sang the old moss-trooper who had looted Crichton’s stable; so, agreeably to “the Galliard’s” principles, they went back again to the village, there to fire shots and shout contumely till the Kurds were awakened and came out. Then of course a fight resulted, in which three or four men{298} were killed. This excited our wrath; not because we grudged them a Kurd or so; still less the sheep that they had fairly earned, and which were very likely theirs originally anyhow; but because among the Kurdish dead was a policeman (the Agha of Châl being a Government mudir among other things), and we feared that a dead policeman would take a great deal of explaining! However, it all ended happily, the officer not being missed! Still, we thought it only our duty to urge the desirability of making up the feud upon Mar Shimun; and asked him if he could not use his patriarchal influence in that direction. His Holiness quite agreed with us that it was most desirable. “Really, the Christians ought to make peace now. They are three corpses and four guns to the good!”

With their “larkishness” goes also a boy’s touchiness and sensitiveness to a slight. The writer once went down through the district of Tkhuma, having as companion one of the chiefs of the canton, whose guest he naturally was when passing the man’s village. A few weeks later he returned; to be met at the border of the district by another chief, one Yalda, of almost equal influence with his previous host.

“It is my hope that you are going to stay with me this time Rabbi.”

As the answer was not given immediately, the gentleman proceeded to explain the necessity of the case.

“You see, you stayed with Giwergis when you were here before; and that was all right, as you came down with him. This time though, you ought to come to me. If you do I shall be very glad to see you; but if you don’t—well I fear that the only thing for me is to shoot you!”

The invitation was accepted, and no more pleasant host could any man have had.

A sad scandal is related of a certain apostle of teetotalism who found himself in a mountain village on the day of a wedding feast. He was cordially invited to stop and share in the feasting and dancing; and did so—to reprove excesses and see that decorum was preserved. In due course the governor of the feast invited him to take wine with{299} him, and this the total abstainer a little too curtly declined. The mountaineer bristled up immediately. Such a refusal was a downright insult. And literally at the pistol’s mouth the poor guest had to gulp the draught down. Nor was that the end of his woes. The other guests were all ripe for frolic; and all that afternoon the unhappy man was haunted by a procession of rollicking caterans, each equipped with a practicable rifle and a large goblet of wine. Of course there was no refusing such very insistent hospitality; and over the inevitable dénouement we feel ourselves constrained to draw a veil.

The fact is though, that boys with guns in their hands can be dangerous, when their feelings are hurt, or when for any reason they are frightened; and then they may turn against their best friends. Only once in his twenty-five years of residence did Dr. Browne find these mountaineers turn really nasty with him, and on that occasion, the men concerned were our good friends of Tkhuma; though the blame did not really rest on them.

A certain Roman Catholic intriguer in the nation desired to dispose of Dr. Browne’s influence, and was not particular either as to the methods he employed or as to the result of them, whether for the foreigner or for his own people. Having ascertained that Dr. Browne was proposing a journey into Tkhuma, and having discovered some details of his plans, he sent a message down into the district. “See here, that Englishman is coming down your way with a companion; and his real intent is to destroy your religion. You will see that when he comes he will do this and that—things that look quite innocent, but which will be a sign to you that I speak truth. Then do you deal with him according to your zeal.”

Down came the Englishman with his companion, and did the acts named, to find that he had roused a storm. For some days both were kept as prisoners in the house of one of the village chiefs; and matters got so far that the leading men were actually debating, in the presence of their captives, whether they should kill them or not. This question occasioned a quarrel, and knives were drawn in{300} the dispute. Then Dr. Browne stepped forward, knowing of course what the trouble was about (for he spoke the Syriac tongue like a native), but (we are convinced) only stirred by the scandal of Christians quarrelling and fighting with one another. He, the prisoner in their hands, rebuked them paternally for that sin; talked to them generally for their good; and finally issued his orders that before proceeding with the discussion the two that had drawn knives on one another should exchange the kiss of peace! Well, they did. Being slightly ashamed of themselves, they kissed and made friends like the children that they are. But after they had done that, at the order of the Englishman, it was really impossible to go on discussing whether they should kill him; and so the whole incident closed!

