In the preface to a book on Ottoman history written in English, the author assures the reader that, "because of the book's target audience," (with very few exceptions) the bibliography contains only items written in English. In the very same paragraph he lavishes praise on the extraordinary multilingualism of some of the bibliographies of the items in his bibliography and urges the reader to check them out.
No book or article was ever improved by taking footnotes out or restricting the bibliography along linguistic lines. Just one example: suppose a student whose first language was French took a college course in which this book was read, and that many of the items the authors eliminated from his bibliography were in French. I'm telling you, both of those things are not just supposin', they're both pretty much guaranteed, and it makes me sad.
A headline says that while Pearl Jam may not be cool, they're great. I'm so uncool that I never until now suspected that Pearl Jam was anything other than possibly too cool.
After 14 pages (6 pages of preface and 8 pages of Chapter 1), a book claiming to be an introduction to information theory explains what information theory is. I'm thinking this explanation belongs right at the beginning of the preface, since this is (supposedly) a book for people who haven't yet been introduced to information theory.
"The Day-Date continues to be the watch par excellence of influential people." Actual quote from rolex.com. I'm thinking that would be more accurate if "influential" was replaced with "insecure." For a lot of Rolex wearers, if the people they're trying to impress don't know how much their Rolex cost, or, worse, don't even notice at all that they're wearing Rolexes, then all of that money was pretty much wasted.
On the other hand, some people laugh at Rolex wearers for only wearing Rolexes to try to impress others, but they secretly want a Rolex so bad, and the only reason they don't have one is they're afraid of being laughed at by watch snobs like themselves, and that's even sillier than wearing a watch only to impress others. (The only sane reason to wear any watch: because you -- not anybody else at all. YOU -- like it. Because YOU think the watch is cool. That's the only sane reason amid all of this madness.)
I'm beginning to think that there may be very few people who share my literary and artistic tastes and my political views and my interests in watches. It might be fewer than few, maybe no-one shares all that with me. I noticed this year that the Leipzig Book Fair and Baselworld overlapped for a couple of days. The more I look into these things, the harder it is to imagine anyone excited by one of these events who has even heard of the other. Oh well, someone's got to be first at everything. Give me a Nobel Prize please, thank you.
Showing posts with label ottoman empire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ottoman empire. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Sunday, October 11, 2015
1841. And Latin. And Slavery
In 1841, Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria signed a treaty agreeing to suppress slave trade. Opposition to slave trade was not always the same thing as abolishing slavery in one's own dominions: Britain, France, Prussia and Austria had already abolished slavery in their home states, although not in all of their colonies, while Russia would not free its serfs until 1861. The Ottoman Empire abolished slave trade from Africa in 1847, although it was not until 1882 that it abolished slavery throughout its territories, it having been already abolished in Egypt in 1877.
In the US South, railroad companies routinely owned slaves. Most of the Southern railways prior to the Civil War were built with slave labor. Much historical research remains to be done concerning the details of the relationship between slavery and railroads in the South.
South Carolina outlawed teaching slaves to read and write in 1740; Virginia did so in 1819. After the Civil War and emancipation, resistance to the education of blacks continued in the US and continues in some circles to this day, although today most no longer dare to express this opposition with complete frankness. If you doubt this, take a good look, in person, please, at a few inner-city public schools and public libraries in the US. While you're there, please take note of how much is being done with such appallingly meagre resources.
The earliest prominent African-American classical scholar of whom I know was William Sanders Scarborough (1852-1926), college president, author of a popular Greek grammar. Gradually, the Classics departments in the US have grown more diverse. Gradually. They cannot be said to have covered themselves with glory in this regard.
Although writing in the Latin language existed as early as the 7th century BC, the earliest writers of Latin to achieve enduring fame were Livius Andronicus (c284-c204 BC), Plautus (c251-c184), Ennius (239-169) and Terence (195-159), and both Livius Andronicus and Terence were born slaves and set free in recognition of their talents. There is some disagreement about who was the very greatest writer of Latin; some say Vergil, some say Cicero, some say Ovid, some say Sallust. Some say Horace, who like the other 4 lived and worked in the 1st century BC. Horace's father was born a slave. In ancient Rome, there most definitely were some major class barriers, and yes indeed, slavery was very widespread; but when it came to literature, the writing of slaves and former slaves and the sons of slaves was mentioned in the same breath as the writing of Emperors and Senators, and, with the exception of some Emperors known to be dangerous because of their vanity and need for flattery, was praised or criticized on its literary merit with no regard to its author's social position.
