straw is carried for a short distance, and the grain falling to the
ground is removed and placed in great clay jars in the living-rooms of
the houses. All the villages are now surrounded with mounds of _kah_
which will be stored before snow comes. The dustiness of this
winnowing process is indescribable. I was nearly smothered with it in
Sahmine, and on windy days each village is enveloped in a yellow dust
storm.
Sahmine, though it has many ruinous buildings, has much building going
on. It has large houses with _balakhanas_, a Khan's fort with many
houses inside, a square with fine trees and a stream, and a _place_
with a stream, where madder-red dyers were at work, and there are five
small mosques and _imamzadas_. The gardens are quite beautiful, and it
is indeed a very attractive village.
The people also were attractive and friendly. After the _ketchuda's_
official visit the Khan's wives called, and pressed me very
hospitably to leave my tent and live with them, and when I refused
they sent me a dinner of Persian dishes with sweetmeats made by their
own hands. The _kabobs_ were quite appetising. They are a favourite
Persian dish, made of pieces of seasoned meat roasted on skewers, and
served very hot, between flaps of very hot bread. Each bit of meat is
rubbed with an onion before being put on the skewer, and a thin slice
of tail fat is put between every two pieces. The cooks show great art
in the rapidity with which they rotate a skewer full of _kabobs_ over
a fierce charcoal fire.
In the evening, at the _ketchuda's_ request, I held a "reception"
outside my tent, and it was a very pleasant, merry affair. Several of
the people brought their children, and the little things behaved most
graciously. It is very pleasant to see the devotion of the men to
them. I told them that in England many of our people are so poor that
instead of children being welcome they are regarded ruefully as
additional "mouths to feed." "Ah," said the _ketchuda_, a handsome
Seyyid, "your land is then indeed under the curse of God. We would
like ten children at once, they are the joy of our lives." Other men
followed, expatiating on the delights of having children to pet and
play with on their return from work.
Sahmine not only dyes and prints cottons, but it exports wheat,
barley, opium, cotton, and fruit, and appears a more important and
prosperous place than Daulatabad, the capital of the district.
The fine valley between Sahmine and Daulatabad is irrigated by a
_kanaat_ and canals, and is completely cultivated, bearing heavy crops
of wheat, cotton, tobacco, opium, _bringals_, and castor oil. The
wheat is now being carried to the villages on asses' backs in great
nets, lashed to six-foot poles placed in front and behind, each pole
being kept steady by a man.
The heat on that march was severe. A heavy heat-haze hung over the
distances, vegetation drooped, my mock _sowar_ wrapped up his head in
his _abba_, the horses looked limp, the harvesters slept under the
trees, the buffaloes lay down in mud and water. Even the greenery of
the extensive gardens in and around Daulatabad scarcely looked cool.
Daulatabad is a walled city of 4500 souls, has a fort, and is reputed
to have a large garrison. The bazars, which contain 250 shops, are
indifferent, and the five caravanserais wretched. It and its extensive
gardens occupy the eastern extremity of a plain, and lie very near the
steep rocky mountain Sard Kuh, through which, by the Tang-i-Asnab, the
Tihran road passes. Another road over the shoulder of the mountain
goes to Isfahan. The plain outside the walls has neither tree nor
bush, and was only brought into cultivation two years ago. The harvest
was carried, and as irrigation had been suspended for some weeks,
there was nothing but a yellow expanse of short thin stubble and
blazing gravel.
There was no space for camping in any available garden, and an hour
was spent in finding a camping-ground with wholesome water on the
burning plain before mentioned. I camped below a terraced and planted
eminence, on which a building, half fort and half governor's house,
has so recently been erected that it has not had time to become
ruinous. It is an imposing quadrangle with blank walls, towers with
windows at the corners, and a very large _balakhana_ over the
entrance. A winding carriage-drive, well planted, leads up to it, and
there is a circular band-stand with a concrete floor and a fountain.
The most surprising object was a new pair-horse landau, standing under
a tree. Barracks are being built just below the house.
