After four days’ stay in Sulaimania I rose early one morning, in answer to the summons of a muleteer, and, having packed my belongings and laid in a small stock of bread, mounted my steed, bade farewell to old Mustafa Beg, and set out in the dusk before sunrise upon my journey to Halabja, the place I had come all the way from Constantinople to see. The road from Sulaimania to Halabja was one of three safe routes out of that town, being away from the Hamavand country, but even here the presence of robbers belonging to the shaikhs rendered it impossible for any but a large caravan to travel. We were therefore to join a main caravan outside the town. This Halabja caravan is a weekly affair, and goes very regularly, being conducted by natives of that place.
It was impossible when traversing the town not to notice how much Persian architecture has influenced the buildings of Sulaimania. All the older and better houses are built upon the Persian model, the upper rooms with glass doors giving the place the appearance of a town of Persian Kurdistan. Everything is very ruinous now, and the perennial insecurity effectually prevents any attempts at improvement.
Leaving behind us these decaying streets and houses we came out under the graveyard on the hill, where it had been arranged that the caravan should collect. However, we found no caravan, but only three women squatting on the ground clasping bundles; and a half-dozen Jaf horsemen, bound about with three or four cartridge belts each, and carrying rifle, knife, and revolver, sat among the young wheat their horses were cropping. One by one the travellers turned up—men on foot, on donkeys, on mules, women perched high upon platforms of bedding hiding everything save the heads and legs of their steeds.
We were accompanied by an officer going to Khaniqin via Halabja, and he had been granted an escort of twenty soldiers as far as the latter place. These at last appeared, and assuming the dignities of escort to the caravan, blew a bugle several times in the hopes of inducing it to start.
Our caravan was a large one; half of its members were women returning from Sulaimania to their native places, villages along the Persian frontier—Kurds all, except for three blatant Bagdadiennes accompanying their husbands, Turkish officials, to Khaniqin. The little party to which I was attached had also its female element, an elderly woman of the mountain lands of Aoram, mother-in-law of the muleteer, and as such allowed to ride free of charge upon a minute ass, which expressed its unwillingness to proceed by sitting down frequently, in streams for choice.
Once under way over the rolling spurs of the Azmir mountains, our military escort began to display that zeal for duty which they never fail to exhibit. Their duty, however, when on the march and in towns has always seemed to me and to the inhabitants to begin and end with a practical study of the science of combined annoyance and roguery, theft and violence, as bearing upon the populace, and in this they attain remarkable proficiency.
On this occasion their first action was to cast from their donkeys three or four inoffensive Kurds, and appropriate their animals. An hour out from Sulaimania the sun began to grow hot, and the soldiers thirsty, and the water-pots of all travellers were emptied despite protest, and because of it in two instances, where the soldiers wantonly broke the pot and spilled its contents.
There was considerable talk of robbers, for the road skirted the country of the rebellious Hamavand Kurds, and the sudden appearance of some horsemen upon a hillock caused the guard some uneasiness and alarm. Being armed with Mauser rifles, they were forced to show some spirit, and retiring precipitately to a depression they fired a volley at the riders, fortunately hitting no one. The perfectly peaceable enemy stopped and shouted something sarcastic, and by their dress and dialect were recognised as fellows of our own half-dozen horsemen. On learning this the condition of the army became piteous. Some six or seven, whose fear of tribal reprisals overcame the influence of military discipline, made off at the double for town, forgetting the men they had fired upon. These, seeing from afar the situation, set off after them with shouts of well-assumed fury. The remainder were penned about by our own horsemen and were receiving a merciless pounding with the butts of rifles wielded wisely and ably from the superior position of horseback. The “yuzbashi”58 screamed in vain Turkish for bugler and “bash chaush.”59 But both lay, one squashed under a horse’s heel, and the other senseless beneath the belly of a donkey that answered the yuzbashi with vociferous braying.
Had it not been that among us were a number of people of the Jaf tribe, into whose lands we were entering, the riders would have now left us, and entrenched among the hillocks farther on would have attacked and looted the caravan. Fortunately their anger soon subsided, and the remaining soldiers, bruised, torn and pitiful, once more resumed their slouch towards Halabja, keeping as far as possible from the rest of us. Under the mounting sun we put the hillocks and gullies of Sulaimania behind us, till ascending a last long slope the plain of Shahr-i-Zur lay before us, a broad valley dotted with the black tent encampments of the Jaf tribe, and the many mounds that stand there, relics of ancient inhabitants and recent villages destroyed by the order of a famous shaikh, a Sulaimanian saint and notorious scoundrel.
