Customer Reviews

Blood and Oil in the Orient

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Without giving too much away of this book this is an autobiography of Essad Bey (Also known by the name Kurban Said who wrote the book "Ali and Nino) Bey also wrote a biography of Muhammad and had officially converted to Islam in Istanbul in the last years of the Ottoman Empire.

Here in this book he traces a fantastic journey of his flight from Azerbaijan his native homeland back and forth across the Caucuses, Iran and Central Asia finally making his way to the West. Bey, describing himself as the son of an Azeri oil baron charters his journey meeting princes and kings along his way, rebels in the north of Iran, slaves and concubines.

The stories are almost certainly exaggerated (Armenian revolutionaries literally bathing in Azeri blood in the streets, Azeris encouraging the kids to bayonet Armenians in revenge) and designed to entertain a bohemian German audience of the 1920s-1930s but none the less they are fascinating and entertaining. For every exaggerated tale there is an ounce of truth to his tales and aside from Tom Reiss (Who by the way, aside from his soap box ranting and unashamed advertising of his book in the afterword contributes nothing to the book) and a few glaringly obvious type mistakes (Which considering the price of the book you would expect them to have checked (Or even Tom for that matter considering he is such an expert on Bey (Or Lev as he calls him)) This is an entertaining read.