While my tent was being pitched, the Governor's _aide-de-camp_,
attended by a cavalry escort, called, and with much courtesy offered
me the _balakhana_, arranged, he said, in European fashion. The
Governor was absent, but this officer said that it would be his wish
to offer me hospitality. As I felt quite unable to move he sent a skin
of good water, some fruit, and a guard of four soldiers.
It was only 11 A.M. when the tents were pitched, and the long day
which followed was barely endurable. The mercury reached 124 deg. inside
my tent. The servants lay in a dry ditch under a tree in the
Governor's garden. _Boy_ several times came into the shade of my
verandah. The black flies swarmed over everything, and at sunset
covered the whole roof of the tent so thickly that no part of it could
be seen. The sun, a white scintillating ball, blazed from a steely
sky, over which no cloud ever passed. The heated atmosphere quivered
over the burning earth. I was at last ill of fever, and my recipe for
fighting the heat by ceaseless occupation failed. It was a miserable
day, and at one time a scorching wind, which seemed hot enough to
singe one's hair, added to the discomfort. "As the hireling earnestly
desireth the shadow," so I longed for evening, but truly the hours of
that day were "long drawn out." The silence was singular. Even the
buzzing of a blue-bottle fly would have been cheerful. The sun,
reddening the atmosphere as he sank, disappeared in a fiery haze, and
then the world of Daulatabad awoke. Parties of Persian gentlemen on
fiery horses passed by, dervishes honoured me by asking alms, the
Governor's _major-domo_ called to offer sundry kindnesses, and great
flocks of sheep and goats, indicated by long lines of dust clouds,
moved citywards from the hills. Sand-flies in legions now beset me,
and the earth, which had been imbibing heat all day, radiated it far
into the morning. I moved my bed outside the tent and gave orders for
an early start, but the _charvadar_ who was in the city over-slept
himself, and it was eight the next day before I got away, taking Mirza
with me.
The heat culminated on that day. Since then, having attained a higher
altitude, it has diminished.[15] The road to Jamilabad ascends pretty
steadily through undulating country with small valleys among low
hills, but with hardly any villages, owing to the paucity of water.
The fever still continuing, I found it difficult to bear the movement
of the horse, and dismounted two or three times and lay under an
umbrella by the roadside. On one of these halts I heard Mirza's voice
saying in cheerful tones, "Madam, your horse is gone!" "Gone!" I
exclaimed, "I told you always to hold or tether him." "I trusted him,"
he replied sententiously. "Never trust any one or any horse, and least
of all yourself," I replied unadvisedly. I sent him back with his
horse to look for _Boy_, telling him when he saw him to dismount and
go towards him with the nose-bag, and that though the horse would
approach it and throw up his heels and trot away at first, he would
eventually come near enough to be caught. After half an hour he came
back without him. I asked him what he had done. He said he saw _Boy_,
rode near him twice, did not dismount, held out to him not the
nose-bag with barley but my "_courier bag_," and that _Boy_ cantered
out of sight! For the moment I shared Aziz Khan's contempt for the
"desk-bred" man.
Mirza is so good that one cannot be angry with him, but it was very
annoying to hear him preach about "fate" and "destiny" while he was
allowing his horse to grind my one pair of smoked spectacles into bits
under his hoofs. I only told him that it would be time to fall back on
_fate_ and _destiny_ when, under any given circumstances, such as
these, he had exhausted all the resources of forethought and
intelligence. My plight was a sore one, for by that time I was really
ill, and had lost, as well as my horse and saddle, my food, quinine,
writing materials, and needle-work. I got on the top of the baggage
and rode for five hours, twice falling off from exhaustion. The march
instead of being thirteen miles turned out twenty-two, there was no
water, poor Mirza was so "knocked up" that he stumbled blindly along,
and it was just sunset when, after a series of gentle ascents, we
reached the village of Jamilabad, prettily situated on the crest of a
hill in a narrow valley above a small stream.
To acquaint the _ketchuda_ with my misfortune, and get him to send a
capable man in search of the horse, promising a large reward, and to
despatch Hassan with a guide in another direction, were the first
considerations, and so it fell out that it was 10 P.M. before I was at
rest in my tent, where I was obliged to remain for some days, ill of
fever. The next morning a gentle thump, a low snuffle, and a theft of
some grapes by my bedside announced that _Boy_ was found, and by the
headman's messenger, who said he met a Seyyid riding him to Hamadan.