Courage, coolness and humour are a necessity for the European who would wander here; but with them he is practically as safe as in London. Men deficient in those qualities may at any time find themselves in an awkward position; as befell a certain unfortunate “Frank” who came into the land to study Kurdish folk-lore, “without a pass from Roderick Dhu.” He had disregarded the advice given him, to take some “Nestorian” from the house of the Patriarch, who could guarantee his character and explain his naturally puzzling proceedings to both Kurd and Christian; and took instead an Armenian who knew nothing of the land.

Accompanied by this man, he went down into the land of Tkhuma, which is as wild a district of Christian ashirets as any in Hakkiari. It was just after harvest, and folk had nothing to do; so a little friendly fight was in progress between two Christian villages. Of course the foreign traveller was stopped and questioned by armed men, who demanded who he was and what he had come for. Had he told the truth, and said that he was neutral in the dispute, he might have been as safe as the Kenites were, when Sisera was fighting out his quarrel with certain Israelitish ashirets: but his wretched Armenian was panic-struck, and was at some pains to explain that his master had come down in the interests of one particular faction, and was the{301} intimate friend of its leader. As a matter of fact (though he did not realize it till too late), the gentlemen who had stopped him were prominent leaders on the other side. Hence, taking the man’s own account of himself as true, they were much disposed to deal with him as an enemy and a spy.

Fortunately they postponed sentence till they had reported the case to Mar Shimun; and the Patriarch ordered that he should be released, that his property (which had naturally been confiscated) should be returned to him, and that he should be conducted out of the district. They obeyed, only retaining one “kodak” as a trophy, and led him to their frontier. Still, it was not in human nature to refrain from representing that the journey was very dangerous; and that they could not dream of letting so honoured a man go without a large escort—and a large fee for each member of it, payable in advance.

Thus escorted, the traveller was taken to the border of the Christian territory, where as luck would have it, they encountered a party of Châl Kurds.

“What have you there?” said the Châl men.

“A Frank of sorts, who says he wants to study your manners and customs,” said the Tkhumans.

“Hand him over to us, and he shall have ample opportunity,” said the Kurds.

So he had; for having been once robbed by the Christians, he was now robbed over again by the Kurds, and this time there was no Patriarch to appeal to. Thus it was a very tattered and woe-begone traveller who was at last delivered at Amadia. He was certainly uninjured personally, save in self-esteem; but otherwise nothing was left him but the clothes he stood up in, which were not many; and perhaps he was fortunate in retaining as much as that!

Amadia is the nearest Government centre to the Tyari and Tkhuma districts; and in connexion with it we may here recount an adventure of that worthy old qasha Tuma mentioned in the last chapter. His reverence had come down to the place, accompanied by a deacon, on some business of his own; and both had been promptly arrested.{302} It was not for any particular crime, but perhaps in the expectation that some reason would turn up if they were kept long enough; perhaps on the principle of tribal responsibility for the acts of any individual, for the men of Tyari had been doing some raiding about that time!

Government having some experience of the fact that Tyari men are hard to catch and harder to hold, a sentry was kept permanently in the cell with the pair, and another posted outside it. Still, the qasha’s pocket-knife was not taken from him, but left him for his meals. Of course, the cell door had to be opened at times; and on one of these occasions the key (which according to local custom was not of metal, but a notched slip of wood) was given to the qasha to hold for a moment. Instantly he “spaced” the notches with his thumb, which is the usual way of measuring anything in this country, and noted the shape of the key. Before very long, the sentry contracted the habit of going to sleep in the cell; and in those intervals, priest and deacon contrived to get a slat of wood out of the roof, and set to work with no other guide than the memory of the measure taken, to make a duplicate key. It was soon finished; and one morning the sentry’s slumber was rudely interrupted, by finding both his prisoners at his throat. He was tied up and gagged quietly; and then came the exciting moment, when the key was first tried in the door. Greatly to the credit of the locksmiths, it fitted; and soon the sentry outside the door, who was not more watchful than his fellow, was safely locked up beside him in the cell and left to await discovery. The priest and deacon were off, on the road to their own mountains; with two good Martini rifles, late Government property, as compensation for their stay at the Government house!

