FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO HIERAPOLIS
“Chauakānam kaot ba chūl u raikadā
Halmbarī chū be vairān jakadā.”
(“My eyes were turned towards the solitude and road,
And I rose up and went to desert places.”)
_Song of the Erzinjan Kurds._
The weather was not so fond of me as to clear up for the sake of
keeping me, for as the day of decision approached it grew steadily
worse, and it was in a driving storm of cold rain that I waded down to
Galata and booked a passage by the Messageries Maritimes steamer to
Beyrouth.
There were few arrangements to make; a passport I possessed; it was but
necessary to provide myself with a document called a “tezkere i ubūrī,”
a travelling passport in Turkish, issued by the police. So having
obtained an order from the Consul, I found my way to a collection of
huts, called the “Eski Zaptié,” in Stamboul, and after running from
hovel to hovel in order to interview numerous effendis, whose duties
apparently consisted of making marks upon the application form, I was
suddenly presented with the document from an unsuspected corner of a
dirty courtyard. The writer was absolutely unaware of my existence in
the building, nevertheless I found myself described in Turkish as of
medium height, dark-haired, and beardless, with black moustache, all
fairly accurate--last and most, of the “Protestant” religion. I was to
pass during most of my journey as a Muhammadan, and here I found at
the outset all my plans checked by a Turkish clerk who described me
in his fatuous passport as a Protestant. Naturally enough I protested,
and vigorously, against the right of these omniscient police clerks to
brand me as of any sect or creed; but they were mildly astonished at my
objections, and could not be brought to see any point except that all
Turks were Musulman, all Armenians “Kristiāan,” all French “Kātūlīk,”
and all English and Americans “Purūtestān.” They but regarded these
as the religious names of the nations, and could not conceive that
an Englishman might be any one of the innumerable dissenting sects.
That he could be a Catholic was too obviously absurd, and the increase
of their contempt for my intelligence was most marked as I asserted
the possibility. So the offending word had to stand, and I resolved
secretly to erase or destroy it whenever necessary.
[Sidenote: PASSPORT DIFFICULTIES]
The day of departure was like the preceding months, rainy and cold,
and I looked with pleasant anticipation upon the prospect of seeing
in a few days the sunny hills of Syria. Our ship was the _Saghalien_,
a comfortable and roomy old boat. The early spring season had brought
with it the first of the tourists to Palestine. Arriving on board,
I heard the first English that had fallen upon my ears since I had
left London. The parties were incongruous enough. Four or five
Roman Catholic priests escorted a company of pious “bourgeois” to
the pilgrimage at Jerusalem, while another and much larger party of
manufacturing folk of wealth and accent had been gathered from Leeds,
Leicester, and a dozen other of the Midland towns of England. A second
party had been formed by some imitator of Mr T. Cook, and included no
less than six gentlemen of religious profession, each from a different
sect of British dissenters. These were all provincial too. An American
and his wife, a Turkish Pasha and his family and attendant effendis,
and some unattached and inconsequent Germans and French, pretty well
made up a full ship.
As I had to start wearing a fez sooner or later, I thought I might
as well begin at once, and pass for a Persian going to Persia,
which would excuse my ignorance of Turkish, which no other disguise
I could have adopted would have been effectual in doing. In the
guise of a native of a far land, and _en route_ for places where the
name “English” was hardly known, I felt strangely cut off from my
fellow Europeans when I heard them talking about their tour, planning
expeditions and journeys new--when they should have “done” Palestine
and Egypt, and returned once more to their Midland towns--experienced
Oriental travellers.
