present Shah's lifetime? Which has the stronger army, England or
Russia? Why England does not take Afghanistan? Did I think the
Zil-es-Sultan had any chance of succeeding his father? but several
times reverted to what seemed uppermost in his mind, the chances of a
British occupation of Southern Persia, a subject on which I was
unwilling to enter. He complained bitterly of Persian exactions, and
said that the demand made on him this year is exactly double the sum
fixed by the Amin-es-Sultan.
It is not easy to estimate the legitimate taxation. Probably it
averages two _tumans_, or nearly fifteen shillings a family. The
assessment of the tribes is fixed, but twenty, forty, and even sixty
per cent extra is often taken from them by the authorities, who in
their turn are squeezed at Tihran or Isfahan. Every cow, mule, ass,
sheep, and goat is taxed. Horses pay nothing.
In order to get away from perilous topics, which had absolutely no
interest for the women. I told him how interested I was in seeing all
his people clothed in blue Manchester cottons, though England does not
grow a tuft of cotton or a plant of indigo. I mentioned that the
number of people dependent on the cotton industry in Britain equals
the whole population of Persia, and this made such an impression on
him that he asked me to repeat it three times. He described his tribe
as prosperous, raising more wheat than it requires, and exporting 1000
_tumans'_ worth of carpets annually.
It is curious that nomadic semi-savages should not only sow and
harvest crops, and make carpets of dyed wool, as well as goats-hair
rugs and cloth, horse-furniture, _kh[=u]rjins_, and socks of intricate
patterns, but that they should understand the advantages of trade, and
export not only mules, colts, and sheep, but large quantities of
charcoal, which is carried as far as Hamadan; as well as _gaz_,
gall-nuts, tobacco, opium, rice, gum mastic, clarified butter, the
skins of the fox and a kind of marten, and cherry sticks for pipes.
Certainly the women are very industrious, rising at daylight to churn,
working all day, weaving in the intervals, and late at night boiling
the butter in their big caldrons. They make their own clothes and
those of their husbands and children, except the felt coats, sewing
with needles like skewers and very coarse loosely-twisted cotton
thread. They sew backwards, _i.e._ from left to right, and seem to use
none but a running stitch. Everywhere they have been delighted with
gifts of English needles and thread, steel thimbles, and scissors.
When it is remembered that, in addition to all the "household"
avocations which I have enumerated, they pitch and strike tents, do
much of the loading and unloading of the baggage, and attend
faithfully to their own offspring and to that of their flocks and
herds, it will be realised that the life of a Bakhtiari wife is
sufficiently laborious.
We were to have left that burning valley at 11 P.M., and when I
returned at dusk from the fort the tents were folded and the loads
ready for a moonlight march, but Yahya Khan sent to say that for the
ostensible reason of the path being greatly obstructed by trees we
could not start till daylight! Later he came with a number of
tribesmen and haggled noisily for two hours about the payment of an
escort, and the sheep a day which it would require. It was not a
comfortable night, for the sand-flies were legion, and we did not get
off till 4.30, when we were joined by Yahya Khan and his son, who
accompanied us to the Pul-i-Hawa.
The path from Kalla Khanabad runs at a considerable elevation on
wooded hillsides and slopes of shelving rock, only descending to cross
some curious ribs of conglomerate and the streams which flow into the
Ab-i-Diz. There are frequent glimpses of the river, which has the
exquisite green colour noticeable in nearly all the streams of this
part of Luristan. At a distance of a few miles from Khanabad the
valley, which has been pretty wide, and allows the river to expand
into smooth green reaches, narrows suddenly, and the Ab-i-Diz, a full,
strong stream, falls in a very fine waterfall over a natural dam or
ledge of rock, which crosses it at its broadest part, and is then
suddenly compressed into a narrow passage between cliffs and ledges of
bituminous limestone, the lowest of which is a continuation of the
path which descends upon it by some steep zigzags.
Below this gorge the river opens out into a smooth green stretch,
where it reposes briefly before starting on a wild and fretted course
through deep chasms among precipitous mountains, till it emerges on
the plains above Dizful. These limestone cliffs exude much bitumen,
and there is a so-called bituminous spring. Our men took the
opportunity of collecting the bitumen and rolling it into balls for
future use, as it is esteemed a good remedy for dyspepsia and "bad
blood."
