Riding in Byron’s Hoofprints –

A History of Albanian Equestrian Travel

by

CuChullaine O’Reilly FRGS

Lord Byron - explored the mountainous regions of Albania on horseback  in 1809.  This journey later served as the inspiration for his famous poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."  He described himself as "the humblest of thy pilgrims passing by."

While stationed on the island of Corfu in 1838, Captain J. J. Best decided to use his leave to explore Albania on horseback. Consequently he set off in November of that year to ride through the seldom-seen land. The isolated country which the Long Rider, accompanied by his fellow English officers, Captains Murray and Cunynghame, and Lieutenant Shaw, proposed to ride through was a province of the Ottoman Empire and strangers were neither permitted nor welcomed.

In his book, “Excursions in Albania,” Best described how he obtained official army permission to explore the hermit kingdom of Europe. This permission was vitally important because eight months prior to this Prince Pierre Napoleon, son of Lucien Bonaparte, went into the country illegally to hunt, whereupon he and his group became involved in a lethal shoot-out with the mountainous inhabitants, the result of which was that two Albanians were killed and the entire countryside was alerted against foreigners.

English officers had been sneaking into Albania for some time to hunt without any official Albanian authorization. So Best's recognized journey was historically important as it appears he may have been the most important English traveller to explore the country since Lord Byron rode there in 1809. 

Best’s book is packed with a variety of equestrian adventures. However, one piece of equestrian travel advice offered by the author is worth recalling. 

"We had not resumed our journey long before we came to another river, and hearing there were many more which we must cross in our day's journey, we decided on adopting a plan which I strongly recommend to all persons who may meet with similar difficulties in travelling through a wild country with a small allowance of clothes. Sitting in wet clothes is likely to cause rheumatism, so, after some deliberation, we came to the conclusion, that in a warm climate like Albania the lower garments, which we usually wear in the civilized part of Europe, ought to be considered as useless encumbrances, and fit only for fashionables who study their personal appearances.

We therefore (do not blush, gentle reader) established a fashion of our own, and rode without any at all!

By this remarkably simple and ingenious contrivance, for which we took to ourselves a great deal of credit, we preserved a set of dry clothes to put on at the end of our day's ride, and ran no risk of getting rheumatism by keeping in wet ones. We performed a considerable part of this last part of our journey in this extraordinary costume. What a fine subject for a caricaturist! At first I was disposed to laugh a good deal, but a few hours up to my girths in water cooled astonishingly my sense of the ridiculous." 

In his merry story the young English Long Rider recalled how he and his friends avoided being murdered by trigger-happy Albanians, witnessed the miseries of a local slave market and out-rode local brigands. 

Many men are born. Some are remembered. Few become legends.

Such was the fate of the English Long Rider Aubrey Herbert, whose amazing true-life adventures served as the inspiration for one of the most dashing heroes in British literature.

Aubrey Herbert was a renowned traveller who set out at the beginning of the 20^th century to explore Anatolia, Arabia, Mesopotamia, the Middle East and the Balkans. Burdened at birth with poor eyesight, this son of wealthy English aristocrats compensated by becoming a linguist who spoke French, Italian, German, Turkish, Arabic, Greek and Albanian. The latter language, though seldom heard outside its mountainous native land, was to play an influential part in Herbert’s later life.

During the course of his many wanderings, hair-raising quests and narrow escapes from death, Herbert was accompanied by Riza Bey, a notorious Albanian tribal prince, who had thrown his lot in with the wandering Englishman for the lordly sum of ten English pounds a year.

In 1905 Herbert and Riza explored Yemen on horseback, at which time Herbert wrote, “The desert is a cruel place, where strangers rarely thrive.”

The following year they rode from Baghdad, across the Syrian Desert, to Damascus, where the famished Herbert and his Albanian comrade cantered up to the best hotel in the city.

“For three weeks we had been tanned by the sun and stung by the wind, sand and rain. Our clothes were fastened with string. With his gun slung over his shoulder Riza marched before me into the ordered quietness of the dining room. I followed, as well armed as he. There I sat down, and penniless and unknown, ordered a royal luncheon. Silence fell upon the room. Luckily for me our English Consul was there. He backed my name upon a piece of paper for all the money I wanted and for three days I revelled in luxury and baths.”

The remarkable duo next rode across Albania in 1907, a country which Herbert described as being so isolated from the rest of Europe that the chivalry of the Middle Ages still existed there.

In his autobiography, “Ben Kendim,” Herbert recalled an episode from his Albanian adventure which makes for interesting Long Rider reading today.

While riding with his horses and servants through a vile and dangerous portion of the mountains, a soldier stopped the author and demanded his yol teskere (road permit), which was packed away.

Soldier: "O Effendi, O my two eyes, give up thy teskere. The merciful government requires this. Praise be to God !"

Herbert: "God prosper the merciful Government ! This law is not for me, nor will I unpack my luggage."

Soldier: "O educated sir, O corner of my liver, stay. Thou shalt not pass."

Herbert: "O dog, eat dirt, but behold that we part in friendship."

Soldier: "I am grateful to you, O Bey. Depart in peace."

"So," writes Herbert, "in those days were the obstacles of travel surmounted."

When the First World War broke out, Herbert was declared unfit for military service because of his poor eyesight. Not to be put off by a few rules, the intrepid Long Rider was able to launch his military career by the simple expedient of purchasing an officer’s uniform and boarding a troopship bound for France. Upon being discovered, the noted linguist was transferred to Cairo, where he joined the British Intelligence Bureau and worked with T. E. Lawrence.

It was thanks to his amazing ability to blend into foreign cultures, and transform himself linguistically to fit his surrounding environment, that Herbert gained a reputation as being a cultural chameleon who was able to disappear into enemy territory. That reputation inspired the English novelist, John Buchan, to use Herbert as the inspiration for the fictional hero, Sandy Arbuthnot. In Buchan’s most famous novel, Greenmantle, a Herbert style hero infiltrates the Muslim world of the Turkish-Ottoman Empire in search of secret plots, deadly spies and the fabled green mantle once worn by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

When the war was over Herbert returned to England, at which time the fledgling democracy of Albania twice offered its throne to this Englishman they had grown to trust.