He lived at free quarters where he chose (on Christian villagers mostly) and paraded the streets in a flowing purple robe with a green turban, which indicated by its folds and pattern whether the wearer was descended from the Prophet by the male or female line.

He was hated by all creeds maybe, but he was feared by all notwithstanding; by Moslems for his supposed spiritual rank, by Christians for his undoubted worldly power. Woe to the Christian dog who presumed to shirk getting off his horse and standing at the salute when the Seyyid rode by; it was an unmerited favour that he should be allowed to ride a horse at all!

Of course, there are gibes against the clan in plenty: for the more grossly superstitious a man is, the more impossible he finds it to keep his tongue off the Church which nevertheless he dares not disobey. When all else is bound, it is hard if speech is not free!

Thus we are told how Khoja Nazr-ed-din was sent out by his wife one day to buy egg-plants for dinner.

“Don’t know what they are like,” said the Khoja.

“Mudhead,” said his wife, “there are lots in the market—fat purple things with green heads.”

“Oh, I know then,” said the khoja; and he came back with a Seyyid in full robes.

“Here’s the egg-plant, wife. What shall I do with it?” he demanded.

“Rip it open and cut off its head,” came the voice from the kitchen, “and then put it in the pot.”

The khoja, obedient man, did his best to follow instructions, and a very dishevelled Seyyid succeeded in escaping into the street.

Khoja[112] Nazr-ed-din is a sort of Oriental Joe Miller, upon whom any story can be fathered, from Stamboul to Kandahar. But how completely the “Arabian Nights” atmosphere survives in Urmi to this day may be judged from the following story, which was told to us as a true one,{210} and which the narrator at any rate believed implicitly. Let us call it,

The Story of Haji Kas, and how his own Son bought him

There lived of late in the city of Urmi a Seyyid of the Seyyids, whose name was Haji Kas. And he was a rich man and a powerful, who had thrice performed the Pilgrimage to Mecca; and who was a friend to the governor and the kadi, and had in repute among the mollahs and imaums.

Now it is said by the Poet (upon whom be peace), “if thy neighbour hath made the Pilgrimage once, beware of him; if twice remove into the next street.” And Haji Kas had three times made the Pilgrimage. Wherefore all men feared him greatly, for he regarded neither God nor man.

Now there was a certain householder in the city who had a garden which Haji Kas coveted; and forasmuch as he would not sell, Haji Kas reviled him and persecuted him, and brought false accusation against him before the kadi in the courts of law. So that householder went to his house sorrowful and sore vexed; and sat him down in an inner chamber, and ate not, and covered his face.

Howbeit that householder had a wife, and she was a fair woman and a wise; and when she saw her husband sorrowing, she said unto him, “What aileth thee, O my lord, that thou eatest nothing and art sad?” And he answered, “Because of Haji Kas the Seyyid; for he seeketh to take from me my garden, and hath brought false accusation against me; and moreover the kadi hath eaten bribes at his hand.” And the woman laughed, and said, “Truly, thou doest ill to fret thyself for such a matter. Leave Haji Kas to me. I will give thee vengeance on Haji Kas.”

So the woman arose in the morning, and donned her fairest raiment, and perfumed herself with musk, and painted her eyes with kohl; and she took her veil, and went forth, and came to the street where Haji Kas dwelt. And as the Seyyid passed by, she drew aside her veil and ogled him, and said, “O Moslem, canst thou tell me the dwelling-place of Haji Kas?” And Haji Kas answered, “I am he. What wouldst thou with me?” And she drew aside her veil{211} further, and smiled, and said, “Thy servant is a woman of Teheran,[113] and married to a man of Urmi. And my husband hath gone on a journey, and hath sent me a writing of divorcement. And behold my neighbours said unto me, ‘Seek not advice of any in this matter, save only of the upright Haji Kas.’”

(The narrator dwelt on the flirtation lovingly, and at great length, but here we are obliged to curtail it.)

Then Haji Kas lighted down from his horse, and took her by the hand and said, “O my lady of beauty, verily in this matter thy neighbours counselled thee well.” But the woman drew away from him, and veiled herself, and answered, “It is not meet that we talk together in the street at this time. Come to my house at sundown, and I will give thee welcome; and there shalt thou instruct me in all that it behoves me to do.”

So Haji Kas arose after nightfall, and went secretly to the house that the woman had appointed to him; and she opened to him, and set meat and drink before him; and while they made merry together, behold, there was a knocking at the door. And the woman went softly to hearken; and she said, “It is my husband. Lo! he is returned from his journey, and I wist not aught of his coming; and I fear that he will do us a mischief, if he find us together in the house.”

Then said Haji Kas, “I conjure thee, O my lady, that thou show me a way of escape.” But she answered, “There is no other door. Hide thee in this great chest; I only have the key thereof, and when my husband is departed then straightway I will set thee free.”

So Haji Kas entered the chest, and the woman turned the key upon him. And she opened the door to her husband, and said, “A greeting to thee! Behold, I have taken Haji Kas in the snare that I have laid.” And the man said, “Where is he?” And she answered, “He is in that chest.{212} Cord it tightly, and we will eat and be merry, and thereafter we will take counsel what we shall do with Haji Kas.”

And when the morning morrowed, the man arose, and said, “What shall we now do with Haji Kas? Come let us open the chest, and I will beat him and let him go.” But the woman said, “Not so. Call thou hither a porter, and lay the chest upon his shoulders, and bid him bear it to the bazaar; and let Achmet the salesman cry it for sale to the highest bidder; but charge him to sell it unopened; no man shall know what is in it, until that it is sold.” Then the man did as the woman had bidden him, and the porter departed to the bazaar.

And as he was going down he met a water-seller; and the water-seller said, “A greeting to thee. Whither goest thou?” And he answered, “I bear this chest to the bazaar.” Then said the water-seller, “What is in it?” And the porter said, “Nay that I know not, for no man may know what is in it till it is sold.”

Then the water-seller went near and hearkened; and he said, “There is some living thing within it. Beware lest it be a jinn. Peradventure it will do thee hurt.” And the porter dropped the chest, and sprang away from it, and cried, “I take refuge with Allah from Satan the stoned.”

Then the water-seller answered, “See now this pool of water. It is my counsel that thou sink the chest awhile therein.”

Now when Haji Kas heard that saying he cried aloud out of the chest, saying “See thou do it not, for I am the Seyyid, Haji Kas.” And the porter answered, “Nay, but this is a cunning jinn.” And Haji Kas cried, “By Allah, I am indeed the Seyyid, and if thou let me go I will give thee a great reward.”

But the porter said, “Not so; for I have been paid my hire and my charge is laid upon me. If then I deliver not the chest to Achmet, who will henceforth employ me in the bazaar?”

Then Haji Kas spake to the water-seller saying, “I pray thee then, friend, that thou will hie thee to the house of my son; and bid him haste to the bazaar, and buy the chest of{213} Achmet, how great soever may be the price thereof. And let him bear it away unopened, that I be not discovered therein.”

