CHAPTER VII

MÔṢUL TO ZÂKHÔ

_April 28--May 10_

The city of Môṣul has a turbulent record which has lost nothing of its

quality during the past few years. It lies upon the frontier of the Arab

and the Kurdish populations, and the meeting between those two is seldom

accompanied by cordiality or good-will on either side. Upon the unhappy

province of Môṣul hatred and the lust of slaughter weigh like inherited

evils, transmitted (who can say?) through all the varying generations of

conquerors since first the savage might of the Assyrian empire set its

stamp upon the land. The town is distracted by the ambitions of powerful

Arab families who ruled, until less than a century ago, each over his

estate in undisputed sovereignty. These lordlings have witnessed, with

an antagonism which they are scarcely at the pains to hide, the hand of

the Turk tightening slowly over the district; nowhere will the Arab

national movement, if it reaches the blossoming point, find a more

congenial soil, and nowhere will it be watered by fuller streams of

lawless vanity. Cruel and bloody as Ottoman rule has shown itself upon

these remote frontiers, it is better than the untrammelled mastery of

Arab beg or Kurdish âghâ, and if the half-exterminated Christian sects,

the persecuted Yezîdîs, the wretched fellaḥîn of every creed, who sow in

terror crops which they may never reap, are to win protection and

prosperity, it is to the Turk that they must look. He, and he only, can

control the warring races of his empire, and when he has learnt to use

his power impartially and with rectitude, peace will follow. But it is

yet far from Môṣul, and seldom has it seemed further than in the

beginning of the year 1909.

Except inasmuch as a greater distance from Constantinople and Salonica

meant a thinner trickle of western ideas, I do not believe that there

existed in Môṣul a more definite opposition to the new order than in

other places, though there, as elsewhere in Asiatic Turkey, the forces

of reaction were numerous and strong. But Môṣul has always been against

the government, whatever form it should happen to assume; the begs have

always played with the authorities as you play with a fish on the hook,

and the fact that they were now constitutional authorities gave an even

better zest to the sport and barbed the hook yet more sharply. The

affairs of the Committee had been ill managed. The local committee,

which had formed on the proclamation of the constitution, had received

with open arms the delegates who were sent from Salonica to instruct it

in its duties--indeed the whole town had gone out to meet them, with the

Vâlî and other notables at its head. But the delegates had been

unfortunately chosen. Both were ignorant and tactless; one was a native

of Kerkûk, the bitter rival of Môṣul, and he had, besides, anything but

an unclouded personal reputation. The local committee lost rather than

gained by their coming, and when they left, they rode unescorted across

the bridge, and no one took notice of their departure. With them

vanished the slender hopes of improvement which the proclamation of

liberty, fraternity and equality had excited, and the begs were left

with a clear field. To their ears the words had sounded like a knell.

Universal liberty is not a gift prized by tyrants, and equality stinks

in the nostrils of men who are accustomed to see their Christian fellow

citizens cower into the nearest doorway when they ride through the

streets. They had no difficulty in causing their dissatisfaction to be

felt. The organization of discord is carried to a high pitch of

perfection in Môṣul. The town is full of bravos who live by outrage, and

live well. Whenever the unruly magnates wish to create a disturbance,

they pass a word and a gratuity to these ruffians; the riot takes place,

and who is to be blamed for it? The begs were all in their villages and

could have had no hand in the matter; it was Abu’l

[Illustration: FIG. 167.--MÔṢUL.]

[Illustration: FIG. 169.--MÔṢUL, MÂR JIRJIS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 170.--MÔṢUL, MÂR TÛMÂ.]

Ḳâsim, the noted bandit, it was Ibn this or Ibn that. As for the

opportunity, it is never far to seek, and upon this occasion it occurred

on the last day of the feast of Bairam, January 1, 1909. The people were

out in the streets, dressed in their best, as is proper to a festival,

when a man of the Kurdish mule corps from Kerkûk insulted (so it is

said) a Moslem woman of Môṣul. In an instant arms were out, the Arab

soldiery attacked the Kerkûkî sowwârs, a fight ensued that lasted many

hours, and in the confusion several Mohammadan women, holiday-makers,

who had not had time to seek refuge in their houses, were killed and

wounded, a most unusual disaster. Meantime, the Vâlî sat trembling in

the serai and lifted not a finger to restore order. Late at night the

Kerkûkîs retired to their own barracks, surrendered at discretion to the

government, and gave up their arms. This episode might be dismissed as a

natural ebullition of racial animosities, but the events of the

following day can scarcely be explained except on the assumption that

they were instigated by the begs. In the morning a rabble assembled

before the serai and cried out for vengeance on the Kerkûkî sowwârs, who

were awaiting judgment at the hands of the government. The Vâlî

hesitated, and the ringleaders called upon the crowd to arm. The people

executed this order with the alacrity of the forewarned, shops and

private houses barred their doors and the town was thrown into a state

of civil war.

There lived at that time in Môṣul a certain Kurdish holy man, a native

of Suleimânîyeh on the Persian frontier. Some years earlier Sheikh

Sayyid had fallen foul of the Turkish authorities--his own influence

having swelled into too great a force--and had received a summons, which

was regarded as implying the blackest misfortune, to present himself in

Constantinople. It happened, when he arrived in the capital, that a

favourite son of the Sultan was lying sick, and since the sheikh had a

great reputation for sanctity, his punishment was delayed while he put

up an intercession on behalf of the child. It was effectual: the boy

recovered, and the sheikh returned in honour to his native place, with

a chaplet of priceless pearls about his neck and a celebrity immensely

enhanced. He was old and had long been harmless, but his sons traded

upon his position and presently made Suleimânîyeh too hot to hold them.

The whole family was under the direct protection of ’Abdu’l Ḥamîd; it

was considered advisable to remove them to a spot where they would be

equally directly under the eye of his deputy, the Vâlî, and they were

brought to Môṣul. They came in like princes on a triumphal progress. The

streets were choked with the mules that carried their possessions, and a

house opposite the serai was assigned to them as a lodging.

No sooner had the rioters reassembled with arms on January 2, than they

were directed to the house of the Kurdish family. Sheikh Sayyid was a

man of eighty-five, but he had the courage of his race. When he heard

the mob storming at his doors, he took the Ḳurân in his hand and clothed

in years and sanctity stepped out into the street, intending to take

refuge in the serai. Its door was opposite his own, and the Vâlî from a

window watched the scene. The rabble gave way before the venerable

figure clasping the holy book, but before he could reach the serai, it

closed in upon him, he was cut down and hacked to pieces. His house was

then sacked and seventeen of his descendants were murdered. If the

leaders of the reactionary party had wished to embarrass the government

and to show up its weakness, they were more than commonly successful.

During the six weeks that elapsed before the arrival of troops from

Diyârbekr and elsewhere, Môṣul was in a state of complete anarchy.

Christians were openly insulted in the streets, the civil and military

authorities were helpless, and no less helpless was the local committee

of Union and Progress. When the troops came some degree of order was

restored, but the reactionary movement was not arrested. The formation

of the League of Mohammad, which was designed as a counterblast to the

Committee of Union and Progress, went on apace. It appealed to Moslems

of the old school, who had a genuine dread of the effects of the new

spirit upon the observance of the laws of Islâm; it appealed to the

ignorant, to whom the conception of the equality of Christian and

Moslem is incomprehensible, and it was eagerly welcomed by all who were

opposed to constitutional government on grounds more or less personal to

themselves. One great magnate went through the bazaars collecting the

signatures of adherents to the Muḥammadîyeh, and for a time the

situation was exceedingly critical. It was however significant that the

Naḳîb of Môṣul, the leading doctor of Islâm, steadily refused to sign

the papers or to have anything to do with the League. Meanwhile a new

and capable Vâlî had been appointed to the province, but he had gone

straight to Kerkûk, where matters were in a still more parlous state,

and lawlessness walked abroad unchecked in the streets of Môṣul. At

length the Vâlî realized the dangers that threatened the province

through its capital, and being a man of action he travelled post haste

to Môṣul, and set about the restoration of order. He arrested and

imprisoned a number of persons and administered severe rebukes to the

leading Moslems, together with assurances that the government would

protect the rights of the Christians. These warnings were repeated in

strong language the day after the accession of Muḥammad Reshâd when the

first rumours of a massacre of Armenians at Adana reached the bazaars.

