beautiful, and an old servant, I paid many visits, and found all the
houses arranged in the same fashion. I was greatly impressed by their
scrupulous cleanliness. The floors of hardened clay are as clean as
sweeping can make them, and the people are clean in dress and person.
The women, many of whom are very handsome, are unveiled, and do not
even wear the _chadar_. The very becoming head-dress is a black
coronet, from which silver coins depend by silver chains. A red
kerchief is loosely knotted over the back of the head, on which heavy
plaits of hair are looped up by silver pins. This girl passed with me
through the crowds of strange men unveiled, with a simplicity and
maidenly dignity which were very pleasing. It was refreshing to see
the handsome faces, erect carriage, and firm, elastic walk of these
Kurdish women after the tottering gait of the shrouded, formless
bundles which pass for Persian women. The men are equally handsome,
and are very manly-looking.
These Kurdish villagers are Sunnis, and are on bad terms with their
neighbours, the Shiahs, and occasionally they drive off each other's
cattle.
On leaving this pleasant place early next morning the _ketchuda_ and a
number of men escorted me for the first _farsakh_, and with my escort
of _sowars_ increased by four wild-looking "road-guards," riding as it
seemed good to them, in front or behind, sometimes wheeling their
horses at a gallop in ever-narrowing circles, sometimes tearing up and
down steep hills, firing over the left shoulders and right flanks of
their horses, lunging at each other with much-curved scimitars, and
singing inharmonious songs, we passed through a deep ravine watered by
a fine stream which emerges through gates of black, red, and orange
rock into a long valley, then up and up over long rolling hills, and
then down and down to a large Ilyat camp beside a muddy and nearly
exhausted stream, where they feasted, and I rested in my _shuldari_.
Two or three times these "road-guards" galloped up to shepherds who
were keeping their flocks, and demanded a young sheep from each for
the return journey, and were not refused. The peasants fear these men
much. They assert that, so far from protecting caravans and
travellers, they are answerable for most of the robberies on the road,
that they take their best fowls and lambs without payment, and ten
pounds of barley a day for their horses, and if complaints are made
they quarter themselves on the complainant for several days. For these
reasons I object very strongly to escorts where they are not
absolutely needed for security. I pay each man two _krans_ a day, and
formerly gave each two _krans_ daily as "road money" for himself and
his horse, but finding that they took the food without paying for it,
I now pay the people directly for the keep of the men and horses. Even
by this method I have not circumvented the rapacity of these horsemen,
for after I have settled the "bill" they threaten to beat the
_ketchuda_ unless he gives them the money I have given him.
The Ilyat women from the camp crowded round me with a familiarity
which, even in savages, is distressing, a contrast to the good manners
and unobtrusiveness of the women of Geokahaz.
On the way to Sanjud, a Kurdish village in a ravine so steep that it
was barely possible to find a level space big enough for my tent,
there is some very fine scenery, and from the slope of Kuh Surisart,
on the east side of the Gardan-i-Mianmalek, the loftiest land between
Hamadan and Urmi, the view is truly magnificent. The nearer ranges
stood out boldly in yellow and red ochre, in the valleys indigo
shadows lay, range beyond range of buff-brown hills were
atmospherically glorified by brilliant cobalt colouring, and the hills
which barred the horizon dissolved away in a blue which blended with
the sky. In that vast solitude the fine ruins of the fortress palace
of Karaftu, where the fountain still leaps in the deserted courtyard,
are a very conspicuous object.
From the Mianmalek Pass there is a descent of 5000 feet to the Sea of
Urmi, and the keen edge of the air became much blunted ere we reached
Sanjud. Nearly the whole of the road from Hamadan has been extremely
solitary. We have not met or passed a single caravan, and on this
march of seven hours we did not see a human being. Yet there are
buff-brown villages lying in the valleys among the buff-brown hills,
and an enormous extent of country is under tillage. In fact, this
region is one of the granaries of Persia.
