The Valleys of the Assassins : and Other Persian Travels

Rating:
Summary: No History Lesson Here, Just A Boring Travel Journal
Review: I found this book to be so boring that I actually couldn't finish it! I've never read a travelogue before, so maybe I'm being overly harsh, but I'm of the opinion that even non-fiction should keep you turning the pages and be fun to read.

The prose is basically along these lines: "And so we came to a village and there were tribesmen there and we all gathered into a tent & drank tea." I mean, it's THAT dry; there is no emotion or suspense to this book whatsoever.

If this book had good historical data it would be acceptable (and I'll admit that that was what I was expecting), but unfortunately it is a travelogue, not a history lesson, and ends up reading like the personal journal of a very boring person (though I know that Ms. Stark has led anything BUT a boring life).

However, it IS a travelogue after all, not a history book, so it's not like I was deceived -- I just thought it would've been something else. Therefore, no less than 3 stars.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautifully-Written Travel Memoir of 1930's Persia
Review: I've read two other volumes by Freya Stark ("Alexander's Path" and "Rome on the Euphrates") and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. But I can't quite give this volume an unequivocal rave. I think the main problem was that I was led into false expectations both by the title and the subject matter heading (HISTORY/LITERATURE) that appears on the back of this paperback edition. While any book by Freya Stark will afford significant pleasures, prospective readers should be aware that there really isn't very much history in this volume, and what there is isn't always reliable (serious historians don't believe the Assassins smoked hashish, or that their chief deceived them with a pleasure garden that they thought was a foretaste of paradise). Thus, if you're primarily interested in learning about the fascinating medieval heretical/terrorist sect known as the Assassins or the archaeology of its storied castles in Iran's Elburz Mountains, you should look elsewhere (to Bernard Lewis's "The Assassins", for a general history, and to Peter Willey's "The Castles of the Assassins" for archaeological information). Stark does deserve credit for rediscovering the site of the Assassin castle of Lamiasar (of which the book does include a good sketch plan), but the two chapters which deal with Lamiasar and the main Assassin castle of Alamut comprise barely a seventh of the book.

The implied emphasis in the title - "The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels" - is thus exactly the opposite of what it should be, for it's the "Other Persian Travels" that are the focus of the book. Marketing considerations aside, it might be more appropriately entitled "Grave-Robbing in the Pusht-i-Kuh," and the subject heading on the back of the book should more accurately say TRAVEL LITERATURE/MOUNTAINEERING/SOCIOLOGY.

Aside from the two chapters on the Assassin castles and their associated valleys, the book focuses by turns on a trip through Luristan, then an area notorious for banditry; a rather half-hearted treasure-hunt in a region known as the Pusht-i-Kuh; and a description of a trek through the high country of the east-central Elburz range beneath the mountain known as The Throne of Solomon. Aside from the rediscovery of Lamiasar, nothing of earth-shattering importance or even great adventure occurred during these travels. So you read Stark for the pleasures of her writing and for a picture of Iranian society at the time when the Pahlevi family was just beginning its fifty-year effort to transform the country into a modern state.

For me, this wasn't quite enough. There are occasional patches of beautiful and memorable writing here, but these are interspersed with lengthy and not always terribly interesting accounts of Stark's daily itineraries. Unlike, say, Paul Theroux, Stark isn't laugh-out-loud funny; the best you get are occasional flashes of a very English dry wit.

At its best, however, Stark's prose can serve as a kind of clinic on descriptive writing, especially with regard to the use of color. Here are a few examples:

"This most beautiful of valleys is in the jungle. Through glades and leafy waves, reddish mountains break into it like hulls of ships, high in the sky. The trees - thron, beech, ash, sycamore, `divar,' medlar, pear - spread there as in a park, great in height and girth; and the river stumbles over their roots in shining eddies. Over all is a virgin sense of freedom, a solitary joyousness, a gentle bustle made by stream and sunlight and the warm light wind, independent of the life of man."