It is strange what a simple exchange of headgear can do. Here was I,
by the mere fact of wearing a fez, isolated, looked down upon by types
one would pass unnoticed in London, audibly commented upon as “quite
a civilised-looking Turk,” exciting wonder as to “’ow many wives ’e’s
got,” and such traditionally Oriental questions. The ignorance of these
people was wonderful and colossal. We sighted, I remember, Mitylene one
morning, and all the force of parsons and tourists hung over the rail
with guide-books and glasses, disputed whether the high land was Chios
or Rhodes, oblivious of the big chart on the top of the saloon stairs,
where our position could be reckoned on the route line at the expense
of two minutes’ thought. They certainly appreciated the beauties of
the glorious archipelago through which we passed, not too quickly,
and faithfully enough raised enthusiasm in the places the guide-books
recommended. Rhodes, when we did get there, and they were certain it
was not Cyprus, created great excitement among them, the controversy
anent the Colossus and his legs was heated enough to keep the subject
alive quite two hours after the island had disappeared beneath the blue
horizon, “quite as blue as the sea at Blackpool,” as one Manchester man
affirmed, in a spirit of rash generosity.
Before we had been two days at sea, I was drawn into uttering some
words of English in a moment of thoughtlessness, and that to a very
hearty individual from Newcastle. He trod heavily upon my feet, and as
I quite involuntarily replied to his apology with an English phrase,
he looked at me in the most utter astonishment, ejaculated, “Great
’eavens, you speak English.”
[Sidenote: MY DISGUISE SUCCEEDS]
“Yes,” I said, “I was brought up in England.”
“Oh,” he replied, apparently relieved, “that accounts for it, you--er,
where are ye goin’ to?”
I told him I was going to Persia, and his hasty conclusion saved me the
trouble of any equivocal statement for the moment, for he continued:
“Oh, then, I suppose you’re one of those Persian gentlemen that’s been
in England lately for the Persian Parliament. ’Ow d’you like England,
what part d’you know best?”
“Kent and Sussex,” I replied, perfectly truthfully, ignoring his first
remarks, “and all the south, for I have never been farther north than
Lincoln.”
Here we were joined by one of my interlocutor’s friends, and I was
introduced with some enthusiasm, my discoverer announcing in the tone
of a naturalist who had just found a rare bug,
“This gentleman speaks English as well as you and me, every bit; ’e’s a
Persian, goin’ to Persia.”
Well, from that moment, I became very popular among these folk,
and found them very hearty indeed, especially when I gave them
the information that Persia looked to constitutional England for
sympathy and help, and regarded her as a natural and ancient friend;
in contradistinction to the Russians, whose Cossacks she detested.
The fact of my being a Persian--naturally enough, they seemed to
think--gave me a claim to their friendship, and nothing pleased them
more than to get me to tell them of my country’s wrongs, her aims and
ambitions, her history and customs, her religion and literature, and
every conceivable subject. On every such occasion I had a sympathetic
and interested audience, who asked innumerable questions, and whom
I was pleased to be able to enlighten considerably. They had to
confess that their preconceived ideas were very changed, and the
general attitude they acquired and which they were at no pains to
conceal, being genuine and honest, if unpolished fellows, was that of
well-informed superiority, which should assert itself on their return
to England.
In playing this part I suppose I was playing also a very mean trick,
the only excuse for which is that I am a sincere well-wisher of
Persia, where I have spent some pleasant years of my life, and this
disguise afforded my assertions an extra credence and weight which
no Englishman, however well informed, could hope to obtain from his
countrymen on so remote a subject as Persia.
So agreeably did the time pass, that I was sorry to see the hills of
Beyrouth draw closer and closer. These were the last Englishmen that I
should see for a long time, for my disguise quite prevented my being
able to call upon consuls where they existed in towns upon my route.
With considerable regret I bade them good-bye and saw them depart, led
by one of those terrible creatures, a native Christian, the lust of
tips and perquisites gleaming in his eyes. As I watched them, helpless
and confused, being shoved this way and that, I almost envied them;
for they were going to “sail” through Palestine in special trains
and carriages, put up at the best hotels, and return in the same
lordly fashion to England; while I was embarked upon a very different
enterprise, to be conducted always with an eye to the elusive piastre,
and a ready, lying tongue.