So the water-seller ran to bear the message, and the porter took the chest and bore it to the bazaar.

And Achmet the salesman took the chest and set it on the bench before him, and he cried aloud, “O Moslems, I have for sale a chest—a chest and all that is in it. What will ye give me for the chest, and for the contents of the chest?”

And the merchants said, “What is in the chest?” And Achmet answered, “Nay that I know not, for none may know what is in it until that it is sold.” Then the merchants came together; and one said, “It is a good chest. I will give a toman[114] for it.” And another said, “I will give two tomans.” Then came to them the son of Haji Kas, breathless with much running, and he cried aloud unto the salesman, saying, “Oh, Achmet, sell me the chest for five tomans.” And a Jew merchant answered, “I will give six tomans”; and the Haji’s son said, “I will give thee twelve!”

Then the merchants spake one to another, saying, “Verily we know not what is in the chest; but behold the Haji’s son knoweth, and it seemeth that it is a thing of price. Of a surety it is smuggled tobacco from the warehouse of the Sheikh; or maybe hashish, and worth much gold.” And they that were aforetime backward were now eager to buy.

But though many bid for the chest, yet the Haji’s son bid higher, and Achmet the salesman sold him the chest for sixty tomans; and he wiped his brow, and paid the money and called a porter to bear the chest away.

But the porter who had brought the chest had stood by, listening to the bidding; and he laughed till his legs gave way beneath him, and he rolled on the ground in his mirth. And while the merchants wondered at him, he gat his breath, and sat up, and cried aloud, and said, “By Allah, O Moslems, was there ever seen the like? This man hath bought his own father for the price of sixty tomans. Haji Kas the Seyyid is in that great chest!”

And when the merchants heard that saying, they ran{214} upon the chest and brake it open; and Haji Kas sat up, and blinked at them therein. And all the merchants laughed till the bazaar rang with their laughter; and they held their sides, and the tears ran down their faces, and they rolled on the ground whooping, even as the porter had done.

Then Haji Kas arose, and gat him out of the chest; and he and his son slank away in shame together. And it came to pass after a few days, that he sold his house, and all that appertained to him in that city, and departed into another country, and returned to Urmi no more.

Governors in the old days did not often lift their hands against the Seyyids; the experience of those who tried to do so, teaching them wisdom. Twice the effort was made; but in each instance the privileged corporation that had religious sentiment behind it was able to win. Once the Vali-Ahd[115] had tried to meet the undoubted difficulty caused by the fact that no governor could keep the Kurdish raiders in order, by making the biggest brigand of the countryside Governor of Urmi province; on the same principle as a certain King of England once made The O’Neill Viceroy of Ireland. The Governor, Hassan Beg of the Marku Kurds, was at least commendably energetic; and being, like all Kurds, a Sunni, he despised all Shiahs equally, whether they were Seyyids or not. He began operations by blowing a batch of them from guns—a fate which they probably richly deserved, but which roused much scandal, for no amount of hereditary sanctity will get you to Heaven in little bits! But presently one such victim escaped. He bribed the artillery-men; and they put him with his arm round the gun’s muzzle, instead of with his back to it. (The execution took place in the midst of a big parade-ground, so that the fraud was not too conspicuous.) Bang went the gun: but the holy man stood unharmed. Up went the cry, “A miracle! a miracle!” and the mob immediately assaulted the governor’s house. He had taken the precaution of bringing a garrison of his{215} own tribesmen with him to his new post, so the attack failed; but he thought it more prudent to leave the city that night and go home. His tenure of the governorship of Urmi had been brief; but like the kingship of Roumania was “always a pleasant reminiscence.”

In the year 1902 another governor, one Mejid-es-Sultaneh, also attempted reform. He proposed to clean the streets and have a pure water-supply; a scheme which was admirable as far as it went, though an American missionary in the town did suggest that “his Excellency had better make the streets before he scrapes them.” Another aspiration of his, expressed in the words that there would never be any real reform in Persia, “till one can see a Seyyid hanging on every tree round Urmi,” was also a perfectly sound one; but unfortunately he lacked the power to execute his admirable ideas. Thus, when Mohurram came round, friction began. By immemorial custom a deputation of Seyyids waits on the governor at that feast; for then (like the Jews of old) they have the right to demand that he “release unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they will.” Mejid-es-Sultaneh was willing enough to honour custom, but had let the college of Seyyids know, unofficially, that there was one man whom they were not to ask for. It had cost some trouble to get him into the jail, and he was to hang. They accepted at once this challenge to a trial of strength, and demanded that man and no other. The governor had the whole deputation thrashed and turned out of his house; sending orders to the prison to hang the man without more ado.

The Seyyids were naturally furious; and they were able to pull strings at Teheran till Mejid-es-Sultaneh was exiled. He only escaped confiscation of his property by executing a hurried deed of gift of the whole of it, in legally binding form, to an English merchant at Tabriz. He trusted absolutely, and justifiably, to that man’s verbal promise that the income should be paid over to him, and the capital restored if ever the original owner were in a position to claim it again.

As for trial, or any pretence of justice, even for a man in this position, there was none. Such things are mere empty{216} words to a ruler who on another occasion invited a prominent Kurdish chief to a conference, swearing on the Koran that, if he came, he should leave Tabriz in safety and honour. The Kurd (Jaffar Agha by name) came on that assurance. He had his conference and started home, loaded with honours and decorations. One hundred yards from the gate of Tabriz he was called back for a last word. He returned fearlessly; entered the reception room—and was shot dead from behind a grating. So the Shah kept faith with a man who trusted to his honour.

Under such rule, government broke down utterly and absolutely in Persia; and the Turks took the opportunity of carrying out the aggression mentioned in the previous chapter, and occupying the strip of frontier they had long coveted. Not content with this, they encouraged a system of open raids over the whole district of Urmi, with the avowed intention of showing the Persians “you cannot control or bridle these Kurds, and so you had better let us do it, for we can.” The writer was in Urmi at the time; living, as an Englishman does in these lands, in personal sanctuary. To shoot an Englishman is too dangerous an amusement (fascinating though it admittedly is) for any gentleman to indulge in—unless the temptation is very great indeed. The experience was interesting; for what one saw was anarchy, apparently with no power of redemption. Vis consili expers the Government of Persia had always been; and when at last it fell under the weight of its own corruption, there was no force left to set up any fresh rule at all. Folk had been accustomed to look to the Hukumet for everything; and when it was gone they lacked the political instinct to set up anything to take its place.

The strangest rumours circulated: such as the statement that a caravan of five hundred camels had arrived in Tabriz from Russia, loaded with nothing but tanzimat (reform); or that “Enjuman Effendi” (Monsieur Parliament) had been appointed governor of the land by the Shah, and that he was a very great man and had very many wives. The collapse of the central Government did not, however, affect daily life in the villages; except that the raiding bands of{217} Kurds walked about the countryside rather more at their ease than was the case normally.