The fall of ’Abdu’l Hamîd set an immediate term to the agitation. In all

likelihood the counter revolution of April 13 had caused no surprise to

the organizers of the League of Mohammad, but the swift action of the

Salonica committee had not been foreseen. The story ran that after the

flight of the deputies from Constantinople the Vâlî had received a

telegram bidding him obey no orders from the capital of the empire--I

cannot vouch for the truth of the tale, but it is not in itself

improbable. The Vâlî was backed by an unwontedly large body of troops

(those who had been sent in to quell the disturbances which had arisen

out of the murder of Sheikh Sayyid), and all over Turkey the troops

stood loyal to the constitution. The city waited with a growing

apprehension as day by day telegrams arrived reporting the advance of

the Salonica army on Constantinople, nor was it unknown that a message

from Baghdâd, offering instant help to the constitutional party, had

passed through Môṣul. Then on a sudden came word that ’Abdu’l Ḥamîd had

been deposed, and, except to the country folk and to me upon the high

road, it had been half expected. So it was that when I came to Môṣul I

found the town, which is one of the worst conducted in the Ottoman

empire, submissive and quiet. In the week during which I remained there

we had no further intelligence save the vague rumour of an outbreak at

Adana; even the assurance that Muḥammad V was sultan in his brother’s

place we accepted from Turkish official sources, neither had we any

means of ascertaining whether he had been recognized by the Powers of

Europe. Turkish official sources are apt to be tainted, and few regions

can be further removed than Eastern Turkey from the pure fountain of the

truth; nevertheless the British Embassy in Constantinople did not see

fit to acquaint its vice-consuls in Asiatic Turkey with the accession of

a new sovereign. I leave this observation without comment. But if we in

Môṣul were uncertain as to the turn events had taken in Europe, we had

valuable opportunities of gauging local conditions. In Môṣul not a voice

was raised against the second triumph of the new order. With the entire

lack of initiative which characterizes the Asiatic provinces, men

resigned themselves to a decree of Fate which was substantially backed

by the army. Whether this second victory was to prove more decisive and

more permanent than the first was open to question; the doubt kept

people to their houses and affected the attitude of some of the most

powerful of the begs, who, being lords of great possessions which they

desired to enjoy in peace, would have given a whole-hearted support to

the new Sultan, but held back lest his government should not prove

strong enough to defend them against their ill-conditioned brethren. In

vain the Vâlî filled the prisons to overflowing with noted malefactors;

if he brought them to trial he knew that no one would dare to advance

evidence against them, and in the meantime the gaols were growing more

dangerously crowded every day. There was undoubtedly some personal

feeling for ’Abdu’l Ḥamîd, but it was rare. I made the acquaintance of

a citizen of Môṣul, a splendid type of the old school, for whom it was

impossible not to feel sympathy, even though I know him to have been one

of the instigators of the murder of Sheikh Sayyid: this man watched from

a room in the serai the proclamation of Muḥammad V, and when he saw the

soldiery tear down and trample under foot edicts which were signed with

’Abdu’l Ḥamîd’s name, he, being alone but for one other, who was my

informant, threw himself upon the ground and wept. “The dogs!” he cried.

“Yesterday they would have been proud if their name had been mentioned in

the same breath with his.” To me he was more guarded; moreover he had

had time to recover his balance. But he predicted wreck and ruin,

bloodshed, revolution and all other evils for his country.

“Is there no remedy?” said I.

“If the source is pure the whole stream is pure,” he answered

enigmatically.

“Was the source pure?” I asked.

He hesitated a moment, and then replied: “No, by God and the Prophet! A

king should go about among his subjects, see them and hear them. He

should not sit imprisoned in his house, listening to the talk of spies.”

I know another, poles asunder from the first, one of the richest men in

the town and one of the most evil: a slave by birth, he might not sit in

the presence of his former master, although the master, great gentleman

as he was, could scarcely outmatch the wealth of the liberated slave.

Him I asked whether there was any strength behind the Arab movement.

“The Khalîfah should be of the tribe of the Ḳureish,” he answered

significantly.

“Who would be Khalîfah if he were chosen from out of the Ḳureish?” I

asked.

“The Sherîf of Mecca is of that blood,” he answered. “The Arabs would

govern themselves.”

He left me to reflect upon his words, for I was well aware that if he

chose to support them with force, all the rogues with whom the city

abounds were at his command, and all the plots and counterplots of the

vilayet were familiar to him.

I sat long in the guest chamber of a third acquaintance, the head of the

greatest family in Môṣul. So stainless is his lineage that his sisters

must remain unwed, since Môṣul cannot provide a husband equal to them in

birth. His forebears were Christians who migrated from Diyârbekr two

hundred years ago. The legend runs that his Christian ancestor, soon

after he had come to Môṣul, went out in the morning to be shaved, but

when he reached the barber’s shop it was filled with low-born Moslems

and the barber kept him waiting until the heads of the Faithful had been

trimmed. “Shall a man of my house wait for such as these?” he cried, and

forthwith abjured the creed of slaves. His descendant was one of those

who would gladly have seen the new order triumph and give peace to the

land. He called down vengeance upon the head of Aḥmed ’Izzet Pasha, one

of the worst of the late Sultan’s sycophants, and upon that of his

brother, Muṣṭafâ, sometime Vâlî of Môṣul. “If he had stayed two years

more he would have ruined the town,” said he. But his hatred of ’Izzet

Pasha had not blinded him to the dictates of honour. It happened that by

those methods of persuasion of which ’Izzet was master, he had induced

my friend to present him with a valuable piece of land. Two months later

’Izzet fell and fled in terror of death from Constantinople, but the beg

would not revoke a gift which the disgraced favourite was powerless to

exact from him. _Noblesse oblige._

I had also the advantage of conversing with several bishops. Now there

are so many bishops in these parts that it is impossible to retain more

than a composite impression of them. They correspond in number to the

Christian sects, which are as the sands of the sea-shore, but as I was

about to journey through districts inhabited by their congregations, I

made an attempt to grasp at least the names by which their creeds are

distinguished from one another. As for more fundamental distinctions,

they depend upon the wording of a metaphysical proposition which I will

not offer to define, lest I should fall, like most of my predecessors,

into grievous heresy. The most interesting, historically, of these

several denominations are the people of Mâr Shim’ûn, some of whom I had

met upon the road. They are currently known as Nestorians, though, as

Layard has observed, this title is misapplied. The followers of Mâr

Shim’ûn are the representatives of the ancient Chaldæan Church, and

their race is probably as near to the pure Assyrian stock as can be

expected in regions so often conquered, devastated and repeopled. Their

church existed before the birth of Nestorius, and was not dependent upon

him for its tenets;[144] its doctrines are those of primitive

Christianity untouched by the influence of Rome, and its creed, with

unimportant verbal differences, is that of Nicæa. After the Council of

Ephesus, in 431, the members of the Chaldæan Church separated themselves

from those who acknowledged the authority of the Pope. Politically they

were already a separate community, for they lived, not under the

Byzantine, but under the Sassanian empire. Their missionaries carried

Christianity all over Asia, from Mesopotamia to the Pacific. Their

patriarch, whose title was, and still is, Catholicos of the Eastern

Church, was seated first at Ctesiphon; when Baghdâd became the capital

of the khalifate, the patriarchate was removed thither, and upon the

fall of the Arab khalifs it was transferred to Môṣul. During the

sixteenth century a schism took place which led to the existence of two

patriarchs, one living at the monastery of Rabbân Hormuzd near Alḳôsh,

and one at Kochannes in the mountains south of Vân. The first, with his

adherents, submitted, two centuries ago, to the Pope; they are known as

the Chaldæans, and they are said to bear the yoke of Rome very

unwillingly. The second is now the only patriarch of the old independent

church, which has been dubbed Nestorian. The office may be termed

hereditary; it passes from uncle to nephew in a single family, for the

patriarch is not permitted to marry; the holder of it is always known as

Mâr Shim’ûn, the Lord Simeon. It is generally believed that if the new

government were to succeed in establishing order, so that the protection

of a foreign Power should cease to be of vital importance, the Chaldæan

converts would return in a body to their former allegiance to the

Catholicos of the East.

A similar division exists among the Jacobites, the Syrian monophysites,

who were condemned in 451 by the fourth œcumenical council, held at

Chalcedon. A part of this community has submitted to Rome and is known

as the Syrian Church, while those who have retained their independence

have retained also their old title of Jacobites. To this pious confusion

Protestant missionaries, English and American, have contributed their

share. There are Syrian Protestants and Nestorian Protestants--if the

terms be admissible--though whether the varying shades of belief held by

the instructors are reflected in the instructed, I do not know, and I

refrained from an inquiry which might have resulted in the revelation of

Presbyterian Nestorians, Church of England Jacobites, or even Methodist

Chaldæans.

None but the theologian would essay a valuation of the relative

orthodoxy of converted and unconverted, but the archæologist must hold

no uncertain opinion as to their merits. The unification, so far as it

has gone, of the two ancient Churches with Rome is an unmitigated

misfortune. The Chaldæans and the Syrians, instigated perhaps by their

pastors, have been so eager to obliterate the memory of their former

heterodoxy that they have effaced with an unsparing hand all, or nearly

all, Syriac inscriptions older than the date of their regeneration, and

in Môṣul it is rare to find any written stone earlier than the end of

the seventeenth century. This is the more provoking as several of the

churches are of great architectural interest, and it is much to be

regretted that the epigraphic record of their history should not have

been preserved. So far as I could judge, the oldest parts of the oldest

churches may probably be dated in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries.