The Khyber Pass was an important part of the so-called "Silk Road," which was actually several land routes reaching from as far west as Europe to as far east as China, and the major land route between Asia and Europe for thousands of years. Columbus was looking for a passage to India -- and in 1492 until he died in 1506 he thought he had found it -- because in his time and until, well, until the rise of railroads, on long journeys sea travel was generally much quicker than land travel. Besides silk, popular items of trade on the Silk Road included gold, silver, ivory, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, jade, fur, lacquer, pomegranates, carrots, spices, porcelain, weapons, and, of course, human slaves.
In the US South, railroad companies routinely owned slaves. Most of the Southern railways prior to the Civil War were built with slave labor. Much historical research remains to be done concerning the details of the relationship between slavery and railroads in the South.
South Carolina outlawed teaching slaves to read and write in 1740; Virginia did so in 1819. After the Civil War and emancipation, resistance to the education of blacks continued in the US and continues in some circles to this day, although today most no longer dare to express this opposition with complete frankness. If you doubt this, take a good look, in person, please, at a few inner-city public schools and public libraries in the US. While you're there, please take note of how much is being done with such appallingly meagre resources.
The earliest prominent African-American classical scholar of whom I know was William Sanders Scarborough (1852-1926), college president, author of a popular Greek grammar. Gradually, the Classics departments in the US have grown more diverse. Gradually. They cannot be said to have covered themselves with glory in this regard.
Although writing in the Latin language existed as early as the 7th century BC, the earliest writers of Latin to achieve enduring fame were Livius Andronicus (c284-c204 BC), Plautus (c251-c184), Ennius (239-169) and Terence (195-159), and both Livius Andronicus and Terence were born slaves and set free in recognition of their talents. There is some disagreement about who was the very greatest writer of Latin; some say Vergil, some say Cicero, some say Ovid, some say Sallust. Some say Horace, who like the other 4 lived and worked in the 1st century BC. Horace's father was born a slave. In ancient Rome, there most definitely were some major class barriers, and yes indeed, slavery was very widespread; but when it came to literature, the writing of slaves and former slaves and the sons of slaves was mentioned in the same breath as the writing of Emperors and Senators, and, with the exception of some Emperors known to be dangerous because of their vanity and need for flattery, was praised or criticized on its literary merit with no regard to its author's social position.
The Khyber Pass was an important part of the so-called "Silk Road," which was actually several land routes reaching from as far west as Europe to as far east as China, and the major land route between Asia and Europe for thousands of years. Columbus was looking for a passage to India -- and in 1492 until he died in 1506 he thought he had found it -- because in his time and until, well, until the rise of railroads, on long journeys sea travel was generally much quicker than land travel. Besides silk, popular items of trade on the Silk Road included gold, silver, ivory, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, jade, fur, lacquer, pomegranates, carrots, spices, porcelain, weapons, and, of course, human slaves.
Saturday, October 3, 2015
1841. And Latin. And Constantin von Tischendorf
Unlike railroads, the Khyber Pass, the Ottoman Empire and baseball, I've had no difficulty whatsoever in linking Constantin von Tischendorf to the Latin language in 1841. It was as easy as could be, of course.
To be precise, in 1841 he was still just Constantin -- or Konstantin, or Constantinus -- Tischendorf. The "von," or "of," or "de," was awarded to him in 1869 by the Russian Tsar. I don't know how the "of" of an aristocratic title is written in Russian. But most Russian aristocrats, and many German ones too, were perfectly comfortable with the French "de," which makes me a little less self-conscious about my ignorance of the Russian term. Today he's usually Constantin to those reading or writing in French, Konstantin in German and Constantinus in Latin; in his own time he was perfectly comfortable with all 3 spellings, one of many examples of why I oppose those who insist that there is such a thing as "correct" spelling.
But you're saying, "Yeah, yeah, Steve, whatevs, but who was this Tischendorf, and why was it 'of course' easy to link him to Latin?" And because you ask that, I can see that you're no New Testament scholar. He's the most prominent figure in the history of the field. He made the single most spectacular discovery, of all time so far, of 1 Biblical manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus, which he found in several pieces and put back together during 3 visits to St Catherine's Monastery under Mt Sinai in 1844, 1853 and 1859.