"The father of our host was an old patriarch very nearly blind and dressed in strips of rags so multitudinous that only a principle of mutual attraction could, you would imagine, induce them to remain all together on his person."

"We climbed down and followed the defile to where it opens on the banks of the Saidmarreh, where rusty flanks of hills lie one behind the other in the sun, like hippopotmai after drinking, ponderous in their folds. Opposite to where we were sitting, a little zig-zag showed the Sargatch Pass and the way to Tarhan. The river wound between,a green water, its sunken bed lined with tamarisk, kurf, and broom and oleander."

"The outwork was a separate range, parrallel but lower, so that in section the two would look like the descending graph of a fever chart. It was called the Kuh Siah, the Black Mountain, and continued the formation we had already seen in the valley below Garau: here, as there, it was broken at intervals by black ravines. The Larti and Hindimini, the two tribes we meant to visit, lived each in one of these ravines, under the shadow of the mountain wall. Between us and them, across an open stretch of plain, were white and red small salty hills, untidily scattered in a straggling line."

One final regret. There are no maps whatsoever in the first two sections, dealing with Luristan and the Pusht-i-Kuh, so you'll need to independently consult a map of Iran if you want to have the vaguest idea of where Stark is and where she's going during the first half of the book.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautifully-Written Travel Memoir of 1930's Persia
Review: I've read two other volumes by Freya Stark ("Alexander's Path" and "Rome on the Euphrates") and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. But I can't quite give this volume an unequivocal rave. I think the main problem was that I was led into false expectations both by the title and the subject matter heading (HISTORY/LITERATURE) that appears on the back of this paperback edition. While any book by Freya Stark will afford significant pleasures, prospective readers should be aware that there really isn't very much history in this volume, and what there is isn't always reliable (serious historians don't believe the Assassins smoked hashish, or that their chief deceived them with a pleasure garden that they thought was a foretaste of paradise). Thus, if you're primarily interested in learning about the fascinating medieval heretical/terrorist sect known as the Assassins or the archaeology of its storied castles in Iran's Elburz Mountains, you should look elsewhere (to Bernard Lewis's "The Assassins", for a general history, and to Peter Willey's "The Castles of the Assassins" for archaeological information). Stark does deserve credit for rediscovering the site of the Assassin castle of Lamiasar (of which the book does include a good sketch plan), but the two chapters which deal with Lamiasar and the main Assassin castle of Alamut comprise barely a seventh of the book.

The implied emphasis in the title - "The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels" - is thus exactly the opposite of what it should be, for it's the "Other Persian Travels" that are the focus of the book. Marketing considerations aside, it might be more appropriately entitled "Grave-Robbing in the Pusht-i-Kuh," and the subject heading on the back of the book should more accurately say TRAVEL LITERATURE/MOUNTAINEERING/SOCIOLOGY.

Aside from the two chapters on the Assassin castles and their associated valleys, the book focuses by turns on a trip through Luristan, then an area notorious for banditry; a rather half-hearted treasure-hunt in a region known as the Pusht-i-Kuh; and a description of a trek through the high country of the east-central Elburz range beneath the mountain known as The Throne of Solomon. Aside from the rediscovery of Lamiasar, nothing of earth-shattering importance or even great adventure occurred during these travels. So you read Stark for the pleasures of her writing and for a picture of Iranian society at the time when the Pahlevi family was just beginning its fifty-year effort to transform the country into a modern state.

For me, this wasn't quite enough. There are occasional patches of beautiful and memorable writing here, but these are interspersed with lengthy and not always terribly interesting accounts of Stark's daily itineraries. Unlike, say, Paul Theroux, Stark isn't laugh-out-loud funny; the best you get are occasional flashes of a very English dry wit.

At its best, however, Stark's prose can serve as a kind of clinic on descriptive writing, especially with regard to the use of color. Here are a few examples:

"This most beautiful of valleys is in the jungle. Through glades and leafy waves, reddish mountains break into it like hulls of ships, high in the sky. The trees - thron, beech, ash, sycamore, 'divar,' medlar, pear - spread there as in a park, great in height and girth; and the river stumbles over their roots in shining eddies. Over all is a virgin sense of freedom, a solitary joyousness, a gentle bustle made by stream and sunlight and the warm light wind, independent of the life of man."