In one instance a party of twelve robbers marked down a village some thirty miles from the frontier; looted it, and insolently drove their plunder along the high roads to their own home again. They made no attempt at concealment or even hurry; and ten miles per diem being about the limit that a sheep can be taken comfortably, the process must have occupied three days at the least. It is true that the Turkish Governor, on hearing of the exploit, did insist on the return of the animals, greatly to the disgust of the raiders. However, they did not go quite without profit; for finding that the beasts had got to go back, they took the precaution of shearing them first!

At the time, we were endeavouring to give the local “Nestorian” clergy a week’s instruction in matters pastoral and devotional. As part of the course, we ordered the whole gathering to write a sermon on the text, “As lambs in the midst of wolves.” We could not help feeling a profane sympathy with the teaching propounded in one of the discourses;—that undoubtedly Christians were lambs, as Scripture said; but that what was most needful under the circumstances was that they should develop the teeth and claws of wolves! The doctrine received practical support from an incident that occurred before the week ended, when two of the deacons present announced, “By your leave, Rabbi, we must go.”

“And wherefore, O deacon?”

“Because our village is being attacked by Kurds, Rabbi; and it is needful for us to go and help beat them.”

Leave was given readily enough; but when was a respectable “retreat” interrupted by such an incident before?

As for the official who was called Governor of Urmi, he sat in the walled town, and did nothing. Once he expressed a general hope that things would go better in the near future; because he had hired a murderer to assassinate Bedr Ismail Agha, the man who was doing most of the raiding at the time. But even the rôle of First Murderer in the Government{218} troupe was bungled; a gratuitous bit of mismanagement, for there was plenty of talent for the part.

Christian townships in the neighbourhood, finding themselves in daily risk of plunder, sent in to complain to his Excellency; and “soldiers” were actually ordered to go out and protect them. They started; but returned in two hours, stating that they had heard a rumour that there were Kurds on the road. They had, of course, never dreamed of doing anything to molest the people they were sent out to punish; but in compensation, they had robbed all the unfortunate villagers, Christian and Mussulman alike, whom they met upon the way coming to seek shelter in the town!

When one of the townships in question, Gukhtapa, renewed its request for some sort of protection, the governor could only regret his inability to afford any assistance “because the soldiers say that they won’t go.” He generously offered to send Kurdish irregulars of another tribe, Marku men, who might be persuaded to “sit in the village.” “Thank you,” said the applicants, “but of the two we prefer the robbers who will go away again, to the robbers who will sit there indefinitely.” They then took their own measures for protection; giving hospitality to a party of Tergawari Christians, driven from their homes by the Turkish aggression, and glad to earn their living by so congenial an occupation as fighting for it.

Ultimately, the Ottoman Government sent a “High Commissioner” to settle the disputed frontier; and the official who appeared was that genial general-utility man of the Empire, Tahir Pasha of Mosul. He settled himself quite comfortably in the house of the Ottoman Consul; a gentleman who (to give a touch of farce to the tragically comic opera that all concerned were playing) was one of the most successful of those “Jilu men” referred to in a previous chapter. This genius had accumulated quite a fortune by collecting money from the charitable in British Columbia for an orphanage in Macedonia (whither he had neither been nor meant to go); and had really carried his nefarious trade to a point where it became almost respectable,{219} because he had actually swindled the Pope! He had got a decoration out of the Holy Father, by posing as an important mountain chief, converted to true Catholicism at the threshold of the Apostles; and by promising to bring his whole tribe to confess the same. One feels that cheating in excelsis in this fashion confers a halo of semi-respectability on such a supreme artist; and the impression was apparently shared by the Ottoman Government, for they had felt that no man could be fitter to represent the Sultan in Urmi, and he had been nominated acting Consul accordingly.

The British Consul-General from Tabriz had come over to help in the settlement of the frontier dispute, and a rather delicate point arose in consequence. The Ottoman Consul was, of course, most desirous to come and pay his respects to his esteemed British colleague; but would like to be assured first that the warrant for swindling that was out against him in British Columbia, would not be executed if he came into a British Consulate. He complained sadly that the expenses of entertaining Tahir Pasha were ruining him; but unfeeling people pointed out that he had no cause to grumble. His money had been given for the sustenance of Macedonian orphans; and his Excellency was a Macedonian of sorts, being an Albanian, and (as he was over seventy) most likely an orphan as well. Thus some of the money was going at last for something that resembled the intention of the donors!

It presently appeared that the instructions the worthy old Pasha had received were, in brief, to waste all the time possible, and do as little else as might be. As these jumped absolutely with his own inclination, he fulfilled them con amore; while it was hard to say whether the British Consul was more annoyed or amused at the manœuvres.

“All Kurds are Turkish subjects, surely,” said the Pasha mildly; “a treaty says so, somewhere.”

“But there are some tribes of Kurds right down on the Indian frontier in Beluchistan, Excellency. Do you mean to claim them too?”

“Well, why not? If they raid over your frontier, let{220} the Sultan know; and he will send a punitive expedition as soon as possible.”

Or there might come a mild protest on the part of the Persian Governor, anent the arrival of some two hundred armed Kurds, “to pay their respects to Tahir Pasha.”

“What is the meaning of this armed invasion of Persian territory, your Excellency?”

“Well, well, these Persians are hard to deal with. We let their pilgrims go over our frontier to Kerbela in droves, and say nothing; and when a few good peaceable fellows come over to pay their respects to the Sultan’s representative you have these complaints at once. So unneighbourly, you know.”

To drive a wily old Australian cow may be hard; but it is child’s play to getting an old Turk to do business when his instructions are to waste time.

So the frontier dispute dragged on ad infinitum till the British Consul left it to settle itself, and went back to Tabriz. The Russians could not allow a country where they had large interests to go to rack and ruin through anarchy, and the present practical occupation of northern Persia was the result.{221}

CHAPTER XI

A LAND OF TROUBLE AND ANGUISH (URMI TO VAN)

That too zealous reformer, Mejid-es-Sultaneh, owns much property among these lower hills; and this fact is responsible for the development of a new type of village, the invention of that English gentleman to whom he assigned his property. It will be understood that “a good head of labour” is as necessary for a Persian estate now as it was for a mediæval manor in England; but conditions may make it difficult to maintain that desirable thing. Hence, when the Englishman found himself charged with a large depopulated estate, he bethought him of settling upon it the dispossessed Christians of Tergawar. They were put there upon the usual terms of the Persian village system, which deserves a word to itself.{222}

The “Lord of the country-side” who owns the land, assigns a certain district to a village. It is his business to provide seed-corn; and in this particular case he built the houses as well, though usually that is not necessary. The villagers then pay him, instead of a money rent, a proportion of the crop, varying from a third to a half of the corn grown. Vineyards pay the same proportion; but if you desire to grow melons, you must ask leave and pay a special rent; for this is a crop that is exhausting for the land, and still more for the water.