And so I found myself sharing, with two Turks and an Arab Christian of
Aleppo, a small boat, from which we were bundled out into the Customs
with a herd of Arabs, Turks, and all kinds of Levantines.
I was recommended by a Syrian who spoke French--like everyone else in
Beyrouth--to put up in a small hotel on the quay, and was given a room
overlooking the harbour, with a little verandah in front, where one
must sit warily, for dirty locomotives shunting in the street had a way
of stopping just underneath and firing with a particularly poisonous
kind of coal, the while they blew off steam from remarkably noisy
safety-valves. This was the terminus of the Lebanon Tramway, which
crawls up the hills to a point called Rayak.
The hotel, kept by a Turk, was clean and cool, but to feed one had
to go round the corner to a kind of restaurant, “à la ferang,” where
an incongruous party of pilgrims of every race returning from Mecca
sat uneasily on small chairs, and regarded with distrust the array of
knives and forks a Greek waiter set before them.
[Sidenote: AT BEYROUTH]
Beyrouth--once one of the greatest maritime cities of the Phœnicians,
when Tyre sent out her ships to the Tin Islands--has grown since then,
and is now a flourishing and picturesque city, built upon the slopes of
the hills that separate Syria from the Mediterranean. The population
is, I should think, mostly Christian, and only in the alleys of a small
bazaar does one see the real signs of an Oriental city. For the rest,
there are broad and dusty roads, a large public square and gardens,
and electric tramways everywhere. The language of the place is more
French than Arabic, and English receives good attention at the American
college there. Like Haifa and Tripoli on the same coast, it is on a
little point of land and faces north, protecting its harbour by a
strong sea-wall, enclosing a deep basin.
In the East one looks out as the first preparation for any journey,
what the Turk calls a “youldāsh,” and the Persian a “hamrāh,” or
travelling companion. On this occasion and without looking for him,
he appeared, in the person of a Konia Turk, who was staying in the
same hotel. We were to leave at sunset for Aleppo by the train, and
my fortunate meeting with him, though our conversation was perforce
limited owing to my ignorance of Turkish, enlightened me to the fact
that we should be twenty-four hours _en route_, and must take pretty
well whatever we wanted to eat with us. So we made an excursion to the
native bazaar, and from the sellers of comestibles in baskets, procured
a large quantity of excellent oranges and some bread and various kinds
of sweet cakes.
At six o’clock we hired porters and carried our goods to the station, a
shed on the quay a few yards away, and having registered our luggage at
exorbitant rates, apparently solely by the overwhelming condescension
of a military-looking effendi of abominable manners, we took
tickets--second class to Aleppo. So well do the French control their
employees, that my companion found afterwards that he had been charged
two medjidies excess on the luggage and one on the ticket, which the
effendi and the booking-clerk doubtless appropriated. I escaped these
impositions apparently owing to the attentions of a young Arab porter,
who for some inexplicable reason took me under his protection, as he
refused all “bakhshīsh” when the train started.
The carriage in which we found ourselves face to face, with our
knees knocking together, filled up with ten other persons. As the
rolling-stock of this masterpiece of French railway engineering
is barely six feet high, and narrow gauge, the temperature rose
swiftly with the odour of the occupants. The seats or benches, which
I surreptitiously measured, are exactly fifteen inches broad, and
in this vehicle we were to--and did somehow--pass the night. Our
fellow-passengers were four terribly frowsy Italian employees of the
railway, and six uniformed individuals. Turks away from the towns
whose inhabitants are Turkish seem always to be uniformed, and it is
hopeless to guess at their standing and importance, which is always to
be assumed in one’s intercourse with the officials of this eminently
officious race. These individuals were of course all “effendis,” and
three of them wore swords, which may have meant anything, as from
subsequent observations it seems even a Customs clerk has that right.