At the narrowest part of its channel the river is crossed by a twig
bridge wide enough for laden animals, supported on the left bank by
some tree-stems kept steady by a mass of stones. In the middle it
takes a steepish upward turn, and hangs on to the opposite cliff at a
considerable elevation. The path up from it to the top of the cliff is
very narrow, and zigzags by broken ledges between walls of rock. For
loaded animals it is a very bad place, and the caravan took an hour
and a half to cross, though only four mules were unloaded, the rest
being helped across by men at their heads and tails. Several of them
fell on the difficult climb from the bridge. It would be bad enough if
the roadway of osiers were level, but it shelves slightly to the
south. That gorge is a very interesting break in an uninteresting and
monotonous region, and the broad fall above the bridge is not without
elements of grandeur. The altitude of the river over which the
Pul-i-Hawa hangs is only 3800 feet, the lowest attained on this
journey.
[Illustration: A TWIG BRIDGE.]
The popular nomenclature is adopted here, but it would be more
accurate to call this stream the Ab-i-Burujird, and to defer
conferring the name of Ab-i-Diz upon it till the two great branches
have united far below this point. These are the Ab-i-Burujird, rising
to the west of Burujird, which with the tributaries which enter it
before it reaches the Tang-i-Bahrain, drains the great plain of
Silakhor, and the Ab-i-Basnoi, a part of which has been referred to
under its local name of Kakulistan, or "the Curl," which drains the
upper part of the Persian district of Faraidan, and receives the
important tributaries of the Guwa and the Gokun before its junction
with the Ab-i-Burujird. A tributary rising in the Kuh-i-Rang has been
locally considered the head-water of the Ab-i-Diz.
Leaving the Ab-i-Diz, the path pursues valleys with streams and dry
torrent-beds, much wooded with oak and hawthorn, with hills above,
buff with uncut sun-cured hay, magnificent pasturage, but scantily
supplied with water.
The _belut_, or oak, grows abundantly in these valleys, and on it is
chiefly collected the deposit called _gaz_, a sweetish glaze upon the
leaf, which is not produced every year, and which is rather obscure in
its origin. When boiled with the leaves it forms a shiny bottle-green
mass, but when the water is drained from them and carefully skimmed,
it cools into a very white paste which, when made up with rose-water
and chopped almonds, is cut into blocks, and is esteemed everywhere.
It is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus.[11] The unwatered valleys are
wooded with the _Paliurus aculeata_ chiefly, and the jujube tree
(_Zizyphus vulgaris_), which abounds among the Bakhtiari mountains.
The heat was frightful, and progress was very slow, owing to the low
projecting branches of trees, which delayed the baggage and tore some
of the tents. In places the path was farther obstructed by a species
of liana known in New Zealand as "a lawyer," with hooked thorns.
We passed by the steep ledgy village of Shahbadar, on the roofs of
which I rode inadvertently, till the shouts of the people showed me my
error, and encamped on the only available spot which could be found, a
steep, bare prominence above a hollow, in which is a spring surrounded
by some fine plane trees. The Shahbadar people live in their village
for three winter months only, and were encamped above us, and there
were two large camps below. Men from each of them warned us to beware
of the others, for they were robbers, and there was a great deal of
dexterous pilfering, which reduced my table equipments to a copper
mug, one plate, and a knife and fork. My _shuldari_ was torn to
pieces, and pulled down over me, by a lively mule which cantered among
the tent ropes.
The afternoon, with the mercury at 103 deg., was spent in entertaining
successive crowds, not exactly rude, but full of untamed curiosity. I
amused them to their complete satisfaction by letting them blow my
whistle, fill my air-cushion, and put the whalebones into my
collapsible basins. One of Milward's self-threading needles, which had
luckily been found in my carpet, surprised them beyond measure. Every
man and woman insisted on threading it with the eyes shut, and the
_ketchuda_ of one camp offered to barter a sheep for it. They said
that my shabby tent, with its few and shabby equipments, was "fit for
God!"
The camps passed on that day were constructed of booths made of stems
of trees with the bark on, the roofs being made of closely-woven
branches with the leaves on. These booths are erected round a square
with mat walls, and face outwards, a sort of privacy being obtained by
backs of coarse reed mats four feet high, and mat divisions between
the dwellings. The sheep, goats, and cattle are driven into the square
at night through a narrow entrance walled with mats.