(I think that Grenfell and Hunt's discovery of the manuscripts at Oxyrhynchus is more spectacular, but it's a discovery of many manuscripts, not just 1, and of many kinds, not just Biblical.)
Besides this world-famous discovery he also discovered several other manuscripts less well-known to the general public, but nearly comparable to Sinaiticus in the eyes of Biblical scholars.
He was a thoroughly professional academic Biblical scholar, fluent in Greek and Hebrew. And it just so happens that in Western civilization, almost all scholars who are fluent in Greek are fluent in Latin as well. It's a matter of course that ancient Greek texts are published in the West with prefaces and footnotes in Latin. And generally expected that those prefaces and notes will be more easily-understood by most readers than those Greek texts. In Tischendorf's case, there's no need to wonder whether he might have been a rare exception to the rule of mastery of Latin, because, like a typical mid-19th-century scholar in many a field, he wrote and published a great deal in Latin, perhaps more, if you count it all up page-by-page, than in his native German. Tischendorf published quite a lot before he turned 26 in 1841. Here's his 1837 dissertation, Doctrina Pauli apostoli de vi mortis Christi satisfactoria.
(It's ironic that among the ancient people who wrote and spoke Greek, knowledge of Latin was NOT assumed. The Latin-speaking Romans had a great admiration for Greek literature. Young Roman gentlemen were often sent to Athens to complete their educations. But the Greeks tended to underestimate the literary achievements made in Latin, and often they looked down their noses at Latin and refused to learn any of it at all, even after the Romans conquered the Greek-speaking regions, giving great practical benefit to a knowledge of Latin.)
All of the territory Tischendorf covered in Egypt, where he made all of his great manuscript discoveries, was a part of the Ottoman Empire at the time. It seems quite possible that he may have ridden the Cairo-to-Alexandria railway line, which opened in 1856. Given his quite busy professional life after the first discovery of parts of the Codex Sinaiticus in 1844, it seems that he only would have avoided riding European trains at some time during his life (1815-1874) if he had deliberately gone quite far out of his way to do so. It seems a very safe assumption that Tischendorf rode the rails at some point. Perhaps if I could find his diaries, it could go from an assumption to a certainty.
It seems unlikely, however, even though he traveled a bit around Germany and Switzerland before 1841, that he rode a train as early as 1841, simply because there weren't very many railways in that region yet.
As far as Tischendorf ever having been in the Khyber Pass -- I do not yet know enough to rule it out, but I believe that his travels beyond Europe were mostly or entirely confined to Egypt.
I have not yet found any evidence that Tischendorf ever heard of baseball, nor that during his lifetime any baseball players ever heard of him. But you never know. (I'm picturing some various tenuous possibility such as Mark Twain meeting Tischendorf during his travels in Germany and mentioning baseball. That's a pretty tenuous possibility, I think.)
To be precise, in 1841 he was still just Constantin -- or Konstantin, or Constantinus -- Tischendorf. The "von," or "of," or "de," was awarded to him in 1869 by the Russian Tsar. I don't know how the "of" of an aristocratic title is written in Russian. But most Russian aristocrats, and many German ones too, were perfectly comfortable with the French "de," which makes me a little less self-conscious about my ignorance of the Russian term. Today he's usually Constantin to those reading or writing in French, Konstantin in German and Constantinus in Latin; in his own time he was perfectly comfortable with all 3 spellings, one of many examples of why I oppose those who insist that there is such a thing as "correct" spelling.
But you're saying, "Yeah, yeah, Steve, whatevs, but who was this Tischendorf, and why was it 'of course' easy to link him to Latin?" And because you ask that, I can see that you're no New Testament scholar. He's the most prominent figure in the history of the field. He made the single most spectacular discovery, of all time so far, of 1 Biblical manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus, which he found in several pieces and put back together during 3 visits to St Catherine's Monastery under Mt Sinai in 1844, 1853 and 1859.
(I think that Grenfell and Hunt's discovery of the manuscripts at Oxyrhynchus is more spectacular, but it's a discovery of many manuscripts, not just 1, and of many kinds, not just Biblical.)
Besides this world-famous discovery he also discovered several other manuscripts less well-known to the general public, but nearly comparable to Sinaiticus in the eyes of Biblical scholars.