Fortunately, they were too taken up with their own affairs to notice
us, and we consequently escaped for a time the merciless curiosity
which emanates from a Turk, private or official.
About four in the morning, after uneasy and very shaken sleep, we
were turned out in darkness and desert on the metals. This was Rayak,
where the broadgauge line for Aleppo branches. Fortunately our new
train, somewhat more commodious, was ready, and we made a rush, our new
quarters being less crowded. Having taken our places, and while we were
yet waiting, a sound as of flustered people, just arrived, and fearing
to miss the train, broke the stillness. The first train had departed
and every one was seated, and we apparently were stopping to allow
passengers a nap in perfect quietness. The noisy knot of people thus
naturally attracted attention, but what was my surprise to see in this
Turco-Arabian land the face of an Isfahāni, of Persia, look into our
window, glance away at companions following, and shout in the Persian
of his native town that there was room.
[Sidenote: PERSIANS INSULTED]
A small crowd of very worried Isfahānis clad in their national dress
came running, and doubtless would have left some of their number in our
carriage, but that several effendis pursued them and headed them off
wherever they attempted to gain entrance. Most of them knew no Arabic
nor Turkish, but were obviously bent on getting to Aleppo. Puzzled at
the inexplicable attitude of the omnipotent effendis, refusing place
to these poor strangers, who emphatically announced that they had paid
their fare, I leant out and asked one in Persian what was the trouble.
For a moment he seemed to be dazed, hearing his own language spoken by
a fezzed Turk, but his ears at last convinced him, and he poured out
his woes.
“Bah! la’nat ullah ’alaihim” (“God’s curse upon them!”) he shouted.
“From Damascus we had second-class tickets. They put us and our women
in a cattle-truck, these sons of Sunni dogs; offspring of Turkish
prostitutes, and now they refuse us even that;” and even as he spoke I
heard a raucous voice shouting in Arabic, “La makān ul ’Ajam” (“There
is no place for Persians”), and in the hated Turkish, “Get desharda!
keupek oghlu!” (“Get outside, son of a dog!”)
The unfortunate men--pilgrims returning from Mecca they were--were
hustled from door to door, cursed and reviled for heretics and Shi’ahs,
refused room anywhere. No insult was bad enough for these unfortunates,
no jibe too cutting.
Suddenly from somewhere a French official appeared, who had as little
sympathy with Sunni as with Shi’ah Musulman, and he solved the question
by tacking an extra coach on, wherein the Persians were accommodated,
and kept separate, their quarters infinitely more roomy and
comfortable than those of their oppressors; and so we started and fell
asleep, to wake in the early sunlight at Baalbak, a place great with
memories of the past, but all too quickly left behind in the present,
when the train, that cares nothing for the worship of Baal, pauses
but a few moments, and continues its way over rolling plains with low
hills in the distance to Homs and Hama, two Arab towns, whose Christian
population saves them from the decay inseparable from Turkish rule and
Musulman subjectivity.
Within some hours of Aleppo, two uniformed officials boarded the train,
and shoving aside a passenger--not uniformed--installed themselves.
After a few minutes, one, a fat, squinting person, produced a dirty
and ragged little note-book and commenced making marks in it, the
while looking at the passengers as one who sketches. Having completed
this mysterious operation, he passed it to his companion, who, after
reading it, passed it back with a “Pekī ’alā” (“Excellent!”), and both
commenced eating oranges, dropping the peel carefully under their
neighbours’ feet. For half an hour or so they were thus engaged, when
one, looking at his watch, remarked that it was late, and departed
swiftly out of the door and along the foot-board. Some time after,
he reappeared by the same way, and seating himself, reproduced his
note-book and revealed his identity. He was a police officer; his
duty was to ascertain whether all the passengers in the train might
be allowed to enter Aleppo without danger of their inciting political
riots or committing crimes of all sorts. This was four months after
the inauguration of the Parliament, four months after we had been told
that the old restrictions on travel instituted by the Sultan and his
spies were absolutely abolished as being an abomination and a relic of
despotism and darker ages.