Since leaving the Karun very few horses have been seen, and the few
have been of a very inferior class. Even Yahya Khan, who has the
reputation of being rich, rode a horse not superior to a common pack
animal. The people we have been among lately have no horses or mares,
the men walk, and the loads are carried on cows and asses.
In the greater part of this country I have not seen a mule, with the
exception of some mule foals on a high pass near Ali-kuh. The
Bakhtiaris breed mules, however, and sell them in Isfahan in the
spring, but rarely use them for burden. They breed horses in some
places, exporting the colts and keeping the fillies. Their horses are
small and not good-looking, but are wiry and enduring, and as
surefooted as mules. In fact they will go anywhere. One check on the
breeding of good horses is that, when a man has a good foal, he is
often compelled to make a present of it to any superior who fancies
it.
The horses are shod, as in Persia proper, with thin iron plates
covering nearly the whole hoof, secured by six big-headed nails.
Reared in camps and among children, they are perfectly gentle and
scarcely require breaking. A good Bakhtiari horse can be bought for L6
or L8. A good mule is worth from L7 to L11. Asses are innumerable, and
are used for transporting baggage, equally with oxen and small cows. A
good donkey can be bought for 30s.
The goats are very big and long-haired. The sheep, which nearly always
are like the goats brown or black, and very tall, are invariably of
the breed with the great pendulous tails, which sometimes weigh nearly
eight pounds. They give a great deal of milk, and it is on this, not
on cows' milk, that the people rely for the greater part of their
food, their cheese, curds, _mast_, and _roghan_.
The goat-skins are invaluable to them. They use them for holding water
and milk, and as churns for their butter. They make all their tents,
their tent carpets, and their sacks for holding wool of goat's-hair,
woven on rude portable looms.
The female costume changed at Shahbadar. The women now wear loose
garments like nightgowns, open to the waist, and reaching from the
neck to the feet, and red trousers, tight below the knee, but rarely
visible below the outer dress. Their notion of ornament consists in
having a branch or frond tattooed up the throat.
These tribes breed cattle extensively. One camp possessed over 300
young beasts. The calves are nourished by their mothers up to two
years old. They have a few white angora goats of great beauty, but the
majority are black and are valued chiefly for their milk and for their
long coarse hair.
A march through fierce heat at a low level brought us at noon to the
village of Imamzada-i-Mamil. The road, after continuing along the same
wooded valley, which in a happier climate would be called a glen,
emerges on scenery truly "park-like," softly-outlined hills covered
with buff grass, and wooded on their gently-curved slopes with oak and
hawthorn, fringing off into clumps and single trees. Smooth broad
valleys, first of buff pasture, and then of golden wheat or green
maize, lie among the hills. All is soft and lowland, and was bathed
that day in a dreamy blue heat haze. Not a mountain rose above the
gently-curved hills which were painted in soft blue on the sky of the
distant horizon. The natural wood ceased. The surroundings underwent
an abrupt change. Is it a change for the better, I wonder? Three
months and a week have been spent in zigzagging among some of the
loftiest mountains and deepest valleys of Persia, and they now lie
behind, among the things that were. In fact, Khuramabad, from which I
write, is not only out of the Bakhtiari country, but the Bakhtiari
Lurs are left behind, and we are among the fierce and undisciplined
tribes of the Feili Lurs.
The baggage animals were not dubious, as I am, as to the advantages of
the change. When we reached the open, Cock o' the Walk threw up his
beautiful head, knocked down the man who led him, and with a joyous
neigh set off at a canter, followed by all the mules and horses, some
cantering, some trotting, regardless of their loads, and regardless of
everything, proceeding irresponsibly, almost knocking one out of the
saddle by striking one with the sharp edges of _yekdans_ and tent
poles, till they were headed off by mounted men, after which some of
them rolled, loads and all, on the soft buff grass. This escapade
shows what condition they are in after three months of hard mountain
work.
Reaching the village at noon, we halted till moonrise at midnight on
an eminence with some fine plane and walnut trees upon it above a
stream which issues from below an _imamzada_ on a height, and passes
close to a graveyard. Possibly this contaminates the water, for there
has been a great outbreak of diphtheria, which has been very fatal. It
is quite a small village, but thirteen children suffering from the
most malignant form of the malady, some of them really dying at the
time, were brought to me during the afternoon, as well as some people
ill of what appeared to be typhoid fever. One young creature, very
ill, was carried three miles on her father's back, though I had sent
word that I would call and see her at night. She died a few hours
later of the exhaustion brought on by the journey. The mercury that
afternoon reached 103 deg. in the shade.
