the sunrise with Christian prayer and praise, and whose ancestors have
worshipped Christ as God for fourteen centuries in these mountain
fastnesses, I wondered much at my former apathy concerning them. It is
easier to _feel_ them our fellow-Christians on the spot than to put
the feeling into words, but writing here in the house of their
Patriarch, the _Catholicos_ of the East, I realise that the Cross
signed on their brows in baptism is to them as to us the symbol of
triumph and of hope; that by them as by us the Eucharistic emblems are
received for the life of the soul, "in remembrance of Christ's
meritorious Cross and Passion"; that through ages of accumulating
wrongs and almost unrivalled misery, they like us have worshipped the
crucified Nazarene as the crowned and risen Christ, that to Him with
us they bend the adoring knee, and that like us they lay their dead in
consecrated ground to await through Him a joyful resurrection.
There were five degrees of frost during the night, and as I lay awake
from cold the narratives I had heard and the extraordinary state of
things in which I so unexpectedly found myself made a very deep
impression on me. There, for the first time in my life, I came into
contact with people grossly ignorant truly, but willing to suffer "the
loss of all things," and to live in "jeopardy every hour" for
religious beliefs, which are not otherwise specially influential in
their lives. My own circumstances, too, claimed some consideration,
whether to go forward, or back to Urmi. It is obvious from what I hear
that the bringing my journey to Erzerum to a successful issue will
depend almost altogether on my own nerve, judgment, and power of
arranging, and that at best there will be serious risks, hardships,
and difficulties, which will increase as winter sets in. After nearly
coming to the cowardly decision to return, I despised myself for the
weakness, and having decided that some good to these people might come
from farther acquaintance with their circumstances, I fell asleep, and
now the die is cast.
We were ready at daybreak the next morning, but for the same reasons
as those given at Merwana did not start till seven for an eleven
hours' march. I took two armed horsemen and six armed footmen, all
fine fellows used to the work of reconnoitring and protecting. Three
of them scouted the whole time high up on the sides of the pass, not
with the purposeless sensational scouting of Persian _sowars_, but
with the earnestness of men who were pledged to take us safely
through, and who live under arms to protect their property and
families.
After five hours of toiling up the Drinayi Pass, taking several deep
fords, and being detained by a baggage horse falling fifty feet with
his load, we crossed the summit, and by a long descent through hills
of rounded outlines covered with uncut sun-cured hay, reached the
plain of Gawar, where the guards left us. On the way we passed the
small Christian hamlet of Eyal, which was robbed of its sheep with the
sacrifice of the shepherd's life the following night. At the village
of Yekmala on the plain the Kurdish _katirgis_ by a shameful exaction
got us into great trouble, and there was a fight, in which Johannes's
gun was wrested from him, and some of my things were taken, the Kurds
meantime driving off their animals at a fast trot. The aspect of
affairs was so very bad and the attack on my men so violent that I
paid the value of the Kurdish depredations, and we got away. A little
farther on the _katirgis_ were extremely outrageous, and began to
fulfil their threat of "throwing down their loads," but I persuaded
_Qasha_ ----, who was alarmed and anxious, to leave them behind, and
they thought better of it.
The mountain-girdled plain of Gawar is a Paradise of fertility, with
abundant water, and has a rich black soil capable of yielding twenty
or thirtyfold to the cultivator. On it is the town of Diza, chiefly
Armenian, which is a Turkish customs station, a military post, and the
residence of a Kaimakam. There are over twenty Christian as well as
some Moslem villages on Gawar, and a number of Kurdish hamlets and
"castles" on the slopes and in the folds of the hills above it.
The sun was sinking as we embarked on the plain, and above the waves
of sunset gold which flooded it rose the icy spires and crags of the
glorious Jelu ranges and the splintered Kanisairani summits. The
plain has an altitude of over 6000 feet, and there was a sharp frost
as we dismounted at the village of Pirzala and put up at the house of
the _Malek_ David, having been eleven and a half hours in the saddle.
After consulting with him and other village worthies I dismissed the
_katirgis_ and paid them more than their contract price. The next
morning they swore by the Prophet's beard, and every other sacred
thing, that they had not been paid, and when payment was proved by two
respectable witnesses, they were not the least abashed. Poor fellows!
