The very rooms in which we were sitting, sipping tea and smoking cigarettes with his Holiness, had been the scene of what Major Dugald Dalgetty would call “a very pretty little camisado” during the progress of the late campaign. The castle, as a frontier post, was a position of some importance; and it was a shrewd loss to the Sheikh when the Agha whom he had placed in charge of it betrayed his trust to his foes. The Agha was fully aware that his seigneur might feel sore about it. He kept the place strongly garrisoned, and posted around it a double line of sentries and watch-dogs. The approaches on two sides are barred by the rivers, unfordable and icy cold in winter; and on the third side rise precipitous mountains, barely climbable even by day. But one night in a winter blizzard, when the very dogs had crept away to seek shelter, the Sheikh’s men seized their opportunity and wormed their way up to the fort. The howling of the tempest drowned the noise of their{145} picks as they cautiously loosened stone after stone from the walling; and at length they formed an opening large enough for one man to creep through at a time. When the next morning broke the treacherous Agha lay dead, with every man of his garrison around him: and the gentleman who was acting as host to the Sheikh and ourselves this evening had been there and then appointed successor. Presumably he was a “sure man.”

Our supper consisted of bowls of whey, and of rice with pieces of chicken. The Sheikh and eight or ten of his principal henchmen ate with us, all helping themselves out of the common dishes with wooden ladles and spoons. They all ate extremely sparingly; but this was probably out of etiquette, the Sheikh himself setting the example because he was feeling indisposed. Upon another occasion, when the Sheikh came to call upon us, his four attendants were credited with having consumed a whole sheep![88]

To his own men the Sheikh spoke but rarely, though pleasantly and often smilingly; and they never seemed to speak to him unless they had been first addressed. With us (as he spoke only Kurdish) he had to converse through an interpreter; and the matters debated for the most part concerned the petty politics of the countryside. He bewailed the universal lawlessness, which, he said (we fear rather inaccurately), was as bad for Kurds as for Christians; and observed that it was strange that neither England nor Russia seemed capable of bringing in reform. “You have gone to India,” he protested, “and you stay there, though you are not wanted. Why cannot you come to us who do want you? You would be welcomed everywhere here.”

Such feelings are well-nigh universal among all the more reputable chieftains. They would appreciate any strong Government, no matter of what nation or creed. The only folk really content with the present condition of Asiatic Turkey are those who have merited hanging: and we grant that this class would poll strong.{146}

Hearing that we were returning to England within a few months at the latest, the Sheikh volunteered to accompany us—of course with an adequate “tail.” He would call on the Archbishop of Canterbury and get him to establish schools in his villages; and then he would go on to see King George at Windsor, with whose aid he made no question he could arrange for the settlement of Kurdistan. Alas! We could hold out no hopes. But the suggestion was made in dead earnest; and we fear that when we did start homewards we were careful not to let the Sheikh know.

Finally he desired to consult us medicinally. He was troubled with an affection of the eyes[89]—in point of fact trachoma—and begged us to give him some medicine which was capable of affording relief. We could do nothing for him at the time; but shortly afterwards we were able to bring up an English doctor from the C.M.S. hospital at Mosul and let the Sheikh have the benefit of his professional skill.

It then transpired that in the interval he had consulted a native practitioner; a wandering Yezidi medicine-man who had recently drifted to Barzan. The Yezidi had diagnosed the watering of the eyes as due to an excess of moisture behind the eye-balls, and had proposed running a red-hot skewer through the Sheikh’s head from temple to temple, in order to dry up the “superfluous moisture” at the fountain head! This horrifying suggestion was both made and received quite seriously. But the Sheikh, very reasonably, had elected to consult the English doctor first. We did not feel much surprised at his Holiness’s reluctance to submit to this treatment: but we did feel some admiration for the heroic assurance of the Yezidi doctor in proposing it. Being pierced through the temples with a red-hot skewer would not be a pleasant way of dying; but it would be luxury compared with the sort of devices which the Sheikh’s followers might be expected to practise on the operator, by way of obtaining consolation for the patient’s untimely decease.{147}

The Sheikh was, we fear, rather crestfallen to find that the English doctor also wished to operate; and stipulated that he should first see the operation practised on one of his train (who had nothing the matter with him at all). The vile corpus was quite willing; but unfortunately the doctor jibbed at it, and eventually decided to prescribe a slower and less certain treatment. We hope that this will prove adequate: but we should have felt sorely tempted to perform a sham operation on the volunteer, in order to overcome the Sheikh’s reluctance to submit himself to the real one.

There was no room for us to lodge that night in the Agha’s castle. The place was already more than full with the Sheikh’s train and the Agha’s household. Accordingly his Holiness presently dismissed us, coming again to the stair-head to do so, and sending a gentleman cateran to guide us to a house in the village which he had ordered to be reserved for our use. Here he came next morning to see us a little before daybreak, to make his adieux on departure, and to return (as he phrased it) the call which we had made on him the night before. This was, however, only a formal call, and lasted a very few minutes. He was anxious to start his day’s journey, and soon rode off towards the Oramar ferry with his picturesque ruffians in his train.

We did not start for another hour. We had first to consume the breakfast which our host the Agha had brought down for us; and, moreover, as all the Sheikh’s train had got to be transported across the river, it would obviously be at least an hour before the ferry was available for our use. Furthermore the Agha could urge that we had no cause whatever to hurry. We were bound for the little village of Erdil, reported only a three hours’ journey; and we had much better wait “till the sun had got into the valley” and had warmed up the frosty air a little so as to make riding more pleasant. In the alternative he suggested that we had better not go at all, because the road was infamous, and riding absolutely impossible. “Horses couldn’t go, and mules couldn’t go, and Englishmen couldn’t walk.” But we were pledged to visit Erdil, so we{148} over-ruled this objection. Moreover, we felt it highly impolitic to admit that there was any place in existence where “Englishmen couldn’t walk.”