All have been considerably remodelled; some were entirely rebuilt after

the siege of Môṣul by Nâḍir Shah in 1743 and others have been rebuilt in

recent years.[145] Moreover there are several which would seem to have

been first founded as late as the eighteenth century. But whatever may

be their date, they all exhibit the same simple plan, a plan which I

believe to be essentially Mesopotamian and more ancient by many

centuries than the existing churches. It is that of the barn church, the

church with two aisles and a nave, covered by parallel barrel vaults so

equal in height as not to admit of a clerestorey.[146] The nave and

aisles are invariably cut off from the sanctuary by a wall--it is too

substantial to be called an iconostasis--broken by three large doors.

This complete separation is not typical of primitive ecclesiastical

architecture; it results, as a rule, from a development of the ritual;

but it appears to be here a part of the original plan. The sanctuary is

almost invariably divided into three parts, corresponding to the nave

and aisles, and, as a rule, the central altar is covered by a dome set

upon squinch arches. The church of Mâr Ahudânî will serve as a typical

example (Fig 168); it is now in the hands of the Chaldæans. A flight of

steps leads down to it from the street, and the fact that it lies so far

below the modern level is one of the indications of its antiquity. The

stair opens into a small atrium with a cloister to east and west. The

church is to the south of the atrium and there is no means of approach

to it from any other side. The present atrium is comparatively modern

and the church shows many signs of reconstruction and repair. The

doorway from the nave to the sanctuary is richly decorated with Arabic

inscriptions, with

[Illustration: FIG. 168.--MÂR AHUDÂNÎ.]

mouldings and entrelac, Mohammadan in character, and I should say not

far removed from the early thirteenth century in date. There are also

motives which are repeated with variations upon all the churches of a

like epoch, grotesque lions and the cross-legged figure which has been

described upon one of the gates of Baghdâd. The building was so dark

that my photographs were not successful, but an outer doorway of Mâr

Girjis gives an adequate idea of the scheme of decoration (Fig. 169).

The straight arch, which serves here as lintel, is a universal

characteristic; so, too, are the ornaments pendant from the voussoirs.

The doorways in the cloister that lies to the west of Mâr Tûmâ, the

episcopal church of the Syrians, exhibit beautiful variants of the same

theme (Fig. 170).[147] In this church the door leading from the nave to

the sanctuary is framed by an entrelac enclosing in its windings the

figures of Christ and the Twelve Apostles.

[Illustration: FIG. 171.--MÔṢUL, MÂR TÛMÂ.]

[Illustration: FIG. 172.--MÔṢUL, MÂR SHIM’UN.]

[Illustration: FIG. 173.--MÔṢUL, PLASTER WORK IN ḲAL’AT LÛLÛ.]

[Illustration: FIG. 174.--MÔṢUL, TOMB OF THE IMÂM YAḤYÂ.]

Three extra aisles have recently been added to the original building,

and I understood the church to be shared between the Syrians and the

Chaldæans. If the Christian architects continued to make use of a

primitive Oriental plan, it is even more certain that they continued to

be dependent upon Eastern artists for their decorative schemes, and were

in no way linked with the West. Their decoration is the same as that

which is to be found in contemporary Mohammadan buildings. For instance,

a lintel which now lies in the atrium of Mâr Shim’ûn, a church which has

been almost entirely rebuilt, is carved with an entrelac unmistakably

Mohammadan (Fig. 172). Over one of the doors of Mâr Tûmâ there is a band

of ornament which may perhaps have been taken from a Mohammadan

building, though it is more probable that it formed part of the original

Christian work (Fig. 171).[148] The style of this deeply undercut relief

is so marked that it imprints itself upon the memory. I saw other

examples of it in the beautiful tomb of the Imam Yaḥyâ which, according

to an inscription, was built by the Sultan Lûlû (Fig. 174).[149] A

mosque for the Friday prayers existed in the time of Ibn Baṭûṭah close

to the Tigris, and this is in all probability the building which is

praised by Mustaufî, who says that “the stone sculptured ornament is so

intricate that it might stand for wood carving.”[150] This particular

kind of stone relief, which is to be found both in Moslem and in

Christian buildings, does in fact closely resemble wood carving, and the

Christian examples cannot be of a different date from the Moslem. The

first recorded mosque in Môṣul was built by Marwân II, the last of the

Omayyad khalifs (744-750), not far from the Tigris, according to Ibn

Ḥauḳal; so far as I know, no trace of it has survived. Nûr ed Dîn, the

Atabeg (1146-1172), built a second Friday mosque in the bazaar, and

this must be the great mosque with the leaning minaret which stands in

the centre of the town, but how much of the original work remains I

could not determine, for Mohammadan feeling was running high when I was

in Môṣul, and at such times it is wiser not to ask for admittance into

mosques.[151] Finally a third Friday mosque was erected near the Tigris

(represented, as I conjecture, by the tomb of the Imâm Yaḥyâ), and to

Lûlû’s day belongs also the ziyârah of ’Abdullah ibn Ḥassan in the heart

of the town. The entrelac round the door of this ziyârah is very similar

to the decoration of the sanctuary door in Mâr Tûmâ, except that the

figures are absent. In the interior there is a band of deeply-cut stone

relief of the wood-work type. The fluted cone-like roof with which the

ziyârah is covered is found in all the Moslem tombs of Môṣul. There is

another fragment of Lûlû’s handiwork which, ruined though it be, is of

great architectural importance, the Ḳal’at Lûlû on the Tigris bank, not

far from the tomb of the Imâm Yaḥyâ.[152] Only the eastern end of two

vaulted halls is standing, but in one of these remains of stucco

ornament still cling to the walls (Fig. 173). The ornament consists of a

band of inscription and a band of tiny arcades, each arch containing the

representation of a nude human figure, depicted from head to waist.[153]

Below this band there has been another design of larger arches covered

with rinceaux which are adorned with flowers and birds. The town walls

are comparatively modern, but the Sinjâr Gate, on the west side, is

worthy of note. It resembles the gates of Aleppo, and like them it bears

a blazonry of lions.

One other memory of the days at Môṣul stands very freshly in my mind.

There exists in the town a small and indigent Jewish community--neither

too small nor too poverty-stricken to have attracted the watchful care

of the Alliance Juive.[154] Under their auspices, M. Maurice Sidi, a

courageous and highly cultivated Tunisian, has opened a school for the

children, and by precept and example he imparts the elements of

civilization, letters and cleanliness, to young and old. The English

vice-consul, who had witnessed his efforts with great sympathy and

admiration, invited him to bring a deputation of his co-religionists to

the consulate while I was there, and a dignified body of bearded and

white-robed elders filed one morning into the courtyard. We returned

their visit at the school, where we were received by a smiling crowd,

dressed in their best, who pressed bunches of flowers upon us. The

class-rooms were filled with children proudly conscious that their

achievements in the French, Arabic and Hebrew tongues had called down

honour upon their race. The scholars in the Hebrew class, who were of

very tender years, were engaged in learning lists of Hebrew words with

their Arabic equivalents, Hebrew being an almost forgotten language

among the Jews of Môṣul. M. Sidi drew forward a tiny urchin who stood

unembarrassed before us, and gazed at him expectantly with solemn black

eyes.

“What do you know?” said the master.

The black-eyed morsel answered without a shadow of hesitation: “I know

Elohim.” And while I was wondering how much of the eternal secret had

been revealed to that small brain, he began to recite the first list in

the lesson-book, which opened with the name of God: “Elohim, Allah”--I

do not remember how it went on, neither did he remember, without M.

Sidi’s prompting. Elohim was what he knew.

Over against Môṣul lies Nineveh. The pontoon bridge that spans the

Tigris had been swept away by the floods; the masonry arches on the

further side stood out into the river, but where the causeway dips down

to meet the bridge of boats it met nothing but the swiftly-flowing

stream. We crossed therefore by a ferry, and so rode up to the mound of

Ḳûyûnjik, where Xenophon saw the ruins of Nineveh and thought them to

be a city of the Medes. His description of the immense area they covered

scarcely seemed incredible as we stood upon the mound. The line of the

walls ran out far to the north, far, too, to the south, embracing the

neighbouring mound of Nebî Yûnus, which is the site of one of Jonah’s

many tombs. The corn grew deep on Ḳûyûnjik, and the blue bee-eaters flew

in and out of Layard’s excavation pits; across the fertile plain rose

the towers of Môṣul; the broad Tigris ran between, which Saladin sought

to turn from its bed when he laid siege to Nûr ed Dîn. His imperious

folly is as forgotten as the splendours of Sennacherib--

“And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass

Never was!

Such a carpet as this summer time o’erspreads

And embeds

Every vestige of the city....”