He was a thoroughly professional academic Biblical scholar, fluent in Greek and Hebrew. And it just so happens that in Western civilization, almost all scholars who are fluent in Greek are fluent in Latin as well. It's a matter of course that ancient Greek texts are published in the West with prefaces and footnotes in Latin. And generally expected that those prefaces and notes will be more easily-understood by most readers than those Greek texts. In Tischendorf's case, there's no need to wonder whether he might have been a rare exception to the rule of mastery of Latin, because, like a typical mid-19th-century scholar in many a field, he wrote and published a great deal in Latin, perhaps more, if you count it all up page-by-page, than in his native German. Tischendorf published quite a lot before he turned 26 in 1841. Here's his 1837 dissertation, Doctrina Pauli apostoli de vi mortis Christi satisfactoria.
(It's ironic that among the ancient people who wrote and spoke Greek, knowledge of Latin was NOT assumed. The Latin-speaking Romans had a great admiration for Greek literature. Young Roman gentlemen were often sent to Athens to complete their educations. But the Greeks tended to underestimate the literary achievements made in Latin, and often they looked down their noses at Latin and refused to learn any of it at all, even after the Romans conquered the Greek-speaking regions, giving great practical benefit to a knowledge of Latin.)
All of the territory Tischendorf covered in Egypt, where he made all of his great manuscript discoveries, was a part of the Ottoman Empire at the time. It seems quite possible that he may have ridden the Cairo-to-Alexandria railway line, which opened in 1856. Given his quite busy professional life after the first discovery of parts of the Codex Sinaiticus in 1844, it seems that he only would have avoided riding European trains at some time during his life (1815-1874) if he had deliberately gone quite far out of his way to do so. It seems a very safe assumption that Tischendorf rode the rails at some point. Perhaps if I could find his diaries, it could go from an assumption to a certainty.
It seems unlikely, however, even though he traveled a bit around Germany and Switzerland before 1841, that he rode a train as early as 1841, simply because there weren't very many railways in that region yet.
As far as Tischendorf ever having been in the Khyber Pass -- I do not yet know enough to rule it out, but I believe that his travels beyond Europe were mostly or entirely confined to Egypt.
I have not yet found any evidence that Tischendorf ever heard of baseball, nor that during his lifetime any baseball players ever heard of him. But you never know. (I'm picturing some various tenuous possibility such as Mark Twain meeting Tischendorf during his travels in Germany and mentioning baseball. That's a pretty tenuous possibility, I think.)
Friday, October 2, 2015
1841. And Latin. And Baseball
Baseball was around by 1841, and, as many of you undoubtedly already know, Abner Doubleday didn't invent it. You may not be aware, however, that Doubleday never claimed to have invented it. I was not aware that he had never made any such claim, and I was getting set to denounce him as a lying self-promoter, but when doing research for this post I discovered that Abner Doubleday, who lived from 1819 to 1893 and was a US Army man from the time he entered West Point in 1838 until he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1873, never mentioned baseball once in his letters, diaries or his two books, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, published in 1876, and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, published in 1882. The only time Doubleday can be shown to have mentioned baseball at all was in 1871 when he filed a request for baseball equipment for the men under his command.
It seems that no claim that Doubleday invented baseball can be found until the 20th century, years after his death. There are some signs that Doubleday was a cantankerous braggart at times, but absolutely no proof that he bragged about inventing baseball. Whoever made that up, it seems very unlikely that it was he.
James Naismith (a Canadian btw) invented basketball in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891, but no one invented baseball. It evolved over the course of centuries. Baseball and softball have many undeniable similarities to rounders. The earliest reliable report of a baseball game being played comes (like Naismith) from Canada in 1838. Overzealous American patriotism and a feeling that baseball was "America's game" probably account for why some felt the need to make up the story of Doubleday inventing the game in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. I don't think baseball was invented in Canada in 1838, I think it was played in the US and Canada before 1838, and quite possibly in other countries as well.
I know: some of you are saying, "Hey, Steve, this is all really fascinating and so forth, but were there any poems written in Latin about baseball in or before 1841?"