The saddle-cloth was missing, and all the things from the holsters,
but after the emissary had been arrested for some crime the latter
were found in his large pockets. Hassan returned late in the
afternoon, having been surrounded by four _sowars_, who, under the
threat of giving him a severe beating, deprived him of his watch.
When I was so far better as to be able to move, I went on to Mongawi,
a large walled village at an elevation of 7100 feet, camped for two
days on an adjacent slope, and from thence rode to Yalpand by a road
on a height on the east side of a very wild valley on the west of
which is Elwend, a noble mountain, for long an object of interest on
the march from Kirmanshah to Tihran. A great number of the mountains
of Persia are ridges or peaks of nearly naked rock, with precipices on
which nothing can cling, and with bases small in proportion to their
elevation. Others are "monstrous protuberances" of mud and gravel.
Mount Elwend, however, has many of the characteristics of a
mountain,--a huge base broken up into glens and spurs, among which
innumerable villages with their surroundings of woods and crops are
scattered, with streams dashing through rifts and lingering among
pasture lands, vine-clothed slopes below and tawny grain above, high
summits, snow-slashed even now, clouds caught and falling in vivifying
showers, indigo colouring in the shadows, and rocky heights for which
purple-madder would be the fittest expression.
In one of the loveliest of the valleys on the skirts of Elwend lies
the large walled village of Yalpand on a vigorous stream. For two
miles before reaching it the rugged road passes through a glen which
might be at home, a water-worn ledgy track, over-arched by trees, with
steep small fields among them in the fresh green of grass springing up
after the hay has been carried. Trees, ruddy with premature autumnal
tints and festooned with roses and brambles, bend over the river, of
which little is visible but here and there a flash of foam or a
sea-green pool. The village, on a height above the stream, has banks
of orchards below and miles of grain above, and vineyards, and
material plenty of all sorts. It was revelling in the dust storm which
winnowing produces, and the _ketchuda_ suggested to me to camp at some
distance beyond it, on a small triangular meadow below a large
irrigation stream. Hardly were the tents pitched when, nearly without
warning, Elwend blackened, clouds gathered round his crest and boiled
up out of his corries, and for the first time since the middle of
January there were six hours of heavy rain, with hail and thunder, and
a fall of the mercury within one hour from 78 deg. to 59 deg. The coolness
was most delicious.
Hadji Hussein's prophecy that after I left him I should "know what
_charvadars_ are" was not fulfilled on this journey. I had one young
man with me who from having performed the pilgrimage to Kerbela bears
the name of "Kerbelai" for the rest of his life. He owns the fine and
frisky animals he drives, and goes along at a good pace, his long gun
over his shoulder, singing as he goes. Blithe, active, jolly,
obliging, honest, kind-hearted, he loads as fast as three ordinary
men, and besides grooming and feeding his animals well, he "ran
messages," got the water and wood, and helped to pitch and strike the
tents, and was as ready to halt as to march. Hassan and Mirza are most
deliberate in their movements; nothing can hurry them, not even the
risk of being flooded out of their tents; and when the storm came on
Kerbelai snatched the spade from them and in no time trenched my tent
and dug a channel to let the water out of the meadow.
The next day was cloudless, and the sky, instead of having a whitish
or steely blue, had the deep pure tint so often seen on a June day in
England. The heat returned, and it was a fatiguing and dusty march
into Hamadan, still mainly on the skirts of Elwend, among villages
surrounded by vineyards. After pursuing a by-road from Jamilabad I
joined the main road, two miles from Hamadan, and the number of men on
good horses, of foot passengers, and of asses laden with fruit and
vegetables, indicated the approach to a capital as plainly as the wide
road, trenched on both sides and planted with young willows.