However, this particular effendi was apparently far above such laws,
as I found out everybody else to be later on, and insisted on full
information. There was an unfortunate German mechanic travelling to
Aleppo for the factory of a merchant there; and because he was a
European, I suppose, the effendi subjected him to every annoyance
possible, affecting to disbelieve his statements, practically accusing
him of being a criminal. His profession worried the policeman, too, and
I think, probably, exposed ignorance caused the petty revenge he took,
for when he asked the European’s profession, he was told “Muhandis,” an
engineer, and did not know the meaning of the word. My turn at length
came, and I was in some fear of uncomfortable queries; for to state
that I was an Englishman would have been utterly disbelieved in a land
where our countrymen travel only in first-class reserved carriages,
wear “solar topee” hats, and are attended by servants. To call myself
a Persian would probably have satisfied the man, but there was always
that damning passport, and of course I did not know but it might be
examined in Aleppo side by side with this creature’s notes.
[Sidenote: CONVENIENT IGNORANCE]
So, knowing but little of his Arabi and Turkish, I feigned total
ignorance, indicating by signs that I was going to Persia, pointing to
myself, the eastern distance, and repeating “B’il ’Ajam” (“to Persia”).
He asked me innumerable questions, which had I answered would have tied
me up in a terrible confusion of contradictions, but at last, failing
to get any reply from me he suddenly desisted, finding no amusement in
the sport, I suppose, and passed on to a more intelligible victim.
About four o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at Aleppo, or rather at
Aleppo station, terminus of that creeping railway, rejoicing in the
extraordinary name of “Chemin de Fer de Damas Prolongement Homs et
Hama.”
To my surprise, no one asked for passports, the only annoyance was that
second-class passengers’ registered luggage would not be distributed
for another hour. While receiving this information I was furiously
attacked by a kind of hotel tout, fortunately the last I was to see,
for I left both hotels and touts behind with Aleppo. However, I
submitted to be thrust into a carriage and found myself careering
along a straight, broad road towards the town, whose chief feature
is the castle upon its flat-topped mound. Modern Aleppo is obviously
an Arab city, the language is Arabic, French has not yet displaced
it as at Beyrouth, while it possesses a few broad streets, where the
badly written French signs of Greek, Armenian, and Syrian shopkeepers,
photographers and hotel-keepers hang. The majority of its ways are
stone-paved alleys between high walls, with the lattice-windows
always associated in the Western mind with Aleppo. Beyond that it
possesses a splendid bazaar, rows and rows of booths in the ordinary
Oriental style, whose owners squat within, selling the European and
native articles to be met with in all bazaars from Constantinople to
Afghanistan. To him who has dwelt in the farther East, it comes like
the first step towards the old country again. With joy I roamed through
these busy alleys of shops, and purchased my road apparatus, candles,
sugar, tea, tin and glass tea utensils, knobs of cheese, fruit, etc.,
of Arabs sitting behind rows of pendant sugar loaves and tin cans,
entrenched among masses of heterogeneous wares.
In point of view of the antiquity of Aleppo, only excelled in Western
Asia by Damascus (which after 3500 years of importance, still maintains
its premier position), some note of its history is due.
That it was a city of the Hittites is witnessed by the inscriptions
in that language within the citadel gates, and at present we know of
no antiquity greater in Syria than that of this wonderful empire,
that lasted for the enormous period of 3000 years (3700–700 B.C.),
and of which there will be occasion to speak later. Though little, if
anything, is heard of Aleppo in the ancient chronicles, it is so near
to the ancient Karkhemish (Corchemish of the Old Testament), that it
probably stood and fell with it during the wars with Assyria, which
lasted from 1100–700 B.C., though no mention of it occurs in the stone
inscriptions of Nineveh, Kalah, Kuyunjik, and Asshur.
