Let Our Fame Be Great (26 page)

Killar's claim of glory has been much mocked, mainly by British writers, but it is essentially believable. The length of time it took Killar to climb from the night's rest spot to the summit – eight hours – is similar to the time taken by Freshfield, although whether the conditions were really sufficiently clear to allow Emanuel to see a lone man on the summit is a different matter.

But the controversy does not stop there. Emanuel's biographer, Prince Golitsyn, identifies Killar specifically as a Circassian from the region of Kabarda, but this has not stopped Turkic tribesmen claiming him as ethnically one of their own. He is variously identified as Chilar Khashirov (if he was a Circassian) or Khilar Khachirov (if he was a Turkic tribesman), or even Kilar Heshire (by Circassian historians in exile who dislike the Russified surnames used in the Caucasus today).

It is hard to blame Freshfield for overlooking his claim. The account quoted above is from an obscure volume called
Life-Sketches of Cavalry General Emanuel
and was published in Russian seventeen years before the Englishman visited the Caucasus. Besides, the event does not appear to have remained in local memories, since he does not report anyone mentioning it.

However, there is a twist in both Killar's and Freshfield's achievements, which is that Elbrus has two summits. Freshfield, we know, ascended the eastern peak, which is lower than its western brother by just twenty-one metres.

The account of Killar's ascent does not specify which peak he climbed but later in the book it records that one of the expedition's achievements was fixing the height of Elbrus's eastern peak at 15,420 feet. Had the western peak been visible, they would have measured its height as well. And if the western peak was not visible, the general could not have seen Killar ascend it. It would seem, therefore, that Killar also only managed to scale the slightly smaller eastern summit of the two-headed mountain.

Incidentally, the height the book gives for the eastern peak is too low, but does chime with the climbers' estimate that their altitude when they stopped was 14,000 feet, and that the amount they had left to climb was 1,400 feet. They may have been using faulty equipment which miscalculated their height by 900 metres, and, if so, Academician Lents reached a heartbreaking 5,200 metres before turning back.

Anyway, be that as it may, both conquerors of Elbrus climbed the smaller summit, so the mountain was still, even after the Freshfield expedition, technically undefeated. And it would remain so for another six years. Fortunately, therefore, for Freshfield, he did not allow himself to relax but continued exploring the region and taking notes. He blazed the trail for the eventual conquest of Elbrus, and was the first Westerner to visit the valleys to the east of Elbrus, home of the Turkic nation later to be dubbed the Balkars.

‘[T]he natives of this and the upper valleys next to the east consider themselves a distinct race from the Tcherkesses [Circassians], who dwell on the verge of the steppes, and in the mountains to the westward. The people here claim to be the old inhabitants, and to have
been dispossessed of their ancient supremacy when the hordes of Tcherkesses from the Crimea inundated the country. Their language is Tartar [Turkic], and their religion, as far they have any, is Mahommedan; the princes seemed, however, to be very broad and tolerant in their views,' wrote Freshfield in
Travels in the Central Caucasus and Bashan
, now a mountaineering classic.

He had certainly found a more challenging venue than Switzerland. Where Switzerland was close to the rich cities of western Europe, and thronged by visitors in summer, these high valleys and mighty peaks were completely unknown. And the peaks were truly enormous. Elbrus is 800 metres taller than Mont Blanc, the highest point in the Alps. It stands north of the main chain of the Caucasus and dominates the whole northern side. To the south, the peaks are scarcely less staggering and technically far harder to climb. They include Dykhtau, of 5,204 metres, and, further east, Kazbek of 5,033 metres.

The valleys that burrow into this vast massif of rock are narrow and inaccessible, meaning their inhabitants were scarcely bothered by the outside world, despite having technically submitted to Russia in the year of Killar's ascent of Elbrus thirty-nine years previously.

‘The imperial sway of Russia does not press hardly on these mountaineers, ' wrote Freshfield, ‘who pay only a light house-tax, are exempt from conscription, and are too remote to be exposed to those petty restraints which a once-free people often find the hardest to bear.'

