Persian words." - 226
• 1935: Reza Shah "ordered that foreign governments should drop the name 'Persia' in official communication and use instead the name 'Iran' -- the ancient name that had always been used by Iranians themselves." - 226
• 1927/1928: Reza Shah "ended the capitulations" to foreign trade interests - 226
• "The Allies were the immediate cause of Reza Shah's abdication, but his removal was welcomed by most Iranians...Reza went into exile in South Africa (where he died in July 1944)." - 230
• "Mohammad Reza Shah had confirmed at his coronation that he would rule as a constitutional monarch, and in 1944 elections were held for the first genuinely representative Majles since the 1920s." - 231
• "The shah tried to appeal to pro-American feeling, and to the United States for support. He made a speech drawing a comparison between Iranian nationalism and America's struggle for independence" - 232
• May 1946: "after a tense period of negotiations and pressure from the United States and Britain", all Soviet forces had left Iran - 234
• "Mohammad Mossadeq assembled a broad coalition of Majles deputies that came to be called the National Front. It was organized around the central demand for oil nationalization" - 235
• March 15, 1951: Majles voted to nationalize oil reserves "under his [Mossadeq's] leadership" - 235
• April 28, 1951: Mossadeq named prime minister - 235
• "In the wake of this demonstration [on August 19, 1953 and partially arranged by the C.I.A. under code name Operation Ajax,] Mossadeq was arrested, the army and Zahedi were in control, and the shah returned. Mossadeq was tried and convicted of treason by a military court but was allowed to live under house arrest until he died in 1967." - 237
• the coup "established the United States in Iran as the prime ally and protector of the Pahlavi regime....the removal of Mossadeq damaged U.S. interests in a much more serious way than could have been imagined at the time." - 237-8
• July 1956: "Egypt's Jamal Abd al-Nasser...followed the example of Mossadeq and nationalized the Suez Canal." - 238
• 1957: "a British diplomat with more than ordinary perspicacity wrote the following of Tehran...'The slums have a compact self-conscious unity and communal sense that is totally lacking in the smart districts of chlorinated water, macadamed roads and (fitful) street lighting. The bourgeois does not know his neighbor: the slum-dweller is intensely conscious of his.'" - 241
• 1963: "a cleric little known outside of ulema circles, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, began to preach in Qom against the shah's government. He attacked its corruption, its neglect of the poor, and its failure to uphold Iran's sovereignty in its relationship with the United States -- and he also disliked the shah's sale of oil to Israel." - 242
• "In the mid-1970s half the population were under sixteen, and two-thirds were under thirty. This was to be the generation of the revolution." - 247
• Ali "Shariati was not a Marxist, but he could be said to have recast Shi'a Islam in a revolutionary mold, comparable to the Marxist model: 'Everywhere is Karbala and every day is Ashura.'" - 255
• January 16, 1979: the shah leaves Iran - 258
• February 1, 1979: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini flies back to Tehran - 258

Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy

Chapter 5: The Fall of the Safavids, Nader Shah, the Eighteenth-Century Interregnum, and the Early Years of the Qajar Dynasty