Sanjud is a yellow-ochre village of eighty houses built into a
yellow-ochre hillside, above which rises a high hill of red mud. It is
not possible to give an idea of the aspect of the country at this
season. Sheep and goats certainly find pickings among the rocks, but
the visible herbage has all been eaten down. The thistles and other
fodder plants have been cut and stacked in the villages. Most of the
streams are dry, and the supplies of drinking water are only pools,
much fouled by cattle. The snows which supply the sources of the
irrigation channels have all melted, and these channels are either dry
or stopped. There has scarcely been a shower since early April, and
for nearly six months the untempered rays of the Persian sun have been
blazing upon the soil. The arable land, ploughed in deep furrows, has
every furrow hardened into sun-dried brick. Villages of yellow or
whitish baked mud, supporting on their dusty roofs buff stacks of
baked fodder, are hardly distinguishable from the baked hillsides. The
roads are a few inches deep in glaring white dust. Over the plains a
brown dust haze hangs.
This rainless and sun-scorched land lives by the winter snows, and the
snowfall of the Zagros ranges is the most interesting of all subjects
to the cultivator of Western Persia. If the country were more
populous, and the profits of labour were secure, storage for the
snow-water would be an easy task, and barren wastes might sustain a
prosperous people; for the soil, when irrigated, is prolific, and the
sun can always be relied upon to do his part. The waste of water is
great, as considerably more than half the drainage of the empire
passes into _kavirs_ and other depressions. The average rainfall on
the central plateau is estimated by Sir Oliver St. John at five inches
only in the year.
My arrival at Sanjud was not welcome. The _ketchuda_ sent word that he
was not prepared to obey the orders of the _Sartip_ of Achaz. I could
buy, he said, what I could get, but he would furnish neither supplies
nor guards for the camp. I did not wonder at this, for a traveller
carrying an official letter is apt to be palmed off on the villagers
as a guest, and is not supposed to pay for anything.
I went to see the _ketchuda_, and assured him that I should pay him
myself for all supplies, and a night's wages to each watchman, and the
difficulty vanished. Many of the handsome village women came to see
me. The _ketchuda_ made me a feast in his house, and when I bade him
farewell in the morning he said solemnly, "We are very glad you have
been our guest, we have suffered no loss or inconvenience by having
you, we should like to be protected by the great English nation." This
polite phrase is frequently used.
The Persian Kurds impress me favourably as a manly, frank, hospitable
people. The men are courteous without being cringing, and the women
are kind and jolly, and come freely and unveiled to my tent without
any obtrusiveness.
The _ketchuda_ sent eight guards to my camp at night, saying it was in
a very dangerous place, and he did not wish his village disgraced by a
stranger being robbed so near it. He added, however, that six of these
men were sent for his own satisfaction, and that I was only to pay for
the two I had ordered.
My journey, which is through a wild and little frequented part of
Persia, continues to be prosperous. The climate is now delightful,
though at these lower altitudes the middle of the day is rather hot.
It was a fertile and interesting country between Sanjud and Sain Kala,
where I halted for Sunday. The road passes through the defiles of
Kavrak, along with the deep river Karachai, from the left bank of
which rises precipitously, at the narrowest part of the throat, the
fine mountain Baba Ali. A long valley, full of cultivation and bearing
fine crops of cotton, a pass through the red range of Kizil Kabr, and
a long descent brought us to a great alluvial plain through which
passes the river Jagatsu on its way to the Dead Sea of Urmi. Broad
expanses of shingle, trees half-buried, and a number of wide shingly
water-channels witness to the destructiveness of this stream. A severe
dust storm rendered the end of the march very disagreeable, as the
path was obliterated, and it was often impossible to see the horses'
ears. In winter and spring this Jagatsu valley is completely flooded,
and communication is by boats. There are nearly 150 villages in the
district, peopled almost entirely by Kurds and Turks, and there are
over 200 nomad tents. The Jagatsu is celebrated for its large fish.
When the storm abated we were close to Sain Kala, a picturesque but
ruinous fort on a spur of some low hills, with a town of 300 houses at
its base. In the eastern distance rises the fine mountain Pira Mah,
and between it and Sain Kala is a curious mound--full of ashes, the
people said--a lofty truncated cone, evidently the site of an
_Atash-Kardah_, or fire-temple. This town is in the centre of a very
fertile region. Its gardens and orchards extend for at least a mile in
every direction, and its melons are famous and cheap--only 6d. a dozen
just now.
It is a thriving and rising place. A new bazar is being built, with
much decorative work in wood. The junction of the roads to Tabriz from
Kirmanshah and Hamadan, with one route to Urmi, is in the immediate
neighbourhood, and the place is busy with the needs of caravans. It
looks much like a Chinese Malay settlement, having on either side of
its long narrow roadway a row of shops, with rude verandahs in front.