Erdil is a tiny derelict Christian village situated in the Oramar valley a little above its confluence with the Zab. All the surrounding villages are inhabited by Kurds and Moslems; and as from year’s end to year’s end it is hardly ever visited by any outside Christian, Rabban Werda had begged us earnestly at least to give it a call. Moreover we might make discoveries. Erdil was reputed to possess some “old books” which it was willing to show to Rabbi Dr. Wigram, and had sent us one Ibrahim, an Erdilite, who promised to lead us to the cache. “Old books,” in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, are apt to prove not worth the seeking. But a scholar would never forgive himself for missing the hundredth chance.

The Oramar river is a noble stream, not inferior to the Zab in volume, gushing forth from a grim rocky portal which notches the Zab’s mountain wall. We were assured that no European had ever yet traversed its gorges; and the assertion is certainly corroborated by the fact that the best map of these regions leaves this corner perfectly blank. In view of the repute of the road we felt half inclined for an instant to leave our animals at Suryi, and call again for them on returning. But we thought this would be too great a temptation for even a friendly Agha, and finally resolved to take them along.

Crossing the Oramar by the ferry, and keeping up the left bank of the river, we entered almost immediately a magnificent rocky ravine. On either hand rose gaunt and tawny precipices fully two thousand feet in altitude, scored all over their upper faces with the lines of the contorted strata, and thinly clothed near the bases with gnarled and stunted oak scrub. A deep, green, rapid river filled the whole of the narrow invert, and this channel was thickly cumbered by a selection of some of the very largest boulders that we have ever seen. Apparently there are many deep pockets just behind the faces of the precipices; and the water collecting in these, splits away the outer wall when it{149} freezes, and sheds the gigantic fragments into the chasm. Not a few of these fallen masses must have been as big as the Marble Arch.

The pathway did not belie the report we had heard of it at Suryi. It scrambled along the steep bank above the river; narrow, broken, and half strangled among blocks of fallen stone. Three times that morning we had to unload the mules, hand the packs across the obstructions, and load again on the further side. Our red-turbanned cateran, who still led us, would pause now and then in the pathway, indicating the landscape at large with a flourish of his arm like a showman, and regarding us with a triumphant grin. But whether he wished to express his admiration of the romantic scenery, or his appreciation of its defensive capabilities, or merely to apprise us that Erdil lay absolutely on the summit of everything—as in fact it did—we were not quite able to decide.

This gorge was a few months later the scene of a notable exploit, achieved by the Sheikh of Barzan at the expense of those hostes humani generis the Heriki Kurds. This horde of wandering robbers, the bane of all settled communities, are wont (as already related) to migrate each spring and autumn to and fro between Mosul and Urmi. They can travel by several routes; but all routes converge upon one point—the “Bridge of Rocks” over the Zab a little above Suryi. Here the Zab, as it issues from the mountains, is throttled (like the Wharfe at Bolton) into a narrow crack between shelving slabs of rock. The slabs are deeply undercut, and the depth of the crack must be considerable; for at one point, where a big rock table rises in mid current, the great river can be crossed in two strides!

Here the Heriki always pass over, at a point where the width of the river is about twenty-five feet. They build a bridge for themselves every spring, and it lasts till the next winter floods. This is the sole piece of honest and useful work which is ever achieved by those incorrigible plunderers; and out of it accordingly a remorseless Nemesis has fashioned “a whip to scourge them.” Here the Government posts its troops when it wishes to collect their taxes; and if they{150} have injured any of the Sheikh of Barzan’s villages, he exacts compensation here.

Now the previous autumn, on their downward journey, the Heriki had lifted two or three thousand sheep belonging to some Christian villages. The villagers appealed to the English, and the English to the Government; but of course there was not the least chance of obtaining any redress. The following spring, however, when the Heriki were nearly due again, we received a visit from the Sheikh of Barzan, who himself (though he did not say so) seemed to have a crow to pick with the tribe. “See here, Effendim,” he argued; “the Hukumet can never get those sheep for you. We know they haven’t got troops enough to get their own taxes this year. Now supposing it were suggested to the Vali that I should be appointed to collect those taxes. Perhaps it is even possible I might get back some of the sheep.”

The Effendi shrugged his shoulders, and did not think much would come of it; but the astute old Vali of Mosul saw the humour of the notion at once. It was quite true he had given up hope of getting the Heriki’s taxes. He even anticipated difficulty in getting the Sheikh of Barzan’s. This scheme would lubricate the bearings most admirably in both directions: and the Sheikh was appointed tax-collector pro hac vice by return of post.

The Heriki came down to their bridge, rejoicing to find it unoccupied. They crossed, and pushed on to Suryi, and the Sheikh broke down the bridge behind. They entered the Oramar valley; and a few miles up they found the “Boys of the Belt” barring it, with the Sheikh’s Ban and arrière Ban posted on the crags around them; and received a polite demand-note from his Holiness the Fermier Général requesting immediate payment of taxes, sheep, and costs.

Even a Government regiment could hardly have got so much without fighting; but the Sheikh had thrown his net so deftly that his captives could not even kick. There was nothing for it but to pay, and look pleasant, and this the Heriki chiefs did with what grace they could. We{151} confess that we doubt grievously whether any large percentage of sheep got back to their original owners; but all the country was jubilant to see the original biters so badly bit.

We held our course up the valley for about three hours—and a bittock; and at this point Ibrahim the Erdilite cheerfully observed that we were just half way. As he had previously assured us that the total distance was three hours we were provoked to “pour cold words on him.” All sorts of things get “poured” in Syriac: you “pour” your guest into bed; you “pour” your enemy into prison;[90] you “pour a howl” at a man when you shout at him from a distance; and to “pour cold words” upon him is to “give him a bit of your mind.” However, we could not blame poor Ibrahim very severely for a fault which he shares with all his nation—a total inability to conceive any measurement of time.

Soon after we bore to the right and entered a tributary valley; a narrower gorge, dark and chilly, where the pools still lay hard frozen all along the shadier side. The path rose more steeply now with a spiral twist to the right like the final turn of a corkscrew. We were rising on to the top of the precipice which had overshadowed our morning’s march. The last pitch was the steepest of any; but here the ground was less rugged, and a few sketchy outlines of terraces tried to pose as cultivated fields. At last we emerged on a tiny plateau, a sprocket on the slope of the mountain, and beheld the dozen rough stone cabins which compose the village of Erdil.