"The father of our host was an old patriarch very nearly blind and dressed in strips of rags so multitudinous that only a principle of mutual attraction could, you would imagine, induce them to remain all together on his person."

"We climbed down and followed the defile to where it opens on the banks of the Saidmarreh, where rusty flanks of hills lie one behind the other in the sun, like hippopotmai after drinking, ponderous in their folds. Opposite to where we were sitting, a little zig-zag showed the Sargatch Pass and the way to Tarhan. The river wound between,a green water, its sunken bed lined with tamarisk, kurf, and broom and oleander."

"The outwork was a separate range, parrallel but lower, so that in section the two would look like the descending graph of a fever chart. It was called the Kuh Siah, the Black Mountain, and continued the formation we had already seen in the valley below Garau: here, as there, it was broken at intervals by black ravines. The Larti and Hindimini, the two tribes we meant to visit, lived each in one of these ravines, under the shadow of the mountain wall. Between us and them, across an open stretch of plain, were white and red small salty hills, untidily scattered in a straggling line."

One final regret. There are no maps whatsoever in the first two sections, dealing with Luristan and the Pusht-i-Kuh, so you'll need to independently consult a map of Iran if you want to have the vaguest idea of where Stark is and where she's going during the first half of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Travel Story
Review: Like jeffergray, I wish there were maps and would agree that the title was somewhat misleading. At times, I found myself confused by some of the historical references since they were cursory and seemed to assume a good knowledge of the history of the Middle East. Perhaps I need to go back to school...

On the other hand, I found this to be a wonderful narrative of a trip to a land that most people will never see, a visit to cultures that are most likely gone in today's world, and, most interestingly, the story of a woman in an area in which women never venture far from their homes. Her descriptions of the details of the countryside and the lives of the people she meets are exquisite and conjure up images despite the absence of pictures. Because of the quality of the writing, it is an easy and fairly quick read.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Travel Story
Review: Like jeffergray, I wish there were maps and would agree that the title was somewhat misleading. At times, I found myself confused by some of the historical references since they were cursory and seemed to assume a good knowledge of the history of the Middle East. Perhaps I need to go back to school...

On the other hand, I found this to be a wonderful narrative of a trip to a land that most people will never see, a visit to cultures that are most likely gone in today's world, and, most interestingly, the story of a woman in an area in which women never venture far from their homes. Her descriptions of the details of the countryside and the lives of the people she meets are exquisite and conjure up images despite the absence of pictures. Because of the quality of the writing, it is an easy and fairly quick read.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly dull
Review: This book was disappointing, especially considering that some call it a classic.

Freya Stark traveled among the remote valleys of western Persia (today's Iran) in the early 1930s, when this area was barely known and rarely visited by Europeans. (Actually, it's not much better known today.) But while her travels may have been pioneering, this account is surprisingly dull and mundane. Stark travels from village to village, briefly meeting the locals, eats a meal or two, then goes on the next day to repeat the process. There's rarely a spark of excitement or adventure -- just a dry recording of events and observations.

Stark's aloof writing style doesn't help. She seems to keep the reader at arm's length from the characters she meets, offering just a superficial look at most of them.

The first half of the book is further handicapped by a lack of maps. As Stark travels about, she casually rattles off the names of landmarks and places as if the reader were intimately acquainted with the area. In fact, frustrated readers will soon discover that it is impossible to tell whether she is traveling east, west, north or south -- or just wandering in circles. The second half of the book has three maps, which helps, although you'll need a magnifying glass to read one of them.

I don't want to make it sound like there is NOTHING interesting in this book. There are a few moments of tense encounters, and occassionally she shows off a dry wit. But these are too few and far between. I can only recommend this book to someone who has a scholarly interest in this region of Iran.