Turkey, and its caravan traffic is enormous for seven or eight months
of the year. Its altitude is only 4700 feet, and the mercury in winter
rarely falls to zero, but the snowfall is tremendous, and on the
Rahwan Plain snow frequently lies up to the top of the telegraph
poles, isolating the town and shutting up animals in their stables and
human beings in their houses for weeks, and occasionally months, at a
time. Bitlis produces a very coarse, heavy cotton cloth which, after
being dyed madder red or dark blue, is largely exported, and is used
for the embroidered aprons which the Armenian women wear. It also
exports _loupes_, the walnut whorls or knots of which I have written
before, oak galls, wax, wool, and manna, chiefly collected from the
oak. The Bitlis people, and even some Europeans, regard this as a
deposit left by the aromatic exhalations which the wind brings in this
direction from Arabia, and they say that it lies on any plant without
regard to its nature, and even on the garments of men. The deposit is
always greatest in dry years. In addition to the white manna, obtained
by drying the leaves and allowing the saccharine matter to fall
off--and the green, the result of steeping the leaves in water, which
is afterwards strained, there is a product much like golden syrup,
which is used for the same purposes.
Bitlis is one of the roughest and most fanatical and turbulent of
Turkish cities, but the present Governor, Raouf Pasha, is a man of
energy, and has reduced the town and neighbourhood to some degree of
order. Considerable bodies of troops have been brought in, and the
garrison consists of 2500 men. These soldiers are thoroughly well
clothed and equipped, and look remarkably clean in dress and person.
They are cheery, soldierly-looking men, and their presence gives a
little confidence to the Christians.
The population of Bitlis is estimated at 30,000, of which number over
20,000 are Kurds. Both men and women are very handsome, and the
striking Kurdish costume gives a great brilliancy and picturesqueness
to this remarkable city. The short sleeveless jackets of sheepskin
with the black wool outside which the men are now wearing over their
striped satin vests, and the silver rings in the noses of the girls
give them something of a "barbarian" look, and indeed their habits
appear to be much the same as those of their Karduchi ancestors in the
days of Xenophon, except that in the interval they have become Moslems
and teetotallers! Here they are Sunnis, and consequently do not clash
with their neighbours the Turks, who abhor the Kurds of the mountains
as Kizilbashes. The Kurdish _physique_ is very fine. In fact I have
never seen so handsome a people, and their manly and highly
picturesque costume heightens the favourable effect produced by their
well-made, lithe, active figures.
The cast of their features is delicate and somewhat sharp; the mouth
is small and well formed; the teeth are always fine and white; the
face is oval; the eyebrows curved and heavy; the eyelashes long; the
eyes deep set, intelligent, and roving; the nose either straight or
decidedly aquiline, giving a hawk-like expression; the chin slightly
receding; the brow broad and clear; the hands and feet remarkably
small and slender.
The women when young are beautiful, but hard work and early maternity
lead to a premature loss of form, and to a withered angularity of
feature which is far from pleasing, and which, as they do not veil, is
always _en evidence_.
The poorer Kurds wear woollen socks of gay and elaborate patterns;
cotton shoes like the _gheva_ of the Persians; camlet trousers, wide
at the bottom like those of sailors; woollen girdles of a Kashmir
shawl pattern; short jackets and felt jerkins without sleeves. The
turban usually worn is peculiar. Its foundation is a peaked felt cap,
white or black, with a loosely-twisted rope of tightly-twisted silk,
wool, or cotton wound round it. In the girdle the _khanjar_ is always
seen. Over it the cartridge belt is usually worn, or two cartridge
belts are crossed over the chest and back. The girdle also carries the
pipe and tobacco pouch, a long knife, a flint and steel, and in some
cases a shot pouch and a highly-ornamented powder horn.
The richer Kurds dress like the Syrians. The under-garment, which
shows considerably at the chest and at the long and hanging sleeves,
is of striped satin, either crimson and white or in a combination of
brilliant colours, over which is worn a short jacket of cloth or silk,
also with long sleeves, the whole richly embroidered in gold. Trousers
of striped silk or satin, wide at the bottom; loose medieval boots of
carnation-red leather; a girdle fastened with knobbed clasps of silver
as large as a breakfast cup, frequently incrusted with turquoises; red
felt skull-caps, round which they wind large striped silk shawls, red,
blue, orange, on a white or black ground, with long fringed ends
hanging over the shoulders, and floating in the wind as they gallop;
and in their girdles they carry richly-jewelled _khanjars_ and
pistols decorated with silver knobs, besides a number of other
glittering appointments. The accoutrements of the horses are in
keeping, and at marriages and other festivities the head-stalls,
bridles, and breast-plates are completely covered with pendent silver
coins.