Wild tribesmen on the one side with a tribesman’s virtues and vices, attractive mischief-loving boys on another, are all these mountaineers; but there are other aspects of their character that show them as capable of acting like devoted men. This comes out most markedly in their attachment to their own historic Church and their readiness to work on its behalf. One good case of this came to the writer{303}’s knowledge in the village of Rabat, in Tal. Here the brother of the headman of the village was murdered by some Kurds; and the crime must have been one of peculiar atrocity, for even the leathery Kurdish conscience was so severely shocked that the local Aghas decreed that a blood-fine must be paid; and a sum of £60 was actually handed over in cash at their order. The headman accepted the money, as a sign that the feud was finally closed, but declared that he would take no compensation for his brother’s death. He handed over the whole sum (a far larger amount than he had ever seen before or was likely to see again) for the repair of the village church, which stood in great need of it. Spurred by this example the whole village turned to, and the edifice was pulled down and rebuilt; every man, woman and child in the place helping to drag the stones from the mountain, tending the kilns where the lime was burnt, or assisting in some other way. The land being almost treeless, the fuel for the kilns was provided by the sacrifice of many of the walnut trees that grew round the village; and be it noted that these were not only valuable property in themselves, but also the source of the one luxury allowed to these people during their long and rigid Lent. The gift meant that the donors would most of them live on millet bread and water, and nothing else, for several Lents to come; so it may be understood that those who gave a walnut tree gave what cost more than the signing of a cheque. No man took a penny for his labour, save a party of artisans from another district, under whose directions the whole was carried out;[136] and as these guilds of builders have that secret of proportion that a modern architect often strives for in vain, the result has been a singularly impressive building, vaulted, and proof against everything save wanton destruction; a monument for some centuries to come of the devotion of the villagers to their church.

True it is that this devotion may take bizarre shapes at times. One district was annoyed by the proselytising efforts of some Romish teachers, who were seeking (of{304} course quite rightly on their principles) to draw away the Nestorians to another obedience, and had succeeded with a certain number of them. A zealous deacon of the old church, much annoyed at this declension from the ways and faith of the fathers, disclosed to the writer a notable scheme for soaking the walls of the little Roman chapel with paraffin, and setting light to it during service, so as to dispose of chapel and worshippers at once.

In some natural horror, his Rabbi rebuked him, making him recite the Sixth Commandment and other appropriate passages of scripture. He certainly promised to respect Western prejudices in the matter, and kept his word loyally; but incidentally showed that quotation is a game at which two can play. “What you say is true no doubt Rabbi. But yet you know that these Papists are after all little better than idolaters; and it is written that the good King Josiah did bid his people burn the idolaters’ bones!”

A case that is perhaps even stranger was the sad lot of a Jewish village, which was situate, for its sins, in the land of Berwar, just within comfortable raiding distance of Tyari territory. Jewish villages are rare in the land, but there are a few; mostly claiming descent from the “ten tribes” which were settled here by Sargon.

If the descent so claimed be correct, the lot of these poor Hebrews was doubly hard; for they were raided on three successive Good Fridays by the Tyari men, not because of any feud, but purely out of respect for the day! Something had to be done, in the raiders’ opinion, to show their abhorrence of an act about which they had much the same feelings as King Clovis; and much the same uncertainty as to dates.

The episode was mediæval, but the people are mediæval; and even more civilized people sometimes use the Jews equally ill. The Tyari men must have sung with right good will in those years, the anthem of their Easter vigil service: “Woe to the people of the Jews!”

That strange observances, beliefs, and superstitions should linger in this corner of Asia, even to a greater extent than in other parts, is natural enough. Second sight,{305} however (to take one widespread phenomenon), does not seem to be so common a faculty here as is the case in Scotland; or it may be simply that the Oriental is more chary of speaking of such a matter to a foreigner. Still, we have heard of cases; notably that of a Seer whom his fellow tribesmen consulted on all matters of importance, and who foretold at the last the disaster that would befall them in one special raid. “If you go out to battle now;” he said, “you will flee seven ways before the Mussulmans; and though you yourself, chief, will be saved by a willow tree, death will be my portion.” The prophecy was literally fulfilled; the Christians being routed in the skirmish, and scattered. The Seer himself (whom the Kurds had intended to spare) was killed by a random shot; and the chief took to flight, and being pursued, had to save himself by swimming the Zab. He was, however, swept away by the current and only escaped by clinging to a projecting branch of willow.