• "The prime agent of the Safavid dynasty's destruction was an Afghan of the Ghilzai tribe, from Kandahar, Mir Veis." - 148
• "Like most Pashtun-speaking Afghans, Mir Veis was a Sunni Muslim." - 149
• October 23, 1722: Shah Sultan Hosein "surrendered the city [of Isfahan] and the [Safavid] throne to Mahmud Ghilzai", son of Mir Veis - 150
• 1729: "Nader [Qoli, also Tahmasp Qoli Khan, meaning slave of Tahmasp]'s army had defeated the Afghans in three battles and had retaken Isfahan." - 153
• "Within Persia, Nader sought only to amend religious practices -- not to impose Sunnism wholesale. But outside Persia he presented himself and the country as converts to Sunnism" partly to compete with the Sunni Ottoman Empire for influence over the Islamic world - 157
• "Using the excuse that the Moghul authorities had given refuge to Afghan fugitives, Nader crossed the old frontier between the Persian and Moghul empires, took Kabul, and marched on toward Delhi." - 157
• "Nader's annexation of Moghul territory west of the Indus, removing the geographical barrier of the Afghan mountains, was one indicator that his regime, had it endured, might have expanded further into India." - 159
• "On his arrival in Kandahar, Ahmad [Khan Abdali, commander of the Afghans under Nader Shah] was elected to be the first shah of the Durrani dynasty, founding a state based on Kandahar, Herat, and Kabul that was to become modern Afghanistan." - 165-6
• "Agha Mohammad [Khan, first Qajar ruler] marched on to Isfahan, taking it in the early part of 1785. He was then duly accepted into Tehran in March 1786....From then on it became clear that he intended to establish himself as ruler of the whole country, and Tehran has been the capital since that time." - 169
• "The Akhbaris asserted that ordinary Muslims should read and interpret the holy texts for themselves, without the need for intermediaries. The traditions (hadith) -- especially the traditions of the Shi'a Emams -- were the best guide. The Usulis rejected this doctrine, saying that authoritative interpretation (ijtihad) on the basis of reason was necessary and required extended scholarly training" - 172
• "This dispute [between Akhbaris and Usulis] was not fully resolve until the early Qajar period...: each Shi'a Muslim had to have a marja-e taqlid, an 'object of emulation' or religious role model. This had to be a living person, a mojtahed [ a specially talented scholar in the ulema], which in practice meant only one or two of just a few mojtaheds in each generation. As some were thus elevated, a hierarchy of mojtaheds came to be created." - 173
• during Fath Ali Shah's reign, "Europeans suddenly began travelling to and reporting back from Persia in large numbers, both as tourists and as state representatives operating out of diplomatic missions. This was because Fath Ali Shah's reign coincided with the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and the European powers were reaching out in competition with one another to find new allies." - 176
• "After Agha Mohammad's massacre at Tbilisi [capital of modern-day Georgia] in 1795, the Russians established a protectorate in Georgia, stationed troops there in 1799, and later abolished the Georgian monarchy after the death of its king -- effectively annexing the territory." - 178
• "although the British encouraged Fath Ali Shah to continue the costly war with the Russians, when Napoleon attacked Russia in 1812 Britain and Russia again became allies, and Britain's enthusiasm for helping Persia against the Russians evaporated." - 180

Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy

Chapter 1 - Origins: Zoroaster, the Achaemenids, and the Greeks

• the Persian language "has no structural relationship with Arabic or the other Semitic languages of the ancient Middle East (though it took in many Arab words after the Arab conquest)." - 2
• "Before and during the period of the Iranian migrations [from the Russian steppe], an empire -- the empire of Elam -- flourished in the area that later became the provinces of Khuzestan and Fars, based in the cities of Susa and Anshan." - 2
• 700 BC: "the Medes -- with the help of Scythian tribes -- had established an independent state, which later grew to become the first Iranian Empire....At its height the Median Empire stretched from Asia Minor to the Hindu Kush, and south to the Persian Gulf, ruling the Persians as vassals as well as many other subject peoples." - 5
• "At the center of Zoroaster's theology was the opposition between Ahura Mazda, the creator-god of truth and light, and Ahriman, the embodiment of lies, darkness, and evil. This dualism became a persistent theme in Iranian thought for centuries." - 7
• 559 BC: Cyrus becomes king of Anshan, being a descendant of the royal house of Persia started by Achaemenes - 12
• 549 BC: Cyrus leads a revolt against Astyages, the Median king, and captures the Median capital of Ecbatana; "Cyrus reversed the relationship between Media and Persia -- he crowned himself king of Persia, making Persia the center of the empire and Media the junior partner." - 12
• "Cyrus and his successors permitted them to return home from exile and to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. For those acts they were accorded in the Jewish scriptures a unique status among gentile monarchs." - 14-5
• "Tomb burial was anathema to later Zoroastrians, who held it to be sacrilege to pollute the earth with dead bodies. Instead they exposed the dead on so-called Towers of Silence, to be consumed by birds and animals." - 16
• "This was an empire that always preferred to flow around and absorb powerful rivals, rather than to confront, batter into defeat, and force submission." - 21
• Darius "maintained the related principle of devolved government. The provinces were ruled by satraps, governors who returned a tribute to the center but ruled as viceroys" - 21
• 512 BC: Darius campaigns into Europe, conquering Thrace and Macedonia - 23
• 490 BC: Battle of Marathon, Persians defeated by Athenian Greeks - 23
• "The wars that continued between the Persians and the Greeks ended at least for a time with the peace of Callias in 449 BC, but thereafter the Persians supported Sparta against Athens in the terribly destructive Peloponnesian wars. These conflicts exhausted the older Greek city-states and prepared the way for the hegemony of Macedon." - 25
• "For more than a century after Alexander [the Great]'s death, Persia was ruled by the descendants of Seleucus, one of Alexander's generals" - 30