A big landlord will often own many villages; and in such cases he places a steward in charge of each, to compute the amount of produce due to him and to receive his proper share. It is easy to understand from this the method by which the “unjust steward” of the parable proposed to defraud his lord: neither is it at all difficult to sympathize with that lord’s “commendation,” in a land which still believes implicitly in the policy of “setting a thief to catch a thief,” and where it is recorded that Ahmed the Calamity and Hassan the Pestilence were made captains of the watch at Baghdad for no other reason than that “they excelled all men in villainy and tricks of cunning.”

Both sides profited by the arrangement in the Mejid-es-Sultaneh estate; the owner getting a good supply of labour for a previously unproductive property, and the villagers a new home in the land.

They were of course in some danger from Kurds; and it was to meet this that the new type of village was evolved by the English administrator—a type which is much to his credit as an amateur military engineer. In ordinary villages the flat-roofed shielings are huddled together without plan or defensibility. But in these, a square space of perhaps 2 acres was enclosed by a wall of mud brick some twelve feet high, with projecting towers at the corners and one good strong gate. Then the houses of the village were built against this wall on the inner side; their flat roofs forming an excellent “banquette” for the defence of the battlemented wall, while the towers provided a flanking fire. The central space was left clear, except for the village{223} church, and provided ample accommodation for the flocks. The Kurds came and reconnoitred, and cursed the inventive and innovating Englishman up hill and down dale. Half a dozen men with flint-locks could keep thirty of the best of them outside such a place; and we believe that no village built on this pattern has ever been seriously attacked.

Normally this district ought to be safe for Europeans; yet it was the scene of one of the narrowest escapes that the writer has ever experienced. In the summer of 1909, when Urmi plain was in the condition of anarchy mentioned in the last chapter, some of the Christian villages protected themselves by enlisting parties of exiles who belonged to the fighting clans of Tergawar; men who loved a battle for its own sake, and who also had a very special personal grudge against the Kurds who were most obnoxious to their hosts. Hence it came to pass that when the Kurds of a certain district came down to plunder the village of Ardishai, with their usual insolent confidence, they met with a most unexpectedly warm reception. In fact they walked straight into a well arranged ambush; whence they only escaped with the loss of fourteen dead, besides wounded; and several captured horses. This was of course a fearful blow to their prestige, and they went home “with their faces blackened,” and feeling that something must be done to wipe off that stain.

The most obvious thing to do was to destroy the whole of the next party of travellers that came their way from Urmi district; and, as it happened, this was the writer’s caravan. A party was detailed for the job; and when we reached the village of Umbi, one easy day out from Urmi, and asked for hospitality for the night, this party settled there also, camping on the roof next to the one we were occupying. We were not aware of the fact, and in any case were safe in the village; for any attack there would be at once a breach of hospitality, and a crime for which it would be too easy to fix responsibility. Our would-be murderers, however, made no secret before their hosts as to what their errand was; and the men of the village, though naturally interested and sympathetic, advised them to push the{224} business no farther. “You see, this is an English party;” they argued. “Now we killed just one American three years ago and have not heard the last of that trifle yet.[116] You had better drop the scheme.” Finding, however, that their guests were resolute, the hosts were far too good sportsmen to interfere by giving any warning to the intended victims; and the gang, who knew they could easily catch our slow-moving caravan, allowed us to go on our way next day, and followed after at their leisure.

We stopped about noon to call on a small Agha whose hold stood near the road; and were sitting at lunch with him under a tree outside the house when this party of five well-armed Kurds rode up and dismounted. The Agha invited them to join us at our meal; and though we were surprised at their refusal, we did not attach any importance to the matter. We said farewell, and started on the road. As soon as we were gone, however, our host, who had read the signs better, turned at once to his new visitors. “Now then, what is your game? Why would you not eat with the Englishman? or was it me that you had a grudge against?”

The Kurds were as frank with him as with their hosts of the previous night; but he took a different view of the matter.

“No, you don’t if you please! I have no special interest in that Englishman or any other; but if he is killed on my land it is me that the Government will come down on. Take another party; it makes no odds to you, and will not cause trouble for other gentlemen.”

As there was after all no personal feeling in the matter, they agreed to that compromise; and we proceeded safely. When we heard the tale later we could only be grateful to{225} our host for his consideration; and convinced even more in the semi-fatalistic belief that is apt to soak into one in a land of “Kismet”—the belief that every man is immortal till his work is done.

There was an afterpiece to the play; what had very nearly been a tragedy developing into something resembling a farce. This is not unusual in the East; for the angel, (or devil) charged with looking after the Persian and Ottoman empires, has a strong—if grim—sense of humour; and mercifully sees to it that the most serious and painful of matters shall always have also a ridiculous side. Our kind hosts at Umbi, having allowed reasonable time for their guests to carry out their expressed intentions, reported them at Urmi as already accomplished; saying that the Englishman and his party had been actually killed. “Is it not already done sahib?” is what your servant says to you about some order that he may, or may not, intend to carry out when convenient; and the minds of these gentlemen were working on similar lines. Word was accordingly brought to the British Consul, then staying in Urmi, that some of the men for whom he was responsible had been murdered. At first that official was blankly incredulous. One acquires a large fund of scepticism about all rumours in the East, and this was a man of some experience. Still, the report grew and grew, and was confirmed again and again, and the bald and unconvincing narrative was embellished with corroborative detail; till at last somebody with an artistic mind came in to declare that he had not only seen our corpses lying on a certain pass, but had smelt them as well; and gave the name of the Sheikh whose bridle was now adorned by the writer’s beard! Even consular scepticism broke down under this strain; and a caravan was got ready, and even coffins ordered for us so that decent interment might be given to our bodies; when a Nestorian qasha turned up opportunely from the mountains, and was summoned before the Consul at once.

“Have you heard anything of this reported murder of Mr. Wigram on the Jerma pass, on the 25th day of the month?” was the query.{226}

“I have sahib; but I think that on the whole it is not true, because I had tea with him at Qudshanis” (well beyond the scene of the supposed murder), “on the 30th.”

As the road goes north-west towards Van, the traveller gradually enters the land of the Armenian Christians, leaving the Assyrian or Nestorian land behind. Kurdistan, which is the general though unofficial title for the land where the Kurds live, embraces both; and of course any Turk will tell you that there is no such land as Armenia or Armenistan. Under the old régime, the word was carefully erased from all maps or books that entered the country,[117] lest erroneous teaching should be given in the Sultan’s schools; and much in the same spirit, books on chemistry were sometimes barred, because they contained the treasonable formula, H₂O. The seditiousness of this is perhaps not obvious: but it will be clear to the meanest capacity when it is explained that H₂ means, and can only mean, Hamid II, Sultan of Turkey; and if you supply the obviously understood symbol = between the 2 and the O, you get the appalling doctrine, “Hamid II = Zero,” which clearly cannot be allowed to pass.

Armenia then, does not exist; though there are districts where Armenians are the prevailing type of Christians; and we are now entering one of them. Of course there is a certain amount of “interlacing,” and isolated villages of either form of Christianity are found scattered among the districts mainly inhabited by the other.