One case of this second-sight, or vision, concerned the writer himself when making a late autumn visit to Qudshanis from Van in 1907, in company with the late Bishop Collins of Gibraltar. We were expected at the place; but terribly bad weather made them not only give up hope of our arrival, but even hold special services of prayer for our safe return to Van. Under these circumstances, a certain deacon of Tkhuma, Nwiya[137] by name, who was servant to the Rev. W. H. Browne, came rushing in to his master early one morning in great excitement. “They are coming, Rabbi; they are coming after all. I saw them in a vision by night, and they will be here this day. But I saw them coming up the valley, not down it as Mr. Wigram said he would come. The bishop was wearing a black hat, and Mr. Wigram a white one.” Three hours later, the avant-courier we had sent before us actually arrived; and in the course of the day the party reached Qudshanis by the route named by the deacon (which had been adopted when the more direct route proved impassable), the bishop wearing an astrakhan fur cap, and the writer a sun-helmet. Any suspicion of confederacy may be ruled out of the question{306} without hesitation, for it was a physical impossibility; and clairvoyance, or some form of thought transference, seems to be the most natural explanation of so strange a coincidence of foreword and fact.

Every nation has, of course, its own superstitions about the mystery of birth, as exemplified in the case of our own ancestors by the belief in “the changeling.” In the case of these Nestorians, the danger that menaces the new-born is a sort of fearful night-hag, called the khwarha, that carries off and destroys the child. To guard against her visits, the child must be watched day and night for the first days of its life (baptism is usually administered on the eighth day), while an onion and a wool-comb must be kept in the same room. The smell of the former makes the spirit sneeze and deprives her of power; while the latter (which is of iron and so exercises a protective influence of itself) entangles her long locks, so that she flees in terror.[138] An old man in the household of the Patriarch tells how he was once set to take his turn at watching a certain important infant, and was so far negligent that he went out of the room to smoke a cigarette. As he did so, he saw the terrible khwarha approach, change herself into the form of an ibex with very long horns (deponent sayeth not what was her appearance previously, which is a pity), and dash into the room. Of course the conscience-stricken watcher dashed in after her; but to his huge relief found his charge sleeping quietly (a happy effect due no doubt to the protective influence of the comb and the onion), so all ended well. Still that moment is a remembrance of horror to that old man to this day.

Here, as in other districts that we have referred to, the power of faith-healing is a very real thing. Recourse is had to any church that chances to be “Lord of Name” for that purpose, and the result is quite often successful. Certain ordeals have to be gone through at times, success in them being an omen of success in the prayer. Thus the church of Mar Abd-Ishu, in Tal (once the hermitage{307} of an ascetic of great local fame, and situated in a cave high up on an almost inaccessible precipice), is a great place of resort for childless couples who desire offspring. After prayer, it is the proper thing to pass through “Mar Abd-Ishu’s passage,” which is a natural cleft in the rock, somewhat analogous to St. Wilfrid’s needle at Ripon.

An easy passage is a sign of the granting of the prayer; but failure does not imply (as in the English parallel) a bad private character. It only means that the saint expects his fee; and this must be promised him before he will grant what is required. As a matter of fact, a slim person can usually get through the hole easily, but an adult can only do so at one particular angle; and if he is not fortunate enough to hit on this, he may have difficulty; for no assistance may be given by the unauthorized spectator. A Kurdish chief attempted it once to the writer’s knowledge, seeing that he desired a son; but he stuck firmly in the crevice and could neither get back nor forward! Scared almost out of his wits, he jumped at the idea that a gift to the saint might let him through; and when small gifts were not accepted, he raised his terms till he was offering all his sheep and half his rifles, and still the saint held on! He was then told, however, that big bribes were no good; but that he must promise exactly what the saint happened to want, and that his Holiness was sometimes very capricious. The Kurd had to go through a good deal of exercise in guessing what it was that a saint in paradise, who had been an ascetic on earth, would be most likely to covet; but at last he hit on the right thing (or got into precisely the right position), and was released on promising some forty-five piastres, or eight shillings. It is pleasing to add that he paid up faithfully, and that he subsequently got the son that he desired; so that his respect for Christian institutions has much increased.

This shrine, indeed, has a high reputation among all faiths. It has only been robbed once, by Kurds; and on that occasion the robbers were promptly put to death by their own fellow tribesmen, and the spoil returned.{308}

Lunacy meets with a peculiar treatment among the men of Tyari (their neighbours declare that all the tribe are mad together, and support that statement by various tales at their expense, which it is well not to repeat in their vicinity[139]). When all visits to a church of Name fail, the patient is absolutely buried alive. He is prepared for burial exactly as if he were a corpse, borne to the graveyard on a bier, and interred with the full church service. A small opening is left for him to breathe through; and at the end of twenty-four hours, he is carefully resurrected. The nervous shock has often beneficial results; but naturally not always.