The eastern edge of this mountain-bound plain lies under the shadow of the great mountain wall of Aoraman, frontier of Persia, a wall bounding the countries of the most secluded and perhaps mysterious of the tribes of Kurdistan, Aorami and Rizhoi, and of those worshippers of the Muhammadan saint Ali, who call him God.
Halabja, or Alabja, as it is written, a speck on the far-rising slope of the plain, was perfectly visible thirty miles away, and between us and it was the perfect desolation beloved of the Turk. His hand here nowadays is but feeble, and this district, once a fertile and prosperous Persian province and still Persian in everything but name, is entirely under the control of Uthman Pasha, head of the Jaf Kurds, who own little or no subjectivity to the Turkish Government, and with the worst possible grace tolerate the presence of the few Turkish officials at Halabja. Post and telegraph they abolished long ago, refusing to pay money for patches of paper to stick upon letters they could carry themselves, and finding a use for telegraph wire in the manufacture of chains and bullets; so that now, while Halabja possesses a full-blown post and telegraph master, the office is as much a sinecure as that of the tax collector, who sits in Sulaimania and begs crumbs of pay from Uthman Pasha.
This Shahr-i-Zur, whose mounds are full of the coins of Sasanian Persia and the tokens of Assyria, was till a few decades back the old sub-province of Gulambar,60 “The Amber Flower,” from all reports one of the most beautiful of all the beauties of Kurdistan.
Thickly inhabited by Aoramani tribesmen and Chaldeans, it possessed innumerable fruit and flower lands, had, and has still, a fine supply of sweet water, and cool breezes from the high mountains to temper the heat of the plain.61
But the Turks gained possession, and, blight that they are, killed everything, so that now its only people are the Jaf nomads, who pass and repass every spring and autumn. All this I had learned, and so looked with more than usual interest upon the scene till we were hurried up by the horsemen, who had descried a large body of Hamavand riders in the distance. With bustle and hurry we fled to the shelter of a cluster of tents, the residence of a tiny tribe—the Muan—whose village, deserted in summer, lay half a mile distant in a grove of willow-trees.
Here we threw our loads upon the plain, and each little party built about itself a barricade of its own belongings. Wheaten bread being unknown at this time of the year among the villagers, we had brought our own, and this we supplemented by a big pot of “du,” the national drink of Kurdistan.
With nightfall came rain, and unsheltered as we were, all of us became very wet. Scorpions, which abounded, having, too, an aversion to damp, took shelter under us, and what with wind, thunder, rain, scorpions, regiments of fleas, and intermittent firing, we slept very little, and were not sorry to load again in the cool early morning. The muleteer’s mother-in-law had fared worst, for she had acted as sentinel all night, her chief duties being to drag slothful pack-animals from off our bedding, upon which they would stand and stamp, adding another nuisance to the night. The soldiers, tired and disgusted with life, were very dismal this second morning. Drenched and footsore, stiff from their drubbing of the previous day, a walk of thirty miles through the heat of Shahr-i-Zur appeared a gigantic affliction indeed. Half-way across the plain, where the stagnant air soaked up warm vapours from the water standing in the depressions, we came to a great goat-hair canopy, surrounded by minor establishments of the same material. This was the encampment of Mahmud Pasha Jaf, the most powerful man in these parts, and the only signs of his magnificence were the glorious carpets, the rows of leather trunks, and the silk quilts hanging in the sun to let the fleas escape.62
We reached Halabja in the afternoon, a little town set among gardens. It is distinguished by three great houses, those of Adela Khanum, whose name is best translated as “Lady Justice”; of Tahir Beg and Majid Beg, her stepsons. These, with a clean and well-built bazaar, give Halabja a distinction it totally lacked fifty years ago, when it was an insignificant village. The stranger in Halabja usually has to accompany his muleteer to the house where he stables his beast, for there is as yet no caravanserai, though one will be built soon. But I had made friends with a merchant of Halabja who knew, as all the inhabitants of Halabja must, Lady Adela, and he insisted that my “knowledge, learning, breeding, and politeness” would gain me a warm welcome from this renowned lady; and that were I to instal myself in a private house she would be offended when she heard, as she of course would do, of the arrival of a Persian, that rare traveller in that part of Kurdistan.
He told me to go boldly to the house of Tahir Beg, which was connected by doors and a bridge to that of Lady Adela, and state that I was a Persian scribe and merchant travelling through her lands, and relying upon her favour. This I resolved to do, and entering a great deserted courtyard, I rode up to the raised verandah and dismounted. A couple of servants strolled up, looked at me and my belongings, and asked who I was. I introduced myself as I had been advised, and they invited me to a seat while they informed Lady Adela, who was in the other house. Her they found just risen from a siesta, and returned shortly with a message expressing her pleasure at having the opportunity of meeting a Persian from Shiraz, the first ever seen in her country, and granting me an upper room in Tahir Beg’s house, whence I could look out over garden, plain, and mountain. Here carpets were spread, tea was brought, with cigarettes, by men who spoke a little Persian; and two saucy Kurdish maids, their turbans cocked at a rakish angle, submitted me to a cross-examination while they smoked cigarettes.