Had the poet been dreaming of Nineveh when he wrote _Love Among the

Ruins_?

“Shut them in

With their triumphs and their glories and the rest....”

We rode from Nineveh through blazing heat for four hours across a plain

where the peasants were harvesting the barley while the locusts

harvested the green wheat, which was not ripe enough to save. The sun

beat so fiercely upon us that I sought refuge in the house of the

village sheikh at ’Amrḳân, and ate in his guest-chamber a lunch which

was made more palatable by the sour curds which he set before us. An

hour and a half further we came to Mâr Behnâm, and found the tents

pitched upon the slopes of a mound above a deep round pool. On the one

side of our camp lay the monastery of Mâr Behnâm, on the other the

shrine that covers his grave.[155] The monastery has the appearance of

a small fort. Its outer walls have been many times ruined and repaired,

and the interior buildings, all except the beautiful church, are modern.

The doorways leading from the porch into the church and from the nave

and aisles into the sanctuaries are covered with lacework patterns,

interspersed with small figures of angels, lions and snakes, together

with Arabic and Syriac inscriptions. In the porch, between the two

doors, there is a small niche worked with arabesques, the very

counterpart of a Moslem miḥrâb. There are square chambers leading out of

the aisles, roofed with pointed domes which are elaborately worked with

stucco ornaments. Upon the east wall and on one of the piers of the nave

are two stucco plaques, one representing St. George on horseback, the

other a full-length figure of a saint. On both there are traces of

colour.[156] I paid my respects to the saint’s tomb in company with a

number of pilgrims from Môṣul who were spending the night in the

monastery. At dusk the villagers assembled under the mound, which marks

the spot as some small suburb of Nineveh, and watered their flocks at

the pool; I watched them from my tent door and thought that the scene

must have changed but little in the past three thousand years.[157]

[Illustration: FIG. 175.--ḲARAḲÔSH, DECORATION ON LINTEL OF MÂR

SHIM’ÛN.]

We rode next day in two and a half hours to Ḳaraḳôsh, where there are no

less than seven churches. Three of them stand outside the village, each

surrounded by its fortress wall, which usually encloses one or two small

living-rooms besides the church. They reminded me forcibly of the walled

Coptic monasteries of Egypt, but the monastic buildings were smaller.

Between them stretched fields of barley wherein the villagers, standing

in line, were pulling up the crops to the strains of the bagpipes. The

churches were oriented almost at haphazard, and provided with the

smallest doors, and windows to correspond. The interiors were so dark

that I abandoned all hope of photographing the ornaments upon the inner

doors,[158] though I made a rapid sketch of the lintel over the

sanctuary door of Mâr Shim’ûn (Fig. 175). Above it was a slab bearing a

floral Persian pattern incised upon the stone. Inside the town several

of the churches had recently been repaired, or were in process of

reparation. A young priest, Kas Yûsef, showed me the work, and gloried

in the replacing of old and ruined churches by new and brand-new

edifices. New lamps for old, but it was the old lamp that could summon

the genius, and I realized the sound moral of the fairy story as I

watched the refurbishing of ancient walls at Ḳaraḳôsh; but I did not

impart my impression to the Syrian priest, whose ardour it would have

been unkind to damp. The Syrians have annexed most of the larger

churches, so said the worthy Jacobite father who brought me the key of

Mâr Shim’ûn, and he told his tale not without a touch of bitterness. Yet

it would have been folly to blink the fact that he was no match for Kas

Yûsef, who was young and eager, and had been trained in a French school

at Môṣul. Twenty minutes beyond Ḳaraḳôsh we came to the ruined church of

Mâr Yuhanna Deleimoyya (St. John the Deleimî), which no one has troubled

to repair, though it had beautiful carved lintels and domes adorned with

plasterwork. Thence we rode for an hour through cornlands to Bârtallâ,

and saw Bâ’ashikâ at the foot of the hills. They were real hills which

lay before us, not the bare desert ridges which were all the heights we

had seen since we crossed over Lebanon on the way to Aleppo. Here were

the buttresses of mightier ranges than Lebanon, the alps of Kurdistân

which end the land of the two rivers. As we climbed upwards, the corn

grew greener, the grass deeper, the flowers more brilliant along the

edge of trickling streams. But my companions paid no heed to these

marvels. Jûsef’s thoughts were busy with the great cities he had seen

since he set forth on his travels, and especially with Môṣul, last and

therefore fairest in his memory. He rehearsed its advantages to the

Môṣul zaptieh, and ’Abdullah was well pleased to listen to such talk.

“Not even in Aleppo,” said Jûsef magnanimously, “do you find better

bread.”

“However many places there may be in the world,” pronounced ’Abdullah,

“there is none where the bread is so good.”

“It is sweet,” assented Jûsef.

“And if you take tobacco from Môṣul to Baghdâd,” ’Abdullah pursued, “it

rots there. The air of Baghdâd is not like the air of Môṣul.”

“Wallah, no!” said Jûsef the much-travelled, weighing city against city

in the finest judicial manner.

We rode through exquisite meadows, and in about five hours and a half

from Ḳaraḳôsh crossed a mountain stream that rippled between banks rosy

with oleander--Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed in robes so

softly flushed. Beyond it my camp was pitched upon a swelling slope

below the steep rocks of Jebel Maḳlûb, wherein, placed high among the

hills, stood the monastery of Mâr Mattai, a grey wall hanging over a

precipice. I left my horse at the camp, and taking ’Abdullah with me,

set out on a half-hour’s climb up a narrow gorge, full of the western

sun, which was golden now, and clement. Every crevice between the stones

was gay with a small starry campanula, gentian-blue, mountain-blue, the

full clear colour of an upland flower; and thrusting their strong roots

under the rocks, the terebinths hung glossy foliage over the path--I

found myself, as I looked once more upon the divine curves of leafy twig

and bough, heaping contempt upon the recollection of that leggy

vegetable, the palm. A ragged boy opened the monastery gate and

conducted us by a long stair to a terrace from which the bishop had

watched our progress up the gorge. He bade me go quickly, while the sun

still shone, to see the church and the tombs of Mâr Mattai and of Bar

Hebræus, but the church had been rebuilt, the inscriptions on the tombs

were already known, and my desire turned towards the bishop, and the

coffee which he was preparing for us, and the room on the terrace where

the cushioned windows opened on to the Assyrian plain. The bishop was

old and very garrulous; the monastery, high set above the world, was

beyond the reach of mundane intelligence, the only monk had gone down to

Môṣul, and in the Jebel Maḳlûb men were still uncertain under which lord

they served. Was it indeed true, asked the bishop, that Muḥammad Reshâd

was Sultan of Turkey? and he rejoiced greatly when we confirmed the

rumour. But his thoughts wandered back to older histories, and hearing

that we had come from Mâr Behnâm, he began to instruct us in matters

pertaining to that shrine.

“My daughter, listen,” said he, and I lay back upon the cushions and

watched the light redden and fade over the plains of Assyria, while the

sweet mountain silence fell more closely in the gorge, and the bishop’s

rambling tale filled the idle hour like some voice out of the past.

’Abdullah sat cross-legged upon a pile of carpets at the end of the

room, rolling cigarettes and nodding his head in approval as the

venerable weaver of romance unfolded his chronicle. “Senherib, king of

Assyria, king of kings,” he began, “to him a son was born whose name was

Behnâm. And it happened upon a day that the Amîr Behnâm was hunting, and

he lost his gazelle and night came upon him while he pursued her. And

being weary with the chase he fell asleep beside a fountain. Then in his

sleep an angel appeared unto him and bade him hearken to one whom he

should meet next day upon the road. And when he had journeyed but a

little way he met Mâr Mattai. And Mâr Mattai stopped him and said: ‘Oh

prince, why do you worship idols that have eyes that see not, ears that

hear not, lips that speak not, instead of worshipping the living God,

who made heaven and earth, al ins w’al jins w’al jami?’--mankind and

different kinds and all kinds. And Behnâm answered: ‘Give me a sign.’

Then said Mâr Mattai: ‘What sign shall I give you?’ And he said: ‘Heal

my sister who is sick.’ And they went on their way towards Nineveh, and

as they went, Behnâm was full of fear, for he dared not take the saint

into his father’s city. But when they reached Bârtallâ, Mâr Mattai was

weary and could walk no further. And he said: ‘If I make water to gush

out of the rock, will you believe?’ And Behnâm answered: ‘I will

believe.’ And the water gushed forth. Then Behnâm returned to Nineveh,

and he refused to worship idols that have eyes that cannot see and ears

that cannot hear and lips that cannot speak.”

“It is true,” said ’Abdullah.

“Neither would he worship the sun,” pursued the bishop, “nor the moon,

nor the stars, nor anything but the living God, who created heaven and

earth, mankind and different kinds and all kinds.”

“It is written in the book,” said ’Abdullah.