Erdil is not the remotest spot on earth; for beyond it we could descry another and yet remoter Kurdish village some five hours further up the vale. But it is at least the remotest spot we are ever likely to get to. A site for an eagle’s eyrie rather than for an abode of man. Thrust out on a little green tongue between two abysmal valleys it commands a superb panorama of the mountains which lie{152} to the northward; range succeeding to range in seven successive sierras till they culminate in the snowy crests of Sat and Jilu, no less than fourteen thousand feet high. And in all that craggy wilderness there was scarcely a vestige of habitation. No wonder the villagers were excited by the advent of visitors from the world beyond.

The populace poured out to greet us. They conducted us to the house of the village rais or head man. They installed us in his one room in the seat of honour by the fireplace; and thronged in eagerly after us, men, women, and children to kiss our hands. They were by no means an ill-looking crowd, and many of the girls were quite well favoured; dark haired, but fair complexioned; sturdy and deeply bronzed. The men wore the usual mountain dress;[91] and the women were clad in figured blue smocks and turbans, girt at the waist with blue sashes, and wearing their long open sleeves knotted together behind them in order to keep the ends out of the way. The usual full dress of the mountain women consists of a smock reaching from the neck to about midway between knee and ankle; and a jacket of the same length worn over it, folded across in front, and slit up as high as the waist on either side. The whole is girt round with a sash; and on their heads they wear kerchiefs, or (in the Tkhuma district) little round caps edged with silver coins. Their hair is worn down their backs, plaited in three, four, or five long pigtails, with a six-inch horse-hair tassel worked in at the end of each plait. The smocks are usually of some figured material, but striped stuff is commoner for the jackets; and the colours which they chiefly favour are Indian red or indigo blue. Usually they go barefoot in their villages, but when they are on a journey they wear a sort of brogue like the men.[92]

{153}

The rais’ house was a typical sample of the ordinary mountain cabin; walled with rough stone rubble, and floored with beaten earth. The low, flat, smoke-blackened ceiling was formed with unsquared poplar stems, upon which was spread a bed of brushwood[93] roofed over with a thick layer of mud. The mud of course cracks in dry weather and the roof becomes very leaky; but it can be quickly consolidated with the little stone roller which is kept on the roof for the purpose, and thus be made once more watertight as soon as the rains return. The tanura, or fireplace, is a beehive-shaped hole dug out in the centre of the floor,[94] and the smoke finds an exit (eventually) through a hole in the roof above. There are no windows whatever, and the doorway is a very low one; and thus in most cases the smoke-hole serves the inmates for skylight as well.

Poor Erdil! Forgotten and isolated, and steeped in poverty and ignorance, it supplies an apt illustration of the conditions of life which prevail among the Kurdish-owned Christian villages in the mountains. Conditions which were commoner still before the advent of the Archbishop’s Mission, and which are still all too common in certain outlying districts like Bohtan. Indeed, in many respects Erdil deserves to be congratulated. Politically, as the inhabitants themselves admitted, they have no great cause to complain. Their owner is the Agha of Suryi; and consequently their over-lord is the Sheikh of Barzan, who is nicknamed “the Sheikh of the Christians,” because he treats his Christian vassals so well. His tolerance secures them from persecution, and his vigorous rule from raiding; and they gave him the same testimonial that was given in old days to King Brian Boru in Ireland, that you “might{154} safely leave a gold bracelet on a bush by the road in his domain.”

But religiously they were left destitute. Their Patriarch seemed to have forgotten them. All the surrounding villages were Moslem, and their nearest co-religionists were a long day’s journey away. They had their church and their service books, and a parson’s glebe and cottage; but thirty years had elapsed since last they had a priest of their own in the village, and it was but seldom that even a wandering deacon had visited them during all that time. For thirty years they had no one to celebrate their services, no one to marry them, no one to baptize their children, no one to bury their dead; and one of the first requests that they proffered to “Rabbi Mr. Wigram” was that he would at least recite the Church of England burial service over the graves of those who had died within the last few years. Surely it is no small credit to them that under such circumstances they remained even nominally Christian; and we feel some satisfaction in recording that a little time after our visit their Patriarch found himself able to send them the priest whom they desired.

The “old books” which they had promised to show us proved (as we had more than half expected) to be only the usual Church Service books.[95] They had kept them jealously hidden in an underground cave in a vineyard; knowing vaguely that they were somehow sacred, but otherwise quite ignorant of their contents, for, of course, not a man in the village could read. The cave must have been quite a dry one, for the books had not suffered in any way; and we cannot doubt that on our departure they were again committed to the cache.{155}

The church was a well-built stone edifice, dating possibly from the sixteenth century; and though disused for so long a period, it was kept clean and in good repair. Within it that Sunday evening we recited our English Evensong; the villagers standing round reverently and joining in the Amens, the only word they could understand. The “Sheikh Birader Effendi” must confess that this strange little service was to him one of the most impressive in which he has ever shared.

The wild rough life of the villagers was reflected in the supper that they provided for us. Where else might one dine on ibex collops and bread made of acorn meal? The latter sounds somewhat unpalatable, but was in fact not at all bad eating. The queer little oaks which grow in Kurdistan bear very large acorns almost as big as small walnuts; and these are not nearly so bitter as English acorns but rather like chestnuts in taste. Often they are roasted and eaten as we eat chestnuts in England; but generally they are ground to meal for breadmaking, and mixed with an equal proportion of barley meal. The natives grow a little wheat likewise, so wheaten bread is not quite unknown to them; but of this, as is to be expected, they get only a very small supply.

It was while we were breakfasting next morning that Erdil produced its final originality in the way of diet. Some hunters had come in overnight, and had brought with them the carcass of a boar. They had cut him up for convenience of transport; but his huge hoofs (as big as a cow’s) and his bristly iron-grey hide proved that he must have been a truly formidable monster: and for five piastres (ten pence) they sold us a big chunk of the meat. His hide was the most valuable part of him, and for this they hoped to obtain as much as two mejidies (eight shillings), since it made such excellent shoes. It seemed little short of a crime to allow so magnificent a pelt to be so ignominiously disposed of; but we did not see, if we purchased it, how we were to carry it away.