In the storm of nations, Scythians, Cimmerians, Arabs, and--above
all--Medes, that raged when Assyria fell, Karkhemish is forgotten and
Aleppo is not heard of till Christian times.
[Sidenote: KARKHEMISH]
It was probably converted to Christianity about the time St Paul sent
his message to Antioch (Acts xi. 19–24), but it is in Muhammadan times
that it really begins to play a part in Syrian politics. It was then
the see of a bishopric, and was sufficiently important to be contended
for in the early days of Islam, when a great battle was fought in the
vicinity (A.D. 657). In A.D. 1056 the great conqueror Alp Arslan took
it, and a century later saw Saladin defending its castle against the
Crusaders. It fell, like all Western Asia, before the barbarian Mongols
in 1260, and was sacked.
It has in more recent days produced many theologians and men of
Muhammadan learning.
In the Turko-Egyptian war of the middle of last century, fighting took
place there, the Egyptian army bombarding the city. A large barrack
built by their commander, Ibrahim Pasha, still stands, to harbour
Turkish soldiers, just outside the town.
That I was unable to explore the now empty fortress was a great
disappointment, but even had it been possible, I could have learned
nothing more than the many historians and archæologists who have
visited it, and provided the reading public with every detail of its
history, past and present. Besides this, Aleppo has been one of the
best known of Oriental cities, particularly to English people, for here
have lived and died agents of the Levant Company, and our Levant trade
has ever had Aleppo for a prominent buyer.
Like Diarbekr, Mosul, and Bagdad, Aleppo lost much of its importance
with the opening of the Suez canal, previous to which time it had
been on the northern overland route to the East. Still, the advent of
the railway, feeble as that is, has done something to restore it to
its former importance, though the Turks, as everywhere else that they
rule, have cast the blight of their presence upon it. At present it
manufactures a large quantity of cotton cloth which is exported very
largely Eastwards, and forms the principal dress material for the
population of Southern Turkish Kurdistan and Northern Mesopotamia.
I had hardly been in Aleppo half a day, at a filthy place boasting
the name of “Hotel de Syrie,” kept by an Armenian--a fact which did
not prevent Musulmans staying there--when a Turkish coachman turned
up willing to take me to Diarbekr, the next big town on my route. I
held out for two days’ grace, but he, having clients at the other end
waiting to be brought back, would hear of no delay, and so after a few
hours I found myself mounted in one of those queer vehicles that ply
between the cities of Syria.
The concern is rather like a punt on wheels. A wooden or canvas-covered
top shelters passenger and driver, and curtains, when they exist, may
be let down to guard the traveller from sun and storm. In this all the
luggage must be placed, and comfort depends upon the skill with which
things are arranged. Fortunately I had little, and putting my only
trunk at the fore end I was able to retain a large square space, with a
mattress under me to sit or recline upon.
Small articles like water-pots or samovars are tied on outside at
various points, and there exist till broken or squashed, their almost
inevitable fate. Commissariat has also to be arranged, for the supply
_en route_ is sometimes uncertain. Travelling light as I was, we only
carried flaps of bread, some dates and onions. Fruit was unfortunately
not in season in this month of March.