Lady Adela, shortly after, sent another message to say that she would see me next morning in private audience, a comparative term in this land of retainers and patriarchal custom. Dinner was brought in upon two great trays, pilau, sour meats, curds, a sweetmeat and sherbet, and followed by a man with a roll of new bedding, upon which I was glad enough to stretch and sleep.
Before proceeding with the narrative, it is advisable to give some note upon the family and tribe of the Jaf, and more particularly upon the extraordinary woman in whose house I was a guest—a woman unique in Islam, in the power she possesses, and the efficacy with which she uses the weapons in her hands.
The Jaf tribe is an ancient one, and has from the earliest history of Kurdistan been powerful, and renowned for the manner in which its chiefs agree and hold together. This trait of character—coherency—so rare among the greater Kurdish chieftains, has won for the tribe wealth and power, so that now various chiefs own such important towns as Panjwin, Halabja, and Qizil Rubat, besides numerous villages and lands, which they have acquired by purchase.
These, the property of individuals, are not connected in any way with the “Jaf land”—that is, the country over which the migratory tribe has the right of passage, domicile, and cultivation, and which is theirs by ancient right, gift, and conquest, belonging to the tribe as a whole.
From the time when Bagdad returned to the hands of the Turks in the 17th century, the Jafs have been in contact upon the west with that nation,63 and have for about two hundred years recognised the Sultan as their overlord, as well as the Khalifa, or spiritual head of Sunni Islam, to which section they belong. They have, however, as a tribe, maintained more than semi-independence up to the present day, Mahmud Pasha holding himself responsible only for a yearly sum payable to the Sultan. In the 18th century, when the bulk of the tribe left their old lands in Juanru of Persia, two sections of the tribe seceded and took up their quarters with the Persian Guran tribe, with whom they still remain. These are the Jaf-i-Qadir Mir Waisi, and the Taishi. Within more recent times, another section—under one, Fattah Beg—separated and retired to Persia, in the Kermanshah province.
Except for these insignificant sections, the great Jaf tribe is as united as it ever was. From time to time it is called upon to undertake the chastisement of smaller tribes who may misbehave, and act for the Turks as Wardens of the Marches, unmolested by their sovereign ruler. The tribe itself—that is, the people who wander every spring from Qizil Rubat to Panjwin and Saqiz—are under the immediate supervision of Mahmud Pasha, who accompanies them. His elder brother, Uthman Pasha, is, as mentioned before, appointed by the Sultan’s ruler, or Qaim Maqam, of the district of Shahr-i-Zur. This is a government of some considerable importance, and is a frontier one, necessitating the possession of armed power upon the part of the ruler. Uthman Pasha, who can call upon the tribe, of course possesses this.
But here we must make a slight digression to bring in Lady Adela, who comes from over the border. The Persian province whose land runs up to the borders of Shahr-i-Zur is Ardalan. This Ardalan was formerly a kingdom under a dynasty of petty Kurdish princes who, though they were virtually independent, yet acknowledged the suzerainty of the Shah of Persia. For five hundred years these princes reigned, holding court at Sina, which is still the capital of Ardalan.
Under their enlightened rule, art and literature grew at Sina,64 literature of a Persian and Kurdish nature, which is just being discovered now,65 the town was beautified with fine houses and gardens, and Sina became a place the records of whose beauty are conspicuous in the books of all travellers who have passed by it.
However, dynasties die out, and this was no exception to the rule. The Ardalan Khans (as the rulers were called) made a defensive alliance with the ruling dynasty of Persia, the Qajars, and one married a daughter of Fath Ali Shah, who ruled over Persia at the beginning of the 19th century. This lady succeeded her husband, and ruled over Ardalan with a firm and just hand. After her came her son, and after him, Persian Governors—for Nasir ud Din, Shah of Persia, a strong ruler, whose aim was to bring all the old semi-independent states directly under his rule, forbade the succession upon the death of the last Vali of Ardalan, Ghulam Shah Khan, and replaced him by his own fierce relative, Mu’tamid ud Douleh.
Side by side with these Sultans and Valis there grew up and existed another powerful family, that of the Vazirs, or ministers of the princes, who owned the town of Duaisa, near Sina. This family was not exterminated nor even deprived of office, but continued in place till to-day, when the chief accountant of Kurdistan, as the province is now called, is a descendant of the old family of Vazirs.