The dress of the women is a foil to that of their lords. It consists
of a blue cotton shirt; very wide trousers, drawn in at the ankles; a
silver saucer on the head, from which chains depend with a coin at the
end of each; a square mantle hanging down the back, clasped by two of
its corners round the neck, and many strings of coins round the
throat; a small handkerchief is knotted round the hair, and in
presence of a strange man they hold one end of this over the mouth.
The Turks in Bitlis are in a small minority, and the number of
Armenian Christians is stated at from 2000 to 5000. The Old Church has
a large monastery outside the town and several churches and schools.
The Protestant Armenians have a substantial church edifice, with a
congregation of about 400, and large boarding-schools for boys and
girls.
The population is by far the wildest that I have seen in any Asiatic
city, and is evidently only restrained from violence by the large
garrison. It is not safe for the ladies of this mission to descend
into the Moslem part of the city, and in a residence of more than
twenty years they have never even passed through the bazars. The
missionaries occupy a restricted and uncertain position, and the
Armenian Christians are subject to great deprivations and restraints,
and are distrusted by the Government. Of late they have been much
harassed by the search for arms, and Christian gunsmiths have been
arrested. Even their funeral ceremonies are not exempt from the
presence of the police, who profess to believe that firearms are
either carried in the place of a corpse or are concealed along with
it. Placed in the midst of a preponderating and fully-armed Kurdish
population, capable at any moment of being excited to frenzy against
their faith, they live in expectation of a massacre, should certain
events take place which are regarded as probable within two or three
years.
It was not to see the grandeur and picturesqueness of Bitlis that I
came here so late in the season, but to visit the American
missionaries, especially two ladies. My hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Knapp,
have returned from a visit to America to spend their last days in a
country which has been their home for thirty years, and have lately
been joined by their son, who spent his boyhood in Bitlis, and after
graduating in an American university has come back, like so many sons
of missionaries, to cast in his lot with a people to whom he is bound
by many links of sympathy, bringing his wife with him. The two Misses
----, who are more than half English, and are highly educated and
accomplished, met Mr. and Mrs. Knapp long ago in a steamer on the
Mediterranean, and decided to return with them to this dangerous and
outlandish place, where they have worked among the women and girls for
twenty-three years, and are still full of love and hope. The school
for girls, in which fifty boarders are received in addition to fifty
day pupils, has a _kindergarten_ department attached to it. The
parents of all are expected to contribute in money or in kind, but
their increasing poverty is telling on their ability to do so, and
this winter the supply of food contributed by them is far short of the
mark.
The tastefulness and generosity of these ladies have produced as
bright and beautiful a schoolroom as could be found anywhere, and ivy
trained round the windows, growing plants, and pictures which are not
daubs give a look of home. With them "Love is the fulfilling of the
law"--love in every tone, look, and touch, and they have that true
maternity of spirit which turns a school into a family, and trains as
well as educates. They are now educating the children, and even
grandchildren, of their earliest pupils, and have the satisfaction of
seeing how very much their school has effected in permeating the
household and social relationships of the Armenian women with the tone
of Christian discipleship, so that one would scarcely hear from the
lips of any of their married pupils the provoking question, "We are
only women, what can we do?" Many of them have gone to homes in the
roughest and wildest of mountain villages, where they sweeten village
life by the gentle and kindly ways acquired in the Bitlis school.
These ladies conduct a mothers' meeting, and I thought that the women
were much developed in intelligence and improved in manner as compared
with the usual run of Armenian women. On being asked to address them,
I took their own words for my text, "We are only women," etc., and
found them intelligent and sympathetic.