Soon after midnight the mules were silently loaded, and we "stole
silently away," to ride through the territory of the powerful
Sagwands, a robber tribe, and reached this place in eight hours,
having done twenty-two and a half miles. It was a march full of risk,
through valleys crowded with camps, and the guide who rode in front
was very much frightened whenever the tremendous barking of the camp
dogs threatened to bring robbers down on us in the uncertain light.
The caravan was kept in steady order, and the rearguard was
frequently hailed by the leader. Nothing happened, and when day broke
we were in open russet country, among low, formless gravelly hills,
with the striking range of rocky mountains which hems in Khuramabad in
front, under a hazy sky.
Later, fording the Kashgan, I got upon the Burujird caravan road,
along which are telegraph poles, and on which there was much caravan
traffic. Recrossing the Kashgan, but this time by a good two-arched
bridge of brick on stone piers, the Yafta Kuh came in sight, and
Khuramabad with its green gardens, its walls of precipitous mountains,
and its ruined fort on an isolated and most picturesque rock in the
centre of the town--a very striking view.
Khuramabad, before the fourteenth century, was called Diz Siyah, or
the black fort, and was the capital of the Atabegs, the powerful kings
who reigned in Luri-Kushuk from A.D. 1155 to about A.D. 1600. Sir H.
Rawlinson does not regard any of its remains as earlier than the
eleventh or twelfth century.
The camps are outside the town, on a stretch of burning gravel, with
some scorched pasture beyond it, on which are Ilyat camps, then there
are divers ranges of blackish and reddish mountains, with pale
splashes of scorched herbage when there is any at all. Behind my tent
are a clump of willows, an irrigating stream, large gardens full of
fruit trees and melons, and legions of mosquitos.
Circumstances have changed, and the surroundings now belong to the
showy civilisation of Persia. As I was lying under the trees, quite
"knocked up" by the long and fatiguing night march and the great heat,
I heard fluent French being spoken with a good accent. The _Hak[=i]m_
of the Governor had called. Cavalcades of Persians on showy horses
gaily caparisoned dashed past frequently. Ten infantrymen arrived as
a guard and stacked their arms under the willows, and four obsequious
servants brought me trays of fruit and sweetmeats put up in vine
leaves from the Governor. Melons are a drug. The servants are amusing
themselves in the bazars. It is a bewildering transition.
The altitude is only 4050 feet, and the heat is awful--the heat of the
Indian plains without Indian appliances. When the men took up stones
with which to hammer the tent pegs they dropped them "like hot
potatoes." The paraffin candles melt. Milk turns sour in one hour.
Even night brings little coolness. It is only heat and darkness
instead of heat and light.
I was too much exhausted by heat and fatigue to march last night, and
rested to-day as far as was possible, merely going to pay my respects
to the Governor of Luristan, the Nizam-ul-Khilwar, and the ladies of
his _haram_. The characteristics of this official's face are anxiety
and unhappiness. There was the usual Persian etiquette--attendants in
the rear, scribes and _mollahs_ bowing and kneeling in front, and tea
and cigarettes in the pretty garden of the palace, of which cypresses,
pomegranates, and roses are the chief features. Mirza was not allowed
to attend me in the _andarun_, but a _munshi_ who spoke a little very
bad French and understood less stood behind a curtain and attempted to
interpret, but failed so signally that after one or two compliments I
was obliged to leave, after ascertaining that a really beautiful girl
of fourteen is the "reigning favourite." The women's rooms were
pretty, and the women themselves were richly but elegantly dressed,
and graceful in manner, though under difficulties. After a visit to
the ruined fort, an interesting and picturesque piece of masonry, I
rode unmolested through the town and bazars.
Khuramabad, the importance of which lies in its situation on what is
regarded as the best commercial route from Shuster to Tihran, etc., is
the capital of the Feili Lurs and the residence of the Governor of
Luristan. Picturesque at a distance beyond any Persian town that I
have seen, with its citadel rising in the midst of a precipitous pass,
its houses grouped round the base, its fine bridge, its wooded
gardens, its greenery, and the rich valley to the south of the gorge
in which it stands, it successfully rivals any Persian town in its
squalor, dirt, evil odours, and ruinous condition. Two-thirds of what
was "the once famous capital of the Atabegs" are now "ruinous heaps."