Mindful of the difficulties we had found in bringing our beasts up to Erdil, we determined in taking them down again{156} to try and lighten their loads. Our own personal belongings were consigned to two stalwart porters, who undertook to guide us by a short cut, practicable only for pedestrians; while our beasts were to make the long circuit and meet us at the mouth of the gorge.

A few weeks later, on the Flushing packet, the steward eyed that baggage dubiously, and opined we should need “two strong porters” to carry it up to the train. At his words there arose in our minds a vision of two grizzled Syrians carrying all that baggage on their shoulders, for three hours, with scarcely a breather, across the face of a precipice which would have made the steward’s hair stand on end! As a matter of fact each load (though it certainly looked overwhelming) totalled up to about sixty pounds, which is the load of a porter on the Alps.

Half an hour we ascended gradually and slantingly along the face of the mountain; and then the ground vanished from under us with a suddenness which took away our breath. The cliff broke away from our toes sheer down to the river beneath us, a drop (to compute it by guesswork) of something like two thousand feet. It was a grand, if somewhat a dizzy, spectacle; but our guides never checked for an instant. They skipped over the lip of the precipice, and went tripping along a ledge on the face of it, as if they considered such travelling the most ordinary thing in the world. This then was the real “three hours’ route” which led from Erdil to Suryi, the path where “horses couldn’t go, and mules couldn’t go, and Englishmen couldn’t walk.”

With regard to the horses and mules we endorse the description most cordially; but for ordinary capable pedestrians it was not so very terrible after all. True, it looked rather a fly-on-the-wall business when seen from a little distance; but the ledges, if narrow, were firm, and there was generally plenty of hand hold. Moreover the rocks themselves, though they had looked absolutely vertical when seen from below the previous morning, all proved to be more or less sloping and not quite destitute of brushwood; so it is possible one might have recovered{157} oneself even had one slipped from the path. The worst bits were at the beginning and end of our traverse, where the track led over steeply tilted slabs. Here our European nailed boots refused to bite on the surface, and the porters in their hempen brogues got across much more happily than we. These hempen brogues are almost universally worn by the hillmen, and are admirable footwear for rock work; but they need patching every evening to be ready for the journey next day. Even English boots, however, cannot long stand this sort of travelling. Let them be made ever so strongly they are cut to pieces in three months.

Half way across the face of the precipice, while pausing to rest a few minutes, we were able by means of our glasses to see our horses coming on behind. They were then just turning into the main valley, having accomplished about half their journey; and though we had given them an hour’s start at Erdil, we had fully two hours to wait for them at the mouth of the Oramar gorge.{158}

CHAPTER VIII

A MASTER OF MISRULE

(NERI AND JILU)

We had companions on the way; for the Heriki Kurds{159} were in the act of conducting their usual migration from Mosul plain to the upland pasture of Tergawar.[96] Thus we were constantly passing their large flocks of sheep, and parties of their well-armed men-folk; a feat that was sometimes made ticklish by the exceeding narrowness of the road. As far as we were concerned, they were harmless companions enough. The “Boy of the Belt” whom the Sheikh of Barzan had sent with us was ample security against any attempt being made on our mightinesses; and they seemed as pleasant and jolly a set of brigands as a man need wish to meet. It is true that we had a slight misunderstanding with one particular shepherd; but that was misapprehension pure and simple, and brought about no evil results. The lad was so picturesque an object as he strode up the pass in front of his sheep, clad in his rough cloak with long gun, shepherd’s crook, and pipe all complete, that we begged him to do us the favour of standing still for a moment, in order that we might secure his portrait. Our friend, however, was new to the camera, and (very pardonably) thought that it was a lethal weapon. He fled like a hare to the cover of the nearest rocks, and prepared to shoot us thence; nor could any blandishments make him relax his attitude of suspicion. Recent events had made him distrustful of anything that looked Governmental.

If, however, the Heriki were just friendly travelling companions for us, they were regarded much in the light of an annual migration of wolves by all the villages on the road. These were all standing to arms till the danger should have passed—the sheep penned in folds close to the houses, the women all within doors, and the men with guns in hand, much inclined to shoot at the stranger first and ask whether he did not mean mischief after. A little yourt[97] that we purchased at one place was only handed out to us through one loop-hole while the master of the house kept us covered with a gun from another. Albeit when we had duly handed{160} over coin of the realm in payment, that gentleman became effusively friendly and apologetic—through his closed and barred door.

Really, these precautions were not uncalled for. The Heriki carry off everything that happens to fall in their way, as incidents already recorded to testify, and “stealis and reifis” with as much impunity as the “common thiefis of Liddisdail” in old Sir R. Maitland’s day.

Poor fellows, they were rather out of humour too, because things had not been going quite well with them. Hitherto, it had been easy to avoid all the attentions of the tax-collector by a proper timing of their migrations, coupled with a little bakhshish to officials; and at the worst they could always go over the border to Persia out of the jurisdiction. Now, however, their condition had greatly deteriorated. Persia had gone so much farther off owing to recent changes, and Ottoman officials were to be found even in the summer pastures which had been free of them before. Thus does a “rectification of frontier,” such as Turkey was then carrying out at the expense of Persia,[98] bring unmerited trouble upon quiet folk.

We stayed for one night in the village of Sat, which gives its name to the whole range. The place is Christian (Nestorian), but its inhabitants have a name for quarrelsomeness and love of intrigue that makes them a proverb among their not very peaceful nation. Such at least is the description given of their character by their own Patriarch, who is, we suppose, the highest authority possible on such a matter; and we give the legend illustrative of the fact, as current among the nation and recounted to us by his Grace himself.

A woman of Sat was once on a journey, near to a Nestorian{161} village unnamed, when she met an old acquaintance on the road outside. This was no less a person than Satana himself, who was sitting on a stone, weeping bitterly.