Bashkala, which will be found upon the map, is the seat of government for the district; and this place is inhabited mainly by Jews, who are, as always, the financiers and merchants of the land. It is a postal centre, principally remarkable for the fact that the post goes to that point from Van, for distribution to such centres as Julamerk, Neri, and Diza; but only strays on to them, when a zaptieh or policeman happens to be going in that direction. Then he takes on the letterbag, provided that he does not{227} forget, or that it is not too heavy for him to carry. Hence letters and papers sometimes spend some time in that office; and we remember the courteous remark of the mutaserif[118] of the place, who observed to us when we called upon him on the way to Van after a winter spent in Qudshanis, “Effendim, the papers you used to receive during the winter had very good pictures in them.” It sounded cool, but after all, the poor man had little to read; the papers were none the worse for his looking at them, and he never meddled with the letters. Also, he always sent them on when he had done with them, and his action did not even imply any delay in the forwarding; so it seemed to us that there was nothing very much to complain about.

Somewhat to the west of the Urmi-Van road, and up among the highest of the mountains, stands one interesting memorial of the past. One particular valley runs down from the edge of lake Van to the Tigris; a pass open practically all the year round, between the plain of Mesopotamia and the Armenian plateau. It should be a highroad for commerce; but the Kurds who live in it are too turbulent to allow any traveller to pass that way as a rule, and it is very little known in consequence. It was a passage of strategic importance, however, in the days when Rome held Nisibis as her frontier post on the Persian border; and when Armenia was a buffer state of most uncertain loyalty, between the Roman and Sassanid Persian empires. Hence it was a road to guard; and Roman engineers planted upon it one of the grandest of Roman fortresses, which stands to this day practically unruined. Diocletian, who fortified this strategic frontier, was probably its builder; and it must have been evacuated when Jovian ceded the provinces to Persia some fifty years after his day. Since then it has remained derelict, for anyone to occupy who cared; and so it stands still—one of the grandest Roman relics anywhere.

It is a great square fortress, built after the pattern of their camps, with the prætorium as its citadel in the centre{228} of the western side. One wall, the northern, has been pulled down to provide material for the mediæval Kurdish kala into which the general’s quarters have been transformed; but this probably embodies much of the old citadel in itself. The whole would well repay examination by an expert—provided that its present owner could be got to understand the difference between antiquarianism and espionage, which is doubtful in the extreme.

A miserable Kurdish village occupies the interior of this grand fort; the hovels being built, of course, from the hewn stones of the walls. But even these “beggars hutting in the palace” are dimly aware that such a place has harboured greater men than they; and tell you that it was the work of giants and enchanters—at which one does not wonder.

The writer once visited the spot, in company with the British military Consul of Van; being attracted both by the interest of the building itself, and also by a story that there was a hoard of ancient documents in some unknown tongue in one of the rooms of the castle. The tale is quite probably true, though the documents may be of any date; but the present owner of the place politely denied all knowledge of them. His guest was a marvel of erudition, he declared, but had been misinformed in this particular; and so he changed the subject to something that interested him more. This was the Consul’s Mannlicher rifle, a beautiful tool that always excited envy everywhere, and was invaluable as a topic of conversation. Our host examined it, dandled it, played with it; and finally proposed a fair exchange—that rifle against his newly married wife! A deal which the Englishman rather ungallantly declined.

Disappointed in this, the Agha started yet another hare, with a hint that if we could oblige him in this, he might find it possible to refurbish his own memory in the matter of the documents. He told us a long tale of woe, of which the principal feature was that his hereditary enemy had recently been building a fine new castle, just in the one spot where he least wished to see it. We sympathized, but were{229} not very clear what we could do in the matter, till we were enlightened by a confidential whisper from our host. “Look here Bey, I know the ways of you English, and you’re sure to have a little dynamite; you always have. Could you not spare me just a few cartridges? I want—to kill a few fish!”

We were the guests of the Agha for the evening, and ate of course what was set before us; next day, however, there was some bargaining to be done for the fowl that was to have the honour of providing our supper that night. It is always well to buy your fowl in the morning, because it saves time at the hour of cooking; and it is easier to drive a bargain when you are obviously not dependent on the completion of the purchase for getting your next meal. Here the Consul’s kavass hit on an ingenious expedient. The Consul had a good rook-rifle with him; and the kavass, a Serb by nationality, was a very good shot with it. Five piastres was the sum demanded for the old cock we had fixed on; two was our offer, which is the usual market rate. The kavass produced the rifle and made a sporting suggestion. “Look here,” he said to the owner, “the bird is about eighty yards off. If I bring him down with one shot, will you let me have him for two piastres? If I have to spend a second cartridge, you shall have the full five.” A Kurd has a sport-loving soul, and the offer was accepted at once; particularly as their rifles do not throw too accurately. The kavass bowled the fowl over neatly; and the same trick got us several dinners at a fair rate that journey, though naturally it could not be played in the same place twice.

When this frontier province was occupied by the Turks (an event that occurred shortly before the revolution), it was strongly garrisoned from end to end. But the sufferings of the unhappy soldiers in the ensuing winter were terrible. No provision was made for their accommodation; no medical stores were provided; and hardly any food. It says much for the troops that they did not loot every village in the neighbourhood; but the fact is that “Nefer Mustafa” (the Turkish Tommy Atkins) is the most easily disciplined{230} and normally one of the kindliest of men. He is not the most intelligent of soldiers, but he is the most obedient; and he will march and starve, fight or freeze, and die in scores of dysentery and cholera, not only without a mutiny, but even without a sense of grievance against anybody; though he can hardly be ignorant that the rascally minor officials are making their profit out of the stores which he does not get. In one particular case, two battalions, amounting to perhaps 1200 men in all (the contractors probably drew stores, &c., for the 2000 they should have been, but that is a detail), were marched from Van to Tergawar late one autumn. There they remained, billeted in the deserted villages, till the following spring; when such of them as could walk were brought back to Van once more. Four months’ peace service in that district, without a shot being fired, had brought those 1200 men down to 400; of whom a bare half were able to march at all! It was simply the work of cold, hunger, fever, and neglect! Things did improve with the army under the new régime, or did for a while at any rate; but the pre-revolutionary state of things would have been regarded as exaggerated for a comic opera but for the tale of human suffering that it implied.

The pay of the soldier was nominally one or two piastres a day; but when he got this magnificent sum, which was not often, it was paid him in sanads, Government assignats, not cash. The local treasury, moreover, would not cash them (in fact, they were usually payable in some other province than that where the poor recipient was quartered), and no shop would look at them as payment for goods. Certain merchants made a business of buying them, at ⅕th of the face value, and presenting them in the proper quarter, when they might perhaps get half the sum due. The Government would be debited with the full amount; and the officials got the balance. By a final touch, which surely nobody but Ottoman officials of the old régime could have conceived, the Government would not receive its own bank-notes from its own soldiers in payment of its own taxes! Those had to be paid in gold, the Government only accepting silver at a heavy premium.{231}

Add to this that the soldier, nominally enlisted for five years with the Colours, and seven in the “Redif” or Reserve, was never allowed his discharge. Greybeards in the ranks were the commonest of sights; and we have seen men serving in 1905 who bore the medal granted for the defence of Plevna in 1878, and who had never been discharged.

