Sir Percy Sykes: Explorer Spy Diplomat Persia and the Great Game

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Persia in the Great Game: Sir Percy Sykes Explorer Soldier Spy

Anthony Wynn

Sir Percy Molesworth Sykes was a personality straight from the pages of a Rudyard Kipling novel. He combined the life of adventure for which T E Lawrence is famous for and a love for adventure which made Sir Richard Burton the cynosure of Victorian society. He traveled widely in Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia and as he traveled he explored the terrain  and sent detailed maps of the region to the Indian Army Intelligence Headquarters at Shimla. He lived and worked in dangerous times. Persia, an unstable patchwork of tribes and sectarian associations, was stirring intellectually to a new kind of political awakening. A movement aimed at transforming Persia into a Constitutional State was gathering momentum and by the first decade of the twentieth century had virtually rendered the Qajar Dynasty both powerless and seriously undermined. Percy Sykes was the Consul posted at Mashhad at a critical juncture and his long standing friendship with the Crown Prince made him a valuable source of political information for the English.

Percy Sykes was born in 1867 in Yorkshire and died in 1945. Educated in the well known Rugby School, Sykes joined the Sandhurst Military Academy and was posted in India. He was based in Sialkot with the 16th Lancers. Along with Francis Younghusband, Syskes too was seconded to the Indian Army and its Intelligence wing. And in this, Sykes was eminently successful as he was able to explore little known mountain passes, traverse the inhospitable Lut Desert, explore the migratory routes of Turkoman nomads as they crossed from Central Asia into Afghanistan and thence into Persia. As he wrote in his History of Exploration his guides in his exploration were the accounts of Alexander's conquests, particularly that of Arrian and the travels of Marco Polo. Sykes was a protégé of Sir Mortimer Durand whose biography he wrote in which he expressed admiration for the tireless manner in which he pursued British interests in Afghanistan which till today is institutionalised in the form of the Durand Line, the boundary between Afghanistan and India, now of course, the line dividing Pakistan from the Pashtun heartland of Afghanistan. Percy Sykes was well trained in Persian and so was able to acquire impressive intelligence.

Persia in the late nineteenth century was the target of two powerful and expansionist Empires: Britain and Russia. The Great Game as Rudyard Kipling called it was played out from the Pamirs, across the Taklamakan Desert, the snow capped peaks of the Hindu Kush to Tehran and Shriaz. An the Consul in Mashhad  and Kerman, Sykes kept a close watch on Russia. The construction of the Trans Caspian Railway had made it easier for the Russians to move its military rapidly and the tribes inhabiting the border areas were constantly in a state of what Ibn haldun called fitna, a state of political unrest. negotiations with tribal leaders on behalf of the Indian Government meant also dealing with the regime in Persia whose writ barely extended as far east as the Baluchi border. The increasing old of Russia over Tashkent meant that Indian trading interests suffered.

During his years of service, Sykes explored 3000 miles in the Himalayas and discovered no less than 40 passes that had strategic value. His detailed Reports which he submitted to the Legation in Tehran eventually found their way from the Foreign Office to the Royal Geographical Society. The task of communication was still filled with difficulties as the engineers sent to man the British Persian Telegraph Company were killed sometimes within days of reaching their posts.

Sir Percy Sykes was a keen observer of the landscape he surveyed. He noticed that the qanats that supplied water to the fields on the border between Baluchistan and Persia had been destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century and agriculture had not quite recovered since. He also was intrigued by the spectacular structures he saw in the region adjoining Persia and Baluchistan. 

The windmills that harnessed the violent desert winds were described vividly by Sykes and they were still functioning when he wrote about them. Huge parallel wall made of mud capture the wind and funnels it towards giant sails that drive timber shafts to which are attached grinding stones. Some of these structures are still extant and are now recognised as UNESCO world heritage sites.

The discovery of Oil in Persia and the transition from coal burning engines to oil powered ships in the Royal Navy added another element in the tense relationship between Persia and the British. With Germany beginning to take an interest in the region in order to use political Islam as an ideology to motivate anti British feeling among Muslims all over Asia men like Sykes had their hands full. At Kashgar Sykes helped Sir Aurel Stein smuggle 146 cartons and boxes of antiquities into India and till this day the Chinese have neither forgotten nor forgiven this vandalism of their cultural heritage.

This book is well written and is based o the personal papers correspondence and Reports of Percy Sykes. In 1915 he was knighted for his services, receiving the KCIE. He died in 1945.