Editorial contextAlong the dry old bed of the Amu Darya, Muraviev passed five neat openings cut in a cliff, called Besh Dishik. The Turkmens said they led to caverns where a king with his family and treasure had lived since ancient times, and that intruders were strangled by an unseen hand. When one man doubted, another pointed to the cliff's echo as proof.
The nomadic Turcomans of the surrounding country are all assured that these apertures are the approaches to vast caverns in which from time immemorial there has dwelt a King with a numerous family, countless treasure, and beauteous daughters, but that once when some inquisitive persons tried to intrude into the caverns, they were immediately seized by an unseen hand and strangled.
Nikolai Muraviev (translated by W. S. A. Lockhart, 1871)
Editorial contextLodged in a Turkmen camp of about 300 black tents, Abbott was won over by the felt tent. He explains that the felt can be lifted in summer, a central fire warms it in winter with the smoke escaping through a roof opening, and the whole home can be moved to a better spot.
These Toorcumun tents are the most comfortable of dwellings … by removing a portion of the felt covering, this tent is open to the air in summer ; and in winter a fire lighted in the centre makes it the warmest of retreats, all the smoke rising through the skylight in the roof.
Editorial contextRiding with a sayyid near the Caspian, Burnes asked about mounds of earth with a pole in the centre. They were 'yoozka', marking where someone had died or been laid out, and Turkmen said a blessing as they passed. Burnes remarks that they were not graves but barrows raised in honour of the dead, and suspects the custom was 'Tatar'.
They are not graves, but mounds or barrows raised in honour of the dead. I entertain an impression that the usage is Tatar; but I had no opportunity of further investigation.
Editorial contextOn the desert road Burnes halted at a Turkmen oba (camp) of about 150 conical, movable huts called khirgahs, scattered on a rise with no order, like giant beehives with black roofs, with the children swarming like bees. A Turkmen settlement of this size was a whole mobile town.
It consisted of about 150 conical moveable huts, called "khirgahs," which were perched on a rising ground. There was no order in the distribution, and they stood like so many gigantic beehives
