On Horseback Through Asia Minor

By Frederick Burnaby

Book Overview

In the savage winter of 1876 Captain Frederick Burnaby rode 1,000 miles eastwards from Constantinople to see for himself what the Russians were up to in this remote corner of the Great Game battelfield. With wars between Turkey and Russia imminent, he wanted to discover, among other things, whether the Sultan's armies were capable of resisting a determined Tsarist thrust towards Constantinople.

Frederick Gustav Burnaby was no ordinary officer. For a start he was reputed to be the strongest man in the British Army. Nor was he all brawn, being fluent in seven languages and possessing a vigorous and colorful prose style--as readers of this Great Game classic will discover.

With his servant Radford, he spend five months riding across some of the cruellest winter landscape in the world before hastening home to write this best-seller.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192825003
• ISBN13: 9780192825001
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Length: 380 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Great Adventure Book

Fred Burnaby did as much as possible, often using his intelligence over his admirable physical strength! A GOOD READ! This guy traveled all over Russia/Middle East/Africa/Turkey with tales you will be glad you read about!

historical travel writing at its best

This book is a joy for the armchair traveler. It takes you back to a place and a time, to a Turkish winter in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Burnaby's style is immediate, and compellingly readable. He lets you feel the mud, the cold, the mood of the times -- and the exotic east. It's great stuff. Crossing Anatolia by horseback in the winter, trying to track down rumors then circulating in Europe of anti-Armenian sentiment among the Turks, Burnaby finds the rumors to be baseless. But through every step of his wild goose chase, while we follow him through village after village, Burnaby describes in colorful detail the environment, and the people he meets. The first three-quarters of this book read like fiction, like a good, rollicking adventure story. It doesn't have a crisis near the end, like an adventure novel would, but Burnaby's story is all the better for being true.

Now this is real adventure travel!

Who in their right mind would voluntarily undertake an expedition on horseback thru Asia Minor in winter...Frederick Burnaby did in the year 1876, a time of intrigue in the Ottoman Empire and Russia where the forces that shaped WWI and 20th century alliances took root. This is an opportunity to travel back into time and traverse Asia Minor prior to the invention of the automobile. You will meet people from all classes and cultures; Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Persian and more. Burnaby tells of his trip with dry humor and with a suprisingly enlightened view of women, considering the times. This is a good read and worth the price of the book. For adventure travelers with time and money on their hands, retracing Burnaby's route on horseback would be a challenge even today.