3-065-769 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Circassian of the Soubash, from the "All Round the World", 1874. Engraving of a sketch 'by Mr. W. Simpson, the well-known travelling Special Artist of this Journal...This sketch is to be seen... at the Burlington Gallery in Piccadilly...He knows territories around the Levant, the Red Sea, and the Black Sea...to the shores of Circassia...Mr. Simpson [here] presents a study of Circassian national character and costume...It is as lifelike and truthful as most of his other sketches. The Tcherkes, as their name is properly written, inhabit the lower parts of the mountain valleys on that side of the Caucasus...Since the Circassian struggle for independence, under Schamyl, was suppressed by the military power of Russia, a large number of the Mohammedans have chosen to emigrate into Asiatic Turkey. Their place has been partly supplied by Armenians removing their habitation from the Turkish dominion into that of the Czar. But the class of which Mr. Simpson's pencil has furnished a characteristic type may still be met with. In the details of this highland chieftain's apparel, we notice a peculiar sort of bandoliers [ie a gazyr], a row of small receptacles for cartridges, or powder and bullets, suspended across the man's breast'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.