It must be owned, too, that the last case in which this treatment was tried to the knowledge of the writer produced a good deal of ill-feeling, because it was so doubtful whether the man was cured or not. He was buried quite properly; and his friends came at the right time to disinter him. But as soon as the stones were removed, he sprang up, exclaiming, “I am risen! I am risen! it is the Last Day!” Then, looking round disgustedly on the men who had come to assist him: “Whoever would have expected to see you at the Resurrection of the Just?”

Query: is that man still mad? His friends would like to think so. But they have an uneasy feeling that he “knows a hawk from a hernshaw when the wind is southerly.”

If the Tyari men are thus buried prematurely at times, there was an ancient custom among them (now extinct for generations), according to which they could dispense with burial altogether. Like many uncivilized peoples, in all climates, they had a habit of putting the aged out of the way of the young when they had no more joy in life; and in their own case got rid of them by throwing them down a special one of the numerous precipices in their country. The story goes that the habit came to be stopped through one particular man, who was carrying up his own father to dispose of him in the time-honoured way. As he scaled the mountain, he put down his burden to rest for a minute,{309} at one particular tree; and as he did so, he heard the old man chuckle.

“And what have you got to laugh at now?” said the son.

“Ah well, I was just remembering”; said the old fellow. “It came to my mind how when I was carrying my old father up here, I put him down to rest myself just at this same tree; and it seemed to me rather comic. Your son, little Yaqub, will do just the same with you when your time comes, no doubt.”

That set the son, who had hitherto been acting just as custom decreed, thinking about things in a new way. He had to admit that he did not like the idea of his little son carrying him up in this fashion to throw him down a precipice; and perhaps it might be that his own old father did not quite like it either! So the end of his cogitations was that he carried the old man down again, and faced the horror of refusing to do as his fathers had done. Thus the custom fell into disuse.

Good people in England will of course be startled at the idea of such a custom ever having prevailed among even “nominal Christians;” in blissful ignorance of the fact that our own ancestors acted in very similar fashion when they were at a similar stage of development. Human nature is much the same all the world over; and we believe that the practice of killing off the old people (useless mouths to fill) did not die out in Christian Sweden till the fifteenth century. The “family clubs” used for dispatching them were usually kept in the churches![140]

{311}

CHAPTER XV

INTRUDERS IN A PANDEMONIUM

(AMADIA AND BOHTAN)

Bigger men live to east and west of them; namely our old acquaintance the Sheikh of Barzan, and the Agha of the Sindigul Kurds, whose name is Abdi. When these men have a disagreement with the Government, it is not a{312} case of mere outlawry, but of open war; and the Government does not always, by any means, get the better of them. Abdi Agha of the Sindigulis is perhaps the better off; for he has a stronghold of the most magnificent description, to which no Government troops have ever penetrated, and which is a fair set-off against the religious prestige of his neighbour. This stronghold is the lofty tableland of Tanina; a great plateau among the mountains where there are wood and water for the whole tribe, and pasture in abundance for all their sheep the whole summer through. It can only be approached, the tale goes (for no foreigner has ever been allowed to visit its summit), by three easily guarded ascents; and when once the tribe are on the top, they can afford to laugh at any force the Government of the district can send against them. A large force set to blockade the place could not be fed in the district, while small detachments guarding the “ports” could be overwhelmed in detail. No doubt resolute troops could storm it; but the cost would be heavy. The only weakness of the sanctuary appears to lie in this; that neither man nor beast can live on the top of it during the winter. When the autumn gales and early snows begin, come down they must; and in this fact would lie the opportunity of a Government that really cared about the enforcement of order.

Throughout the district there are plenty of Christian villages, almost entirely of the Nestorian church, though at the western end of it some belong to the “Jacobite” body. All of these, however, are rayat or feudally subordinate, to the Kurdish chiefs among whom they live, and are little better in fact than serfs. The principal town of the land, Amadia, is a fully equipped seat of government, with a kaimakam, a lieutenant of gendarmerie, a district judge, and all complete. But his Excellency the Governor knows better than to issue any order that he thinks likely to be unpleasant to his neighbours.

