History of Persia

Sykes was educated at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and, upon his commission as an officer in the British Army, joined a cavalry regiment in India in 1888. In November 1892, he undertook a secret mission to Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan) to survey, on behalf of the British authorities, the Trans-Caspian Railway, recently completed by the Russians. He made trips to Persia in 1893 and ...