The old Jaf Pashas had been forced to keep upon good terms with the dynasty of Ardalan, and from time to time marriages were effected between the Jaf and Ardalan chiefs and petty chiefs.
These alliances were looked upon with great disfavour and some alarm by the Turks, whose keenest desire is to see the Jaf on bad terms with their neighbours in Persia. Consequently when Uthman Pasha in 1895 announced his intention of marrying into the family of the Ardalan Vazirs, some futile opposition was offered by the Turkish Government. However, he proceeded to Sina and brought home to Halabja, then an insignificant village, as bride, a lady of the Vazir family whose father occupied an important position in Teheran.
Once installed at Halabja, Lady Adela proceeded, aided by the prestige of her family, to assert her position, a procedure not opposed by Uthman Pasha. She built two fine houses, finer than any edifice in Sulaimania, upon the Sina model, importing Persian masons and artificers to do the work. Her servants were all Persian subjects, and in Halabja she instituted in her new houses a little colony of Persian Kurds, and opened her doors to all travellers from and to that country, and kept continual communications with Sina, five days’ journey away.
Gradually the official power came into her hands. Uthman Pasha was often called away to attend to affairs, and occasionally had to perform journeys to Sulaimania, Kirkuk, and Mosul on matters of government. So Lady Adela, governing for him in his absence, built a new prison, and instituted a court of justice of which she was president, and so consolidated her own power, that the Pasha, when he was at Halabja, spent his time smoking a water pipe, building new baths, and carrying out local improvements, while his wife ruled.
She built a bazaar in Halabja, a square construction having four covered rows of shops connected by alleys of more shops, all covered in and domed with good brick arches, and trade flowed in to Halabja, which grew to considerable importance. Such importance did the place attain that the Turks actually grew jealous, and to obtain a hold over it, put up a telegraph line, to which the tribesmen objected, and expressed their objection by cutting down the wire. At the same time Lady Adela advised the Turks not to repair it, for she too objected to the incursion of Turks upon her territory, and warned them that as fast as they built up telegraph wires her people should cut them down. And so to-day Halabja possesses no telegraph line, though a uniformed official lives there and rejoices in the title of Post and Telegraph Master. Every summer, when the climate of Halabja becomes oppressively hot, the court of Lady Adela repairs to a little village in the hills, or to a town in Persian territory, where some three or four months are passed.
In and around Halabja Lady Adela has instituted the Persian fashion of making gardens, apart from the gardens around the houses, and now outside the little town are several of the graceful and thickly treed gardens which are only seen in Persia, gardens which are wildernesses of large shady trees, with unsuspected bowers and flower-beds in their shady depths.
So here, in a remote corner of the Turkish Empire, which decays and retrogrades, is one little spot, which, under the rule of a Kurdish woman has risen from a village to be a town, and one hill-side, once barren, now sprinkled with gardens; and these are in a measure renovations of the ancient state of these parts.
Shahr-i-Zur, or Sharizur, used to be called by some Shahr-i-Bazar, and until recently its capital was a place called Gulambar, which is under the Aoraman mountain, and there is a legend to the effect that at earlier times a village called Ahmad Kulwan, across the northern mountains, used to be the capital.
However that may be, in the Sasanian times of Persia, when Qasr-i-Shirin was built, and Farhad hewed at the mountain of Bisitun, there was a great town named Hulwan. This was about the year A.D. 400. Hulwan and its territories extended up to what is now known as Shahr-i-Zur, and behind the site of the modern Halabja, in the hills which form an amphitheatre behind it, there was a large town called Sasan. Here were great stone buildings, and their ruins still stand, ordinary walls and pillars of the great Sasanian age of Persia. There is every indication, besides legend, to show that a great city existed here, and in the Shahr-i-Zur plain below were a number of villages whose inhabitants cultivated its rich and well-watered soil. To-day there are but a number of large, high mounds, a sure indication of ancient inhabitation. Shahr-i-Zur was so well protected by its hills, that it is no wonder that the ancient kings looked upon it as a specially favoured spot, and favourable to development and commerce. Around all sides is a high ring of mountains, except upon the north-west, and besides its ring of hills a swift, strong river shuts them in upon the southern side.
Across this, from Sasan, a great bridge was built into the territory of Hulwan, a part of which still stands. Shahr-i-Zur means the “Strong City,” and Shahr-i-Bazar, “The Market Town”—both equally appropriate names, but there is no proof as to which was originally employed to designate the plain.