“O Brother, what is your trouble?” said the sympathizing lady.

“I am broken-hearted,” sobbed the poor fiend; “I have been trying to sow strife in this village for seven years and have not raised a single quarrel in that time; I must give it up.”

“Cheer up! let me try my hand;” said the lady; and the couple went together to the village, where they found a bridal party just leaving the church. What measures were taken by the woman history (prudently) sayeth not; but within half an hour bride and bridegroom were pulling one another’s hair, and the friends of each were taking part in a very pretty fight.

“Now you can stay here and be happy,” said the woman of Sat to her friend.

“Thank you,” said Satana, “But while you are here, I really think my presence would be superfluous.”

One is completely outside the power of the Government in the Barzan-Neri district, but not quite out of touch with its officials notwithstanding. In one of the remotest of villages, in a deep gorge running up into the Sat range, and called Bi-Kar, we actually found a Government mudir. It is true that he had no power; and any collecting of taxes that took place in the neighbourhood was done by wholly unauthorized agencies; but there he was, presumably as a testimony to the existence of the Hukumet.

Like most Ottoman officials, he was delightfully courteous to the chance visitor; and in this case perhaps the welcome was not mere politeness, but real joy in speaking to an educated man once more. For years in that remote glen, he had enjoyed no conversation with any but policemen and Kurds. His story was typical of those of a good many of the young Ottoman official class. Educated at Stamboul, in the college for Government servants, he had (like most of the younger men of his day) been attracted by the “Young Turk” propaganda, and its hopes for a reformed and revived{162} Ottoman Empire. Something brought his reforming sympathies to light; and a prompt order from Abdul Hamid dispatched him to this corner of the earth, with a black mark against his name, and no chance of promotion, or any sort of career.

Three years passed in that exile, and then the revolution gave him some hope of a change. But the years that had elapsed since then had only been evidence that he was forgotten by the new régime as thoroughly as the old one could have wished; and here was he, an educated and capable man, settling down while still under thirty as a soured, disappointed minor official. He was one of the many tragedies of Ottoman rule.

Laboriously enough, we pushed on for three days’ travel, a daily ascent and descent of 3000 feet marking our progress. The tracks were always feasible enough for mules, though as viewed from a distance they had a painfully dizzy aspect; and the deep gorges between each pair of ridges were places of marvellous beauty. The valley of Heriki lives in our memory as perhaps the most exquisite of all. We descended the crags and steep slopes of the mountain side—coming down 2000 feet in half an hour on foot, though of course the animals might take four times as long—to a glen that was one garden, thick with walnut and poplar trees, interspersed with figs and with vines trained from tree to tree, all in the glory of their best foliage. Trees flourished here luxuriantly from the soil and climate, and were respected for the one reason that makes a Kurd respect anything; for the whole glen is one great cemetery. As its name implies, it is the original home of the nomad tribe with whom we had just been journeying. From this spot there set out the five eponymous ancestors of the five septs that make the tribe to-day; and hither every man of name and fame is borne for burial among the great ones of his house. There is much romance about this most turbulent of nomad tribes; and it is not diminished by the fact that (if legend tells true) they were Christians once; in the days when Nestorian bishops, nomad like their flocks, had for diocese “the tents of the Kurds.” One relic of their ancient{163} Christianity they are said to bear with them still (we follow the account given by old Nestorian priests), namely, the head of a Christian martyr, one of the several saints George of Eastern legend. This is the palladium of their tribe, and is borne about in a chest either by the principal chief among them, or by some holy mollah in the clan.

A three days journey from Barzan takes the traveller to the domain of the great rival of the chief of that ilk, viz. the Sheikh of Shamsdin, who has his palace at Neri. This man is at least as powerful as his neighbour; and indeed Obeid-Allah of Shamsdin, grandfather of the present Sheikh, had thoughts of carving out for himself a separate principality, a buffer between Turkey and Persia. He was able to invade the latter country in force, and to besiege the city of Urmi for some weeks in the early “seventies.” He failed, however (though the success of the Sheikh of Koweit in an analogous scheme shows that it was not impossible under favourable circumstances); and he and his son Abd-l-Kadr were removed to Constantinople as state prisoners, while his second son, Saddik or Zadok, was left as head of the tribe. Shrewder than his father, Saddik was content with the reality of power, and accumulated wealth by tobacco smuggling on the most magnificent scale. His caravans went down to Persia, often 100 mules strong, in open defiance of the “Regie” officials; and a large portion of the proceeds was invested in rifles, smuggled from Russia to Urmi. If the troops in Trans-Caucasia were not much libelled, many of them came from their barracks, in exchange for vodka!

A kaimakam, and an inspector of the “Regie” (the Governmentally recognized tobacco monopoly) both reside at Neri; and are generously provided with apartments in the fine house built by the Sheikh out of the profits of the industry which their official duty is to stop. But both of these domestic animals are most gratifyingly tame.

Not all of the Sheikh’s income went in rifles, or even in bakhshish. He once wrote politely to the author, asking for a recommendation to an English bank, as he had some savings to deposit with them. The writer named a bank or two; and knowing that his Holiness expected ten to fifteen{164} per cent. on money ready at call, did not think much would follow. But eventually some thousands of pounds did actually find their way to Lombard Street; for this prince of tobacco smugglers was in very solvent circumstances indeed! A Kurdish brigand chief with a large banking account in England sounds a wildly impossible conception. Yet William Hickey records how another wholesale smuggler hailed a homeward-bound China clipper in mid channel, and purchased all her skipper’s private stock of tea with a cheque for £800, which was accepted without the least demur. So such things were certainly done in the England of 1770!

Saddik was a terrible oppressor of Christians in his early days, and his deliberate murder of one particular bishop, whom he had invited to his house as a guest, shocked even the robust Kurdish conscience.[99] Years brought wisdom, however; and he realized that to massacre or dispossess good cultivators was bad economy. So such as remain are allowed to live, though it must be owned that their condition is but very little removed from serfdom. Among these properties of his is an Archbishop. The second dignitary of the Nestorian Church, the Metropolitan Mar Khanan-Ishu, resides in the Sheikh’s country. He lives of course in his own monastic house, and is allowed the use of his own property; but he is practically a prisoner in the hands of “that Great One,” maintained much as the Norman adventurers in Italy maintained certain Popes, as the readiest instrument for governing their own subjects.