These ladies have endured great hardships, and their present position
is one of continual deprivation and frequent risk. One of them was so
severely stoned in Bitlis that she fell unconscious from her horse. In
the winter Miss ---- itinerates among the Armenian villages of the
Mush and Rahwan Plains and the lake shore, travelling over the crust
of the enormously deep snow in a hand-sled drawn by a man, braving
storms which have nearly cost her her life, sleeping and living for a
month or more at a time chiefly in _odahs_, and fearlessly
encountering the very roughest of Kurds and others in these dim and
crowded stables. The danger of village expeditions, and the difficulty
of obtaining _zaptiehs_ without considerable expense, have increased
of late, and the Mush Plain especially has been ravaged all the
summer and autumn by the Kurds, with many barbarities and much loss of
life, so that travelling for Christians even in companies has been
dangerous. Caravans have lately been attacked and robbed, and in the
case of one large mixed caravan the Christians were robbed but the
Moslems were unmolested. A traveller was recently treacherously
murdered by his _katirgis_, and Miss ----, having occasion to employ
the same men a few days ago, saw and heard them rehearse his dying
agonies more than once for the amusement of Kurds on the road.
Luxury is unknown in this mission house. It is so small that in order
to receive me the ladies are sleeping in a curtained recess in the
kitchen, and the reception-room for the natives is the eating and
living room of the family. Among them all there is a rare devotion,
and lives spent in cheerful obedience to God and in loving service for
man have left on their faces the impress of "the love which looks
kindly and the wisdom which looks soberly on all things." The mission
has had a severe struggle. The life on this mountain slope above the
fanatical city is a very restricted one,--there is nothing of what we
are accustomed to regard as "necessary recreation," and a traveller is
not seen here above once in two or three years. All honour to those
who have courage and faith to live such a life so lovingly and
cheerfully!
I. L. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[54] It does not present any difficulty to me that Xenophon omits all
mention of the lake of Van, for a range of hills lies between it and
the road. I have travelled over the track twice, and failed to see
anything in the configuration of the country which would have led me
to suppose that the region to the eastward was anything but a
continuity of ranges of hills and mountains, and if the Ten Thousand
took the route from the eastern head-waters of the Tigris to the
Murad-chai at the farther end of the plain of Mush, directing all
their investigations and inquiries in a westerly direction, there are
very many chances against their having been informed, even by their
prisoners, of the existence of the sea of Van.
[55] _Paradise Lost_, iii. 741, "Nor stayed, till on Niphates' top he
lights."
LETTER XXXIII
PIKHRUZ, _Nov. 14_.
I was indeed sorry to leave the charming circle at the Mission House
and the wild grandeur of Bitlis, but a certain wan look in the sky and
peculiar colouring on the mountains warned my friends that winter
might set in any day, and Dr. Reynolds arranged for _katirgis_ and an
escort, and obtained a letter from the Governor by means of which I
can procure additional _zaptiehs_ in case of need. My Turkish
_katirgi_, Moussa, is rich, and full of fun and jollity. He sings and
jokes and mimics Mirza, rides a fine horse, or sprawls singing on its
back, and keeps every one alive by his energy and vitality. My loads
are very light, and his horses are strong, and by a peculiar screech
he starts them off at a canter with no other object than the
discomfiture of Mirza, who with all his good qualities will never make
a horseman. Unluckily he has a caravan of forty horses laden with
ammunition for the Government on the road, so things may not be always
so smooth as they are now. Descending by a track more like a stair
than a road, and crossing the Tigris, my friends and I performed the
feat of riding through some of the bazars, even though Mr. Knapp and I
had been pelted with stones on an open road the day before. There was
no molestation, for the people are afraid of the _zaptiehs'_ swords.
Bitlis is busy, and it is difficult to get through its crowded
markets, low, narrow, and dark as they are, the sunbeams rarely
entering through their woven roofs. The stalls were piled with fruits,
roots, strange vegetables, red home-dyed cottons, gay gear for horses,
daggers and silver chains such as Kurds love, gay Kurdish clothing,
red boots with toes turned up for tying to the knees, pack-saddles,
English cottons ("_Mankester_"), mostly red, and pipes of all kinds.
There was pottery in red and green, huge earthen jars for the storage
of water, brooms, horse-shoes, meat, curds, cheeses, and everything
suited to the needs of a large and mixed population, and men seated in
the shops plied their curious trades.
