FROM THE EUPHRATES TO THE TIGRIS, EDESSA (URFA), AND AMID (DIARBEKR)
There are, I believe, no remains in Membich of the temple of Atergatis
which Crassus spoiled, and even at Karkhemish there is nothing but a
mound unopened and kept closed by the Turks, to show where a great
goddess, probably the greatest goddess of ancient times, was worshipped.
In reading the histories of Chaldea, Syria, Canaan, the Hittites,
Israelites, Phœnicians, and Greeks, there appears as the chief goddess
in their mythology always a goddess of victory, or love, and it is
interesting to trace the course of this deity through the religions
of the ancient East. The Chaldean race, which inhabited the lowlands,
at the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris, from ages far beyond our
knowledge, had, from earliest times set up a goddess, “Belit,” the
lady, and it is from her that the later goddesses of other nations, or
rather the later names and worship, sprang.
It is now known that the Hittites (for whose history the world is
indebted to the wonderful research of Professor Sayce) were an
extraordinarily powerful nation, that held the lands of Syria from
about 3700 B.C.[4] to 700 B.C., when the Assyrians overcame them.
During this period they came into contact with the civilisation of
Babylon, and, long before the appearance of the Syrians as a nation,
probably adopted the worship of Belit or Ishtar (the same deity), whose
name they altered to Atergatis. The worship of Atergatis was general
among the peoples of Canaan (Syria), under the name of Ashtoreth, or
Ashtaroth as we find it in the Bible.
[Sidenote: BEL AND ASHTORETH]
The Canaanitic mythology also supplied a fundamental idea of male and
female essence in Baal and Ashtaroth, with whom we are familiarised by
the Bible stories; and this idea of the origin of fecundity and power,
Baal, the God of all the living principles, according to the Canaanitic
peoples, was the deity after whom the Israelites so often strayed; and
Ashtaroth, the goddess of motherhood, love, and sensuality, necessarily
was coupled with him.
Baal or Bel, or Moloch, the Sun-god, or Dagon, are all names of the
same god, according to different tribes and peoples, who adopted this,
probably the earliest conception of any worship of the supernatural
arising from reverence of the sun and moon as the emblems of day and
night, fire and moisture, heat and cold, light and dark, life and
death, as twin gods of these antithetic phenomena--in short, the
symbols of existence at all.
So we find the goddess Ishtar worshipped by the Phœnicians as
Ashtoreth, by the Hittites as Atergatis, by the Philistines and
Canaanites as Derketo, the fish-goddess (whose emblem and likeness was
that of a half-woman, half-fish, as that of Dagon, the god, was that of
a fish-man).
It was of course to these that the high places whereon they erected
“Asherah,” or places of adoration, were dedicated, and against them
that the prophets of Israel were sent.
Thus we find Elijah sent against the priests of Baal (the Syrian
version, the fire-god), who called upon their god, since he had in
their mythology retained the first principle of fire, to send down that
element.
However, Ishtar, or whatever one of her names we may call her, played
a more important part in the history of Western Asia than the Sun-god
himself. To her, temples were erected by all the nations worshipping,
and she retained through all, the suzerainty over the planet Venus, her
particular sign and emblem.
Yet even among the Assyrians, who probably exalted her name more than
any other nation, she bore a dual character, for we read that she had a
temple at Nineveh and another at Arbela--a place dedicated originally
to four gods. Now the Ishtar of Nineveh was essentially a goddess of
love and luxury, who ruled the planet Venus; but she of Arbela gave
victory in battle and strengthened the arm of the warrior.
It was at any rate a powerful and compelling religion this, that lasted
through four thousand years of battles, of races that appeared, rose
to importance and vanished, of peoples as little in sympathy with
natural feeling as the Phœnicians and Assyrians, as the Hittites or
Chaldeans. The worship of this goddess went on claiming homage from
the mighty kings of the Hittites, the Chaldeans, and the Assyrians,
keeping subject the host of nations, great and small, from Persia to
the Mediterranean coast.
And now we are told that the Hittite kingdom extended to Ionia, and
temples were erected to the goddess at Ephesus and Smyrna. Here came
the Greeks as colonists, and, adopting the hosts of female attendants
and priestesses as a basis, founded the legend of the Amazons. Not only
that, but they adopted and adapted the worship of Atergatis, giving her
a Greek name, under which she achieved a greater fame and commanded a
greater reverence than any goddess of the pure Greek mythology.
And here, in this hamlet of Membich that was called Hierapolis during
Greek supremacy, was one of the chief Syrian temples in the last day
of her worship (54 B.C.). When this occurred, the Hittites had been
gone into the oblivion of the past some 650 years, but the goddess, and
perhaps her temple, an offshoot of the greater temple of Karkhemish,
still stood.
For what we know of the Hittites we are indebted, as above mentioned,
to Professor E. G. Sayce, who first announced to an astonished world
of Orientalists and students, a great Hittite nation, the existence of
which had been to that day--not two decades ago--absolutely unknown.