Among the hill villages, high up in the ravines of the frowning walls of Aoraman, religious shaikhs lived and died, and there are to-day several holy individuals living in little villages perched thousands of feet up under the mighty and frowning wall of the great mountain. In the plain, Kurd and Christian lived in peace, till the ascent to power of a certain Abdul Qadir, a fanatic, and slaughterer of all who displeased him. Shahr-i-Zur possessed in his time (about two hundred years ago) a mixed population, and its Kurdish people still spoke the ancient dialect known as Shahr-i-Zuri, a tongue of old Persia, rejoicing in grace of form and sound, now only to be heard in Aoraman, much corrupted.
This fanatic was the cause of a massacre of Christians, and the Chaldeans inhabiting the plain fled to the mountains, to Kirkuk, and to Bagdad. The Shahr-i-Zuri, who were upon bad terms with some of the local ruffians employed in the massacre, dispersed and disappeared, and left Shahr-i-Zur a waste. Gulanbar, a small town, was deserted and laid bare, with its villages along the mountain foot. These have become partially reoccupied, and are now shadows of what they formerly were.
In 1821 or thereabouts a Persian prince, Muhammad Ali Mirza, invaded and took it, but in a subsequent battle fought near Halabja he was mortally wounded, and retiring across the river, left it in the hands of a Turkish pasha of Bagdad.
Nevertheless the Persians claim Shahr-i-Zur, for it was once theirs, and they conquered it again and again, and to-day it stands upon the strip of land, a debated territory within the borders of which, an international commission has sagely remarked, “the frontier may be assumed to exist.”
When Sulaimania was yet under the rule of the descendants of Sulaiman Pasha, Gulanbar was made the seat of a Qaim Maqam, and the necessary three “mudirliqs” were instituted in the plain. So matters went until Uthman Pasha, who is chief of the section of the Pushtamala Jafs, settled in Halabja, and as has been shown, proceeded to make it important. Gulanbar never recovered its ancient importance and prestige, and Halabja began to outstrip its neighbours across the plain, until the Qaim Maqam, now Uthman Pasha, was transferred to Halabja, and Gulanbar was made the residence of a subsidiary “mudir.”
At the time of my visit, there were settled in Halabja, besides Uthman Pasha and his wife, Majid Beg and Tahir Beg, sons of the pasha’s former wife. Majid Beg has now succeeded to the chieftainship of the Pushtamala, for the old man died in October 1909 and was buried in Biara, a mountain village reckoned very holy in these parts.66
It is not more than about a hundred and twenty years since Uthman Pasha’s section of the tribe has been settled in Halabja. Originally the Jaf tribe lived in a country to the south-east of Halabja, in Persian territory, called Juanrud. Here they were independent, until the Vali of Ardalan succeeded in capturing the chief, his son, and brother, and executing them. Fighting ensued, and the Jafs, who had made themselves very unpopular with the Ardalan princes, first by the fact of their independence, and second by their arrogance and hostility, were expelled. The nomad section, called the Muradi, fled, some 50,000 people in all, to the pasha of the newly rising Sulaimania, and he conferred upon them the land they now occupy, which extends from Qizil Rubat, in the south, to Panjwin, upon the Persian frontier, in the north. A certain number of sedentary Jafs remained upon the ancestral lands, but suffering under the rule of the son of the Ardalan prince, deserted to the Guran tribe, and became part of them, submitting to their sultans.
Certain others remained, undismayed by the defection of their fellows, and still live in Juanrud—Persian subjects who have forgotten that they were ever Jaf Kurds.
Meanwhile the Muradi section, of which the chief sub-tribe was the Pushtamala, flourished and increased. The Pushtamala, the aristocratic section, continued to be that from which the chief was drawn until after the time of Muhammad Pasha, who, when he died, left three sons—Uthman, Mahmud, and Muhammad Ali. These separated the territories, while keeping close touch and living in harmony. Mahmud Pasha took charge of all the tribe, with whom he travels while it is upon its spring and autumn migrations between the mountains and the lowlands. Uthman Pasha took Gulanbar and Halabja and the Shahr-i-Zur lands, and, increasing in power and wealth, eventually gained the government of the district. Muhammad Ali Beg, the third son, remained at Qizil Rubat, where he owns many lands and gardens, and lives a life of ease and content.67 Under these three sections of the Pushtamala there are the sub-tribes of ’Amala, Jaf-i-Sartik, Jaf-i-Tilan, Mikaili, Akhasuri, Changani, Rughzadi, Terkhani, Bashaki, Kilali, Shatiri, Haruni, Nurwali, Kukui, Zardawi, Yazdan Bakhshi, Shaikh Isma’ili, Sadani, Badakhi, Musai, and the Tailaku.