Thus these second-rate Aghas are left pretty much to the freedom of their own will, and the result is as bad a Government as can well be imagined. An important chief,{313} like the Sheikh of Barzan, may at least tolerate no other tyrant; and may possibly see that killing off the bees is not the best way of getting a permanent supply of honey. But the small men have their own feuds with one another; their train of dependents that must be supported somehow; and, moreover, a total absence of conscience—or even of the enlightened self-interest that is sometimes its working substitute.

As for appealing to the Government for redress against the Agha’s misdoings that is entirely wasted labour; and anyone who does so is apt to be given a lesson by the feudal chief, to warn others from doing the like.

A description of some of the actual proceedings of two of the chiefs may enable the reader who has no knowledge of the ways of Ottoman officials in the remoter districts to learn what Turkish rule really means. Reshid, the Mira of Berwar, pays so much lip-deference to the Government’s authority that he does condescend to buy from it the right of collecting the taxes from the Christian villages, year by year. This right is usually farmed out by the local officials (the fact that this is expressly illegal has nothing to do with the matter), the contractor paying a fixed sum to the Treasury, and making what he can out of the place. Reshid pays a sum of £5 for each village, which the Treasury gets; and perhaps another £5 goes in bakhshish, to secure that there shall be no competition, or that some flaw shall be found in any other offer. Then he extracts some £200 from each village.[141]

It is possible that this is not much more than double the real assessment; still, even so, one would have thought that it might be worth while for the provincial governments to institute a better system; for when that is done in some thirty villages, it really represents a material loss to a Treasury that is perennially empty. However, you may talk to a Turk till you are tired, and represent to him that his system is simply robbery, and stupid robbery too; and{314} that with better methods he would get ten times as much with one tenth the trouble. You are told politely to your face that you are under a misapprehension; though this ignorance of the country is of course pardonable in a foreigner. What is said or thought privately may perhaps be guessed.

In feuds anything may happen. Thus Mira Reshid has a standing feud, of twenty years date now, with the men of Tyari; which is said to have commenced with a treacherous murder under trust in the Mussulman’s own house. It blazed up fiercely in the summer of 1908; and that not without excuse from the Kurd’s point of view, for some Tyari hot-heads (angry at the fact that a proposed reconciliation had not come off) had carried out a raid in Berwar territory, and killed Reshid’s own brother. That he should cut the bullet out of the corpse, and send word to the chief of the Lizan valley (whence the raiders had come) that he was keeping it to shoot through his heart, was fair enough; but he certainly went beyond all ordinary rules in proclaiming a Jehad or holy war of Islam against Christianity, on account of what was at the most a mere tribal feud.

However, all the neighbouring tribes of Kurds rallied at that call, and he was able to muster 8000 men, armed with modern rifles, against the short 1500 flintlocks that was all that the threatened sub-district of Lizan could produce. It says much for the reputation of the Tyari fighters, that even under those circumstances the Kurds dared no frontal attack, and were content to make a long counter-march through the mountains, to reach the head of that Lizan valley (a tributary of the Zab) which the Christians were defending. Then they marched down it, plundering as they went, while the Christians on the hill above saw their houses go up in smoke one after the other.

There was little spoil to take, for the sheep and women had been prudently sent away to the north; but all the usual courtesies of war went by the board that day. Trees were girdled; houses and standing crops were burnt; irrigating channels broken down so as to ruin the crops in{315} other fields; and the conquerors marched down the valley to fulfil an old threat that they would “dance in St. George’s Church on St. George’s day,” and thereafter carry fire and sword up the main valley of Tyari; which was not directly concerned in the feud.