They know no better and are doubtless very poor. I was glad to get rid
of their sinister faces and outbreaks of violence, but for some days
it was impossible, being harvest-time, to obtain transport to
Kochanes, though I was able to leave Pirzala for other villages.
The next day mists rolled down the mountains, and a good cold English
rain set in, in which I had a most pleasant ride to Diza, which was
repeated the following day in glorious weather, the new-fallen snow
coming half-way down the mountain sides. I was surreptitiously on
Turkish soil, and it was necessary to show my passport to the Diza
officials, get a permit to travel, and have my baggage examined. Ishu,
the present _Malek_ of the plain, through whom all business between
the Christians and the Government is transacted, accompanied us to the
Mutessarif of Julamerik.
Diza is an unwalled town on an eminence crowned by barracks. The
garrison of 200 men was reduced to six during the summer. The Kurds
evidently took the reduction as a hint to them to do what they liked,
and they have mercilessly ravaged and harried the plain for months
past.[42] An official assured me that 15,000 sheep have been driven
off from the Gawar Christian villages between the middle of June and
the 17th of October, partly by the nomad Herkis. There are now sixty
soldiers at Diza, and the Mutessarif of Julamerik is there, having
come down to capture Abdurrahman Bey, one of the great oppressors of
the Christians,--an attempt rendered abortive (it is said) by a bribe
given by the Bey to the commanding officer of the troops.
I was interested in my first visit to a Turkish official. His room was
above a stable, with a dark and difficult access, and the passages
above were crowded with soldiers. The Mutessarif sat on a divan at the
upper end of a shabby room, an elderly man much like Mr. Gladstone,
very courteous and gentlemanly, with plenty of conversation and
_savoir-faire_. He said that the letter I carry is "a very powerful
document," that it supersedes all the usual formalities, that my
baggage would not even be looked at, and that I should not require a
_teskareh_ or permit. By his advice I called on the Kaimakam, and in
each room a soldier brought in delicious coffee. The Kaimakam was also
very courteous, and talked agreeably and intelligently, both taking
the initiative, as etiquette demands.
In this and in the general tone there was a marked difference between
Persian and Turkish officialdom. The Persian Governor is surrounded by
civilians, the Turkish by soldiers, and in the latter case the manner
assumed by subordinates is one of the most profound respect. The
sealing of my passport took a considerable time, during which, with
_Qasha_ ----, I paid several visits, was regaled with Armenian
cookery, tried to change a _mejidieh_ at the Treasury, but found it
absolutely empty, and went to see a miracle-working New Testament,
said to be of great antiquity, in an Armenian house. It was hanging on
the wall in a leather bag, from which depended strings of blue and
onyx beads. Sick people come to it even from great distances, as well
as the friends of those who are themselves too ill to travel. The bag
can only be opened by a priest. The power of healing depends on a sum
of money being paid to the priest and the owners. The sick person
receives a glass bead, and is forthwith cured.
On Gawar Plain I lodged in the village houses, either in
semi-subterranean hovels, in which the families live with their horses
and buffaloes, or in rooms over stables. Very many sick people came to
me for medicines, and others with tales of wrong for conveyance to
"the Consul" at Erzerum. No one seemed to trust any one. These
conversations were always held at night in whispers, with the candle
hidden "under a bushel," the light-holes filled up with straw, the
door barred or a heavy stone laid against it, and a watch outside.
The Gawar Christians are industrious and inoffensive, and have no
higher aspiration than to be let alone, but they are the victims of a
Kurdish rapacity which leaves them little more than necessary food.
Their villages usually belong to Kurdish Aghas who take from them
double the lawful taxes and tithes. The Herkis sweep over the plain in
their autumn migration "like a locust cloud," carrying off the
possessions of the miserable people, spoiling their granaries and
driving off their flocks. The Kurds of the neighbouring slopes and
mountains rob them by violence at night, and in the day by exactions
made under threat of death. The latter mode of robbery is called
"demand." The servants of a Kurdish Bey enter and ask for some jars of
oil or _roghan_, a Kashmir shawl, women's ornaments, a jewelled
dagger, or a good foal, under certain threats, or they show the owner
a bullet in the palm of the hand, intimating that a bullet through his
head will be his fate if he refuses to give up his property or informs
any one of the demand.
