The Road to Oxiana

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The Road to Oxiana is a travelogue by the explorer Robert Byron, first published in 1937. It documents Byron's travels around Persia and Afghanistan, and is considered one of the most influential travel books of the 1930s. The word "Oxiana" in the title refers to the ancient name for the region along Afghanistan's northern border.

Plot

The book is an account of Byron's ten-month journey in the Middle East, Afghanistan and India in 1933–34, initially in the company of Christopher Sykes. It is in the form of a diary with the first entry "Venice, 20 August 1933" after which Byron travelled by ship to the island of Cyprus and then on to the countries of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. The journey ended in Peshawar, India (now part of Pakistan) on 19 June 1934, from where he returned to England.

The primary purpose of the journey was to visit the region's architectural treasures of which Byron had extensive knowledge, as evidenced by his observations along the way. For example, he says of the Mosque of Sheikh Lutfullah, now listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO:

Byron interacted with the locals and negotiated transport, including motor vehicles, horses and asses to carry him on his journey. He encountered heat, cold, hunger and thirst and suffered the inconvenience of bugs, fleas, lice and physical illness.

List of places visited in The Road to Oxiana

Robert Byron's journey in this book starts with the first entry on 20 August 1933 and ends on 8 July 1934. The following are the places that have entries in the book (NB spellings used by the author sometimes differ from contemporary usage):

Venice
SS Italia
Kyrenia
Nicosia
Famagusta
Larnaca
SS Martha washington
Jerusalem
Damascus
Beirut
Baghdad
Kirmanshah
Teheran
Gulhek
Zinjan
Tabriz
Maragha

Tasr kand
Saoma
Kala julk
Ak bulagh
Ayn varzan
Shahrud
Nishapur
Meshed
Herat
Karokh
Kala nao
Laman
Qom
Delijan
Isfahan
Abadeh
Shiraz

Kavar
Firuzabad
Ibrahimabad
Kazerun
Persepolis
Yezd
Bahramabad
Kirman
Mahun
Sultaniya
Shahi
Asterabad
Gumbad-i-kabus
Bandar Shah
Samnan
Damghan
Abbasabad

Kariz
Moghor
Bala Murghab
Maimena
Andkhoi
Mazar-i-Sharif
Robat
Khan Abad
Bamian
Shibar
Charikar
Kabul
Ghazni
Peshawar

Reception and reviews

The writer Paul Fussell wrote that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry."

The travel writer Bruce Chatwin in his introduction to the book has described it as "a sacred text, beyond criticism," and carried his copy since he was fifteen years old, "spineless and floodstained" after four journeys through Central Asia.

References

External links
The Road to Oxiana Russian edition
Blogger SquareKufic has a series of posts on the monuments described in the book, including many of the photos taken by Robert Byron himself.

The Road to Oxiana, excerpts
Google Books extracts from 1982 edition

British travel books
Architecture books
Architectural history
1937 books
Books about the Middle East
English non-fiction books
Books about Afghanistan
Books about Iran