“My son,” said the bishop, “it is written.” And Christian and Moslem met

on the common ground of scripture. “Then Senherib put him and his sister

to death. But the king was old and sick unto death, and he repented of

what he had done, for he had no heir to inherit the kingdom. Therefore

he sent for Mâr Mattai and entreated him to bring his son to life. And

Mâr Mattai answered: ‘Oh king, I will raise him from the dead if you

will build me a monastery in the Jebel Maḳlûb.’ And Senherib built the

house wherein we sit,” concluded the bishop.

“And who built Mâr Behnâm?” said I, anxious to prolong the recital.

“My daughter,” he replied, “the house of Mâr Behnâm was built by Isḥâk

the merchant. For Isḥâk was journeying to Baghdâd, and upon the road he

fell ill, and Mâr Behnâm appeared to him and healed him. Verily the

Assyrians were idolaters, but they came to know the true God. So the

world changes.” The bishop broke off abruptly at this confusing point in

the narrative, for even he felt that it would be an anachronism to

assert that the Assyrian empire was Christian. But the historical

sequence of events was nothing to ’Abdullah.

“God is great,” he assented. “The world changes.” And he rolled another

cigarette.[159]

We ran down the path in the dusk and found my dinner-table spread under

the moon. Round the camp-fire sat ’al ins w’al jins w’al jami’ and

watched the boiling of Ḥâjj ’Amr’s rice-pot.

However many countries there may be in the world there are none so rich

in faiths as the mountain frontiers of eastern Turkey. Beliefs which

have been driven out with obloquy by a new-found truth, the

half-apprehended mysticism of the East, echoes of Western metaphysics

and philosophy, illusive memories of paganism--all have been swept

together into these hills, where creeds that were outlined in the

childhood of the world are formulated still in terms as old as

themselves. Islâm, with the lash of its simple, clear-cut doctrine, has

herded them into remote places. Cowering there under centuries of

persecution they have hidden their sacred things from the eyes of the

spoiler, in silence they endure the reproach which dogs the most

innocent practices of a secret cult, and each sect awaits, through ages

of misery, the reward and the redeemer which its peculiar revelation has

promised. These outcast communities make a potent appeal to the

imagination and to the sympathy. I have no desire to pry into that which

they choose to conceal, neither have they any wish to take me into their

special confidence; but their hospitality is unfailing, and whenever I

find myself among them I find myself among friends.

We were now entering the country which is the head-quarters of the

Yezîdîs, who, from their desire to conciliate or to propitiate the

Spirit of Evil, are known to Moslem and Christian as Devil Worshippers.

By Moslem and by Christian they have been placed beyond the bounds of

human kindness, and while the Mohammadan has been unremitting in his

efforts to bring them, by methods familiar to dominant creeds, to a

sense of their short-comings, the Christian has regarded the wholesale

butchery which has overtaken them from time to time as a punishment

justified by their tenets. I had journeyed before among Yezîdî villages,

in the mountains of north Syria, and had been struck by the clean and

well-ordered look of the houses, and by the open-handed friendliness of

the people, as well as by their courage and industry. The Mesopotamian

Yezîdîs I knew only through the descriptions contained in Layard’s

enchanting books, but I carried a letter to ’Alî Beg, the head of the

sect, and proposed to visit him in his village of Bâ’adrî and to see, if

he would permit, the most sacred of all Yezîdî shrines, Sheikh ’Adi.

’Abdullah, when he learnt my intention, expressed his entire approval of

’Alî Beg as a man, but he would hear nothing of his religious

convictions because they were not founded upon a book.

“Effendim,” he said, “Moslems and Jews and Christians have a book; it is

only the infidels which have none, and the Yezîdîs are infidels. They

worship the Sheitân.”

“You must not speak of him while we are at Bâ’adrî,” said I, for the

Yezîdîs never take the name of the Devil upon their lips and to mention

him in their presence is a shameful insult.

“God forbid!” replied ’Abdullah.

We rode over flowery foot-hills that were bright with hollyhock and

gladiolus, borage and mullein, and in an hour and a half from our

camping-ground we reached the village of Jezarân.

“These are Shabbak,” observed ’Abdullah.

“What are Shabbak?” I asked.

“They are not true Moslems,” he replied. “God knows what they believe.

They resemble the Shî’ahs. Effendim, they came with the armies of the

’Ajam, and after the ’Ajam departed, they remained.” The ’Ajam are the

Persians, or, roughly speaking, any barbarians.[160]

We went down into a lovely valley where the storks waded wing-deep

through grass and buttercups--Chem Resh is its Kurdish name, Wâdî Aswad

in Arabic, and both mean the Black Valley. Everywhere I was now given a

Kurdish as well as an Arabic name for the villages, and the

mother-tongue of the inhabitants was Kurdish, though, as a rule, they

spoke Arabic also. Three hours from the camp we crossed a stream in the

Wâdî ’Ain Sifneh, and half-an-hour beyond it we rode through the first

Yezîdî village, Mukbil. The Yezîdîs, being of Kurdish race, do not

differ in appearance from the rest of the population, except in one

particular of their attire: they abhor the colour blue and eschew it in

their dress, but red they regard as a beneficent hue, and their women

are mostly clothed in dark-red cotton garments. The valley in which

Mukbil lies is of uncommon fertility. Rice is cultivated here, and

cotton; the emerald green of the grass indicated the presence of swampy

ground, and the heavy air was full of the perfume of growing things. I

lunched under a fig-tree near a Yezîdî hamlet; the village elders

brought me curds and bread unasked, and refused to take payment. Having

climbed a green ridge, we dropped into the valley of Baviân, crossed a

deep river and rode up its bank till we came, four hours from Mukbil, to

the famous rocks which are carved with Assyrian reliefs and

inscriptions. Under them we pitched out tents, and a more exquisite

camping-ground you might go far to seek. Fattûḥ knew the place. He had

been here with one of whom he spoke as Meesterr Keen. This legendary

personage appears frequently in Fattûḥ’s reminiscences, and I suspect

him to be no other than Mr. King, of the British Museum. “He gazed long

upon the men and animals,” observed Fattûḥ, with indulgent recollection,

“and many times he photographed them. And then, wallah! he climbed up

the rocks, and all the writing he took down in his book. Not many of the

gentry are like Meesterr Keen, and your Excellency need not trouble to

copy the writing once more.”

I troubled not at all, but looked in amazement at the great figures of

gods mounted on lions, and kings standing in adoration which Shalmaneser

II had carved upon the cliff (Fig. 176). Behind some of the groups

rock-cut chambers have been hollowed out in a later age, their doorways

breaking through the figures of the reliefs, and the stream eddies round

the feet of winged beasts and bearded men, walking in procession, cut

upon huge boulders which have been dislodged from the face of the

hill.[161] When I had seen these wonders I wandered up the valley to a

point where the cliff bends round and holds the river in the curve of

its arm. Here lay a deep still pool, the banks of which were starred

with daisies and poppies and the rocks with campanulas and orchids. The

water, dyed to a ruddy brown by recent rains, was like a disk of

polished bronze in a setting of green and white and scarlet enamel. I

sat for a little and listened to the birds singing about their nests in

the cliffs, and the river breaking over the stones below the pool, and

then I swam in the warm brown water and went upon my way rejoicing.

A fortunate chance sent other travellers to visit the reliefs that day,

Dominican fathers from the monastery of Mâr Ya’ḳûb, two days’ journey to

the west of Baviân. They gave me much valuable information before they

rode away on their mules, and I only hope that they enjoyed my tea half

as much as I enjoyed their conversation. They were bound for Sheikh

’Adî, and hearing that I also was on my way thither, they told me of the

underground chambers of the shrine, now seldom shown to strangers, and

of the spring that runs through them from basin to basin; of the Yezîdî

adoration of fountains, and of the baptismal rites which they practise,

ceremonies which they borrowed from another Mesopotamian sect, the

Mandæans, who are called the Christians of St. John. So sacred is the

element of water that a Yezîdî will not enter a Moslem bath, nor will he

eat of fish, which is born of water. They spoke too of the religions of

dualism, of which the Yezîdî faith is one, though it is probably

derived, through Manichæanism, from an ancient Babylonian source, rather

than directly from Zoroaster, since it preserves the reverence for the

sun which sprang from Mani’s identification of light with the Principle

of Good; and out of their wide experience of local customs they drew

parallels

[Illustration: FIG. 176.--ASSYRIAN RELIEFS AT BAVIÂN.]

[Illustration: FIG. 177.--’ALÎ BEG.]

[Illustration: FIG. 178.--THE KHÂTÛN AT THE DOOR OF SHEIKH ’ADÎ.]

from the Christian sects, whose observances reflect those of primitive

cults, and told me of Christians who, like the Yezîdîs, turn to the sun

to pray. Then they left me with the birds and the river and the Assyrian

gods, to reflect upon the unchanging persistence of human beliefs.