In this way (among innumerable other instances) my host at ----,[43] a
much-respected man, had been robbed of five valuable shawls, such as
descend from mother to daughter, four handsome coats, and 300 _krans_
in silver. In the last two years ten and fifteen loads of wheat have
been taken from him, and four four-feet jars filled with oil and
_roghan_. Four hundred and fifty sheep have likewise been seized by
violence, leaving him _with only fifteen_; and one night while I was
at his house fifty-three of the remaining village sheep, some of which
were his, were driven off in spite of the guards, who _dare not
fire_. I was awakened by the disturbance, and as it was a light night
I saw that the Kurds who attacked the sheepfold were armed with modern
guns. The _reis_ of that village and this man's brother have both been
shot by the Kurds.
Testimony concurred in stating that the insecurity of life and
property has enormously increased this summer, especially since the
reduction of the Diza garrison; that "things have grown very much
worse since the Erzerum troubles;" that the Kurds have been more
audacious in their demands and more reckless of human life; and that
of late they have threatened the Christians _as such_, saying that the
Government would approve of "their getting rid of them." Very little
of any value, the people said, was left to them, and the extreme
bareness of their dwellings, and the emptiness of their stables and
sheepfolds, while surrounded with possibilities of pastoral and
agricultural wealth, tend to sustain their statements. "The men of
Government," they all said, "are in partnership with the Kurds, and
receive of their gains. This is our curse."
Many women and girls, especially at Charviva and Vasivawa, have been
maltreated by the Kurds. A fortnight ago a girl, ten years old, going
out from ----, to carry bread to the reapers, was abducted. It became
known that two girls in ---- were to be carried off, and they were
hidden at first in a hole near ----. Their hiding-place last week was
known only to their father, who carried them food and water every
second night. He came to me in the dark secretly, and asked me to
bring them up here, where they might find a temporary asylum. Daily
and nightly during the week of my visit Gawar was harried by the
Kurds, who in two instances burned what they could not carry away, the
glare of the blazing sheaves lighting up the plain.
The people of Gawar express great anxiety for teachers. The priests
and deacons must work like labourers, and cannot, they say, go down to
Urmi for instruction. A priest, speaking for two others, and for
several deacons who were present, said, "Beseech for a teacher to come
and sit among us and lighten our darkness before we pass away as the
morning shadows. We are blind guides, we know nothing, and our people
are as sheep lost upon the mountains. When they go down into the
darkness of their graves we know not how to give them any light, and
so we all perish."
This request was made in one of the large semi-subterranean dwellings,
which serve for both men and beasts in Kurdistan. The firelight
flickered on horses and buffaloes, receding into the darkness, and the
square mud-platform on which we sat was framed by the long horns and
curly heads of mild-eyed oxen.
I answered that it would be very difficult to raise money for such an
object in England. "But England is very rich," the priest replied. I
looked round, and the thought passed across my mind of Him "who though
He was rich yet for our sakes became poor," whose life of self-denial
from the stable at Bethlehem to the cross on Calvary is the example
for our own, and whose voice, ringing down through ages of luxury and
selfishness, still declares that discipleship involves a love for our
brethren equal to His own. Yes, "England is very rich," and these
Syrians are very poor, and have kept the faith through ages of
darkness and persecution.
This plain, the richest in Kurdistan, is also most beautiful. In
winter a frozen morass, it is not dry enough for sowing till May, and
even June. This accounts for the lateness of the harvest. The Jelu
mountains, the highest in Central Kurdistan,--a mass of crags, spires,
and fantastic parapets of rock, with rifts and abysses of
extraordinary depth,--come down almost directly upon it. There is no
wood. The villages are all alike, surrounded just now by piles of
wheat and straw on their threshing-floors, with truncated cones of
fodder, and high smooth black cones of animal fuel. These are often
the only signs of habitations. One may ride over the roofs without
knowing that houses are below.
Being entirely baffled by the difficulty of obtaining transport, I
went on to Gahgoran, and put up at the house of the parish priest,
where the subterranean granary allotted to me was so completely dark
that I sat all day in the sheepfold in order to be able to write and
work, shifting my position as the sun shifted his. A _zaptieh_ had
been sent from Diza, who guarded me so sedulously that _Qasha_ ----
dared not speak to me, lest the man should think he was giving me
information.