Among the most prominent objects are horse, mule, and ass shoes;
pack-saddles, _khurjins_, rope, and leather. Fruiterers abound, and
melons are piled up to the roofs. Russian cottons and Austrian lamps
and mirrors repeat themselves down the long uncouth alley.
The camping-ground is outside the town, a windy and dusty plain. Here
my eight guards left me, but the _ketchuda_ shortly called with a
message from the _Sartip_ commanding a detachment of soldiers and the
town, saying that a military guard would be sent before sunset. Sain
Kala is in the government of Sujbul[=a]k, and its people are chiefly
Kurds with an admixture of Turks, a few Persians, mainly officials,
and the solitary Jew dyer, who, with his family, is found in all the
larger villages on this route.
An embroidery needle was found sticking in my _dhurrie_ a few days
ago, and I had the good fortune not only to get some coarse
sewing-cotton but some embroidery silks at Sain Kala, and having a
piece of serge to work on, and an outline of a blue centaurea, I am no
longer destitute of light occupation for the mid-day halt.
Truly "the Sabbath was made for man"! Apart from any religious
advantages, life would be very grinding and monotonous without the
change of occupation which it brings. To stay in bed till eleven, to
read, to rest the servants, to intermit the perpetual _driving_, to
obtain recuperation of mind and body, are all advantages which help to
make Sundays red-letter days on the journey; and last Sunday was
specially restful.
In the afternoon I had a very intelligent visitor, a _Hak[=i]m_ from
Tabriz, sent on sanitary duty in consequence of a cholera scare--a
flattering, hollow upper-class Persian. He introduced politics, and
talked long on the relative prospects of Russian or English
ascendency in Asia. England, he argued, made a great mistake in not
annexing Afghanistan, and his opinion, he said, was shared by all
educated Persians. "You are a powerful nation," he said, "but very
slow. The people, who know nothing, have too much share in your
government. To rule in Asia, and you are one of the greatest of
Asiatic powers, one must not introduce Western theories of government.
You must be despotic and prompt, and your policy must not vibrate. See
here now, the Shah dies, the Zil-i-Sultan disputes the succession with
the Crown Prince, and in a few days Russia occupies Azirbijan with
200,000 men, captures Tihran, and marches on Isfahan. Meanwhile your
statesmen talk for weeks in Parliament, and when Russia has
established her _prestige_ and has organised Persia, then your fleet
with a small army will sail from India! Bah! No country ruled by a
woman will rule in Asia."
In the evening the _ketchuda_ and two other Persian-speaking Kurds
hovered so much about my tent that I invited them into the verandah,
and had a long and pleasant talk with them, finding them _apparently_
frank and full of political ideas. They complained fiercely of
grinding exactions, which, they said, "keep men poor all their lives."
"The poorest of men," they said, "have to pay three _tumans_ (L1) a
year in money, besides other things; and if they can't pay in money
the tax-gatherer seizes their stock, puts a merely nominal value upon
it, sells it at its real value, and appropriates the difference." They
did not blame the Shah. "He knows nothing." They execrated the
governors and the local officials.[22] If they keep fowls, they said,
they have to keep them underground or they would be taken.
At the Shah's death, they said, Persia will be divided between Russia
and England, and they will fall to Russia. "Then we shall get
justice," they added. I remarked that the English and the Kurds like
each other. They said, "Then why is England so friendly with Turkey
and Persia, which oppress us, and why don't travellers like you speak
to the Sultan and the Shah and get things changed." They said that at
one time they expected to fall under English rule at the Shah's death,
"but now we are told it will be Russia."
After a long talk on local affairs we turned to lighter subjects. They
were much delighted with my folding-table, bed, and chair, but said
that if they once began to use such things it would increase the cost
of living too much, "for we would never go back to eating and sleeping
among the spiders as Mohammedans do." They said they had heard of
Europeans travelling in Persia to see mines, to dig among ruins for
treasure, and to collect medicinal herbs, but they could not
understand why I am travelling. I replied that I was travelling in
order to learn something of the condition of the people, and was
interested likewise in their religion and the prospects of
Christianity. "Very good, it is well," they replied; "Islam never
recedes, nor can Christianity advance."