It is a five-hours’ ride from Baviân to Bâ’adrî, and during the course

of it I began to learn something of the terrible lawlessness which turns

the beautiful Kurdish mountains into a hell upon earth. We passed upon

our way a small Kurdish settlement, of which the houses burrowed into

the hill-side like the lairs of wild animals. It is the winter quarters

of one Ḥassan Jângîr, a robber chief of the Kochars, the nomad Kurds.

Two days before it had been raided by the government, in retribution for

innumerable outrages, and such of the population as yet lived had fled

into the hills. The feudal lord of Ḥassan Jângîr is Sheikh Ḥajjî, who

was at that time, to the satisfaction of the whole country-side,

imprisoned in Môṣul, but his liegeman had joined forces with another

redoubted malefactor, Sheikh Nûrî, and it was rumoured that the pair

with their followers had been encamped the previous night on the heights

above Baviân. It was not without reason, as I now perceived, that the

Vâlî of Môṣul had insisted on providing me with four zaptiehs instead of

the customary two.

The village of Bâ’adrî clings to the green slopes of the foot-hills, and

’Alî Beg’s whitewashed house stands over it like a miniature fortress.

The beg, who is the descendant of the other ’Alî to whom Layard stood

godfather (with some misgivings as to what might be the duties of the

sponsor of a devil-worshipping baby), received me in his divan with the

utmost cordiality. He is a man of middle age with a commanding figure

and a long beard, light brown in colour, that curls almost to his waist.

He was dressed from head to foot in white, and as we sat together in the

divan, I thought that I had seldom drunk coffee in more remarkable

company. I told him that I knew his people in the Jebel Sim’ûn and that

they had spoken of him as the ruler of all.

“The ruler of us all,” he replied gravely, “is God.”

In the courtyard were a pair of peacocks, in honour, no doubt, of the

Angel Peacock, who rules the age of 10,000 years in which we live, and

is the symbol of him who must not be named. His bronze effigy is carried

by the Ḳawwâls, the higher priesthood of the Yezîdîs, when they journey

among the scattered communities of the sect, and to whatever dangers

they may be exposed, it is said that the image has never been allowed to

fall into the hands of infidels.[162] The Yezîdî women are neither

secluded nor veiled, and when ’Alî Beg took me to see his wife we found

her in the midst of her household, male and female, giving orders for my

entertainment. She was a handsome woman dressed in a robe of purple

cotton, with a black velvet cap placed over the muslin veil which was

wrapped about her head and under her chin, but did not conceal her face.

On her wrists she wore heavy gold bracelets set with turquoises. She

talked nothing but Kurdish, so that my greetings and my gratitude were

conveyed to her through the beg’s secretary, a Chaldæan from Alḳôsh. Few

Yezîdîs can either read or write, such knowledge being forbidden to

them, and I doubt whether the beg himself had any acquaintance with

letters. In the women’s quarters I knitted an instant friendship with

’Alî Beg’s small son, Sa’îd Beg, and though we had no common language in

which to express our feelings, our intimacy advanced silently by leaps

and bounds while he sat upon the largest of my camp-chairs and watched

me eat the sumptuous meal with which his father had provided me. When I

had finished there was enough and to spare of rice and mutton, bread and

semolina pudding and sour curds to satisfy all my servants and soldiers.

Meantime the beg had made preparations for my visit to Sheikh ’Adî,

whither two Yezîdî horsemen and all my four zaptiehs were ordered to

accompany me, lest we should meet with Kurdish robbers in the hills.

’Alî Beg with a dignified retinue of elders, one of whom was a ḳawwâl

who had that day returned from

[Illustration: FIG. 179.--SHEIKH ’ADÎ.]

[Illustration: FIG. 180.--ZÂKHÔ.]

[Illustration: FIG. 181.--BRIDGE OVER THE KHÂBÛR.]

the Jebel Sinjâr, watched our departure (Fig. 177). Their fine grave

heads and flowing beards gave them a singular resemblance to the kings

and gods upon the rocks of Baviân, and perhaps the likeness was not

merely fanciful, for the higher dignitaries of the Yezîdîs intermarry

with none save those of their own rank, and who knows what ancient blood

may flow from generation to generation through their veins?[163] We rode

into the folds of the hills by a path so stony that we were forced at

times to dismount and lead our horses. Bushes of flowering hawthorn grew

among the rocks, oak-trees, in newly opened leaf, were scattered over

the steep slopes, and the grass was full of poppies and the last of the

scarlet ranunculus. The Yezîdîs hold the ranunculus in high esteem, its

bright-red colour being of good omen in their eyes, and I regard it with

no less favour, though perhaps for more superficial reasons. After a

climb of close upon two hours, we reached the summit of the hill and the

path dipped down, through sturdier oak woods, into a secluded valley,

out of the heart of which rose the fluted spires of Sheikh ’Adî, a

sanctuary and a tiny village embosomed in planes and mulberries and

ancient fig-trees (Fig. 179). We sat down by the edge of a clear

fountain while one of my Yezîdî guides went forward to announce our

arrival to the khâtûn, the sister of ’Alî Beg. She came to meet me in

the outer court of the shrine, a tall and slender woman wrapped in white

robes, with a black cap upon her head and a heavy linen veil thrown over

it and drawn tightly under her chin. She took me by the hand, and

bidding me welcome in the few words of Arabic which she had at her

command, led me past the booths where the hucksters spread out their

wares during the days of the great yearly festival--they stood empty now

under the mulberry branches. We passed through a doorway into a small

paved court, still and peaceful and half-shaded by mulberries. The

further side was bounded by the wall of the shrine, which opens into the

court by a single door. Upon the wall near the door a snake is carved

in relief upon the stones and painted black (Fig. 178). With a singular

magnetic attraction it catches and holds the eye, and the little court

owes to its presence much of the indefinable sense of mystery which

hangs over it as surely as hang the spreading branches of the

mulberry-trees. I took off my shoes and followed the khâtûn as she

stepped softly over the grass-grown pavement. At the door she paused,

touched with her lips the stone, and murmured a Kurdish prayer in which

I heard the frequent repetition of Sheikh ’Adî’s name. In her white

robes and heavy veil she looked like some strange priestess: the sibyl

of the Delphic shrine might have stood so, robed in white, and kissed

the marble gateway of the sun-god’s house. A cool darkness and the

murmur of water greeted us as we entered. We found ourselves in a large

oblong chamber lying, as near as I can guess, from east to west, and

divided into two vaulted aisles, of about the same width, by a row of

seven piers. From under the wall on our left hand flowed a streamlet of

clear water that ran into a square tank, and out of it down the length

of the southern aisle. In the north aisle there was a tomb covered over

with coloured cloths: “Holy man’s grave,” whispered the khâtûn as we

passed it. But we had not yet reached the sanctuary which holds Sheikh

’Adî’s bones. The eastern end of the north wall is broken by a door

which leads into a dark chamber containing a second tomb. This chamber

is covered by the smaller of the two spires. To the west of it is a

second square room, bigger than the first, and here Sheikh ’Adî’s tomb

stands under the larger spire. It was totally dark: the wick floating in

a saucer of oil carried by the khâtûn did little to illuminate it, and I

lighted a coil of magnesium wire, to the delight of my guide, who

interrupted her prayers to Sheikh ’Adî to utter ejaculations of pleasure

each time that the white flash leapt up into the dome. For my part I

would as soon study by the flame of a will-o’-the-wisp as by the

uncertain brilliance of magnesium wire, coupled as it is with the

assurance that the burning tendril will ultimately expend itself upon my

skirt, and I got no more profit from the display than the gratification

of the khâtûn and the knowledge that the high cone was set over the

angles of the chamber on squinch arches--a construction which I could

have predicted while it was still wrapped in darkness. Beyond the tomb

chamber, and parallel with the north aisle, lies a long vaulted room,

pitch dark like the other, and filled with oil jars. “For Sheikh ’Adî,”

said the khâtûn, and kissed the well-oiled door as we entered.[164]

Still further west we came to a vaulted gallery, running along the north

side of the court; it, too, was dark except where the light shone

through a few cracks in the wall. We went back through the two domed

rooms, and when we reached the smaller tomb-chamber the khâtûn turned to

me, saying, “Come.” Up to this point we had been accompanied by the

zaptiehs and by the Yezîdîs from Bâ’adrî; to these she pointed the way

into the aisled hall, and taking my hand she led me to a low door in the

eastern wall of the tomb-chamber. She bent her slender figure and passed

through it, holding up her lamp to light my path. I followed her down

half-a-dozen steps into a small chamber, dimly illumined by faint rays

that struggled through chinks in the masonry of the south wall. The

north wall was, so far as I could see, cut out of the solid rock; from

under it gushed a spring which is said to take its source in the well

Zemzem at Mecca. As in the upper building, the water flowed into a small

square basin and through a hole in the wall at the eastern end of the

room, but it flowed at its own pleasure, or perhaps the well Zemzem had

been overfilled by the rains and the stream was greater than is usual,

for it covered the floor to the depth of several centimetres. I stood

doubtfully upon the lowest step and then decided that the wisest course

would be to pull off my stockings--bare feet take no harm from a watery

floor, though feet accustomed to be shod will tread unsteadily upon the

sharp pebbles with which the spring has plentifully bestrewn the

pavement. The khâtûn was much distressed to see me reduced to this

plight: “Bîchâreh!” she said, “poor one.” We splashed across the chamber

and into a low passage which turned at right angles and conducted us

into a second room. The stream came with us and was caught in yet

another basin. In the dim twilight my companion turned quickly towards

me and laid her hand upon my arm.

