The Dervish Bowl

‘A compelling portrait of one of the 19th century’s most characteristic heroes’
Asian Review of Books

‘Arminius Vambéry was one of the shadier characters to travel the fabled Silk Roads through Persia to Central Asia. His mostly forgotten story is vividly told in Anabel Loyd’s lively and entertaining biography.’
Anthony Sattin, author of Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World

‘There have been many hagiographies written about Arminius Vambery – mainly by Arminius himself – so it’s refreshing to read of his life in unvarnished detail. Anabel Loyd captures the different facets and flaws of this complex traveller, who seemed to fit everywhere and nowhere.’
Chris Aslan, author of Unravelling the Silk Road: Travels and Textiles in Central Asia

‘Anabel Loyd’s biography of Arminius Vambéry is a fascinating book and a masterly study. It is both a mine of so far unknown information as well as a thrilling read which will benefit both the scholar and the general reader.’
Christoph Baumer, author of The History of Central Asia in Four Volumes

Who was Arminius Vambéry? A poverty-stricken, Jewish autodidact; a linguist; traveller, and writer; or a sometime Zionist, inspiration for Dracula’s nemesis, and British secret agent?

Vambéry wrote his own story many times over. And it was these often highly embroidered accounts of journeys through Persia and Central Asia that saw him acclaimed in Victorian England as an intrepid explorer and daring adventurer. Against the backdrop of the ‘Great Game’, in which Russia and Britain jostled for territory, influence, and control of the borders and gateways to India and its wealth, Vambéry played the roles of hero and double-dealer, of fascinated witness and Imperial charlatan.

The Dervish Bowl is the story of these competing narratives, a compelling investigation of the ever-changing persona Vambéry created for himself, and of the man who emerges from his private correspondence and the accounts of both his friends and his enemies, many of whom were themselves major players in the geopolitical adventures of the volatile nineteenth-century – a time when Britain’s ambitions for her empire were at their height, yet nothing and no one was quite as they seemed.

ANABEL LOYD has been a regular columnist for the Indian Telegraph for many years. She has lived and worked in India and has a particular interest in the Indian history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Read Anabel’s blog piece, ‘No Change for Turkmenistan’ on the RSAA blog here.