The wall as is usual is of crumbling, rain-eaten, sun-dried bricks,
and a very poor gateway admits the traveller into a network of narrow
alleys, very ruinous, with infamous roadways, full of lumps, holes,
slimy black channels, stout mangy dogs, some of them earless,
tailless, and one-eyed, sleeping in heaps in the hot sun, the whole
overwhelmingly malodorous.[16]
It was no easy matter to find the way to the American Mission House,
even though the missionary _Hak[=i]m_ is well known and highly
esteemed, and I rode through the filthy alleys of the city and its
crowded bazars for more than an hour before I reached the Armenian
quarter. The people were most polite. There was no shouting or
crushing in the bazars, and in some cases men walked with me for some
distance to show me the way, especially when I asked for the
_Khanum's_ house. Indeed they all seemed anxious to assist a stranger.
Many of the children salaamed, as I thought, but I have since heard
that they are fond of using to a Christian a word which sounds just
like _salaam_, but which instead of meaning _Peace_ is equivalent to
"May you be for ever accursed!"
On reaching the Mission House I found it shut and that the
missionaries were in the country, and after sending word that I had
arrived I spent some hours in an Armenian house, where the people
showed extreme hospitality and kindness.
They put a soft quilt down on the soft rugs, which covered the floor
of a pretty whitewashed room, with many ornaments, chiefly Russian,
and, finding that I was ill, they repeatedly brought tea, milk, and
fruit instead of the heavy dinner which was at once cooked. The sight
of several comely women dressed in shades of red, with clean white
_chadars_, going about household avocations, receiving visitors and
gracefully exercising the rites of hospitality in a bright clean house
festooned with vines, was very pleasant to a dweller in tents. It is
not Armenian custom for a daughter-in-law to speak in the presence of
her mother-in-law, or even to uncover her mouth, or for young women to
speak in presence of their elders. A wife cannot even address her
husband in the presence of his mother, except in a furtive whisper.
Owing to the custom of covering the mouth, which shows no symptom of
falling into disuse, I did not see the face of a girl matron who,
judging from her eyes, nose, and complexion, was the comeliest in the
room.
Towards evening, as I lay trying to sleep, I was delightfully startled
by a cheery European voice, and a lady bent over me, whose face was
sunshine, and the very tone of her voice a welcome. Goodness, purity,
love, capacity to lead as well as help, true strength, and true
womanliness met in the expression of her countenance. Her spotless
cambric dress, her becoming hat with its soft white _pagri_, the
harmonious simplicity of her costume, and her well-fitting gloves and
shoes were a joy after the slovenliness, slipshodness, and generally
tumbling-to-pieces look of Oriental women. The Faith Hubbard School,
one of the good works of the American Presbyterian Mission, was close
by, and in half an hour Miss ---- made me feel "at home." Blessed
phrase!
I. L. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] On this journey of 400 miles from Burujird to the Turkish
frontier near Urmi, I never heard one complaint of the tribute which
is paid to the Shah. All complaints, and they were many, were of the
exactions and rapacity of the local governors.
[15] North of Daulatabad, the route of last winter from Nanej to Kum,
the winter route from Kangawar to Tihran, was crossed. Although it is
a "beaten track" for caravans, so far as I know the only information
concerning it consists in two reports, not accessible to the public,
in the possession of the Indian authorities.
[16] Hamadan is the fourth city in the Empire in commercial
importance. She has a Prince Governor, 450 villages in the district,
raises revenue to the amount of 60,000 _tumans_, of which only 11,000
are paid into the Imperial Treasury, and, as the ancient Ecbatana, the
capital of the Median kings, she has a splendid history, but the few
lines in which I recorded my first impressions are not an exaggeration
of the meanness and unsavouriness of her present externals.
LETTER XXIII
HAMADAN, _Sept. 12_.
I came for four days, and have been here nearly three weeks, which I
would willingly prolong into as many months if the winter were not
impending. Illness, the non-arrival of luggage containing winter
clothing from Tihran, and the exceeding difficulty of finding a
_charvadar_ willing to go to Urmi by the route I wish to take, have
all detained me. For some time I was unable to leave the house, and
indeed have been out very little, and not outside the city at all.
I am disappointed both with Hamadan and its autumn climate. It stands
at an elevation of 6156 feet [Schindler], and on the final slope of
the Kuh-i-Hamadan, an offshoot of Mount Elwend, overlooking a plain
about fifteen miles long by nine broad, populous and cultivated,
bounded on the other side by low gravelly hills. At this altitude, and
with autumn fairly begun, coolness might be expected, but the heat,
which a fortnight ago seemed moderating, has returned in fury, with
that peculiar faintness about it which only autumn gives. Mount Elwend
attracts masses of clouds, and these tend to hang over the town and
increase the stagnation of the air, about which there is a remarkable
closeness, even in this high situation overlooking the plain.