Gahgoran was full of strangers. The Patriarch had come down from
Kochanes, and occupied the only room in the village, whither I went to
pay my respects to him. The room was nearly dark, and foggy with
tobacco smoke, but a ray of light fell on Mar Gauriel, Bishop of Urmi,
a handsome full-bearded man in a Nestorian turban, full trousers, a
madder-red frock with a bright girdle in which a _khanjar_ glittered,
and a robe over all, a leader of armed men in appearance. I had met
him in Urmi, and he shook hands and presented me to Mar Shimun, a
swarthy gloomy-looking man. In his turn he presented me to Mar Sergis,
Bishop of Jelu, a magnificent-looking man with a superb gray beard,
the _beau-ideal_ of an Oriental ecclesiastic. _Maleks_ and headmen of
villages sat round the room against the wall, not met for any
spiritual conclave but for stern business regarding the taxes, for the
Patriarch is a salaried official of the Turkish Government. All rose
when I entered, and according to a polite custom stood till I sat
down. They held out no hope of getting baggage animals, and I
returned to the sheepfold.
It was a long day. The servants did not arrive till night, and
Kochanes receded hourly! Many people came for medicine, and among them
a very handsome man whose house was entered by Kurds a month ago, who
threatened him with death unless he surrendered his possessions. After
this he and his brothers fled and hid among the wheat, but fearing to
be found and killed, they concealed themselves for a fortnight in the
tall reeds of a marsh. He is now subject to violent fits of trembling.
"My illness is fear," the poor fellow said. Three hundred sheep had
been taken from him and twenty-five gold _liras_; his grass had been
burned, "and now," he said, "the oppressor Hazela Bey says, 'give me
the deeds of your lands, if not I will kill you.'" He had been a
_Malek_, and was so rich that he entertained travellers and their
horses at all times. Now his friends have to give him wheat wherewith
to make bread.
The house of _Qasha_ Jammo has granaries at each side of the low door,
a long dark passage leading into a subterranean stable with a platform
for guests, and a living-room, on a small scale, like the one at
Marbishu. A space was cleared in the granary for my bed among wheat,
straw, ploughs, beetles, starved cats, osier graintubs coated with
clay, six feet high, and agricultural gear of all sorts. It was a
horrid place, and the door would not bolt. After midnight I was
awakened by a sound as if big rats were gnawing the beams. I got up
and groping my way to the door heard it more loudly, went into the
passage, looked through the chinks in the outer door, and saw a number
of Kurds armed with guns. I retreated and fired my revolver in the
granary, which roused the dogs, and the dogs roused the twenty
strangers who were receiving the priest's hospitality. In the stable
were fourteen horses, including my own two, and several buffaloes. The
Kurds had dug through the roof of the granary opposite mine, and
through its wall into the stable, and were on the point of driving out
the horses through the common passage when the hardy mountaineers
rushed upon them. The same night, though it was light and clear,
another house in Gahgoran was dug into, and a valuable horse belonging
to a man in the Patriarch's train was abstracted. A descent was also
made on the neighbouring village of Vasivawa, which has suffered
severely. Eight _zaptiehs_ employed by the villagers at a high price
to watch the threshing-floor, and my own _zaptieh_ escort, were close
at hand.
Horses having at last been obtained from a Kurdish Bey, I left on
Tuesday, the Gahgoran people being stupefied with dismay at the
growing audacity of the Kurds. The mountain road was very dangerous,
but I travelled with Mar Gauriel and his train, thirteen well armed
and mounted men, besides armed servants on foot. The ice was half an
inch thick, but the sun was very hot. The mountain views were superb,
and the scenery altogether glorious, but the passes and hillsides are
not inhabited. We were ten hours on the journey, owing to the custom
of frequent halts for smoking and talking.
In the afternoon a party of Syrians with some unladen baggage mules
came over the crest of a hill, preceded by a figure certainly not
Syrian. This was a fair-complexioned, bearded man, with hair falling
over his shoulders, dressed in a girdled cassock which had once been
black, tucked up so as to reveal some curious nether garments, Syrian
socks, and a pair of rope and worsted shoes, such as the mountaineers
wear in scaling heights. On his head, where one would have expected to
see a college "trencher," was a high conical cap of white felt with a
_pagri_ of black silk twisted into a rope, the true Tyari turban.