I don't know. I thought for sure I'd be able to find a slew -- a veritable slew -- of translations of "Casey at the Bat" into Latin, but that poem wasn't even written in English until 1888, and to my great surprise, the only translations of it I've been able to find are one into French, "Casey au bâton" by Paul Laurendeau (anOTHer Canadian!) and 2 into Hebrew: "Hator Shel Casey Lachbot" by Menachem Less and "Casey BaMachbayt" by Jason H Elbaum. I have yet to find anything written about baseball in Latin, original or translated from another language, verse or prose. Total failure on that front.
I've also found nothing at all about baseball being played in the Ottoman Empire. Surely that's just personal failure on my part, not a lack of anything to be found.
As far as baseball somewhere near the Khyber Pass: surely it will come as no surprise that an Afghani national baseball team has been formed since the arrival of US military personnel in that country in 2002. In 2013 they lost a game to their neighbor across the Pass, Pakistan, by a score of 34-0, which shouldn't come as a total surprise when you consider that the skills required in baseball and in cricket are similar in many ways, and that Pakistan won the Cricket World Cup in 1992 and was a close runner-up to Australia in 1999, while Afghanistan has had had only 1 appearance each in a World Cup and a World Twenty20. In fact, although cricket has been played in Afghanistan since the 19th century, Afghanistan's national cricket team is only a few years older than its national baseball team.
As far as baseball and railroads are concerned, connections are many and should be fairly obvious. Union Pacific claims that "By 1876, game times were being scheduled to coincide with train schedules," and the claim doesn't seem farfetched. Finding a connection between baseball and railroads as early as 1841 is proving more difficult.
As to whether baseball came to Mexico as early as the Mexican American War of 1846 to 1848, let alone 1841, that is controversial, although a confluence of baseball and railroads in Mexico as early as that war can be ruled out. Plans for Mexican rail lines began in 1837; however, the first line, between Mexico City and Veracruz, did not open until 1873.
It seems that no claim that Doubleday invented baseball can be found until the 20th century, years after his death. There are some signs that Doubleday was a cantankerous braggart at times, but absolutely no proof that he bragged about inventing baseball. Whoever made that up, it seems very unlikely that it was he.
James Naismith (a Canadian btw) invented basketball in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891, but no one invented baseball. It evolved over the course of centuries. Baseball and softball have many undeniable similarities to rounders. The earliest reliable report of a baseball game being played comes (like Naismith) from Canada in 1838. Overzealous American patriotism and a feeling that baseball was "America's game" probably account for why some felt the need to make up the story of Doubleday inventing the game in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. I don't think baseball was invented in Canada in 1838, I think it was played in the US and Canada before 1838, and quite possibly in other countries as well.
I know: some of you are saying, "Hey, Steve, this is all really fascinating and so forth, but were there any poems written in Latin about baseball in or before 1841?"
I don't know. I thought for sure I'd be able to find a slew -- a veritable slew -- of translations of "Casey at the Bat" into Latin, but that poem wasn't even written in English until 1888, and to my great surprise, the only translations of it I've been able to find are one into French, "Casey au bâton" by Paul Laurendeau (anOTHer Canadian!) and 2 into Hebrew: "Hator Shel Casey Lachbot" by Menachem Less and "Casey BaMachbayt" by Jason H Elbaum. I have yet to find anything written about baseball in Latin, original or translated from another language, verse or prose. Total failure on that front.
I've also found nothing at all about baseball being played in the Ottoman Empire. Surely that's just personal failure on my part, not a lack of anything to be found.
As far as baseball somewhere near the Khyber Pass: surely it will come as no surprise that an Afghani national baseball team has been formed since the arrival of US military personnel in that country in 2002. In 2013 they lost a game to their neighbor across the Pass, Pakistan, by a score of 34-0, which shouldn't come as a total surprise when you consider that the skills required in baseball and in cricket are similar in many ways, and that Pakistan won the Cricket World Cup in 1992 and was a close runner-up to Australia in 1999, while Afghanistan has had had only 1 appearance each in a World Cup and a World Twenty20. In fact, although cricket has been played in Afghanistan since the 19th century, Afghanistan's national cricket team is only a few years older than its national baseball team.
As far as baseball and railroads are concerned, connections are many and should be fairly obvious. Union Pacific claims that "By 1876, game times were being scheduled to coincide with train schedules," and the claim doesn't seem farfetched. Finding a connection between baseball and railroads as early as 1841 is proving more difficult.