Emerging into the full sunlight on the waggon road to Erzerum, we met
strings of girls carrying water-jars on their backs from the wells,
and long trains of asses and pack-bullocks bringing in produce, mixed
up with foot passengers and Kurds on showy horses. Bitlis rejoices in
abundant streams, wells, fountains, and mineral springs, some strongly
chalybeate, others resembling the Vichy waters. The grandly
picturesque city with its piled-up houses, its barred windows
suggestive of peril, its colossal ruins, its abounding waters, its
bridges, each one more remarkable than the other, its terraced and
wooded heights and the snow-crested summits which tower above them,
with their cool blue and purple shadows, disappeared at a turn of the
road, and there too my friends left me to pursue my perilous journey
alone.
The day was superb, and full of fine atmospheric effects. As we
crossed the Rahwan Plain the great mountains to the west were
enshrouded in wild drifting mists, through which now and then peaks
and ledges, white with recent snow, revealed themselves, to be hidden
in blackness the next moment. Over the plain the blue sky was vaulted,
and the sun shone bright and warm, while above the mountains to the
south of Lake Van white clouds were piled in sunlit masses. After
halting at Tadvan, a pleasant village among streams, fountains,
gardens, and fruit trees, we skirted the lake along pleasant
cultivated slopes and promontories with deep bays and inlets to
Gudzag, where I spent the evening in an _odah_, retiring to sleep in
my small tent, pitched in the village, where a big man with a gun, and
wearing a cloak of goatskin reaching to his feet, kept up a big fire
and guarded me till morning. The water froze in my basin during the
night. The _odah_ was full of Armenians, and Murphy interpreted their
innumerable tales of wrong and robbery. "Since the Erzerum troubles,"
so the tales ran, "the Kurds kill men as if they were partridges." On
asking them why they do not refuse to be robbed by "demand," they
replied, "Because the Kurds bring big sticks and beat us, and say they
will cut our throats." They complained of the exactions of the
_zaptiehs_ and of being tied to the posts of their houses and beaten
when they have not money wherewith to pay the taxes.
Starting at sunrise on the following morning I had a very pleasant
walk along the sweet shore of the lake, while water, sky, and
mountains were blended in a flood of rose and gold, after which,
skirting a wooded inlet, on the margin of which the brown roofs of the
large village of Zarak were scarcely seen amidst the crimson foliage,
and crossing a low range, we descended upon a plain at the head of a
broad bay, on the farther side of which, upon a level breezy height,
rose the countless monoliths and lofty mausoleums of Akhlat, which I
had made a long detour to see. The plain is abundantly watered, and
its springs were surrounded with green sward, poplars, and willows,
while it was enlivened by numerous bullock-carts, lumbering and
creaking on their slow way with the latest sheaves of the harvest.
After winding up a deep ravine we came upon a great table of rock
scarped so as to be nearly perpendicular, at the base of which is a
stone village. On the other side is a fine stream. I had purposed to
spend the night at Akhlat, but on riding up the village street, which
has several shops, there was a manifest unfriendliness about its
Turkish inhabitants, and they went so far as to refuse both lodgings
and supplies, so I only halted for a few hours. Few things have
pleased me more than Akhlat, and the dreamy loveliness of the day was
altogether propitious.
I first visited the Kharaba-shahr or "ruined city." The table rock is
honeycombed with a number of artificial chambers, some of which are
inhabited. Several of these are carefully arched. A very fine one
consists of a chamber with an arched recess like a small chancel, and
a niche so resembling a piscina at one side that one involuntarily
looks for the altar. These dwellings are carefully excavated, and
chisel marks are visible in many places. Outlining this remarkable
rock, and above these chambers, are the remains of what must have been
a very fine fortress, with two towers like those of the castle of
Bitlis springing from below the rock. The whole of it has been built
of hewn red sandstone. The walls have been double, with the centre
filled up with rough stones and mortar, but not much of the stone
facing remains, the villages above and below having been built of it.
Detached pieces of masonry, such as great masses of walls, solitary
arches, and partially-embedded carved fragments extend over a very
large area, and it is evident that investigators with time and money
might yet reap a rich reward. Excavators have been recently at
work--who or what they were I could not make out, and have unearthed,
among other objects of interest, a temple with the remains of a dome
having a cornice and frieze, and two small circular chambers, much
decorated, the whole about twenty-five feet long.
Akhlat Kalessi, or the castle of Akhlat, stands on the sea-shore, on
which side it has no defences. It is a fortress with massive walls,
with round and square towers at intervals, and measures about 700
paces from the water to the crest of the slope, and about 330 across.