My coachman for some reason took me for a Haji returning from Mecca,
and I found this such an excellent disguise, ensuring such civility on
the road, that I was content to let it stand, till too late to change,
and forthwith wound about my fez the white handkerchief which is a sign
of the pilgrim homeward bound. We left Aleppo in our carriage thus
one noonday, and a few minutes outside the town and over the ridge,
one looked round and saw nothing but the yellow Syrian desert devoid
of hills, the surface only occasionally disturbed by Arab villages,
like clusters of anthills, the style of architecture as far as the
Euphrates being all of the sugar-loaf pattern. For some hours our two
ponies took us along the level track--there is no made road--till
nearly sunset, when among a few mounds we suddenly came upon a village
the natives call Bāb. Doubtless proximity to Aleppo may account for
the excellent little bazaar, cleanly and good caravanserai, in one of
whose upper rooms, overlooking the courtyard full of mules, donkeys,
camels, horses, and sheep, I found a resting-place. Built of white
stone, this caravanserai in point of comfort was one of the best I
have seen in many years’ wanderings. Design it had none--one block of
rooms, some nine feet above ground, formed one side. Opposite were
large stables, on the roof of which was the row of rooms of which I
occupied one. The entrance to the caravanserai was the usual kind of
deep porch with small chambers on either side, and above the archway of
the entrance the enterprising architect had constructed two excellent
rooms with glass windows, for the wives of wealthy travellers, opening
on to a little fenced space of roof where they might promenade. The
“khanchi” or keeper of the serai pointed to this with pride. The rooms,
he informed us, were special accommodation for travelling pashas and
such great game, and the chicken-run of a promenade was considered to
be absolutely the last word in the progress of architecture.
[Sidenote: BAB]
The first experiences of travelling in native guise reveal many little
things one never thought of before, when, as Europeans, we arrived at a
stage, had our room quickly swept and carpeted, camp tables and chairs
set out, and steaming tea swiftly produced. Certainly I did not have to
sweep my room on this occasion, though subsequently I learned to wield
the three blades of grass they call a broom in these parts. Water, too,
the khanchi fetched. But my small belongings, which it was not safe to
leave in the carriage, I had to bring up, and made several journeys up
and down the narrow steps from courtyard to roof, laden with mattress,
quilt, blanket, and the bags and bundles without which one finds it
impossible to travel in the East.
Then I discovered that I needed tea very badly, so I had to go
downstairs with my tin samovar, draw water from a well, fill it,
and beg the lighted coal from a coachman whom I saw smoking a
hubble-bubble. This done, I retired to my heights again, and after some
time enjoyed a glass of tea and some dry bread.
At this juncture my coachman appeared, and expressed his astonishment
that I had not followed the custom of travellers arriving in a strange
place--to visit the bazaar.
This I had omitted to do, in fact had not thought of it. Now it was
just sunset, I had no dinner to eat, the bazaar was closing; and worse,
there was nothing, not even bread, in my bags for to-morrow’s twelve
hours in the desert. By this time I could get on fairly well with
Turkish, but suddenly my coachman exclaimed, in a fit of geniality,
“Az kurmānjī dazānam” (“I know Kurdish”!), and I found in a moment a
new means of communication, for though I did not know the Kermanji
dialect well, it is sufficiently near some others I did know, to be
intelligible. I found afterwards that from the fact of my hailing
Kurdish as an old friend, my coachman, who had been at some pains to
find out my native place, a point always to be settled with one’s
travelling companion in the East, had at once registered me as a native
of Persian Kurdistan. So with status as a Haji of Kurdistan conferred
on me, I was introduced as such by my friend the coachman to all and
sundry.
Here he proved a real friend, for he offered to show me the bazaar and
try to get bread and some dinner before closing time. The bazaar was
a small one, but fortunately there was a tiny cookshop, where exactly
three kinds of very greasy pilau were on sale. From these I selected
the least uninviting, and arranged for the proprietor to send a couple
of plates of it to the caravanserai. We went into the village baker’s,
and there I found the great advantage of being, first, a Haji, and
next, a strange Haji. At first the man, who was closing his shop, was
very loth to serve us; but my guide, in tones of pained remonstrance,
mentioned that I was a Haji, and the man hesitated, and finally
began to throw bread into his scales. As a means to get full weight,
Muhammad, the coachman, threw in the remark that I was a stranger
from far away, knowing neither tongue, nor country, nor custom. The
worthy baker, with a sententious remark upon the virtue of honouring
the stranger and the acquisition of merit, threw in an extra piece and
looked to me for the pious expression that was his due, and which I
was fortunately able to supply in Arabic, much to his gratification.
