Customer Reviews

The Valleys of the Assassins: and Other Persian Travels (Modern Library Paperbacks)

5 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I agree with much of what is said in the reviews below: Stark's travelogues aren't to be read in bed if you have any intention of keeping your eyes open for more than a dozen pages or so. Her writing is clear and concise, but not scintillating by any means. What's of interest in this book is less the style of writing and more the travels themselves. Here was a single woman in the 1930s traveling in an area of the world virtually unknown to Westerners, making the radical choices, for instance, to study the Koran and live with the locals. She was a true radical of her own time who dared to tread places that Marco Polo didn't even approach, despite his (in)famous claims to the contrary.

As for the criticism of the lack of maps in the book that some of the reviewers here have brought up -- well, that may be a criticism directed at the publisher, but it shouldn't be aimed at Stark. The maps that are in the book are the ones that Stark made herself during her travels and handed over to the Royal Geographic Society, and are considered the first Western maps of the area. In my own research, I was in contact with the Society repeatedly, trying to procure additional maps of the Elburz Mountain region for background information on Vladimir Bartol's ALAMUT, an historical novel based on the most famous Valley of the Assassin resident, Hasan ibn Sabbah. Frankly, Stark's maps are some of the few that actually exist, even to this day. The area of her travels -- perhaps aside from CIA maps that we mere mortals are not privy to -- has not been mapped very well. Spend a few hours scouring antiquarian map collectors and see what you come up with. True, it would have been helpful for the publisher to add some basic "Rand McNally" type overviews of her route, but a criticism of Stark on this point is completely beside the point and neglects to recognize her true contribution to the literature.

The qualities of this book are many. First, the style is fine, humorous, and above all,
flowing and unassuming. The information is indeed an insider's one: Mrs Stark speaks fluently persian, and therefore talks directly to the characters she meets. Moreover, she did her homework and is quite learned on the ancient civilizations which
flourished in the areas she describes. So, it is an excellent reading full of valuable informations on a bygone era.

I just finished reading this book, which concluded our 2008 book club list. Like many of the books I'm reading these days, I'm sorry to have only now read this travel classic. What a pleasure it was to share Freya Stark's long-ago journey to the wilds of Persia. Although I share other reviewers' desires for "more maps," I muddled through the first half of the book with one hand on my laptop searching Google Earth, trying to find the various kuhs and ruds she was describing.

Still, I enjoyed the alternating sensations of anxiety and epiphany that even armchair travel can bring as I projected my own emotions onto Stark's efforts as she tried to figure out where in the world she was, find a meal or a place to sleep, and calibrate that difficult balance between physical safety and high adventure.

This extraordinary writer, traveler, adventurer, a woman greater even than her exceptional circumstances, leads us into a magical realm as remote in her time as in Alexander's, and like Herodotus, reveals the intimacies in the history of the people who live there. As a travel book, as a geographical study, as research or recreation, Freya Stark is still, even today, a marvel.

I first read an earlier edition of The Valleys of the Assassins: and Other Persian Travels (Modern Library Paperbacks) nearly 40 years ago while working in Tehran. At that time, it was the primary inspiration for a one-day excursion into the Alamut region with a few friends in a '66 Pontiac convertible, executed with all of the carefree abandon of Ms. Stark. I was delighted to find this reprint in 2001 [as well as The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut (Modern Library Paperbacks)] as I searched for greater understanding of the people of the Middle East in the wake of September 11th, just as she had successfully done throughout her lifetime of exploration and writing about these ancient civilizations.

The real enjoyment of reading about her colorful adventures comes from her insights into the region as a journalist and the origins of the people, along with her vivid descriptions of life and her dry wit. When you think of this Western woman, often traveling alone, moving throughout the Muslim world of the 1930s [one that hadn't changed in centuries] you become instantly in awe. By simply reading at random any passage that she wrote, you are turned into the traveling companion of this amazing lady and shown those people and their customs in lands that are now forever lost to us, with Stark's compelling words being the only exception. Her true gifts to the world are these wonderful sojourns into the past.

Bob Magnant is the author of The Last Transition... - a fact-based novel about Iran, Iraq and the Middle East...

Freja Stark does an outstanding job bringing to life the wilds of early 20th century Iran! I could imagine myself being right there with her.

I would not recommend this book. This woman is a self centered scatterbrain, adventurous, yes, but didn't learn much about the country she visited.