As to whether baseball came to Mexico as early as the Mexican American War of 1846 to 1848, let alone 1841, that is controversial, although a confluence of baseball and railroads in Mexico as early as that war can be ruled out. Plans for Mexican rail lines began in 1837; however, the first line, between Mexico City and Veracruz, did not open until 1873.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
1841. And Latin. And The Ottoman Empire
I have not been able to find much information about the knowledge or use of the Latin language in the Ottoman Empire in 1841. This of course should by no means be understood as indicating that there is little or nothing to be found out. In the 1840's the Empire was in the midst of a massive program of reform, re-organization and modernization which involved some imitation of Western Europe in things such as legal codes, finance, modes of dress and also education. Whether the latter included the great emphasis on Classical scholarship to be found at the time in Western universities, I do not know.
Here is a report by an Englishman who inspected the Seraglio collection of Greek manuscripts in 1907; his report, disappointing, to say the least, to anyone who had imagined a vast store of such manuscripts, includes one 15th-century "Lexicon Latino-Graecum et Graeco-Latinum."
Every now and then a Westerner would publish an account in Latin of his sojourn to the exotic Ottoman east, from Pierre Gilles' De topographia Constantinopoleos: et de illivs antiqvitatibvs, published in 1561,
to Victor Guerin's thesis De Ora Palaestinae: A Promontorio Carmelo Usque Ad Urbem Joppen Pertinente, published in 1856, in which descriptions of what Guerin himself had experienced in Palastine in 1852 and 1854 only very seldom interrupt the flow of quotations from ancient Greeks and Romans, the Bible and Crusaders.
I have mentioned before on the blog how Lord Charlemont, on his visit to Constantinople in 1749, asked his guide, whom he described as a "sensible Turk," whether the Seraglio library had by any chance preserved the lost books of Livy. Such anecdotes make one very curious about what such "sensible Turks" might have had to say about the eccentric Westerners who occasionally popped up in their midst. Who knows how much more I could tell you about things like that if I were fluent in Turkish or Arabic.
There appear to have been no railroads anywhere within the Empire in 1841; the earliest I have been able to find is the Alexandria to Cairo line, in operation from 1856. It seems that large-scale building of railways in the Ottoman dominions did not get underway until the 1880's. The lines dynamited by Lawrence of Arabia and his followers during WWI would've been 30 years old or less at the time.
The borders of the Ottoman Empire never advanced further eastward than the western shores of the Euphrates river and the Caspian Sea, about 1000 miles away from the Khyber Pass in a straight line by air, somewhat more than that by train and/or car.
Here is a report by an Englishman who inspected the Seraglio collection of Greek manuscripts in 1907; his report, disappointing, to say the least, to anyone who had imagined a vast store of such manuscripts, includes one 15th-century "Lexicon Latino-Graecum et Graeco-Latinum."
Every now and then a Westerner would publish an account in Latin of his sojourn to the exotic Ottoman east, from Pierre Gilles' De topographia Constantinopoleos: et de illivs antiqvitatibvs, published in 1561,
to Victor Guerin's thesis De Ora Palaestinae: A Promontorio Carmelo Usque Ad Urbem Joppen Pertinente, published in 1856, in which descriptions of what Guerin himself had experienced in Palastine in 1852 and 1854 only very seldom interrupt the flow of quotations from ancient Greeks and Romans, the Bible and Crusaders.
I have mentioned before on the blog how Lord Charlemont, on his visit to Constantinople in 1749, asked his guide, whom he described as a "sensible Turk," whether the Seraglio library had by any chance preserved the lost books of Livy. Such anecdotes make one very curious about what such "sensible Turks" might have had to say about the eccentric Westerners who occasionally popped up in their midst. Who knows how much more I could tell you about things like that if I were fluent in Turkish or Arabic.
There appear to have been no railroads anywhere within the Empire in 1841; the earliest I have been able to find is the Alexandria to Cairo line, in operation from 1856. It seems that large-scale building of railways in the Ottoman dominions did not get underway until the 1880's. The lines dynamited by Lawrence of Arabia and his followers during WWI would've been 30 years old or less at the time.
The borders of the Ottoman Empire never advanced further eastward than the western shores of the Euphrates river and the Caspian Sea, about 1000 miles away from the Khyber Pass in a straight line by air, somewhat more than that by train and/or car.
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