When we asked him the price, he actually told us the right amount
without any haggling, and remarked upon the wickedness of harassing
the stranger. This excellent attitude I found in many places, that is,
wherever there were Kurds or Arabs. Turks are another race in manner
and custom. I found my dinner waiting at the caravanserai, and invited
my coachman to partake, for I knew that the humble station I occupied
in the social scale was only equal to, if not lower than, that of a
coachman.
[Sidenote: A JUST MAN]
With frank gratitude he squatted opposite me, and with our fingers we
finished the mess. Previous experience in Persia had taught me how to
negotiate semi-liquid dishes with a piece of bread and two fingers,
or consume piles of rice without feeding one’s surroundings. Also I
knew the style of ablution necessary, and the formulæ of thanksgiving
after eating. This latter was not called for on the road, for religious
observance falls into considerable desuetude among the slaves of the
desert track. Dinner finished--it took about three minutes--we shared
each other’s cigarettes, and as he departed to attend to his horses and
I retired under a fold of my coat in a corner of the room, I felt that
once more I was back in that generous and genial East that I had known
before, so many hundreds of miles nearer the rising sun.
Next morning before daybreak we were up and on the way, and the sun
rising showed us the same yellow undulating plain with now a range
of distant hills to the north of us. We were not taking the usual
track across the desert, which goes as a rule more northwards towards
Birejiq, a town whose chief feature is a castle built during the wars
of the Crusade.
Our way lay towards Membich, a city with almost the most ancient
history of the Syrian desert--Karkhemish always excepted. We were
traversing the lands which have seen the cultivation of the great
Hittite nation that is said to have had its capital at Karkhemish
but a few miles from here, about 3500 B.C., an age only excelled by
Babylonia herself. From that time till the conquest of these lands by
the Assyrians, some 700 years B.C., the king of the Hittites ruled over
what was then doubtless a fertile country. It is about the Euphrates
banks that some of the greatest battles of the world have raged.
Hittite, Assyrian, Greek, Parthian, have all fought for Syria, and won
and lost it; and Membich, that had a temple to the goddess Atergatis
(of whom more hereafter), existed as a wealthy city, and stood for
all these centuries, to be despoiled at the hand of a Roman plebeian,
a place-buyer, whose ambition and greed eventually brought him to
well-deserved ruin. This was Marcus Lucius Crassus, who in 54 B.C.,
in a campaign against the Parthians, “entered the shrine, carefully
weighed all the offerings in the precious metals, and then ruthlessly
carried them off.”[3]
The town was not, however, destroyed, for it was ceded by Anthony, some
twenty years later, to a deserter from Parthia, who, after holding it
for a few months, once more returned to Parthia, leaving it in Roman
hands.
To a field of ruined walls, piles of enormous carven stones, mounds
betokening ancient buildings, we came that evening. Upon the highest
mound is now a little mosque, and the place is peopled by a number of
Circassian immigrants, who in their Cossack dress looked singularly
out of place among the Arabs around them. On all sides are the remains
of ancient buildings, stones too great to carry away. Their principal
use to-day appears to be to wall in the fields of grain, and when not
too large for transport, to form new buildings in the dirty, squalid
village, whose accommodation--three filthy rooms, all that remains of a
caravanserai--is in keeping with the tone of the place.
[Sidenote: MEMBICH]
Here we blessed the foresight that had made us bring some eatables
from Bāb, for the surly inhabitants refused to supply anything but
eggs, which were at the price of six for the equivalent of a penny.
The water was bad, our supply being from a shallow well (just outside
a particularly odorous cesspool), from which half the village came to
draw water.
Since there was no bazaar to go to, nothing to do, nothing to buy and
eat, I spent the time sitting on my door-step, for there were too many
flies to share the room with, and nightfall and sleep came very welcome.
FOOTNOTE TO CHAPTER II:
[3] Rawlinson, _Parthia_, p. 152.