Journal of the Society of Arts : Volume XLVIII, No. 2480 [‎681v] (12/24)

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JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS.
[June i, 1900.
sometimes strikingly pretty, being composed of
small round willow boughs set in between the
rafters, and picked out in colours, with an
occasional touch of gold. The walls are
plastered and frequently painted with pictures
of fruit, flowers, or small arabesques, and there
are numerous niches with arched tops which
act as shelves, on which are stored books,
clothes, crockery, or food. There is usually
very little furniture, unless the merchant has
become bitten with the craze to imitate the
Russians, in which case there are cheap tables
and chairs of a conventional type imported from
Russia, for such things are not made in Tash
kent. The truly native house, however, contains
little but rugs and mattresses, with perhaps a
small round table, or a carved or painted
wooden cupboard. The women’s quarters are
very much the same in arrangement and furni
ture, except that they may have a broad bed—
the cha?Joy oi India —made of a wooden frame
with a network of ropes, raised a few feet from
the floor. The usual bed is merely a rug or a
thin mattress stretched on the ground. In
many of the rooms a small basin is let into a
corner of the floor, with a jug standing by, for
the numerous ablutions required by the Mussul
man’s religion.
The merchant who lives in this house is
attired in a pair of loose white trousers made
of cotton, and tied round his waist with a cord
and tassels. His shirt, also of light-coloured
cotton, is very long, with a small slit for the
neck, and wide sleeves ; over this he wears a
tchafian, or two or three, according to the
weather. This garment is a long coat, cut
very sloping at the neck, and with enormous
sleeves, much too long for convenience, but
satisfying the. Asiatic sense of propriety, which
requires that the hands be covered. The
tchajan is of cotton or silk in summer, often
striped or patterned in the most gorgeous
colours ; in winter one gown will be made of
cloth and lined with fine sheepskin or fur. A
scarf or small shawl is twisted round the waist,
and a turban, either of striped cotton or, if the
wearer is a mullah or distinguished for piety,
of white material is wound round the head
over a little embroidered skull cap.
1 he dress of the women is very similar, but
their gowns are more often of silk, and many
strings of beads, gold, and gems are worn
round the neck, with bracelets, anklets, hair
ornaments, and sometimes nose-rings. Out
side they wear a thick veil of woven horsehair
and a dark-blue or green cloak with long
sleeves. The class of women who go abroad
unveiled is such that even Jewesses and others,
whose religion does not demand it, cannot
venture out without these hideous garments.
This applies, however, only to the purely
Mussulman cities. In the east, where the
Buddhist element is strong, an unveiled woman
is occasionally seen, while the custom has
never obtained among the Kirghiz and other
nomad tribes, whose Mohammedanism is even
less than skin deep.
Although there are hotels in Tashkent, and
in many other Central Asian towns, they are
by no means according to Western ideas of
comfort, resembling in arrangement the cara
vanserai already described. The food of the
country is mutton, mutton, mutton ! In the
town there is some attempt to vary the method
of cooking; but, as a rule, the dishes are
too greasy and insipid for European palates.
Wine can be got in Tashkent, imported from
Russia, at fabulous prices, but the native drink
is green tea, black tea having been only intro
duced by the Russians, and this is sometimes
thickened with cream or melted tallow, and
sometimes flavoured with a small dried lemon.
The walls of Tashkent are said to have been
sixteen miles round, but were largely de
molished by the Russians to make barracks
and parade-grounds. Outside these walls and
the gardens surrounding them is the open
steppe, over which are dotted numerous
villages, mostly inhabited by either Tartars or
Kirghiz, the races who mingle in the city
keeping apart here. One is a sort of summer
residence for the governor and his little court,
and at another is a large establishment for
the breeding and improvement of horses,
nominally a private enterprise, but in reality
subsidised by Government, which realises the
importance of a plentiful supply of horses from
a strategical point of view.
Altogether, Tashkent is a curious and typical
example of East meeting West. The modern
Russian soldier and his Paris-dressed wife rub
shoulders with the Usbek or Kirghiz, whose
ancestors were Khans and Beks in this country
at a time when Russia was a mere congeries
of half-savage States ; or with the Mongols,
whose warrior kings in the days of old not
only conquered Russia, but a great portion of
the then known world ; or with the Tadjiks, of
almost prehistoric origin, former owners of the
soil, who were dispossessed by Kirghiz and
Mongol alike, but still retain their individuality.
All these varying peoples have accepted the
yoke of their Western conquerors. The
Oriental is, above all, a fatalist, and he recog-