“Are you not afraid?” she whispered.

I looked up into the white and gentle face, wrapped round with the

whiter veil, on which the burning wick cast a ghostly light, and because

of my deep ignorance I was much perplexed.

“No,” I answered.

“I am afraid,” said she. And then I understood that if I had known how

holy was the ground whereon we trod, not even the sharp pebbles would

have prevailed over my mind against its awe-inspiring shades.

The stream gushed out under the east wall, the khâtûn opened a small

door beside its mouth, and we passed out, blinking, into a sunny

courtyard, half filled with piles of firewood, which I believe to be the

wood used in the annual sacrifice of the white bull to Sheikh Shems, who

is the sun.[165] We returned round the south of the building, past the

house which is occupied by the khâtûn and by ’Alî Beg when he comes to

the festival, and rejoined the zaptiehs in the inner court. There we sat

long under the trees, eating freshly-baked bread and drinking bowls of

milk with which the khâtûn provided us. It was with difficulty that I

persuaded her not to kill a lamb and add it to the meal, which she

considered far too modest for our merits or for her reputation as a

hostess.

Little is known of the saint whose tomb is the central shrine of the

Yezîdî faith. He is variously reported to have sprung either from the

regions near Aleppo, or from the Ḥaurân, and he died in the year A.D.

1162. He was one of a number of illuminators of whom the Sûfî mystic,

Manṣûr el Ḥallâj, was another--he who suffered martyrdom for asserting

the permeation of all created things by the Deity with the phrase: “I am

God.”[166] The Angel Jesus is a third--not the phantom Jesus whose death

is recorded in the New Testament, but the spirit whose place that other

had usurped;[167] and many of the Jewish prophets are revered in the

same manner. There is a tradition that the building which is now Sheikh

’Adî’s tomb was once a Christian church, but though I looked sharply for

evidences that might confirm this report, I could not be sure that they

existed. It is certain that there were earlier edifices upon the present

site, and the building has been so often destroyed and restored that its

original form must have been almost obliterated.[168] Round the doorway

there are re-used stones covered with the net-like patterns which are to

be found in the churches at Ḳaraḳôsh. An Arabic inscription, built into

the same wall, bears the date 1115, but this date undoubtedly refers to

the Mohammadan era, and the inscription is therefore barely two

centuries old. Below it a second representation of a serpent is carved

upon the wall, not painted like the one near the doorway, and lying

parallel with the ground instead of standing upright. What the black

snake signifies I do not know, neither did I ask for an explanation

which would not have been accorded. Layard says that the Yezîdîs

repeatedly assured him that it was without significance, and I should

have been given no other answer.[169] ’Abdullah, who knew as little as

I, volunteered the information that a Yezîdî will never kill a black

snake, but when I asked whether there were many such reptiles in the

hills, he replied that so far as he knew there were none, and his

testimony as to the practices of the Yezîdîs when confronted with them

did not seem to me to be of much value. Before I left Bâ’adrî I received

an invitation to be present at the summer festival. Of the ceremonies

performed at this time Layard has left two wonderful descriptions,[170]

and if ever I find myself at Môṣul in the height of the summer, I shall

not forget ’Alî Beg’s proffer of hospitality.

It was near sunset when we reached Bâ’adrî. After night had fallen Sa’îd

Beg came to fetch me to his mother’s quarters. We held converse through

the Christian secretary, and our talk was mostly of the child who sat

beside me smoking one cigarette after another.

“In my country children may not smoke,” said I. “Oh Sa’îd Beg, little

children like you should be asleep at this hour.”

The khâtûn smiled at him tenderly. “We can deny him nothing,” said she.

And the secretary added: “The ’araḳ they give him is worse for him than

the cigarettes.” Sobriety is not, I fear, to be numbered among the

Yezîdî virtues.

I left next morning at an early hour, and the secretary saw to the

comfort of my departure and received my thanks for the kindness which

had been shown to us, but neither he nor any other of ’Alî Beg’s people

would accept a reward. As I was about to mount, he said that the beg

would ask a favour of me.

“Upon my head and eyes,” said I.

“Will you leave with us some of your fire ribbon. He would light the

tomb with it at the next festival.” I broke off half the roll, and by

this time the fame of magnesium wire must have spread to the Jebel

Sinjâr, or even to the Jebel Sim’ûn, and in the skirts of many a pious

person a hole has doubtless been burnt.

Having breakfasted with Devil Worshippers, I lunched with the prior of

Rabbân Hormuzd. The monastery, which is a very ancient and famous

Nestorian house, once the seat of a patriarch, now belongs to the

Chaldæans, that is, to the Catholic Nestorians. It lies high up in the

hills above Alḳôsh, a village four hours to the west of Bâ’adrî. When we

reached Alḳôsh I sent my caravan forward, and with Jûsef and ’Abdullah

climbed for half-an-hour up a narrow rocky valley by a winding path

which led us to a postern in the wall. In the flourishing Nestorian days

innumerable hordes of monks lodged in caves among the rocks; many of

these caves are still extant (though many have crumbled away with the

crumbling of the stone) but few are tenanted. Rich, who has left an

interesting account of Rabbân Hormuzd,[171] was of opinion that the

amphitheatre of cliffs, honeycombed with caves, was an ancient Persian

burial-place converted into a Christian monastery. Traditions differ as

to the history of the tutelary saint; some say that he was martyred in

the persecution of Yazdegird, king of Persia, and some in that of the

emperor Diocletian. The date of the foundation of the monastery is

generally given as falling within the fourth century, though the prior,

Kas Elyâs, told me that it was founded in the seventh century.

Exceedingly little of the original monastery remains, and Rich relates

that at the time of his visit it had recently undergone a comprehensive

restoration. The present buildings (and no doubt the ancient buildings

were much the same) climb in tier above tier up the precipitous

hill-side. The house of Kas Elyâs stands highest of all, and there I sat

in the window-seat and gossiped with the jolly prior. We brought him

news of the accession of Muḥammad V, on the hearing of which he bubbled

over with satisfaction, and declared that Salonica was the saviour of

the empire and that all his allegiance was given to the Young Turks, and

all his hopes depended upon them. Even in the last six months order had

been foreshadowed in the Kurdish hills, and with Muḥammad V upon the

throne and Sheikh Hajjî in prison, who could predict how far it might

not be carried? It was encouraging to listen to views so optimistic,

even though I knew that the prophecies of Kas Elyâs must be slow of

fulfilment. I began to forget the weariness caused by the heavy steaming

heat of the plain, and half-an-hour in the prior’s lofty house, together

with a lunch of omelettes and honey and sour curds, completed the cure.

Thus restored, I followed him into the church. The main part of it,

according to him, is about four hundred years old, but a chapel (which

is obviously later in date) was, said he, erected about a hundred years

ago. For English eyes it has an interest out of all proportion to its

age, for upon the doorway are carved the names of James and Mary Rich,

with the date 1820, and of Henry Layard, with the date 1846. An age of

splendid achievement in travel was that which saw Rich and Layard,

Chesney and Ainsworth and Rawlinson; for much of our knowledge of the

remoter parts of Asia we depend still upon the bountiful information

with which their learning and their courage supplied us. To the south of

the church a passage is hollowed out of the cliff. It leads into a tiny

rock-cut chamber, to the ceiling of which two iron rings are fastened.

“From these,” observed the prior, “Rabbân Hormuzd suspended himself when

he fell into meditation, and here it is the custom for pilgrims to make

their offerings.” The hint, I need hardly say, was effectual. The

baptistery lies south-west of the church; it is built of masonry and

covered by a dome on squinches. To it, and to the vaulted chamber

adjoining it, I should give an earlier date than to the rest of the

edifice.

Much cheered in mind and body, and laden with roses from the monastery

garden, we rode down into the insufferable heat of the low ground.

Shortly after leaving Alḳôsh our path turned into the hills to the

right, climbed by a charming valley with a rushing stream in its depth,

crossed a low pass and led us out into the broad green plain which lies

between the Jebel Alḳôsh and the Jebel Dehûk. Flowering grasses brushed

our stirrups as we rode, but, in spite of its fertility, the plain is

almost uncultivated. The few villages, Moslem and Christian, are

harried by the robber bands of Sheikh Nûrî, and whenever the miserable

peasants have gathered together such modest wealth as their resources

permit, the nomad Kurds fall upon them with rifle and with firebrand.

