An Afghan mountain pass in 1830.
“From time to time, God gives birth to men (and you are one of them) who feel a deep passion for acts that expose life in exchange for finding things out.” The words enunciated by Lurgan Sahib in Rudyard Kipling’s famous Roman addressed to Kim during the boy’s training as a spy for the Raj, also serve to describe the adventurer Charles Masson, a real character whose adventures also seem to be drawn from another of Kipling’s famous works, The Man Who wanted to be king because they even offered him a kingdom. With the life of Masson, explorer, soldier, spy, we find ourselves in the realms of capital-letter adventures at the time of the Great Game, the name that helped the political rivalry between Britain and Russia in the 19th century Kipling become popular right in its Kim . On the geopolitical board (as we would now say) of the Great Game, Afghanistan, a vast area largely unknown and hostile to Westerners, occupied the major spots and was the pinnacle of exploration, espionage, and diplomacy. Although there was no open war between Russia and Britain, the British fought three proxy Afghan wars obsessed with controlling this backyard of India.
Charles Masson (1800-1853), real name James Lewis, was an Englishman who defected from the ranks of the Bengal Horse Artillery and had amazing adventures in the northern frontiers of India and Afghanistan, often risking his life and engaging in the dangerous intrigues of the Time. Now, a book that’s a unique blend of scholarly essay and impassioned narration (“This is the story of someone who followed his dreams to the ends of the earth, and what happened when he got there”) dives into the flamboyant character from Masson. , a guy with plenty of villain, scoundrel and liar to highlight another facet of his personality, that of a pioneer in archaeology, and most notably his obsession with finding one of Alexander’s lost cities in the dusty and wild Afghan lands which is magnificently mysterious Alexandria of the Caucasus or Alexandria Paropamisos. In Alexandria, in search of the lost city (Shackleton Books, 2022), Edmund Richardson (Bristol, 40 years old), Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham, leads us on the trail of one of the legendary cities , which the Macedonian conqueror (about twenty, all with his name, Alexander was not exactly humble) founded on his way to the end of the world. He does it by putting us in Masson’s shoes and so fascinated by him that we almost forget that the destination was the lost city, to surrender, like the author, to the excesses of life and the adventures of the intrepid British character.
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The book exudes great emotions and a vehement desire to travel, extreme experiences and narrowness. A póthos, a longing not unlike that which drove Alejandro himself and Masson. One wonders what it is about the Afghan adventure and the Great Game that unleash these emotions. “Masson’s story, like many other stories from the Great Game, is an adventure that changes the way we see the world,” Edmund Richardson told the newspaper. “And that’s the enduring appeal of this moment in this part of the world. Afghanistan gives us a different perspective on ourselves and the world we grew up in.”
historian Edmund Richardson.
Alongside Masson – who goes so far as to graffiti the Bamiyan Buddhas, wander around dressed as a dervish and look odd “even in the best of times” – appears a whole gallery of genuinely curious historical figures. Richardson seems to like Alexander Bukhara Burnes, who is perhaps the best known of the Big Game. “Burnes is one of the greatest travelers and adventurers of the 19th century. And wherever she was, she always felt that she belonged there, whether it was a palace in Britain or a hilltop in Afghanistan. But for me, the characters that never quite fit in – and never feel like they belong anywhere – are the most interesting. Masson is of course the wanderer who is never satisfied, who never finds what he is looking for. But I also feel for one of Masson’s friends, Colonel Stacy, a British Army officer who spent his free time roaming the bazaars of India looking for coins and antiques. Always more interested in understanding India than waging war.”
Ultimately, the quest for the Alexandria of the Caucasus (for the ancient Greeks, the range stretched east and included the Hindu Kush) remains unsolved. Is Richardson aware of this fundamental frustration that lies at the heart of his book? Is there any scientific news on this subject, on this or another lost Alexandria? “Being a historian of antiquity means wanting what you cannot have. Almost all of our testimonies of the past have been lost, from literature to art to archeology. But we always find ways to put the pieces of the ancient world together. And the incomplete stories are the most intriguing. Frustration is also a seduction. That’s how Masson felt when he was looking for Alexandria. And I feel it as I put his story back together and the story of his lost city.” Richardson adds: “Excavations have been made around Bagram, 60 kilometers northwest of Kabul, where Masson believed Caucasus-Alexandria was excavated and is traditionally located suspended in recent years due to instability in Afghanistan. It is quite possible that the Americans found numerous objects during their time at the air force base there. I’m trying to find out if any discoveries have been made. But obviously the US government is not very interested in discussing this part of the story right now and most of the records are classified…”.
Image of Kabul in the mid-19th century.
Richardson, educated at Cambridge and Princeton, has traveled to many of the places discussed in his book; When asked which ones impressed him the most, he replies: “Very early in his travels, Masson crossed the Thar Desert on foot. He didn’t speak a word of the local dialects. I didn’t have a card. I had no plan. As I followed in his footsteps and retraced his path, I couldn’t believe he survived. As you advance further into this desert, the world gradually disappears. The trees give way to the bushes and the bushes to the sand. The landscape changes color from green to brown to gold. The streets are disappearing. There is a tremendous stillness, especially at night, and the feeling of one’s own smallness in the vastness of the world is overwhelming.”
The scholar seems to have become very fond of Masson and his discovery of a then-unexpected ancient mixed culture with Hellenistic and Buddhist elements in Afghanistan, the Kushan Empire. Of the personality traits that most impressed him in the man who became Britain’s top secret service agent in Kabul ‘to fulfill his dream’, he highlights: ‘Masson was a storyteller, a born storyteller. He spent at least a decade traveling across India and Afghanistan all alone with nothing to protect himself but words. He never carried a gun or sword. He never had a group. Night after night he slept alone on the mountainside. They often came close to murdering him, but he continued. He was so in love with Afghanistan and the story of Alexander the Great that he would do anything and risk anything to reach his goal: the lost city of Alexander.
British troops attack Kabul Fortress during the First Afghan War.
It’s odd that Britain has produced as many characters as Masson has. “It produced them because, paradoxically, it was a country that always tried not to produce them,” says the scholar. “Particularly in the 19th century, the culture of the time encouraged staying calm, conforming and not asking questions. But who always wants that? Thus people like Masson or the great Victorian explorer Richard Burton found their own ways of being in the world, even if it meant traversing the planet to find a life that made them happy and fulfilled in a way Britain never could .
Alexandria is the story of a great adventure. Is Edmund Richardson a lover of the genre, sensitive to Kipling, Bengali spearmen, Far Pavilions, the exploits of the Guides and the Frontier epic, or the bravery of Walter Hamilton at the Kabul residence? “I’ve been fascinated by these stories for years, of people finding ways to survive in impossible situations. Travelers and adventurers who are far from home and discover new ways of seeing and understanding the world. They’re stories of people caught between two very different worlds who feel at home nowhere, and that’s part of the pull and shocking power they always have.
After Britain’s involvement in the modern war in Afghanistan, how does Richardson see the longstanding relationship between the two countries? There are so many parallels between past and present conflicts… “For any historian of Afghanistan, the parallels between past and present are inescapable. William Dalrymple explored it very well in Return of the King [Desperta Ferro, 2017], in which he points out how Afghans view their own history and how Western powers never seem to learn from past mistakes. There’s an old Afghan proverb that I quote in Alexandria that says: “First comes an Englishman, a traveller. Then two and they make a card. Then an army comes. So it’s better to kill the first Englishman.”
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