The bazars are small, badly supplied, dark, and rude; and the roads
are nothing but foul alleys, possibly once paved, but now full of
ridges, holes, ruins, rubbish, lean and mangy dogs, beggarly-looking
men, and broken channels of water, which, dribbling over the soil in
the bazars and everywhere else in green and black slime, gives forth
pestiferous odours in the hot sun.
The people slouch about slowly. They are evidently very poor, and the
merchants have the melancholy apathetic look which tells that "trade
is bad." The Feili Lurs, who render the caravan route to Dizful
incessantly insecure, paralyse the trade of what should and might be a
prosperous "distributing point," and the Persian Government, though it
keeps a regiment of soldiers here, is unsuccessful in checking, far
less in curing the chronic disorder which has produced a nearly
complete stagnation in trade.
I am all the more disappointed with the wretched condition of
Khuramabad because the decayed state of its walls is concealed by
trees, and it is entered by a handsome bridge 18 feet wide and 900
long, with twenty-eight pointed arches of solid masonry, with a fine
caravanserai with a tiled entrance on its left side. The Bala Hissar
is a really striking object, its pile of ancient buildings crowning
the steep mass of naked rock which rises out of the dark greenery and
lofty poplars and cypresses of the irrigated gardens. This fort, which
is in ruins, encloses within its double walls the Wali's palace and
other official buildings, and a fine reservoir, 178 feet by 118, fed
by a vigorous spring. In the gardens by the river, north of the fort,
are some remains of the walls and towers of the ancient Atabeg
capital, and there are also ruins of an aqueduct and of an ancient
bridge, of which ten arches are still standing. The most interesting
relic, however, is a round tower sixty feet high in fairly good
preservation, with a Kufic inscription round the top.
It is said that there are 1200 houses in Khuramabad, which would give
it a population of over 7000. It has been visited by several
Englishmen for purposes of trade or research, and it has doubtless
made the same impression upon them all as it does upon me.
_Burujird, August 9._--A night march of twenty-two miles through
perilous country brought us in blazing heat to an encampment of
Seyyids of the Bairanawand tribe, fine-looking men, showing in their
haughty bearing their pride in their illustrious lineage, but not
above depriving us during the night of many useful articles. Their
camp had three streets of tents, in front of which oxen were treading
out wheat all day long. These Seyyids have much wealth in mares and
oxen. Again we started at moonrise for what was regarded as a
dangerous march, a party of Sagwands having gone on ahead, with
hostile intentions, it was said.
However, nothing happened, and nothing was heard except the shouts of
our own _charvadars_ and the pandemonium made by the simultaneous
barking of huge dogs in the many camps we passed but could not see. We
rode through cultivated valleys full of nomads, forded the placid
Bawali, and at dawn were at the foot of the grand pass of Handawan,
7500 feet in altitude, which is ascended by steep zigzags over worn
rock ledges, and the dry boulder-strewn bed of a torrent. A descent of
2000 feet and a long ride among large formless hills took us to a
narrow gorge or chasm with a fine mountain torrent, and thence to the
magnificent Tang-i-Buzful, from which we emerged with some suddenness
on the slopes of the low foot-hills on the north side of the plain of
Burujird or Silakhor.
This very rich plain, about thirty miles long by from six to eight
broad, has been described as "waterlogged," and the level of the water
is only a foot below the surface. Certainly very numerous springs and
streams rise along the hill slopes which we traversed and flow down
into the plain, which is singularly flat, and most of it only relieved
from complete monotony by the villages which, to the number of 180,
are sprinkled over it, many of them raised on artificial mounds, at
once to avoid the miasma from the rice-fields and as a protection from
the Lurs. Above the south-eastern end rises the grand bulk of Shuturun
Kuh, with a few snow-patches still lingering, and towards the other
lies the town of Burujird, the neighbourhood of which for a few miles
is well planted, but most of the plain is devoid of trees. It is
watered by many streams, which flow into the Burujird river and the
Kamand-Ab, which uniting, leave the plain by the magnificent
Tang-i-Bahrain.