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Apparently it was always thus, for on a tablet at Persepolis
occurs a passage in which the vice of lying is mentioned as among the
external dangers which threatened the mighty empire of the Medes and
Persians. "Says Darius the king: May Ormuzd bring help to me, with the
deities who guard my house; and may Ormuzd protect this province from
slavery, from decrepitude, _from lying_; let not war, nor slavery, nor
decrepitude, _nor lies_ obtain power over this province."
[20] I have very great pleasure in acknowledging a heavy debt of
gratitude to Persian officials, high and low, for the courtesy with
which I was uniformly treated. It is my practice in travelling to make
my arrangements very carefully, to attend personally to every detail,
and to give other people as little trouble as possible, but in Persia,
when off the beaten track, the insecurity of some of the roads, the
need of guards at night when one is living in camp, and the frequent
insubordination and duplicity of _charvadars_ render a reference to
the local authorities occasionally imperative; and not only has the
needed help been given, but it has been given _courteously_, and I
have always been treated as respectfully as an English lady would
expect to be in her own country.
[21] The general verdict of travellers in Persia is, that misrule,
heavy taxation, the rapacity and villainy of local governors, and
successive famines have reduced its small stationary population to a
condition of pitiable poverty and misery, and this is doubtless true
of much of the country, and of parts of it which I have traversed
myself. But I can only write of things as I found them, and on this
journey of 300 miles from Hamadan to Urmi I heard comparatively little
grumbling. Many of the villages are contented with their taxation and
landlords, in others there are decided evidences of prosperity, and
everywhere there is abundance of material comfort, not according to
our ideas, but theirs. As to _clothing and food_, the condition of the
cultivators of that part of western Persia compares favourably with
that of the _rayats_ in many parts of India. But just taxation and a
complete reform in the administration of justice are needed equally by
the prosperous and unprosperous parts of Persia.
[22] The truth is that since Persia broke the power of the Kurds ten
years ago, at the time of the so-called Kurdish invasion, she has kept
a somewhat tight hand over them, and her success in coercing them
indicates pretty plainly what Turkey, with her fine army, could do if
she were actually in earnest in repressing the disorder and chronic
insecurity in Turkish Kurdistan.
LETTER XXV (_Continued_)
The following morning the _Sartip_ turned out in my honour all the
road-guards then in Sain Kala to the number of twelve to escort me to
the castle of Muhammad Jik, a large village, the residence and
property of the _Naib Sartip_. This was the wildest escort I have had
yet. These men were dressed in full Kurdish finery, and besides guns
elaborately inlaid with silver and ivory, and swords in much-decorated
scabbards, they carried daggers with hilts incrusted with turquoises
in their girdles. They went through all the usual equestrian
performances, and added another, which consists in twirling a loaded
and clubbed stick in a peculiar manner, and throwing it as far ahead
as possible while riding at full gallop, the one who picks it up
_without dismounting_ being entitled to the next throw. Very few
succeeded in securing it in the regulation manner, and the scrimmage
for this purpose was often on the point of becoming a real fight. They
worked themselves up to a pitch of wild excitement, screamed, yelled,
shouted, covered their horses with sweat and foam, nearly unhorsed
each other, and used their sharp bits so unmercifully that the mouth
of every horse dripped with blood.
After they received _bakhsheesh_ they escorted me two miles farther
"to honour the _Khanum_," fired their guns in the air, salaamed
profoundly, and with shrieks and yells left me at a gallop.
The village of Muhammad Jik has a well-filled bazar and an aspect of
mixed prosperity and ruin. The castle, a large, and, at a distance, an
imposing pile, a square fort with flanking towers, is on an eminence,
and has a fine view of the alluvial plain of the Jagatsu, studded with
villages and cultivated throughout.
Here, for a rarity, the _Seigneur_ lives a stately life among those
who are practically his serfs in good old medieval fashion. Large
offices are enclosed within an outer wall, and are inhabited by
retainers. Rows of stables sheltered a number of fine and well-groomed
horses from the sun. Bullocks were being brought in from ploughing;
there were agricultural implements of the best Persian type, fowls,
ducks, turkeys, angora goats; negroes and negresses, grinning at the
stranger; mounted messengers with letters arriving and departing;
scribes in white turbans and black robes lounging--all the
paraphernalia of position and wealth.
