Overview

Seldom does an equestrian travel tale require its readers to exert more intellectual caution than this superbly written book. For herein lies a story whose message of intolerance is once again afoot in the world. True enough, young British officer Hippisley Cunliffe Marsh evaded plenty of danger in the way of Turkoman slave traders and other villains as he made his wary way from Turkey to India. Moreover, being a keen horseman, the Bengal Lancer made sure to note the equestrian practices of the countries he rode through. The Turkoman horses are specially trained on little food and less water for a month previous to an expedition; and once they start the horse gets large quantities of a mixture of one-half barley, one quarter maize, and one quarter sheep s fat, all made into a soft mass of eight pounds, on which the horse is able to do a hundred miles a day for several days, Captain Marsh noted. With the decline of the Turkish, Persian, Afghan and Mughal kingdoms, the military might of the British Raj was in its ascendancy. With this rise in power, officers like Marsh harbored a corresponding belief in their personal superiority. The result was a long slide into religious and cultural bigotry. On arriving at the holy city of Meshed, Persia, for example, Marsh was detained at the gates by guards intent on inspecting his saddlebags. Adhering to the belief that Europeans were exempt from local legalities, the author, struck the rascal holding my horse with my whip, leaving him bellowing on the ground. Throughout history, the world of equestrian travel has been peopled by wise men and women. Their journeys taught them that custom and appearance count for little and that the perils of equestrian travel unite all Long Riders as they attempt to survive hunger, cold and danger. Such a bond of equestrian brotherhood has no room for the religious and political bigotry found in this book. Yet in this time of global woe, when the Islamic world is being devalued by a new generation of Sahibs who cherish the myth of their national superiority, Marsh s Ride through Islam reads like a warning from the grave.

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9781590481578

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