Both officially and personally, as hereditary Sheikh of Shamsdin, and as an Imaum of eminence, Sheikh Saddik had a great reputation among Moslems, and knotty problems came to him for solution. Thus it was at his “diwan” that a perplexed tribesman presented himself one day with a fine cock under his arm, and the query, “What ought to be done with this fowl? It has taken to preaching Christianity!” He was asked for an explanation, and told how three times in his hearing the bird had proclaimed,{165} “The religion is the religion of Jesus.” And sure enough when the cock was produced in evidence it immediately repeated at the top of its voice “Din Din el Seyidna Isa”; or at least what all present unanimously interpreted as being those words. That it was a miracle none doubted: but was it of Allah, or of Sheitan? If the latter, of course the owner could wring the cock’s neck and the incident would be closed. If the former, ought he, a good Mussulman, to obey it and turn Christian?

The Sheikh considered the matter; and gave an answer that at once showed some skill in casuistry, and was as bitter and well merited a gibe at Christian divisions as one could wish. The miracle was declared to be from Allah; and the cock must in no wise be slain, but preserved as an honoured and sacred fowl. However, there were many sects of Christians, and each one claimed that its particular version of Christianity was “the religion of Seyidna Isa.” The cock had given no evidence as to which was the right one; so, until all Christians should agree together, or till the bird should give another and more explicit oracle, no true believer need do anything. It is an episode that shows many aspects of the Oriental mind.

Sheikh Saddik was a ruffian, but a fine and strong character withal. His son and successor, Taha, has inherited all his ruffianism without the stronger qualities. At the age of nineteen years he weighed precisely that number of stone; and when a day’s journey was unavoidable, it took two sturdy mules, with specially padded saddles, to bear his gross carcass along the way. He has the bad taste to wear European clothes (or what he takes to be such, corduroy trousers and butcher boots), and presents a strong family resemblance to the “Claimant.” His younger brother, Sheikh Musa, once fell foul of the British military Consul from Van, in a way that has since been vigorously impressed on his memory. The officer in question, accompanied by the writer, arrived at this place in the spring of 1909; and the party was of course entertained as guests of the house in the absence of the master. We had arrived at noon, and had sent the horses out to pasture and rest, when one of{166} the katarjis came running up with tidings much resembling those of the servants of Job, and in much the same state of mind as that of those unfortunates. The Sabaeans, represented by the personal servants of the Sheikh, had come down on the animals as they were feeding, and disregarding all protests had carried off every one!

There was of course a tremendous storm, for a deadlier insult to guest and British Consul could hardly be imagined; and the tame kaimakam was required to procure the instant return of the stolen property. He, poor man, was grievously perplexed between his fear of the Consul on the one hand, and his fear of his proprietor on the other. Between the two, he collapsed in something very like tears, ejaculating “What can I do? They were the Sheikh’s men who took them.” He did send out his two zaptiehs, with a consular kavass, to bring back the beasts; but as soon as they were outside the village, those two worthies sat themselves on the ground and informed the kavass that, kaimakam or no kaimakam, they were not going to do anything against the Sheikh’s followers if they knew it!

The animals were returned that evening; and it came out that Sheikh Musa had suddenly conceived the idea that he would give a picnic to his womenkind; wherefore the order “bring horses” had been issued, and obedience to it was expected.

“There are no horses, your Greatness,” the servants had said.

“No horses? There are horses!” pointing to the meadow where the Consul’s animals were at grass.

“But those are the Consul’s, your Greatness.”

“The Consul’s! Am I Sheikh, or am I not?”

So the horses were brought; and it is to be hoped that the trouble that followed, and the fine that had to be paid, was a salutary lesson to everybody.

Of late years, a family quarrel has rather diminished the power of Sheikh Taha. His uncle Abd-l-Kadr, son of Obeid-Ullah, returned from Constantinople with the claim to be (what he is by all laws of primogeniture) the Head of the House. Fighting followed between the two; a proceeding{167} which would not have done much harm to anyone had the Kurds only fought among themselves. Naturally, however, the poor serfs of Christians (whose allegiance both parties claimed) suffered as those do suffer who have the misfortune to find themselves between the upper and nether millstones.

Both Sheikhs were arrested, but a compromise was arranged. Abd-l-Kadr agreed to accept a liberal allowance from the family funds; and to live in Stamboul, the city he knew, rather than set up as a savage chief in Kurdistan.

A day’s journey from the Sheikh’s house at Neri brings the traveller to the land of the Christian “ashirets” of Jilu and Baz.

Ashiret is a word that strictly means “tribe” or clan; but as descriptive of status it is contrasted with “rayat” or subject; and means that the bearers of the name pay tribute (when it can be got out of them) and not taxes. The Ottoman Government is only now extending its power, as a practical thing, into Kurdistan at all. All the Mussulman dwellers in the land were until lately “ashiret,” and much in the same position as the Highlanders “beyond the line” in days previous to the “forty-five.” A fair proportion of the Christian dwellers there, happening to have arms, are “ashiret” as well.

Those who are unarmed are in the unpleasant position of having to serve two masters (both of them abominably bad ones), and are “rayat” both to the Government, as far as its power goes; and to the Kurdish chiefs, as far as they can enforce theirs. The whole position is comprehensible to those who live among the people; but to the foreigner, it appears to be (and is) the negation of law, order, and all that we mean by good government. It is the old life of the highlands of Scotland, complicated and worsened immensely by the division between Christianity and Islam.

Still, among the ashirets who carried arms, whether Christian or Moslem, the position was by no means intolerable a generation ago. Besides it was extremely picturesque. The various tribes fought one another freely; and of course{168} the feuds usually, though not always, followed the religious and racial line of division.