[Sidenote: THE HITTITES]
We now know that the Hittite empire lasted for the enormous period of
about 3000 years.
The Chaldean chronicles mention them as a nation, in the date 3500 B.C.
(_circa_). The seat of the nation appears to have been at Karkhemish,
but before that they had been domiciled in the Taurus Mountains and the
hills of Armenia, whence they descended, a hardy mountain race, to the
lowlands of Canaan.
They were the descendants of Heth, son of Canaan (Genesis x. 15), and
once settled in Karkhemish, where the chief temple to Atergatis was
built (modern Jerabulus), extended their kingdom from the Bosphorus
to the confines of Egypt, with whose Pharaohs they fought long and
sanguinary battles.
Like all peoples in the East, even in the present day, they would
appear to have been tribal in constitution, but their chief king was he
of Karkhemish, with a lieutenant king at Kadesh in the south.
However, their might, long-lived as it was, fell before the onrush of
the Assyrians, then but a young race, comparatively newly separated
from the Chaldeans and Babylonians, and in 700 B.C. the last of the
Hittite kings, who had been for some time tributary to Sargon, rebelled
against his stronger neighbours, was defeated, and the last remnant of
the Hittite empire, which had grown weak and dismembered, was destroyed
and forgotten.
At Karkhemish, the capital through so many centuries of the Hittite
empire, and chief city of the worship of Atergatis, there remains now
but the great mound. War has again raged over the remains of greater
combatants, for the Turks were defeated by the Egyptians there half a
century ago.
Its interest to-day lies in the fact that the Bagdad railway is planned
to cross the river just by the mound of Karkhemish, so we may look for
bulky volumes in German some day, which will give us fuller particulars
of this ancient city than we possess at present.
We left Membich very early next morning, and _en route_ discovered that
several other carriages had put up in the place during the night; for
both behind and before were rumbling, swaying vehicles, two or three
full of luggage, and the rest carrying passengers. From Membich the
country--as barren as ever--began to get a little hilly, and in the far
northern distance we could see the Kurdish mountains in the province of
Mamurat ul Aziz, at this time of the year well capped with snow.
For a few hours we got along at a good pace among the low hills, till
we received a sudden check from a very steep place going down, and
as we turned the elbow of a hillock, the Euphrates appeared below
us, an angry, rushing river of very considerable width. By devious
and dangerous ways we arrived at a broad foreshore, to find half a
dozen carriages already arrived, and by the time the contingent from
Membich had been drawn up there were twelve all in a line, the horses
unsaddled, waiting to be ferried across by a craft rather like a
high-prowed longship cut in half at the waist. Upon the high stern a
man wielded an enormously long steering-oar and two or three others
with poles and oars supplied a propelling power. But it was not merely
a question of rowing across; there were but two landing-places, one
on either side, and the current was of such a force as to render it
absolutely necessary to tow the craft about a mile above the proposed
landing-place on the opposite bank. Then, shoving off, everybody
exerted their utmost strength to get the clumsy craft across the river,
and if they were sufficiently quick and strong, they would perhaps hit
the spot where the waiting carriages stood. If they came to shore lower
down, there was of course nothing to do but tow back again. Necessarily
the transit of a couple of carriages and their horses (the utmost
capacity of the ferry), counting from the time another party had landed
on the opposite bank, took two or three hours.
Our large party of passengers, seeing that delay would inevitably
occur, were disposed to come to an amicable arrangement regarding
precedence. Unfortunately we discovered that half the vehicles were
hired by the Chief of Police of Urfa to transport himself, his goods
and womenfolk, and though he had--from what his fellow-travellers
said--evinced no desire for speed so far, he now turned upon every one
of us who talked of arranging an order of crossing, brandished his
sword, and upbraided the company in general for proposing any such
arrangement in his presence, which should be sufficient to give us the
clue to all matters of precedence.
[Sidenote: A EUPHRATES FORD]
He would go first with all his goods and women, and whoever paid him
would follow him in the order of the magnitude of their contribution.
The Turkish and Armenian drivers seemed so effectually cowed by
his disagreeable appearance and offensive manners, that most of
them--ignoring his offer of precedence by payment--retired some
distance and began to lunch, content to let him get clear away. Two
cartloads of Christians of Urfa, however, intimidated by his continued
attempts to extort money, paid and got away during the afternoon.
The remainder of us arranged who should go first, and, making the best
of the hours we had to wait, composed ourselves to that which fills up
so much of the idle time of the East--sleep.
It was nearly sunset before we finally got across, and found ourselves
on the broad plain of the Euphrates valley. With all despatch we
harnessed up and set out. Arriving at the caravanserai, we found it
full of the effendi and his chattels, and the travellers who had
followed him; so, making the best of a bad job, we went on, trusting to
luck to find a place to sleep.
