We marched into Bokhara on ÁrminiusVambéthe 12th of July, and betook ourselves straight to the spacious _tekkie_ (convent), shaded by trees, which, forming a regular square, is provided with forty-eight cells on the ground floor. The chief of this building was the descendant of some saint, the court-priest of the Emir, and a man enjoying universal respect. Hadji Salih, my intimate friend and companion, had been at one time a pupil of this holy man, our present host, and, in that capacity, he took upon himself at once to introduce me and the more prominent members of our party to him. The recommendation and introduction coming from such a source, we were received in the most friendly manner by the chief of the tekkie; and having indulged in half an hour's conversation with me, his satisfaction seemed to know no bounds, and he loudly expressed his regret at the Badevlet's (his Majesty the Emir's) absence from Bokhara, which prevented him from taking me to the Emir at once. He immediately ordered a separate cell, in the most hospitable location near the mosque, to be assigned to me, one of my neighbours being a learned mollah, and the other Hadji Salih. The tekkie was full of celebrities, and I had happened to light on the principal nest of religious fanaticism in Bokhara. The official reporter had given information of my arrival as an event of great importance, and Rahmet-Bi, the first officer of the Emir and commander-in-chief in Bokhara during the Emir's absence on his campaigns in Kokhand, was making inquiries of the hadjis about me, on the first day of my stay. But as the Emir's power does not extend to the tekkie, the inquisitiveness of his first officer was made so little account of, that nobody had thought it worth while to inform me of the same. In speaking of me my friends said: "Hadji Reshid is not only a good Mussulman, but a learned mollah besides; and he who entertains a suspicion against him commits a most grievous sin."
On the following day I went out with Hadji Salih and four others of our party, to take a look at the city and its bazaar. Although the squalid and rickety buildings and the streets covered with sand, one foot thick, did not tend to place "noble Bokhara" in the most favourable and imposing light, yet upon entering the bazaar and beholding the thronging multitude animating it, I could not refrain from being intensely interested at the novel sight. The beauty and wealth of the bazaar were not the things that surprised me, so much as the immense and multifarious variety in races, dress and manners which struck the eye everywhere. The type of Iran was visible in the faces of a great portion of the people; but the Tartar features, which could be seen in all their shades, from the Uzbeg to the wild Kirghiz, claimed my particular attention owing to their prominence. The last, and generally the Turanian race, may be distinguished from the people of Iran by their heavy and awkward gait. Jews and Hindoos could be seen in great numbers, too. I cast, now and then, a stealthy glance at the contents of the shops, finding in them but few goods of the manufacture of Western Europe, but Russian manufactures were all the more extensively represented in them. Home-made articles have a separate place assigned to them in the bazaar, and it is to this place that the Kirghizes, the Kiptchaks, the Kalmuks and the inhabitants of Chinese Tartary resort to make their purchases of clothing.