Still, arms were approximately equal; and the Christians, though outnumbered, had strong positions to defend, and were of good fighting stock, as men of Assyrian blood should be. So, until Abdul Hamid’s day, the parties were fairly matched on the whole; and generations of “cross-raiding” had evolved an understanding in the matter, capable of summary statement as “Take all you like, but do not damage what you leave; and do not touch the women.” Thus, live-stock were fair loot, and so were carpets and other house-furniture, and arms of course. But the house must not be burnt, and standing crops and irrigating channels not touched, while a gentlemanly brigand would leave the corn-store alone. Women were never molested when a village of ashirets was raided, until a few years ago. And this was so thoroughly understood that it was not necessary even to guard them; a custom which by an interesting parallel prevailed on our own Scotch border in the fourteenth century.[100] When, however (as sometimes happened), a party of Kurds at feud with other Kurds, plundered a Christian village that was “rayat” to the chief of the other party, girls might be carried off, with the other live stock. Even so, however, wives were sacrosanct.

Of late years things have changed for the worse in this respect. Women are not always respected now; and the free distribution of rifles among the Kurds has done away with all the old equality. This was done, when the late Sultan raised the “Hamidie” battalions; partly for the defence of his throne, partly perhaps with the idea of keeping the Christians in subjection. Now when to odds in numbers you add the additional handicap implied in the difference between Mauser and flint-lock, the position becomes impossible; and the balance has since inclined steadily against the Christian tribes.

The fights of old were not usually very deadly, for though{169} a good deal of home-made powder was burned, these mountaineers are tough, and hard to kill. The writer has known an instance of a Kurd who was shot through the body in a tribal skirmish; after which he walked home, and observed to his wife, “Beastly nuisance this: here is a brand-new shirt, and two holes in it; and it will want washing too!”

Jilu is a curious little mountain canton—a fan of narrow gorges descending from the rugged Galiashin range, the highest peak of which, Supa Durig, approaches 14,000 feet. Their union forms the Oramar River, that considerable tributary of the Zab mentioned in the previous chapter. Nothing but “terrace cultivation” is possible on the bare rocky slopes; and the earth that composes the fields has usually to be carried to the spot where the terrace wall has been built to retain it, in baskets on men’s backs. A spot has to be chosen which is reasonably safe from avalanches; else the poor farmer may find, some spring morning, that not only his crop, but his whole field, has been swept away in the night.

Men of Jilu have a harder life than even the average mountaineer of Kurdistan; and hence it is, no doubt, that they have developed the wanderlust, which is far more strongly marked in them than in most of their fellow countrymen. They wander everywhere in search of work, though they always drift back to this strange little canton at the end. Starting with nothing but the clothes they stand up in, and very ragged clothes too, they apparently never starve, and occasionally bring back a fortune. Men are to be found in Jilu who helped to build the forts of Port Arthur; and who corrected the writer on certain points connected with that fortress when the siege was being discussed in the patriarch’s diwan. Who served guns on board the American battleships off Cuba; or have (goodness alone knows how) found some charitable person to give them a university education in America. One of these wanderers brought back £3000; or, to be accurate, brought it to within a few days’ journey of his home, when his luck deserted him at last, for he met a party of Kurds,{170} and the robbers made the haul of their wicked lives. It was the cruellest trick of fortune; but he owned to have made the money in one very doubtful trade that these fellows practise; and we could not avoid the feeling that the thief by violence had as good a right to the spoil as had the thief by fraud.

The trade in question is this. Jilu men have made the discovery that folk in Europe and America have much sympathy with an ancient and struggling church, and are willing to give considerable sums to assist it. So they collect for “schools and orphanages.” Men go by the dozen to gather in money, nominally for these objects; but actually spend it on their own needs alone. American police know the trick well, and indeed have invented the term “fake-priest” as descriptive of this branch of the great profession of roguery.

One can feel some sympathy with the rascals who thus answer the old question “why did Allah create fools, if not for the profit of wise men?” They are in absolute and utter poverty; and they know that by going to foreign parts, and there “slinging a yarn” that they would not expect their own people to take seriously, they can gather sums that mean wealth to them. It is a great temptation; and it will continue till such time as charity and common sense begin to run in double harness, and charitable folk at home refuse to extend to these Orientals the trust they would never repose in one of their own countrymen.

Further, tried by their own standards, these Orientals are not cheating. An Eastern does not understand the administration of a Trust. What you give, you give; and may Allah reward you for your charity. But, when you have given it, it is yours no longer; and why should you complain if its owner finds that he needs it for something different to his original intent. You gave it for a school? Well, he really meant to use it for a school then; but afterwards he found that he needed it for his own family. It is his; why not? Narrow-minded man, why use the ugly word thief?

So, while sympathizing with these rascals, we advise no{171} man to give them money; or even to trust the interesting documents they produce, sealed with the patriarchal seal. Forgery is singularly easy in a land where the seal is the sole signature, and any seal-cutter can copy it from an impression.

So the “Jiluayi” wander; reproducing to-day in all details the seller of relics who rode to Canterbury with Chaucer. One enterprising member of the fraternity made a considerable sum by selling in four Russian villages the four feet of the ass on which our Lord rode into Jerusalem; and only got into trouble when the temptation to supply the demand of a fifth village for another foot overpowered his prudence. Another, in India, suffered even worse things. He had gathered about £300 from various places; mainly by his absolute refusal to go away from anywhere till something was given him. But in Malabar he was arrested as a Russian spy, and dragged before a zealous native magistrate. Knowing, by experience at home, the danger of telling the truth to any official, and particularly of owning to the possession of money, he declared that he was a very poor man and had not a penny in the world; thus sticking to the lie, when the truth would probably have secured his safety. The magistrate handed him over to the police to be searched, and they of course found the gold upon him, and appropriated the whole. Then they reproduced their victim in court, saying that as far as they could ascertain he had spoken the truth, and that he really had no money. On this, he was discharged.

The central shrine and cathedral of the district of Jilu is the ancient church of Mar Zeia, a building remarkable enough to merit a word of description to itself. In structure it is not very different from any other mountain church; being a mere rectangular box of stone, with a roof vaulted within and flat without, and arranged according to the usual type of Nestorian building, which we must describe later. It is its contents that are unique.