Power was still in the hands of the traditional chiefs, and the communities seem to have shared the easy democracy of the mountain Circassians, rather than the more structured government of their neighbours on the plains.

‘Their local government has been generally described as feudal; it seemed to us that patriarchal would be the more fitting word. The princes are the recognised heads of the community; they live in a house four times the size of any other in the village, they are richest in flocks and herds, and on them falls the duty of entertaining strangers; but their word is not law, and they can only persuade, not compel, their poorer neighbours to carry out their wishes,' said Freshfield, who had ample opportunity to see how these ‘princes' – in reality, just
headmen – behaved, since they welcomed him and his companions to their villages and gave them beds for the night.

It is something of a mystery where these Turkic highlanders come from. As seen above, they themselves claim to be the original inhabitants of the country, and that the Circassians and others came from elsewhere and stole their best land.

One old Balkar man I talked to on a visit of my own to the high Caucasus told me his people were the ancient Etruscans, who had spread from here to pre-Roman Italy without, mysteriously, leaving any traces in between of their passing. Another Balkar told me in all seriousness that Shangri-La or Shambala, the pure land of the Tibetan Buddhists, was at the foot of Elbrus and that the traditional Turkic religion had given rise to several of the faiths of Asia.

The Karachai-Balkars are now Muslim, and proudly so, although Freshfield reported that substantial elements of folk beliefs clung on in their villages. He and his companions had to tell their welcoming committee, when they descended the mountain, that there was not, in fact, a ‘gigantic cock' on top of Elbrus who welcomed the sunrise every day by crowing and flapping his wings, while guarding a treasure against all intruders. ‘We could not even pretend to have had an interview with the giants and genii believed to dwell in the clefts and caverns,' he added.

Turkic peoples are scattered all across the former Soviet Union, from the Tuvans of Siberia via the Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uzbeks and Turkmen of Central Asia, the Tatars and Bashkirs of the Volga, the Kumyks and Nogais of the plains north of the Caucasus, the Tatars of Crimea, and the Azeris and Meskhetians of the south Caucasus. Most of them, with the stark exception of the mountain-dwelling Kyrgyz horse-herders of Central Asia, lived traditionally on the plains and it is odd that Turkic tribesmen should have ended up as the owners of the highest portion of the Caucasus.

It seems most likely that they were pushed into hills by war, or else followed their herds to the lush mountain meadows where there is plentiful grazing for cattle, sheep and horses in summer.

John F. Baddeley, a British traveller, journalist and entrepreneur whose knowledge of the Caucasus was unrivalled by any foreigner at
the turn of the century, recorded a number of legends that give a possible explanation as to how the Turkic peoples came to be here. The prominent Aideboloff and Abayeff families were, he said, founded by two brothers who came from the east with the armies of Genghis Khan, but killed a prominent man and had to flee to the mountains. Misaka, the founder of the Misakoff family, meanwhile, had quarrelled with the Kumyk people of the plains of northern Dagestan and also fled.

A more romantic story clung to the origins of the Balkarokoff family, which, we hear, was founded by a Circassian called Anfakho who settled in the Upper Baksan valley. His family lived there quietly until one descendant, called Akhtougan, got ideas above his station. He rode to the Dagestani town of Tarku, where a ruler called the Shamkhal enjoyed supreme power, and waited for a celebratory dance, from which he stole the Shamkhal's daughter. Fleeing into the Baksan, he was unnoticed for two years. Eventually, however, the fruits of his victory began to pall and he wanted recognition of his royal connections.

He returned to Tarku and, with commendable cockiness, sought reconciliation with his unwilling father-in-law. The Shamkhal was outraged, and ordered him seized. Akhtougan slew the guards sent to trap him and fled back into the Baksan, but he knew pursuit was close behind and that his hideaway must have been discovered. He called for Svan masons to come over the mountains and build him one of their traditional defensive towers. This they built in record time, by employing unusually agile oxen to carry stones on their horns along planks laid between the cliffs and the upper storeys.

When the Shamkhal's army arrived, Akhtougan was safe in his new tower and had his marksmen shoot all the invaders' horses but leave the soldiers unharmed. This display of aggressive leniency rendered the Shamkhal helpless. He was forced to agree to a treaty and the marriage of his daughter to the arrogant thief.