Bashkala, to which we must now return, is two days journey from Van; and the road crosses the lofty Chokh range, an obstacle easy enough in summer, but uncommonly formidable in winter. At the best of times it is impassable to artillery, though a road could be constructed across it with a little labour. Half of it has in fact been accomplished, and a properly graded track, with wide sweeps and zigzags, goes up part of the ascent. Like most Turkish roads, however, it has neither beginning nor end, and nobody ever uses it. A little more trouble over the removal of the rocks in which it terminates at each end (and which keep it inacessible to all beasts of burden) would have made it useful. However, when this point had been reached, the official interested in it was recalled, or the money ran out, or the Vali wanted the funds for something else; and so it remains unfinished and useless to this day. It is somehow characteristic of the Arab and Ottoman races (though not of all Orientals) that they can form magnificent designs, and can begin and work at them for a time. Seldom, however, can they finish them, and never can they undertake the toil of maintenance and repair. So magnificent monuments and civil works fall into utter decay, and boats go to ruin everywhere, for lack of a ha’porth of tar.

One of the gorges of the Chokh range was the scene of a strange episode during the Armenian massacres of 1896. A party of Armenians, mostly women and children, were endeavouring to escape by this route, in the early spring. At that season frequent avalanches descend from the upper slopes to the bottom of the defiles, choking them for hundreds of yards on end. The streams of course make their way under the snow, winding through caverns which no man dare enter; for the water nearly fills the tunnel, and the roofs are constantly collapsing as the melting proceeds.{232} As the party approached one of these caverns, making their way along the track on the hillside above it, they found their pursuers close behind. “Let us fall into the hands of God rather than into those of the Kurds,” said their leader; and wading into the stream, they entered the snow-cave. As they did so another avalanche thundered down the slope behind them blocking the entrance of their refuge and burying them under the snow. “They have gone to their deaths,” said the pursuers, and halted where they were. But, as a matter of fact, the refugees were just within the cavern when the avalanche fell. This naturally dammed back the ice-cold torrent for a while, and they were able to crawl down the empty bed to the lower end of the passage. Here they emerged, hidden from their enemies by the curvature of the valley, and so escaped!

It may well be recorded too that at least one man of this district, Agha Zohar of Zirnek, sheltered the Armenians who fled to his country for refuge in that black time. When the slaughterers came in pursuit, and said that it was the order of the Sultan that the Armenian dogs should die, he replied proudly that he knew of no order of any Sultan that could constrain a gentleman to surrender his guests to the sword! The refugees had brought some few cattle with them, and these they offered as a reward to their protector. He not only refused to accept them, but gave them pasturage with his own herds till it was safe for the men to return to their homes.

The best type of Moslem gentleman is unsurpassed in any land.

The half-way house between Bashkala and Van is the city of Khoshab, which boasts the one castle of our acquaintance, which really embodies the dreams of Gustave Doré. As we give a picture of it, we may spare the reader any attempt at a description; but may say that though the main part of the architecture is Seljuk in style and date, it presents some features that are of European character, and support the local tradition that its real designer was a “Frank” of Italian birth—though whether a captive or an adventurer is left uncertain. The same tradition says also that the{233} castle was built by the illustrious Saladin, the only Kurd whom history is able to mention with esteem. The place may perhaps have been part of his family property, but as he was born in Egypt, he can hardly have dwelt in it himself. Certainly there was a stronghold here long before the days of either Saladin or Mohammed, for the masonry of the lower courses of one of the great towers cries aloud that it is Urartian. It was built, that is, by the men of that ancient kingdom whose capital was at Dhuspas, (which is Van), in the days when Tiglath-Pileser ruled at Nineveh; and which disputed the sovereignty of Asia with the might of Assur itself. That subject, however, belongs to another chapter.

In the neighbourhood of Khoshab there is one monument that was probably venerable even when the Urartian foundations of that grand castle were laid; and that is one of the finest “ziarets” that we have seen in Kurdistan. A great isolated hill, Boshet Dagh by name, stands up in the vicinity; rising to 11,000 feet, and commanding one of the grandest views in the country, from Ararat in the north to Shamsdin in the south. It is yet so easy of ascent that a horse can easily be ridden the whole way up; and it forms an ideal “High Place,” like those of the Old Testament.

Here, the men of old time (and how old one is afraid to say) constructed a Temple of the orthodox Semitic pattern, such as once stood at Jerusalem, and still remains at Baalbek. It comprises a court for worshippers, where sacrifice can be offered; an outer sanctuary; and an inner shrine. All is rudely built of course, but all the essential features are there; even to the detail of “ceremonial pillars,” like the “Jachin and Boaz” of Solomon’s temple, which are here represented by a round score of rough dwarf columns. What these stood for in the mind of their builders it is hard to say. They are a witness, perhaps, of a covenant between man and God, like those which Jacob set up at Bethel. In any case, there they stand; a token of how thoroughly the most primitive form of Semitic religion is a living reality to-day. No fossiliferous strata preserve the forms of past ages more thoroughly than does the corporate mind of the{234} living East; though it is often hard to extract the fossils, and harder to ascertain their true significance.

An easy road takes us from Khoshab to Van, down a valley that should bear a large population; but where to-day nothing but a chilly wind wanders, that makes living unpleasant, and is said to blight wheat. “There were Armenian villages here once,” said a Nestorian to us, “but when the Kurds turned them out, this wind came, and now none can live here. It is the breath of the curse of the dispossessed upon their oppressors.” And so the fertile Havatsor plain lies empty, though villages abound upon its borders; and though a prosperous little town stands where the road begins to climb the low pass leading over the last range to the gardens and orchards of Van.{235}

CHAPTER XII

A SLOUGH OF DISCONTENT

(VAN AND THE ARMENIANS)

One of these great lava flows, that of Nimrud Dagh, forms the dam that holds up the large salt lake of Van; a body of water of about the size of the lake of Geneva, but carrying almost as much mineral matter in suspension as does the companion lake of Urmi. In this case, however, the mineral is not ordinary salt, but borax (bi-borate of sodium, to be accurate); so that the water is pleasanter to swim in, and not so absolutely fatal to animal life.{236}

At certain seasons of the year the mouths of the rivers that enter the lake swarm with fish—a variety of bleak. They run up into fresh water to spawn, and in the process are scooped out by the basket-load. Certain types of water-snake also haunt the rocky shores.

These are about four feet long, and creamy white in colour (or appear so, when seen through some depth of water); and they have the characteristic wedge-shaped head that one generally associates with poison.