For centuries, Jilu men who have gone “to countries” (or foreign parts generally) have made a practice of giving gifts to this shrine on their return; and it, unlike other{172} churches, has never been plundered by any foe, for a reason that will presently appear.

The consequence is that the building contains such a collection of ex voto offerings as can hardly be matched in the world, reaching back for one is afraid to say how long. The most modern feature is a grand collection of American clocks, alarm and otherwise, that hang on a cord, touching one another, all across the church. Bells, usually of small size (for half a mule load or 125 lbs. is the strict limit of weight that can be transported in one mass), are hung everywhere; long strings of them decorating the curtain that veils the sanctuary. Vestments for the priests, of Russian cut and make, hang all along the walls; while ostrich eggs and coral speak of the connexion with Malabar. Finally, away at the back, and covered thick with dust, stand rows of “China jars,” said to have been brought back thence when this Nestorian church had its bishops at Pekin and Singan in the eighth century, and which connoisseurs would probably think cheap at their weight in gold.

Strangest perhaps of all, if genuine, is the charm that has preserved all these treasures from the spoiler. A zaptieh had accompanied us from the seat of government at Neri, and had entered the church with us, reverently removing hat and shoes at the door. He now approached the young bishop who was showing us his treasures, and said “My Lord, you will allow me to see the handkerchief of Mohammed the Prophet?” “By all means,” said the bishop; and going to a recess in the wall, he produced thence a bundle of silk wrappings, which were removed one after the other, revealing a piece of plain linen, inscribed with Arabic characters. This either is, or is supposed to be, a firman of protection for this church, issued by the Prophet himself, and written on his own napkin. Whether it is, whether it can be, genuine is not for us to say.[101] This is certain at least; that every Kurd believes in its genuineness: and the zaptieh bowed before it with the utmost reverence, placed{173} it on his forehead and eyes for a moment, and finally returned it, with an offering to the shrine which represented about a week’s pay. Genuine or not, the fact of its existence has saved this church and its contents from plunder many a time and oft, and will probably continue to do so; though it must be owned that at one terrible outbreak of Moslem fanaticism in the year 1847, not even reverence for the name of the Prophet saved a similar document in the hands of the Patriarchial family from destruction, the members of the family from slaughter, or an even wealthier church from plunder.

We were the guests of the Bishop of Jilu, Mar Sergius, in his very primitive palace; and as we had arrived at noon, spent a good deal of the afternoon “holding Diwan” in his reception room—sitting that is in the seat of honour on a low diwan, while all the village came to us, and talked of anything and everything that occurred to them. Many of course desired medicine, for any Englishman is a doctor by hereditary right; and always carries with him good “English salt,” which is quinine, as well as other drugs.

So, “distribute medicines manfully” is the rule for the traveller here, whether you chance to know anything about the trade or not. Fever you can recognize at any rate, or the patient will recognize it for you; and if you have not the ghost of a notion what the disease is, look doubly wise and administer something harmless and bitter. The nastier the drug, the more it will stimulate the faith of the sufferer, and that, after all, is the essential thing. Speaking generally, you will cure more efficiently when you do not know what the trouble is, than when you do. Only remember certain rules. First, that to give mild aperients to an Oriental is a sinful waste of good drugs; and diminishes faith in foreign medicines, which is worse. Second, if you go by book at all, give three times the “book dose” to an Assyrian, and five times the amount to a Kurd; for then you may produce some sort of effect. This instruction was given to the writer by men of experience when he was new to the country, and it staggered him for the moment, but he was reassured. “Yes,” said a worthy member of the{174} Syrian nation, “it is very difficult to poison a Kurd at all; and if you succeed, it does not much matter.”

Still, we own that we have once known an Oriental suffer from an overdose. He had applied to a Syrian friend for an aperient; and the friend (who called himself hakim on the strength of three months spent as bottle-washer in an American Mission dispensary) had given him “a strong medicine.” Both parties were startled at the result; and as the writer turned up opportunely next day, he was called in as a consultant, and found the victim in a very reduced state indeed after a night spent upon the rack!

“What did you give him?” he asked the hakim.

“Croton oil,” said he.

“And how much?”

“Oh, not much; only a teaspoonful.”

(N.B. half a minim is the maximum allowed by the British Pharmacopœia!)

Persian tea-spoons are not as big as English, so perhaps he had not given much more than thirty times the full dose. The consultant gave it as his opinion that as the patient had survived twenty-four hours, he would recover; and the event justified his wisdom.

There was one case brought to us that afternoon, however, that was quite beyond our skill. A man came with a tale of woe expressed in a mountain dialect that we could not follow; and the bishop had to be impressed as interpreter. He heard, and collapsed in a fit of laughter, gasping out, “He wants a medicine to quiet his wife’s tongue, Rabbi.”

“Tell him I am not a worker of miracles, my lord,” said we.

The most important subject of local politics that came up for discussion was an attempt recently made by a reforming local governor to take a census of the men of Jilu. A Government official had come among them with papers and ink, and proceeded to write down all their names. When they asked what it was all about, he explained that it was the elections to the Mejlis-i-Mebussan, the Turkish Parliament; and that if their names were written down properly they should have a member all to themselves,{175} who should be a man of Jilu, and should live in Constantinople and draw a fine salary, just for sitting in the capital and representing their grievances to the Sultan.

The idea seemed a good one, and folk gave in their names freely, till the census was nearly finished. But then it occurred to them that perhaps they had been hasty, and that these lists might be used for other things than the election of an M.P. What if they were a basis for taxation? or even worse, for the drafting of their young men to the army? The result was that a “strong deputation” went after the Government mudir (who, by the way, was an Armenian), confiscated all his papers and burnt them. He was disposed to think that he was fortunate in that he had not been himself thrown on to the pile.

A casually minded Government took no notice of the little incident, which after all only concerned an Armenian underling.[102] Had it been a real Turkish official, there would probably have been trouble for every one concerned; and a good many more besides.{176}