The tribes still left in Persian territory upon the ancestral lands are the Qubadi, Babajani, Waladbegi, Ainakhi, Imami, Daprishi, Dilataizhi, Mirabegi, Daitiri, and Namdar Begi; while those who took protection under the Guran tribe, and have become Guran in name, were the Qadir Mir Waisi, Taishai, Qalkhanchagi, Yusif Yar Ahmadi, Kuyik, Nairzhi, and the Gurgkaish. These are, of course, Persian subjects, and resist the attempts of the Turkish Jafs to induce them to come over the frontier and join the great tribe, for they are quite content to call themselves Guran and be Persian subjects.
The horsemen at the disposal of Mahmud Pasha, Majid Beg (successor of Uthman Pasha), and Muhammad Ali Beg, is 4000 men, who are always armed with Martini rifles, and are ready at a few hours’ notice to fight for their chiefs. This and a light tax paid to the Turkish Government are the only obligations the tribesmen have to their chiefs; and of course, while nominally under the control of Mahmud Pasha, they are really independent in their actions, looting and raiding without fear of retribution, for they conform to tribal rule by acknowledging Mahmud Pasha, accompanying the rest of the tribe, paying their taxes, and providing fighters when necessary.
It was natural that when Uthman Pasha married into the aristocracy of Persian Kurdistan, the Turks were much offended, for his first wife had been recommended by the Turkish Government, a person of whom they thoroughly approved, and through whose influence they hoped to make Uthman Pasha more Turkish in his sympathies than before. That he should have, upon her death, married a member of the contumacious Ardalan nobility, who had always been, and ever are, loyal to Persia, was a blow to Turkish prestige in Kurdistan which the effendis have resented ever since; and when Lady Adela acquired much of the power they had given to Uthman Pasha, they furiously bit the fingernail of impotence, and thought of many futile schemes for breaking her influence.
This lengthy diversion from the narrative was necessary to explain the nature of the people among whom I found myself at Halabja, a place unique in Turkish Kurdistan, in being the residence of such powerful Kurdish people as Uthman Pasha, Lady Adela, Tahir Beg, and Majid Beg, and in being absolutely in the possession of the three huge mansions in which they lived.
The morning after my arrival broke to the sound of clinking tea-glasses outside the door of my room, and opening it I was confronted by a couple of retainers bearing the apparatus of tea “à la persane,” a big brass samovar, a basin to wash saucers and glasses, and the little waisted Persian tea-glasses and china saucers themselves.
The bedding was rolled up and carried away, and hot sweet tea served, three glasses being the orthodox number. During the space between the glasses one smoked, and a decent interval was allowed to elapse between their presentation. The ceremony over, the paraphernalia was carried away, and the day being officially commenced, I set out to see Lady Adela.
In the manner of Kurdistan this was a private interview, so I found no more than twelve servants, retainers, and armed men standing at the door. The room was long and narrow, two walls of which were pierced with eight double doors opening on to the verandah, the other walls being whitened and recessed, as is done in all Persian houses. The floor was carpeted with fine Sina rugs, and at the far end stood a huge brass bedstead piled high with feather quilts. Before and at the foot of this lay a long, silk-covered mattress, and upon it sat the Lady Adela herself, smoking a cigarette. The first glance told her pure Kurdish origin. A narrow, oval face, rather large mouth, small black and shining eyes, a narrow, slightly aquiline hooked nose, were the signs of it; and her thinness in perfect keeping with the habit of the Kurdish form, which never grows fat. Unfortunately, she has the habit of powdering and painting, so that the blackened rims of her eyelids showed in unnatural contrast to the whitened forehead and rouged cheeks. Despite this fault, the firmness of every line of her face was not hidden, from the eyes that looked out, to the hard mouth and chin. Her head-dress was that of the Persian Kurds, a skull-cap smothered with rings of gold coins lying one over the other, and bound round with silk handkerchiefs of Yezd and Kashan. On each side the forehead hung the typical fringe of straight hair from the temples to the cheek, below the ear, and concealing it by a curtain of hair, the locks called “agarija,” in the tongue of southern Kurdistan. The back hair, plaited, was concealed under the silk handkerchief that hangs from the head-dress. Every garment was silk, from the long open coat, to the baggy trousers. Her feet were bare, and dyed with henna, and upon ankle and wrist were heavy gold circlets of Persian make. Upon her hands she wore seventeen rings, heavily jewelled, and round her neck was a necklace of large pearls, alternating with the gold fishes that are the indispensable ornament of the Persian Kurd, and of many of the Persians themselves.
A woman fanned her, while another held cigarettes ready, and a maid waited with sherbet and rose-water. As I entered, Lady Adela smiled and motioned me to a seat beside her on the mattress, and gave me the old-fashioned Kurd greeting:
“Wa khair hatin, wa ban i cho, ahwalakitan khassa shala.” (“You are welcome; your service is upon my eyes; your health is good, please God.”)