It was nearly nine, and the great man had not risen, but he sent me a
breakfast of tea, _kabobs_, cracked wheat, curds, _sharbat_, and
grapes. The courtyard is entered by a really fine gateway, and the
castle is built round a quadrangle. The _andarun_ and its fretwork
galleries are on one side, and on another is what may be called a hall
of audience, where the _Sartip_ hears village business and decides
cases.
He offered me a few days' hospitality, paid the usual compliments,
said that no escort was needed from thence to Sujbul[=a]k, where my
letter to the Governor would procure me one if "the roads were
unsettled," hoped that I should not suffer from the hardships of the
journey, and offered me a _kajaveh_ and mule for the next marches.
A level road along the same prosperous alluvial plain leads to
Kashava, a village of 100 houses embosomed in fruit trees and
surrounded by tobacco and cotton. It has an old fort, a very fine
spring, and a "resident proprietor," who, as soon as he heard of my
arrival, sent servants with melons and tea on silver trays, stabled my
horse, and provided me with a strong guard, as the camping-ground was
much exposed to robbers. Such attentions, though pleasant, are very
expensive, as the greater the master the greater are the expectations
of the servants, and the value of such a present as melons must be at
least quadrupled in _bakhsheesh_.
While halting the next day the horses eagerly ate the stalks and roots
of a strongly-scented bulb which lay almost on the surface of the
ground, and were simultaneously seized with a peculiar affection.
Their hair stood out from their bodies like bristles, and they threw
their heads up and down with a regular, convulsive, and apparently
perfectly involuntary motion, while their eyes were fixed and staring.
This went on for two hours, _Boy_ following me as usual; but owing to
this most distressing jerk, over which he had no control, he was
unable to eat the dainties which his soul loves, and which I hoped
would break up the affection--a very painful one to witness. After the
attack both animals perspired profusely. The water literally ran off
their bodies. The jerks gradually moderated and ceased, and there were
no after effects but very puffy swellings about the throat. Both had
barley in their nose-bags, but pawed and wriggled them off in order to
get at this plant, a species of _allium_.
When _Boy_ was well enough to be mounted we descended into an immense
plain, on which were many villages and tracks. This plain of Hadji
Hussein is in fact only another part of the alluvial level of the
Jagatsu, which, with a breadth of from four to ten miles, extends for
nearly forty miles, and is fertile and populous for most of its
length. At the nearest village all the men were busy at the
threshing-floor, and they would not give me a guide; at the next the
_ketchuda_ sent a young man, but required payment in advance.
After crossing the plain, on which villages occur at frequent
intervals on gravelly islands surrounded by rich, stiff, black soil,
we forded the broad Jagatsu and got into the environs of, not an
insignificant village, as I expected, but an important town of 5000
people. A wide road, planted and ditched on both sides, with well-kept
irrigated gardens, shaded by poplars, willows, and fruit trees, runs
for a mile from the river into the town, which is surrounded by
similar gardens on every side, giving it the appearance of being
densely wooded. The vineyards are magnificent, and the size and
flavour of the grapes quite unusual. Melons, opium, tobacco, cotton,
castor oil, sesamum, and _bringals_ all flourish.
Miandab is partly in ruins, but covers a great extent of ground with
its 1000 houses, 100 of which are inhabited by Jews and twenty by
Armenians. People of five tribes are found there, but unlike Sain
Kala, where Sunnis and Shiahs live peaceably, the Mussulmans are all
Shiahs, no Sunni having been allowed to become a permanent inhabitant
since the Kurdish attack ten years ago, when Sunnis within the city
betrayed it into the hands of their co-religionists.
It has several mosques, a good bazar with a domed roof, a part of
which displays very fine copper-work done in the town, and a garrison
of 100 men. I saw the whole of Miandab, for my caravan was lost, and
an hour was spent in hunting for it, inquiring of every one if he had
seen a caravan of four _yabus_, but vainly, till we reached the other
side, where I found it only just arrived, and the men busy
tent-pitching in a lonely place among prolific vineyards. Sharban had
lost the way, and after much marching and counter-marching had reached
the ford of the Jagatsu, which I had been told to avoid, where the
caravan got into deep strong water which carried the _yabus_ off their
feet, and he says that they and the servant were nearly drowned. Mirza
had to go back into the town to obtain a guard from an official, as
the camping-ground was very unsafe, and it was 11 P.M. before dinner
was ready.