This last outrage, however, was averted by one daring deed. The church in question stands at the foot of the side valley, close by the bridge over the Zab that forms the sole passage to the larger threatened district. One chief of the Christian mountaineers saw that a band of brave men might throw themselves into a house which commanded both, and save their brethren, even if they themselves were ruined. He called for volunteers who would come down with him and cut across the Kurdish advance in the effort to gain that point. He would only take men who would put their lives on the hazard, for no quarter is given in Jehad. He got his party; and the writer must be allowed some pride in the fact that one of the members of this forlorn hope was a pupil of his own, a member of the “English School,” named Saypu. They reached their point and prepared for defence; Saypu’s last preparation being to take his own school-books out of the house (which, as it happened, was his own home) and hide them in a hole in the rock. It was the first token of affection he had given for them in his life! The little band made good their defence; and as they had not to deal with the main body of their enemy, they were actually able to carry out a sortie on their foes as they retired. Saypu, who had gone into the fight with a borrowed flint-lock, came out of it with a breech-loader of his own, the fairly won spoil of its late owner! More important than this, however, was the fact that the bridge was held. Though the side-valley was burnt from end to end, the main one was saved from ravage; and the Christians were able to hold their service on the following Sunday in the still undesecrated Church of St. George.

Such an open war as this roused even the Ottoman Government to asking questions; though to do the officials justice, they would have been glad enough to leave the{316} matter alone if only British Embassies and Consulates had left them in peace. As it was, they consented to send a commissioner to somewhere near the district, with instructions to “do takikat” in the case. As a matter of etymology, takikat means examination or inquiry. As a matter of practice, it means sending an official with instructions to waste time, and do nothing elaborately; while the Government at headquarters says to the interfering foreigner, “you must allow us reasonable space and opportunity for action.” After a few months, this phrase is altered; and the reply is, “well, after all, it happened a long time ago, and we cannot go into the matter now.” In this case, the commissioner got as far as Amadia, and sent a summons to Reshid to come down and explain his conduct. Reshid sent out five pounds to the messenger, and the information that he was ill in bed, and the gentleman must call again; and this quite satisfied everybody.

This is the sort of procedure that fills a Consul with despair. It is hard enough to get a disciplinary or reforming order out of the central Government; and when you have got it, what better are you? There is no possibility of getting the thing executed. Every Jack-in-office in the Ottoman service knows what is meant by a “watery command”—an order extracted by foreign pressure which he is meant to disregard. They know when the authority means business, and then they answer the rein at once; but they also know when it does not, and then they do nothing. Foreign influence cannot possibly see to it that there is a Consul in every place where oppression can arise. No Power can keep one in every mudirate; and nothing short of that would be effective. If Turkey is ever to be reformed, it must be by foreigners who have executive as well as advisory authority; power, that is, to hang an official who does not obey orders, or a chief who breaks the peace. Half a dozen such men would have Kurdistan as safe as Hyde Park inside a year, for if there is one chance in twenty of trouble ensuing, the Kurd does not raid.{317}

Reshid’s only rival in Berwar is the Agha of Châl,[142] an old man who is the government Mudir of his district. He is also a Sufi by religious profession; and both of these circumstances should make for respectability; for the Mudir is put there to keep order, being lowest on the scale of local governors, and Sufis are usually supposed to be quiet mystics. Many of them are so in fact, and most interesting religious philosophers to talk with; but this man is noted for being on the whole the most crafty murderer in the country-side. It is of course something to rise to eminence in a profession so crowded as that peculiar one is locally; but perhaps that is not the most remarkable thing about this particular Agha. He is the only man of the writer’s acquaintance who keeps a really large herd of domestic Jews. Châl village is largely populated by men of that race; and they are to all intents and purposes the serfs of the Agha—his tame money-spinners. The writer was even offered full rights in one of them for the sum of five pounds; and if the bargain would have held in more civilized districts (and the vendor, to do him justice, did not realize that it would not), it might have been as profitable an investment as is ever likely to come his way! A Jew of one’s very own, bound to put all his financial skill at your disposal, and to use it solely for your benefit, would be a most valuable property.

There are other chiefs who keep “tame Jews” in this fashion, though not on the same scale as does the wise man of Châl. Naturally, you are expected to protect your own Hebrew, and to guard him against all other oppressors; even as the King of England used to do, when he had absolute property in all the Jews in England, and saw to it that their debtors did not default. Kurdish Aghas, however, do not always rise to this duty; and the writer has known a case, where the unfortunate Israelite, who was owned in this fashion by one Agha, was robbed of every penny and rag he possessed by that Agha’s rival.{318} Poor Ibrahim complained, of course, to his natural lord, on the ground that it was iyba to that master himself, if his property was robbed in this style. The chief had to admit that there was something in the argument; but redress by force of arms (the obvious method) was impossible, because the robber was far too nearly his equal in strength.

“Your face is blackened my Lord,” pleaded the poor Hebrew.