Intermittent fever and diphtheria are prevailing both in the city and
the adjacent villages. Not only is the air close and still, but the
sun is blazing hot, and the mercury only varies from 88 deg. in the day to
84 deg. at night. Brown dust-storms career wildly over the plain, or hang
heavily over it in dust clouds, and the sand-flies are abundant and
merciless. In the winter the cold is intense, and the roads are
usually blocked with snow for several weeks.
Water is abundant, and is led through open channels in the streets.
The plain too is well supplied, and the brown villages, which
otherwise would be invisible on the brown plain, are denoted by dark
green stains of willow, poplar, and fruit trees. The town itself has
fine gardens, belonging to the upper classes, but these are only
indicated by branches straying over the top of very high walls.
My first impressions have received abundant confirmation. Important as
a commercial centre as Hamadan doubtless is, it is as ruinous, filthy,
decayed, and unprosperous-looking a city as any I have seen in Persia.
"Ruinous heaps," jagged weather-worn walls, houses in ruins, or partly
ruined and deserted, roofs broken through, domes from which the glazed
tiles have dropped off, roadways not easy by daylight and dangerous at
night, water-channels leaking into the roads and often black with
slime, and an unusual number of very poor and badly-dressed people
going about, are not evidences of the prosperity which, in spite of
these untoward appearances, really exists.
The high weather-worn mud walls along the alleys have no windows, in
order that the women may not see or be seen by men. A doorway with a
mounting-block outside it, in "well-to-do" houses, admits into a
vaulted recess, from which a passage, dimly lighted, conducts into the
courtyard, round which the house is built, or into the house itself.
These courtyards are planted with trees and flowers, marigolds and
autumnal roses being now in the ascendant. Marble basins with
fountains, and marble walks between the parterres, suggest coolness,
and walnuts, apples, and apricots give shade. The men's and women's
apartments are frequently on opposite sides of the quadrangles, and
the latter usually open on _atriums_, floored with white marble and
furnished with rugs and brocaded curtains. I have only seen the
women's apartments, and these in the houses of rich traders and high
officials are as ornamental as the exteriors are repulsive and
destitute of ornament. Gilding, arabesques in colour, fretwork doors
and panelling, and ceilings and cornices composed of small mirrors
arranged so as to represent facets, are all decorative in the extreme.
These houses, with the deep shade of their courtyards, the cool plash
of their fountains, and their spacious and exquisitely-decorated
rooms, contrast everywhere with the low dark mud hovels, unplastered
and windowless, in which the poor live, and which the women can only
escape from by sitting in the heaped and filthy yards on which they
open, and which the inhabitants share with their animals. The contrast
between wealth and poverty is strongly emphasised in this, as in all
Persian cities, but one must add that the gulf between rich and poor
is bridged by constant benevolence on the part of the rich, profuse
charity being practised as a work of merit by all good Moslems.
The bazars are shabby and partially ruinous, but very well supplied
with native produce and manufactures, English cottons, Russian
merchandise, and "knick-knacks" of various descriptions. The presence
of foreigners in the town, although they import many things by way of
Baghdad, has introduced foreign articles of utility into the bazars,
which are not to be found everywhere, and which are commending
themselves to the people, "Peek and Frean's" biscuits among them. The
display of fruit just now is very fine, especially of grapes and
melons. The best peaches, which are large and of delicious flavour, as
well as the best pears, come from the beautiful orchards of Jairud,
not far from Kum. The saddlery and caravan equipment bazars are
singularly well supplied, as indeed they should be, for Hamadan is
famous for leather, and caravans loaded with hides for its tanneries
are met with on every road. The bark and leaves of the pomegranate are
used for tanning. Besides highly ornamental leather for book-bindings
and women's shoes, the tanners prepare the strong skins which, after
being dyed red, are used for saddles, coverings of trunks, and
bindings for _kh[=u]rjins_.