And it was in the peasant tongue of Sina, her native place, not the sloppy, mouthing dialect of Sulaimania; and I replied in the same, grateful to hear the language with which I had grown familiar a year before in Persian Kurdistan.
Her tones were peculiar, not those of a woman, and though not deep, were clear and decisive, and abrupt. Persian she understood perfectly, though a little shy of speaking it before one whom she only knew as a Persian. After asking me particulars of my journey, and news of Shiraz and its people, that she knew of by repute, she asked me to read her a letter in Persian that had just come from Teheran, and was so taken with the accent of Shiraz, that she was not satisfied till I had repeated the epistle three times, remarking to her servants:68
“Bravo! that is the true Persian speech, the sweetest of all God’s languages.”
After that she refused me permission to speak Kurdish, and insisted upon Persian, exacting long explanations of any Shiraz idiom new to her.
For an hour or more the interview lasted, then she rose and earnestly desired to know if I was quite comfortable, gave orders for new carpets and better bedding for me, and then retired, and for the first time spoke Persian as a farewell, bidding me return to the official “divan,” which she held every afternoon.
I was returning to my room, when a serving-man told me that I must go and call upon Tahir Beg, second son of Uthman Pasha by his first wife, who lived in the other end of the big house wherein I had my room. This chief, who owns some land at Halabja, has acquired a reputation for considerable literary skill, and speaks besides Kurdish, Persian and Turkish, in the former of which he writes a good deal of poetry. He has also a slight knowledge of French.
As is the habit among such people, he keeps open house, and callers arrive at all times of the day and interview him.
I found him in a great three-sided room, or summer portico, which opened upon the roof of the entrance lobby and some rooms attached thereto. From the open side a magnificent view of Shahr-i-Zur and the Azmir Mountains spread before one, clear and rose-coloured in the morning light. Round the portico were ranged wide, high benches, upon which it is possible to sit, dangling a leg that does not reach the ground, or to squat in the Oriental fashion. Carpets were spread upon the ground and over the benches, and just outside, on the roof, a number of armed Kurds stood in attendance. Tahir Beg sat meditating, upon a bench covered with a fine rug, apparently oblivious of an old sayyid, a scowling priest in a great turban, and a Turkish bimbashi in full uniform. He was a wild-looking man. His heavy eyebrows shaded the bulging blue eyes of an opium-smoker, but the vacillating expression was mitigated by the strong aquiline nose and firm chin. His mouth was concealed by a heavy, fair moustache. He wore the usual Kurdish garments—long, flowing, striped silk robes—and in his belt carried a Colt repeating pistol and a great dagger. His headgear was that of a Jaf chief—fringed silk handkerchiefs wound in a turban broader at the top than at the base, and the fringes hung about his ears and forehead, giving him a wild and ferocious appearance.
He had been informed of my arrival, and replied to my greeting in perfect Persian, without a trace of Kurdish accent, inviting me to a seat beside him. He asked a few questions, whence had I come, and where going, and did I speak French, answering to my affirmative with “Et moi aussi, je sais un peu,” a surprising utterance from a Kurdish chief who has never quitted his native hills.
As if this effort were too much for him, he subsided into silence, and thus we sat for a space, the quiet unbroken save for the service of coffee “à la turque,” which the servants handed round. Once he conferred a mark of his favour upon me by handing me a cigarette from his box, and lighting it for me himself.
Presently another Turkish official, arrived from Khaniqin en route for Sulaimania, came in, and being a loquacious fellow, insisted on carrying on a conversation, which was confined to short Turkish monosyllables on Tahir Beg’s part.
He cut the interview short by suddenly rising and retiring to a private room, whereupon we dispersed.
I had yet another call to make. When I had left Sulaimania I had purchased two bills for two hundred and fifty and one hundred and fifty krans (about eight pounds), upon a Jew of Halabja, and t had been recommended by my friend Matti, the Mosul Christian, to go to one Mansur, a native of Sina of Persian Kurdistan, and a Chaldean. This person was a petty merchant, and agent of a greater than himself in Sina, known as Haji Khanaka. As he was from the native place of Lady Adela, he had from the first installed himself in a lower room of her house, and for years had lived as her guest, paying no rent, owning no furniture, and buying no food, for her kitchen supplied him with his excellent meals. In return for this hospitality he performed certain small duties, as a correspondent to merchants and Chaldeans in Sina with whom Lady Adela had dealings, and procured for her any special stuffs or cloths she might require. He was indistinguishable from a Kurd of Sina, for he wore the short tunic, plaited Persian frock-coat, and a turban wound about a felt skull-cap, which is the costume of Ardalan.