“It is indeed,” said the Agha; “but I can’t go to war with him notwithstanding.”

Presently he had a really brilliant inspiration. “Look here Ibrahim; I have it! I’ll go and rob his Jew myself!”

That being the way the Kurdish mind works, it will be readily understood that their unfortunate Christian rayats run considerable peril when there happens to be feud between two Aghas. Under those circumstances, it is just as satisfactory on the point of honour—and a good deal more profitable and less risky—to raid your opponents’ unarmed Christian villages, than his armed Kurdish ones. Both sides practise this amiable habit with great satisfaction to themselves; and the poor rayats suffer accordingly.

The presence of one powerful Kurdish chief ruling a whole country-side is thus a distinct improvement (however tyrannous he may be) on the rule of several rivals. He may at least have the sense to realize that it is unprofitable to carry the oppression of the rayats too far, lest the cattle should be ungrateful enough to die on his hands. A story is told of the brother of the notorious Bedr Khan Beg, that on one occasion when that great destroyer of Christians was meditating a further massacre, he appeared in the diwan in labourer’s dress, armed with a shovel.

“Mashallah. Why this masquerade?” asked his brother the chief.

“Well brother, it is what we shall have to do, if you go on with your game of massacring all Christians. You will leave none to do the work on the land.”

The acted parable went home, as so often was the case in biblical times; and the proposed raid was countermanded.{319}

During the Italian and Bulgarian wars, there was of course much heated feeling among Mussulmans, and much wild talk of a massacre of all Christians. A Kurd indulging in that sort of swagger in a Christian village was countered by an argument which naturally no European would have expected, but which we have reason to believe had considerable weight in many quarters.

“Of course, you can massacre us,” said an old priest, “we are in your hands. But then, what will King George do?”

“King George!” said the Kurd contemptuously, “his arm does not reach to Kurdistan.”

“No, but he has millions of Mussulman rayats in India,” said the Christian. “If you kill us, think you that he will not take life for life from them?”

The Kurd was staggered. At first, he was disinclined to believe it possible for any Christian King to have Mussulman rayats. But when assured on that point, he quite admitted the probability—and more, the propriety—of King George retaliating on Mussulmans in India for anything their co-religionists might do to Christians in Kurdistan. The Oriental is quite philosopher enough to grasp the notion of solidarité.

Moreover it must be inferred that a Kurd has a ghost of a conscience. He does not himself expect to sleep quiet in his grave unless some Christian places a rag on it in token of forgiveness. It is a weird belief, but is fully accepted on all hands. A noted marauder was lately buried near Amadia, and three Tyari men passing his grave after nightfall heard awful groans proceeding from it. One, bolder than his comrades, went nearer, and found an asthmatic sheep. An unlucky discovery, for it utterly ruined the moral.

The character of the country is tamer than that we have just been traversing, for it is only in the most rugged and inaccessible gorges that the ashiret Christians have been able to maintain their independence. In these Berwar and Sapna districts, the wilder ranges have been left behind. The valleys are wider, and the hills are usually forest clad;{320} the prevailing tree being a small type of oak. Fortunately this is a valuable crop in itself, for it produces a very large oak-apple; and this is used freely in the dyeing of the local cloth, so that the trees have a good chance of preservation. The colours produced vary, according to the process, from pale yellow to dark brown; but as is always the case with pure vegetable dyes, all are excellent in tone, and a most gratifying contrast to the cold hard aniline dyes that European science has introduced to ruin the once beautiful carpets of this land.

The hills are mostly of limestone, and lie in long parallel ranges, due east and west, with steep crags and precipices on the crests, and long tree-clad slopes below. They gradually lose their elevation as they approach the Mosul plain; but even at the last stand up over that endless level with a startling abruptness. The rivers, true to their habit in this land of contradictions, burst clean through these ranges in their southern course, though they naturally receive tributaries in each one of the parallels.

Good coal lies under much of this country; the writer having actually seen one six-foot seam that crops out at four several points along a line of sixty miles, and is probably continuous in other directions also. It is of course quite unworked at present. Turkish political economy teaches that for so long as the coal is there, it is safe, and a solid national asset. If, however, you dig it up and burn it, it is gone and cannot be replaced. Besides, mining concessions, or anything else likely to bring in the foreigner, are anathema to the Ottoman and are never granted if they can possibly be avoided.