Given better means of transport, and better government, one may yet see Lake Van become a health resort and a bad; for its waters are certainly curative in certain types of skin disease. The writer has known an obstinate case of soriasis cured by a summer spent in camp on the lake, with regular bathing as part of the day’s programme. The effect on human hair is also very peculiar; for an English lad with ordinary light-brown hair developed, under similar treatment, an aureole of the purest gold ever seen on human head. The change seemed permanent too, at least as regarded all that was above scalp-level at the time. Later growth was unfortunately of the original hue!

This country was formerly the home of one of the great empires of ancient history; that of the Urartians, or Khaldians, who could dispute the hegemony of Asia with Assur, at the time when the first colonists were settling on the seven bare hills that afterwards were Rome. Van (Dhuspas as it was then called) was their capital; and their kings had their palace on the great limestone ridge that rises, like the vertebrae of some huge saurian, 300 feet above the alluvial plain. As a stronghold this rock was impregnable, and could turn back even Assur at her strongest; and to this day the masses of cyclopean masonry on its crest, and the scores of inscribed cuneiform tablets on its precipitous faces, bear witness to the might of its former lords. The language in which these inscriptions are written is unknown elsewhere (unless it may prove to have affinity with the mysterious Hittite, in spite of the difference of script); but fortunately a tri-lingual inscription left by Xerxes the son of Darius has enabled the records{237} to be deciphered. They do not, as a rule, possess as much interest as the Assyrian inscriptions; and are usually to the effect that “I, Menuas son of Ishpuinis, set up this stone, and invoke the Curse of Cowdray upon the man who throws it down.” Menuas, and his son Argistis, were the two most powerful monarchs who occupied the throne of Dhuspas; and their reigns (B.C. 820 to 760 or thereabouts) coincided with a period of decadence in the rival power of Assyria. But in 735 B.C. the Empire of Urartu succumbed before Tiglath Pileser II; though their then king, Sharduris II, was able to make good his defence of this unconquerable citadel.

The plateau of Van is at present the home of the Armenian race; but it is very doubtful whether these have any connexion with the aboriginal Khaldian inhabitants. Their own traditions absolutely contradict the theory; but their modern national writers are apt to claim such descent, now that European scientists have made out the meaning of the inscriptions. Whatever their blood may be, there the Armenians are now; but it is one of the features of that most tangled problem, the Armenian question, that members of the race are never more than a minority, wherever they are found.

Men of that nationality exist everywhere; and no “shadrach” in a blast furnace refuses more obstinately to melt and become assimilated to the rest of the iron ore, than they refuse to assimilate themselves to their neighbours. They are found elsewhere only in colonies; but even in this their original home, massacre, oppression, and the deliberate planting of counter-balancing colonies of Kurds in villages whence the original owners have been expelled, has reduced them to something less than half the present population.

As a people there are few who have a good word for them. They are said to be cowardly and treacherous; to be mere money-grubbers, and so on ad nauseam. The charges vary; but all agree that the objects of them are objectionable somehow. They seem, in fact, to be a sort of Dr. Fell of nationalities; for every one dislikes them, though{238} often enough they cannot tell the reason. Even the writer, who has not the least objection to thieves, murderers, and devil-worshippers, and who has a kindly feeling for a successful cheat, admits to getting on less well with Armenians than with other Orientals.

And yet there is much about them that anyone must admire. They have, in fact, much in common with the Jew, who excites much the same feeling among many estimable people! Both have the same attachment, alike to money and to their own peculiar form of religion. Both have the same power of endurance and toughness. And as both have had much the same treatment for generations, and both are nations without a country, they have developed much the same characteristics. Money and intrigue have been their only weapons; and they have naturally come to think these the most important of all things. We can have nothing but admiration for their devotion to their nation, with which their religion and their church is bound up; and they have a high sense of their duty to it, as shown by their educational institutions. Men call them a nation of cowards; but that charge at least is false. In the massacres of 1895, armed men were butchering unarmed; and there was no test of anything but passive endurance. Yet how many could have saved their lives by a mere verbal acceptance of Islam? We shall have a good deal to say to the discredit of the revolutionaries among them, the “Fedais;” but at least the terror that that very small body could inspire among Turks and Kurds in three provinces ought alone to acquit them of any reproach of cowardice.

Both as nation and as church they have a long history, for which we may refer the reader to such works as Lynch’s “Armenia.” They have been subject to the Ottoman Turks since the year 1365, when the latest of a series of Armenian kingdoms finally collapsed. But outlying colonies of their nation exist, as is well known, in several lands, notably in Persia and India.

Their Christianity dates back to 312 A.D. when the whole people was converted by the joint efforts of their king,{239} Tiridates, and Saint Gregory the Illuminator. The Greek Church calls them heretical; but their heresy is in truth no more than a resolution to maintain the independence of their church, which is now the sole expression of their nationality, and is prized accordingly. It is true that they refuse to accept one of the Councils that most of the world calls “General,” viz. that of Chalcedon; but they have been at some pains to insert into their version of the creed words expressly condemnatory of that peculiar “Monophysite” heresy which their rejection of Chalcedon is supposed to affirm; and their real cause for disagreeing with that Council was its recognition of the Primacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

For some time after their conquest the Armenians had nothing particular to complain of in their lot as Ottoman subjects. The Turk had no cause to fear anybody, for his dominion was unshaken, and it is only when he fears that he is oppressive and cruel. Moreover if his method of government did suggest the habits of a man who lives on capital rather than income, there was still a good deal of capital left, and all was comfortable for every one while it lasted. The Armenians were rather the favourites among the subject races. They were the millet-i-zadik, the loyal people, who had no friends outside the empire, and no political aspirations, but were content to be Ottoman subjects provided that their religious institutions were respected. Any interference with these was the last thing that the Turk contemplated; for the Mussulman was, to do him justice, the first ruler that was really tolerant in religious matters. Armenians were very convenient underlings in all the work of governing. “We Turks do not know how to make money, we only know how to take it;” and a Turk does not know to this day, and probably never will learn, how really to govern a country. His sole conception is to occupy the land, and take as much money from his subjects as his needs require. His instincts are really those of the nomad; the rayats are his sheep and cows,—there to be milked. He does not want to kill them, for he is a kindly fellow; and besides, who ever kills his own cattle{240} wantonly? But if a sheep exhibits an unpleasant independence of disposition, and propagates the blasphemous doctrine that it was created for other things than the due provision of milk, wool, and mutton in due season for its lawful owner, the shepherd is apt to say it is a vicious beast, and to take measures accordingly.

The country that the Turk acquired had of course to be administered somehow; but it was not Turks by blood that did the administering. The high officials were usually the selected children, taken from their Christian parents by the “Janissary” tribute (which provided also the corps d’elite of the army). Or else they were European adventurers and renegades; or (in the case of many of the very best of them) Albanians. The underlings were very largely Armenians, who form most admirable subordinates in all Government offices. They were never trusted with any high executive posts; but they did all the inferior work, and no objection was raised to their filling their own pockets the while.