It is a nice story, and paints a picture of the Turkic valleys being a refuge from the rulers of the plains. Place names suggest the valleys were once more ethnically mixed, but they had certainly become entirely Turkic-speaking by the time of Freshfield's visit.

The climber, on conquering Elbrus, led his party to the fashionable spa resort of Pyatigorsk, where Lermontov was killed. He was not impressed by the luxury and dissipation of the holidaymakers, and his group rapidly left, passing south through the garrison town of Nalchik and up the gorge of the Cherek into the high valleys once again.

Freshfield claims the honour of having been the first western European to visit the Cherek valley, and he probably was. It is an extraordinary gorge, guarded by cliffs a thousand metres or more high, and threaded by a stream that slams into the rocks with uncontrolled rage. When Freshfield entered it, the only passage was via a narrow path which rose and fell as it sought to find a way through the narrows. The gorge opened out eventually, extending its flanks into gentle slopes of grass and crops. Along the streams were villages, which this story will visit again. He called the main village Muchol, a name that had become Mukhol eighty years later, when the Soviet troops deported the highlanders from their valleys for their imagined treason, but otherwise was little changed.

The houses were made of heavy stones, and may better be described as manmade caves. The back wall and floor were dug out of the hillside, while the front wall was made of heavy stones laid without mortar. Massive logs supported a roof of packed earth fully two feet thick, with grass growing on it lushly. From above, the houses looked like peculiar terraces, with wicker-work chimneys sticking out of them. From below, they looked above all like burrows. The people exploded out of their houses in wonder, however, when the party of mountaineers appeared. ‘The male population surrounded us in the street; the womankind, being the property of Moslem lords, were obliged to content themselves with what they could see from the house-roofs. Their dress consists of a loose crimson robe, with a cap, from which a row of coins hangs down over the forehead. There was certainly one pretty face amongst them, and there may have been more, but no second opportunity of seeing any of the beauties occurred during our stay,' he wrote.

Among the locals was a religious scholar who had been on the pilgrimage to Mecca and who affected Turkish dress. The villagers
brought ample supplies of food and cake to the visitors, who had a room to themselves fitted out with the ‘brightly-painted trays in which Easterners delight, and pegs, on which hung sheepskins, swords and guns, with the other necessary equipments of a Caucasian when away from home'.

Freshfield normally showed little interest in the people he met, but was clearly won over by the villagers in Muchol, which they left ‘carrying away with us pleasanter recollections of its inhabitants than of those of any other village we had halted at. At Uruspieh we had, it is true, received almost equal kindness; but there the princes were imbued with a tinge of Russian manners, in contrast to which the patriarchal simplicity of Balkar was the more striking.'

Leaving the village, the climbers trekked up the valley towards Georgia, passing guard huts set up to protect the flocks from thieving Georgians who might cross the mountains, then turned east and passed into the land of the Ossetians and out of the scope of this chapter.

On the publication of his book in 1869, Freshfield started something of a craze for visiting the Caucasus. Climbers from Italy, Hungary and Germany as well as Britain came to follow the trail that he had blazed. The slopes never became thronged, like those in Switzerland, but the books written by the pioneering visitors began to resemble modern guidebooks. One of Freshfield's later works warned climbers against hiring the son of a particular man who lived in a house with a green roof, for example, and some of the chiefs appeared again and again, becoming stock characters in the accounts.

Fortunately, however, among the climbers was one who had more curiosity about the inhabitants of the valleys than just their use as porters for exploring the peaks. Florence Grove, who arrived in the Caucasus in 1874, wrote an immensely readable account called
The Frosty Caucasus
which gives us some of the best information on the tribesmen that we have.

His group too crossed over from Georgia, but it crossed first into the Cherek valley, which had so impressed Freshfield at the end of his trip. They too encountered two Georgians at the pass, although these had been obliged to kill their – presumably stolen – bullock, since it was unwilling to slog over the pass. The cattle-rustling seems not to
have been affected by the passing of six years of Russian rule since Freshfield first climbed these peaks.