The Mervi Turks of Herat
Valley
Last
May I was with Sir Peter Lumsden in his camp at Tirpul, in Afghanistan, as
Assistant-Commissioner Afghan Boundary Commission, and I was sent by him with
two Engineer officers ― Major Holdich and Captain Peacocke ― to Herat. None of
the members of the Commission had at that time visited Herat, nor had any
Englishman been inside the town for several years. The last, or almost the
last, Englishman who had been there was Sir Lewis Pelly, who had visited it in
1860.
The
first day we marched to the village of Rozanak. The next day to the large and
flourishing village of Shikeban. The whole country was cultivated like a
garden. The inhabitants of this village are chiefly of a tribe called Mervis,
they are descendants of a portion of the inhabitants of Merv, who, when that
town was taken by Amir-Maasum of Bokhara about 1784, fled to Afghanistan and
were given lands at this place.
C. E. Stewart — The Herat Valley and the Persian
Border, from the Hari-Rud to Sistan (1886)
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