He spoke Kurdish, too, absolutely perfectly, and knew Persian quite well. He had already received a letter from Matti regarding myself, and welcomed me to Halabja, putting himself entirely at my service. He lived in a dark lower room, furnished with a couple of carpets and some felts. Upon either side of the far end were the beds, that served their own purpose at night, and during the day were used as couches. They consisted of but a mattress upon the ground, and a roll, composed of pillow and coverlet. Between these beds, exactly at the head of the room, was a large Russian iron box, the mark of the merchant, and above it upon a mud shelf a little heap of devotional books in the Chaldean language. As I entered, Mansur was sitting before the iron box smoking a Persian water pipe, and he rose as I came in, advanced, and with ceremony bowed me to the bed which occupied the highest position, that is, the left-hand far corner of the room as one enters at the opposite end.
He lamented the unfortunate times that had fallen upon Turkish dominions, for he had suffered very considerably in pocket from robberies of his goods in transit from Sulaimania and Kirkuk.
He had also lent a certain amount of money to Uthman Pasha, and cursed the Turks, who, by keeping the Pasha in Sulaimania, prevented his collecting his personal revenues to pay his debts. In Halabja itself he had but little business, except in spring and winter, when the Kurds brought from the mountains the valuable skins he purchased and sent to Sina, whence his co-religionists take them to Nijni-Novgorod for the fair every summer. It was his habit to go home to Sina every year and stay there the summer; but this year, owing to the amount of debts with Lady Adela and the Pasha, he had been ordered by his employer to remain till some wheat had been harvested, or some tobacco sold, when he could press for payment.
After partaking of tea, he proposed that we should take a stroll in the bazaar and see the drawees of my two bills; so we set out, quitting the courtyard by a low, insignificant door which gave on to a cul-de-sac leading to a narrow and dirty street. This in turn became a kind of open square, one side of which was occupied by a row of booths, where the occupants were busy roasting “kebabs,” cutting up sheep, and purchasing fruit from peasants newly in from the gardens. This was the food bazaar of Halabja, and Mansur told me that but seven years before, there was but waste ground here, where now almost the centre of the little town lay.
The bazaar was entered by a great door, and its wall formed a third side of the little square, a good, solid wall built of the best brick. The entrance gave on to one side of a long, vaulted passage, each side of which was occupied by shops, and which turned at right angles at short distances from the main doorway.
The plan of the bazaar, designed by Lady Adela, is more that of what we understand by a market. In shape it is exactly square, with an entrance at the middle of each side. An avenue of shops runs round inside the walls, and another passage connects two of the doors, cutting the parallelogram into two equal halves. The shops are raised upon a brick platform, or rather are at a height of two feet from the ground, and have a brick platform of that height before them, upon which the proprietor squats or puts his wares. The shop itself is but a great cupboard, the front of which takes out, being made of panels of wood, or shutters. Within are shelves upon which the goods are stacked, and if the proprietor be a Jew, an iron strong-box in front of the equipment.
There are in the Halabja bazaar fifty-two such shops, and probably twenty of these are occupied by linen-drapers and cloth merchants, chiefly Jews, who are the principal part of the commercial population.
The bazaar, where all the news of the town and district are brought, and whence culled by the curious, had already heard of my arrival, and as I entered in company with Mansur I found myself greeted by Kurd and Jew alike. This cordiality did not, however, extend to business, for to my disgust the Jew upon whom I had purchased my little bills refused to meet them, and I found that the Sulaimania seller had promised to send goods to him for the value of the bills, but being short of money, had drawn the drafts and sold the goods on his own account in Sulaimania. Matti, who had in Sulaimania procured them for me, had fortunately guaranteed them, so I was not more than temporarily inconvenienced, for, as Mansur said, “He who stays with Lady Adela has no need of money.”
It appeared that I was the first Persian they had ever seen in Halabja, and considerable curiosity was evinced as to my native place. Sitting upon a carpet before the shop of the Jewish merchant, a little crowd of interested Kurds and Jews collected, endeavouring with some success to talk to me in Persian, and one and all descanting upon the beauties of Halabja, utterly refusing to believe that the Shiraz whence I came could be larger or finer, or that Kurdish was not understood there.
Most remarkable was the space Lady Adela took up in their affairs and conversation. She had, in building this bazaar which attracted trade and was a source of profit to merchants, at the same time done the best thing for her own pocket that she could possibly have devised, for she was heavily in debt to the occupants, and had naturally the widest option as to when she should pay. It was reported that she always did pay in the end; and for this reason, and also the excellent reason that makes a tenant submissive to a powerful landlord, no one attempted to limit her purchases, which in cloth and stuffs were really enormous. The prices these Jews charged to her, too, were exorbitant, and they excused themselves for this by an account of the interest lost by delay, much as one’s tailor must do.