This was Mr. Browne, one of the English Mission clergy, who, from
living for nearly four years among the Syrians of the mountains,
helping them and loving them, has almost become one of them. He was
going to Diza to get winter supplies before his departure for one of
the most inaccessible of the mountain valleys, but with considerate
kindness turned back to Kochanes with me, and remains here until I
leave. This fortunate _rencontre_ adds the finishing touch to the
interest of this most fascinating Kurdistan journey.
Crossing the Kandal Pass, we descended on the hamlet of Shawutha,
superbly situated on a steep declivity at the head of a tremendous
ravine leading to the Zab, blocked apparently by mountains
violet-purple against a crimson sky, with an isolated precipitous rock
in the foreground, crowned by an ancient church difficult of access.
Below the village are fair shelving lawns, with groups of great walnut
trees, hawthorn, and ash, yellow, tawny, and crimson--a scene of
perfect beauty in the sunset, while the fallen leaves touched the soft
green turf with ruddy gold. The camping-grounds were very fair, but
the villagers dared not let me camp. The Kurds were about, and had
exacted a ewe and lamb from every house. Owing to the influx of
strangers, it was difficult to get any shelter, and I slept in a horse
and ox stable, burrowed in the hillside, the passage to the family
living-room, without any air holes, hot and stifling, and used my
woollen sheets for curtains. The village is grievously smitten by the
"cattle plague." In telling me of the loss of "four bulls" within
three days, my host used an expression which is not uncommon here, "By
the wealth of God, and the head of Mar Shimun."
Yesterday we descended 1500 feet, alongside of a torrent fringed with
scarlet woods, and halted where the Shawutha, Kochanes, and Diz
valleys meet at the fords of the Zab, here known as "the Pison, the
river of Eden." The Zab, only fordable at certain seasons, is there a
fast-flowing dark green river, fully sixty yards wide, deep enough to
take the footmen up to their waists, and strong enough to make them
stagger, with a lawn bright with autumnal foliage below the savage and
lofty mountains on its right bank.
From the Zab we ascended the gorge of the Kochanes water by a wild
mountain path, at times cut into steps or scaffolded, and at other
times merely a glistening track over shelving rock, terminating in a
steep and difficult ascent to the fair green alp on which Kochanes
stands at the feet of three imposing peaks of naked rock--Quhaibalak,
Qwarah, and Barchallah.
Thus I beheld at last the goal of my journey from Luristan, and was
not disappointed. Glorious indeed is this Kurdistan world of
mountains, piled up in masses of peaks and precipices, cleft by
ravines in which the Ashirets and Yezidis find shelter, every peak
snow-crested, every ravine flaming with autumn tints; and here, where
the ridges are the sharpest, and the rock spires are the most
imposing, on a spur between the full-watered torrents of the Terpai
and the Yezidi, surrounded on three sides by gorges and precipices, is
this little mountain village, the latest refuge of the Head of a
Church once the most powerful in the East.
Kochanes consists of a church built on the verge of a precipice, many
tombs, a grove of poplars, a sloping lawn, scattered village houses
and barley-fields extending up the alp, and nearly on the edge of a
precipitous cliff the Patriarch's residence, a plain low collection of
stone buildings, having an arched entrance and a tower for refuge or
defence. The houses of his numerous relations are grouped near it.
Everything is singularly picturesque. The people, being afraid of an
attack from the Kurds, would not suffer me to pitch my tent on their
fair meadow, and Sulti, the Patriarch's sister, has installed me in a
good room in the house, looking across the tremendous ravine of the
Terpai upon savage mountains, the lower skirts of which are clothed
with the tawny foliage of the scrub oak, and their upper heights with
snow.
I. L. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] I have since heard that these Kurds, a short time afterwards,
betrayed some Christian travellers into the hands of some of their own
people, by whom they were robbed and brutally maltreated.
[40] I give the story as it was repeatedly told to me. It was a very
shady and complicated transaction throughout.
[41] Dr. Cutts, in his interesting volume, _Christians Under the
Crescent in Asia_, gives the following translation of one of the
morning praises, which forms part of the daily prayer. The earlier
portion is chanted antiphonally in semi-choirs--