There were isolated cases of oppression in plenty, as there always will be when Armenian and Turk deal with one another; but it was not Turkish tyranny that was invariably to blame. We have known of an Armenian father, on his death-bed, giving his last charge to his son, as follows: “Grigor, these are the last words of your father; and see that you honour and obey them, as such words should be honoured.”

“I will my Father; on my head and eyes be it,” said the youth.

“My son, never pay your taxes until you have been thrashed.”

Under these circumstances, it really does not prove brutality in the tax-collector, if he sometimes thinks he may as well begin with the stick, and so save trouble all round.[119]

The fact is, that to try and get the better of the Government in a bargain (or for that matter, of anybody else) is{241} an Armenian’s notion of sport; and abstractedly, there is as much to be said for it as for professional football! Very pretty fencing sometimes results, as the following case may show. Educational institutions and church property have to be registered in the names of trustees; and, in consideration of the fact that they pay no taxes, certain fees are demanded when a new name has to be registered. The idea of saving that expense appealed to all Armenians; and there was the further consideration that no one of them ever feels any confidence in another’s honest administration of any trust fund. A brilliant idea occurred to some genius. He would secure a trustee who was indubitably honest and immortal as well; the property should stand in the name of the Patron Saint!

So, in one instance (the thing was done repeatedly) the school attached to the church of SS. Peter and Paul was solemnly registered in the names of Peter, son of Jonas, fisherman by trade, resident at Capernaum in the province of El Kuds (Jerusalem), and Paul, father’s name unknown, tentmaker by trade, resident at Tarsus in the province of Adana. The scheme worked admirably for a while; and when the Ottoman officials realized what was being done, and objected to losing their fees, it must be owned that they played the game prettily. They sent in a formal notification to the Armenian authorities, that they understood that these two trustees, Petrus Effendi and Paulus, were now dead; and (so far as their information went) that both gentlemen had died intestate. If this were so, then in course of law their trust property would revert to the “Ministry of Pious Benefactions,” whence very little of it would ever come out for the use of any Armenians!

There was a terrible scare for a while among those concerned; but Turkish good nature came into play, and the matter was dropped, in consideration of proper trustees being registered in future—and no doubt a decent bakhshish to the officials concerned.

While the nation as a whole was not badly off, individuals were often in a position of privilege, owing to some personal claim that they happened to have on some official. One of{242} these, which endures to the present day, is so remarkable as to deserve special notice.

The house of the Armenian priest of Adeljivas, on Lake Van, is officially recognized as having perpetual immunity from all forms of taxation. The family legend has it that their ancestor was the personal servant of Ali, the nephew of the Prophet, in some warlike expedition that he made. The scene of the campaign is said to have been Egypt.

Ali was hit in some skirmish by an arrow, which pierced his heel and broke in the wound. The steel could not be found and extracted, and signs of mortification set in, so that the doctors gave up hope. Still the Khalif, though he thought himself dying, insisted on rising from his couch to say his prayers as a good Mussulman should; while his faithful Christian servant stood behind him the while. One of the attitudes of Moslem prayer involves bowing forward from a kneeling posture till the forehead touches the ground. (It is this attitude that makes such a headgear as the fez or turban obligatory for a Moslem. The hat is not removed in prayer, and yet the forehead must touch the ground.) Naturally, a wound on the heel was drawn open by this act, and the Armenian saw the arrowhead in the flesh. He, prompt man, dropped on his knees, got a good hold of it with his teeth, and pulled! The steel came out, but Ali fainted with the pain, and the servant fled, fearing he had killed his master. The latter recovered, however, and ordered search to be made for his benefactor; and when he had found him, told him to name his own reward. Perpetual immunity for all males of his house from all taxes was what the practically minded Armenian chose; and Ali granted him this boon at once, giving him a piece of his own robe in testimony. Each successive Khalif has recognized the act of his great predecessor, and in many cases has given a firman declaring the same; and these documents are now stored in the house of the present holder of the privilege. They naturally form a most interesting collection; ranging, as they do, from the great purple and gold parchments, works of art of great value to connoisseurs, which were granted by Sulieman the{243} Magnificent and Murad the “Father of Clubs,” down to the flimsy half-sheet of notepaper which bears the seal of Abdul Hamid II.

With them is kept what purports to be the original fragment of the robe of Ali; which is a valuable possession in itself, for water in which it has been dipped is a specific for most diseases for all faiths. The piece of stuff has some unusual qualities certainly, if it is genuine; for it is said to have lasted undecayed through some thirteen centuries of soaking and drying again. As for the cures it works, they are genuine enough, provided that the patient has sufficient faith!

Gradually, however, the comfortable state of things referred to, from which both Ottomans and Armenians profited, changed and took a bad turn. The Ottoman Government grew worse itself absolutely; and much worse relatively to the progress made by other nations in Europe. Turks saw one Christian nation after another (Greek, Bulgar, and Serb) slip from their control, and grew more and more suspicious of those that remained; while these became more and more aware and resentful of their sufferings. The old oppression and corruption grew worse; while the old laziness and good nature that had tempered things helped less. The latter qualities, however, are not quite extinct even yet, as a case from the writer’s own knowledge may illustrate.

An unfortunate Assyrian qasha was arrested on some charge or other; and after he had endured some months of close confinement in a very foul prison, was tried and fully acquitted—and then sent back to prison again indefinitely, because he could not pay to the jailer the fees he had incurred during his avowedly illegal confinement! One must admit that the same thing used to happen in England during the eighteenth century; but perhaps the English official would not have been as kindly as was the Ottoman Vali, who replied to the intercession of the writer by saying, “Well it is a hard case. Look here, Effendim, you can have him out any Sunday for service, if you will promise to send him back on the Monday!{244}”

That official’s successor, by the way, had the idea of doing things more in order; and signalized his departure from the old slack ways by inviting any folk who had the misfortune to be under sentence of death in his province, to come in and be executed without more delay. When the order had gone out, he set about inquiring how many he might expect to surrender themselves; and found that the number of gentlemen who were under sentence of outlawry in his jurisdiction, and liable to death or imprisonment for life on arrest, amounted to between seven and eight hundred, and included every Kurdish Agha of any note in the vilayet![120] The decree caused much inconvenience; for naturally there was some delicacy felt about coming to pay your respects to the new governor under the circumstances.

While the Government got worse, the national self-consciousness of the Armenians developed; particularly in the light of the fact that they saw how other subject nations, who made sufficient noise, were given their independence by Europe. They began demanding reform, and a measure of autonomy; requests which it was natural they should make, in light of the fact that they could not help being aware that they were far cleverer and more adaptable than the Turks, and that nevertheless they were treated as an inferior race by them. On the other hand, the Turkish feeling was “This country is ours and we mean to rule it. Equality of treatment such as these Armenians demand is a sheer impossibility; for the reason that the races are not equal. While we have the power, we can keep them under; but to put them on an equality means that in a very few years we shall be under them.” Reform is anathema to the Turk, for he knows (even if he cannot put the matter into words) that reform means subjection of the Turk to the rayāt.