The enclosure, which is entered by two gates, contains two ancient
mosques solidly built, and a few houses among fruit trees, as well as
some ruins of buildings. The view of the Sipan Dagh from this very
striking ruin is magnificent.
There are many Circassian villages on the skirts of the Sipan Dagh,
and their inhabitants bear nearly as bad a reputation as that of the
Kurds. They are well armed, and defy the local government. They are
robbers and pilferers, and though they receive, or did receive, an
allowance raised by a tax on the general community, they wring what
they please out of the people among whom they live.
A mile from Akhlat, on a table-land of smooth green sward high above
the silver sea, facing southwards, with a glorious view of the
mountains of Central Kurdistan whitened with the first snows of
winter, lies in an indescribable loneliness--the city of the dead. The
sward is covered though not crowded with red sandstone monoliths, from
six to fourteen feet in height, generally in excellent preservation.
Each has a projecting cornice on the east side with carved niches, and
the western face is covered with exquisite tracery in arabesques and
knot-work, and inscriptions in early Arabic. On the graves are either
three carved stones arranged on edge, or a single heavy hewn stone
with a rounded top, and sides decorated with arabesques. Few of these
beautiful monoliths have fallen, but some are much time-worn, and have
a growth of vivid red or green lichen upon them.
Besides these there are some lofty _turbehs_ or mausoleums, admirably
preserved and of extreme beauty. The form is circular. The sepulchre
is a closed chamber, with another above it open half-way round on the
lake side, and a colonnade of very beautiful pillars supports round
arches, above which are five exquisitely-carved friezes. The whole is
covered with a conical roof of carved slabs of red stone, under which
runs an Arabic inscription. Each of these buildings is decorated with
ornament in the Saracenic style, of a richness and beauty of which
only photography could give any adequate representation. Close to the
finest of these _turbehs_ is an old mosque with a deeply-arched
entrance, over which is a recess, panelled and carved like one in the
finest of the rock chambers. The lintels of the door are decorated
with stone cables. Mirza counted more than 900 monoliths.
As I sketched the finest of these beautiful mausoleums some _mollahs_
came up and objected to the proceeding, and Moussa urged me to desist,
as the remainder of the march was "very dangerous," he said, and must
be "got over" in full daylight. This phrase "very dangerous," as used
in Armenia, means that there is a serious risk of having the baggage
and horses driven off, and the men stripped to a single garment. Such
things are happening constantly, and even Moussa ceases his joking
when he speaks of them.[56] The remaining march was over great
solitary sweeps of breezy upland to Pikhruz, an Armenian village of
100 houses, which has an intelligent Protestant teacher with sixty
boys in his school. The villagers possess 4000 sheep, and have not
been much harassed by the Kurds. They employ Kurdish shepherds and
four night watchmen, two of whom are Kurds. The head-dresses of the
women are heavy with coins, and they wear stomachers and aprons so
richly embroidered that no part of the original material is visible.
The _khan_ is an exceptionally bad _odah_, and is absolutely crowded
with horses, oxen, and men, and dim with the fumes of animal fuel and
tobacco. It is indeed comically wretched. The small space round the
fire is so crowded with _zaptiehs_, _katirgis_, and villagers that I
have scarcely room for my chair and the ragamuffin remains of my
baggage. Murphy is crouching over a fire which he is trying to fan
into a state in which it will cook my unvarying dinner--a fowl and
potatoes. Moussa is as usual convulsing the company with his stories
and jokes, and is cracking walnuts for me; the schoolmaster is
enlarging to me on that fruitful topic--"the state of things," the
sabres and rifles of my escort gleam on the blackened posts, the
delectable ox and horse faces wear a look of content, as they munch
and crunch their food, the risk of sleeping in a tent is discussed,
and meanwhile I write spasmodically with the candle and ink on a board
on my lap. I am fast coming to like these cheery evenings in the
_odahs_, where one hears the news of the country and villages. The
_khanji_, the man who keeps the guest-house, provides fire, light,
horse-food, and the usual country diet at so much per head, and
obtains the daily fowl, which costs about 6d., and is cooked while
warm. Milk can be got from one of the cows in the stable. My expenses
for food and lodging are from 4s. to 6s. a night.