Thus it is that long tracts of land are unpeopled and the hamlets that

exist are more than half in ruin. One we passed that had been looted and

left a smouldering heap of ashes two years earlier, but the newly

aroused hopes of firmer government had induced the peasants to return to

it, and the houses were springing up again. The deep grass through which

we journeyed, both on this day and on the next, is looked upon as a sore

peril, since it tempts the Kurds down into the lowland pastures. To

avoid this annual reign of terror, the peasants are wont to set it on

fire as soon as it ripens, leaving but a small patch round each village.

For a week the plain is wrapped in flame and smoke, and the stifling

heat of the burning rises up to the hill-top monastery of Mâr Ya’ḳûb,

where the Catholic priests are witnesses to the appalling destruction of

what might have been a rich harvest, and to the bitter oppression which

turns the bounty of nature into a recurring threat. Jûsef, whose

imagination is not to be roused except by considerations of a soundly

practical character, cast his eye over the fields and observed

thoughtfully: “The muleteers of Baghdâd must starve this year to buy

fodder for their cattle, yet here is enough to feed all the Jezîreh.”

Heaven send peace to this fair country.

We camped near the small village of Grê Pahn (Arabic: Tell’ Arîḍ = the

Broad Mound), where we found our tents pitched. It had taken us three

and a half hours to reach it from Alḳôsh, but the caravan time had been

somewhat longer. Upon the following day we had a hard march; the caravan

was ten hours upon the way and I, with ’Abdullah and Jûsef, considerably

more, for we began the day with an excursion from the road to the

Assyrian reliefs above Malthai. We turned to the right, up the valley

that leads to Dehûk, and leaving our horses at the foot of the hill

under the care of Jûsef, ’Abdullah and I climbed up and sought for the

sculptures. It was rough going and we had been insufficiently directed,

so that for long we sought in vain. At last in despair I sent ’Abdullah

back to fetch a guide and sat down to wait for him under a rock. Clumps

of flowering saxifrage covered the stones; campanula pyramidalis lifted

its tall spires out of the crevices, the wide green valley lay below,

its sparsely scattered villages each clustering about an ancient mound,

and beyond it rose the mountain chains of Kurdistân. The air was full of

the fragrance and the freshness of the hills and alive with the sound of

their waters. To all the high places of the world I have given

allegiance--all exercise a like authority and confer like privileges,

and in these distant solitudes I claimed and was accorded an

old-established right of mountain citizenship.

’Abdullah’s mission came abruptly to a successful termination. We had

climbed high above the reliefs, and his keen eye espied them as he made

his way down. They are four in number, and on each precisely the same

scene is depicted. A king stands in adoration before a procession of

seven gods, six of whom are mounted upon the backs of beasts, while one

is seated upon a throne borne by a lion. Another, or perhaps the same,

king follows the company of gods on foot. A tomb or cell has been broken

through one of the reliefs, as at Baviân. In subject and in style the

reliefs in both places are closely alike, and though there are no

inscriptions at Malthai, the learned have concluded that the work there

must be of the same epoch as that at Baviân, and have dated it in the

reign of Shalmaneser II (860-825 B.C.).[172] They have yet to solve the

difficult problems connected with the interchange of religions and

artistic conceptions between the Assyrians and the Hittites, whose

sculptures show, at a far earlier date, the same strange motive of a

divinity standing upon the back of a wild animal.

For the rest of the day we journeyed along the foot of the hills by the

Môṣul high road. In the middle of the afternoon ’Abdullah observed

conversationally:

“That is the house of a bandit,” and he nodded his head towards a small

white fort under the hills. The bandit was at that period imprisoned at

Môṣul, but his empty dwelling served ’Abdullah as a peg whereon to hang

a denunciation of the Kurds, root and branch.

“As God is almighty,” said he, “they fear not God nor the Sultan. They

take the load and the camel with it. Allah al wakîl! they fire at the

soldiers of the government; they seize the load and the mule.”

“Where do they buy arms?” I asked.

“From Ibn Sabbâḥ of Kuweit,” he replied. “They travel down the Tigris to

the Gulf in keleks, and there they buy a rifle for three Ottoman pounds,

and sell it here for ten pounds--with a rich merchandise, wallah! they

return from the Gulf of Persia. And how can we prevail against them when

’Abdu’l Ḥamîd showed them favour? Sheikh Ḥajjî was a shepherd in the

hills--a shepherd with a shepherd’s staff guarding the sheep--till

’Abdu’l Ḥamîd made him a beg. Praise God he is now in the Môṣul

prison--may God curse him!”

“God strengthen the new government,” said I.

“Please God,” he answered.

After five hours’ quick riding from Malthai the post-road turned to the

right, over the hills. We did not follow it, but rode straight on for

another forty minutes to our camp at the Kurdish village of Koleh. I had

heard of a fortress which lay upon the western slopes of the Jebel el

Abyaḍ, half-an-hour beyond Koleh, and thither I went next morning. It

proved to be the ruins of a fortified town of which nothing but the

outer wall was standing. The spurs of the Kurdish mountains are covered

with fortress ruins, outlying strongholds of the highland races against

the inhabitants of the plains, or else defences serving to protect the

fruitful lowlands from the inroads of the tribes. They date, so far as I

can judge, from every period, from the Assyrian to the Ottoman, but the

majority are undoubtedly Kurdish, robber fastnesses of the marauding

chiefs who have spread terror over the countryside for many a century.

In this last category I should not, however, place Za’ferân. The wall

is built of fine masonry; it is about 1·70 metres thick, the outer and

the inner faces being of dressed stones, the core of rubble and mortar.

It runs up to the top of a rocky bluff which has been divided from the

area of the town by a cross wall. The rock forms a natural citadel, but

I could see no signs of masonry, other than the wall, upon its

summit--indeed the ground falls so sharply that there is little room for

building. From this elevated position the town wall can be seen

stretching out in an irregular, elongated semicircle, and the plain

slopes down from it towards the Tigris, which lies two or three miles to

the south. In the centre of the town there is a large mass of ruin near

which are some rock-hewn sarcophagi. Two clearly marked streets cross

the enclosed area at right angles to one another, the one passing by the

central ruin and running down to a gate in the south wall, the other

running from east to west and probably from gate to gate--the eastern

gate is visible, but the western part of the wall is so much ruined that

the position of its gateway is not to be determined. The lintel and door

jambs of the south gate are standing, the width of the opening is only

two metres, and the lintel here and in the east gate (where it has

fallen to the ground) is unadorned and uninscribed. The character of the

masonry and the existence (as is proved by the lines of street and ruin

heap) of a town carefully planned upon an ordered system, point to a

date prior to the Mohammadan conquest, and I am inclined to seek for a

Byzantine origin for Za’ferân. Perhaps it may be a relic of the

triumphant, though brief, re-occupation by Heraclius of the provinces

ceded to the Persians by Jovian.

I followed my caravan back to the Môṣul highway and so across the hills

to Zâkhô. We climbed up the pass by as good a road as any in Turkey, but

while we were rejoicing over its excellence, it broke off short and left

us to find our way down the opposite side of the pass as best we might

along a bridle-path strewn with boulders. So we came down into the

valley of the Khâbûr and saw before us the snowy wall of the Kurdish

Alps (Fig. 180). At the gate of the pass stands Zâkhô, “old and

isolated,” as Ainsworth says, and it would be difficult to better the

phrase.[173] The more ancient part of the village is built upon an

island in the Khâbûr. The right arm of the river is spanned by a masonry

bridge, the left arm washes round the castle, a fortress which must have

had a long and checkered history, though I can find no record of

it.[174] The masonry is of many different periods. The finest and

probably the oldest part is an octagonal tower which juts out into the

stream on the south-east side. The outer walls are all fairly well

preserved and make an imposing appearance, but the interior is terribly

ruinous. In the upper part of the building there is a large hall with

windows opening on to the river. The engaged columns which support the

interior pointed arches of these windows are covered with a delicate

tracery of carving very like Seljuk work of the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries. This part of the castle cannot be dated later than

the fourteenth century, but the foundations and the octagonal tower must

be considerably older. Last of all the Turkish garrison has supplemented

the ancient work with wretched structures of rubble and mortar, and

these, too, have fallen into ruin and have been given over to the

storks, who nest contentedly among them. In Zâkhô lies buried the first

missionary to Kurdistân, the Dominican Soldini, who died here in 1779.

The quarter that stands upon the right bank of the Khâbûr is mainly

Christian and contains, I believe, two small churches of no very great

age, but my curiosity was quenched before I reached them, by a violent

thunderstorm which drove me back to my tents. It swept down the valley

from Amadîyeh, and rolling away, left the mountains so magically

beautiful that I could give no further thought to any architecture but

that of their white pinnacles and spires.