We had traversed the plain and were gradually ascending a pleasant
hilly country by moonlight, when the driver descried a cluster of
sugar-loaf roofs just off the road, and we stopped to interview the
inhabitants.
A couple of finely built men came out, apparently Arabs, but they had
not spoken half a dozen words to one another before we saw that they
were Kurds. This resolved both the driver and myself to stay, for the
Kurds, with all their bad reputation, are better hosts than Armenian,
Turk, or Arab. Eventually, when a number of children and sheep had
been dragged out from what appeared to be a cellar, they told me
that the best room in the place was at my disposal. Descending three
steps, and passing along a dark narrow corridor, I found myself in a
circular chamber whose high sugar-loaf roof was invisible in the gloom
undispersed by a tuft of burning brushwood.
The Kurds, with continual joking and merriment, tripping one another
up, as they brought in the baggage, eventually deposited all my
belongings in the room, and then installed themselves. The hamlet had
a population of some fifteen men and women, and within five minutes
these were all gathered around my strip of carpet. One of them knew
Turkish, and tried it on me, taking me for a Turk; but when I replied
in Kurdish, telling them I did not understand Turkish, they evinced
considerable satisfaction, and hailed me as a brother Kurd, albeit
of some other tribe (these were of the Milli), but nevertheless a
fellow-countryman, and to be treated as a guest. And right well did
these simple people act up to the fine old Kurdish law of hospitality.
They possessed little enough of the world’s goods, but their best
fowl was sacrificed to the occasion, eggs in numbers sufficient for
ten men were produced. Every one of them except the headman, who sat
by as host, busied himself about something. One made a fire in the
centre of the room, making gloomier the gloom with pungent smoke;
another fetched water for washing--they would not let me go outside
in the keen wind, to the spring. One heated water for tea, while his
companions killed and plucked and commenced cooking the fowl. Surplus
eggs they hard-boiled and put up for my journey next day. I felt
ashamed to be imposing thus upon these simple and genuine people, only
I knew that utter incredulity would have met any attempt I might have
made to undeceive them. What could they think of a man whose only
means of communication not only with them, but with the whole world
of Syria, was Kurdish? I found, however, that the appreciation they
evinced for tea and good cigarettes, luxuries unknown to them except
by name, quite outbalanced my qualms. The unfortunate driver, who was
subject to fits of surliness, finding his protégé in such a state of
independence, gave way to a period of disagreeableness which the jibes
of the Kurds did nothing to dispel, and finally retired to sleep among
his horses’ legs. As a race, Kurds are a witty and facetious people,
great lovers of practical jokes; but I think these excelled any I ever
met in this particular feature. The stance was one continual roar of
laughter; despite their inquisitiveness, their personal remarks, their
habit of fingering everything, the whole tone of their behaviour was
too obviously ingenuous and well meant, possibly to offend any but
Turks, whom they cursed and reviled, and made the subject of many
unmentionable pleasantries. About ten o’clock the headman, a handsome
fellow, doubly important in the possession of the village rifle, told
everyone to clear out and let me sleep, and they retired, driven by the
butt of the ancient fire-arm.
[Sidenote: A KURDISH VILLAGE]
I was composing myself to sleep when a young woman came in, and began
quietly to sweep the room with a bunch of twigs. Not unnaturally I
sat up and regarded her with some astonishment, not lessened when she
produced from a recess some bedding, which she put down beside mine. I
was hardly in a position to make a remark upon her obvious intention to
share the room, but the situation was saved by the appearance of one
of my friends of the earlier evening. He saw me sitting up, and asked
why I did not sleep, as if the proceedings which had just taken place
were too ordinary for remark, and I learned in reply to half-formed
questions that he was the house-owner, his wife the sweeper, and that
owing to the size of the village, which possessed but two rooms fit to
sleep in, they were going to spend the night beside me. This method of
procedure was propounded by him in such a matter-of-fact way, and was
so apparently quite the thing to do, that I could not, nor did I wish,
to make any remark upon what was a purely patriarchal custom. What
I learned was, that had I been a Turk or Arab, they would have told
me to sleep in the carriage; but being a Kurd, and a guest, I must
excuse their presumption in occupying the room, which was my exclusive
property. The poor man even seemed somewhat ashamed at having possibly
broken some unwritten rule of hospitality, but I did my best to put him
and his wife at ease, and we literally lay down together.
I was awakened by the wife early in the morning; her man yet slumbered.
She herself carried out the small luggage to the carriage, and then two
or three villagers turned out and loaded up the heavy things. Last of
all the headman appeared, and, as we drove away, the sound of his rough
hearty farewells rang in my ears. These were the first Kurds I met, the
outposts of a great race, that covers 125,000 square miles of mountain
in Turkey and Persia, and who, despite the fact that their outlying
tribes are but fourteen days distant from London, are the least known
of any Middle Eastern race; albeit they are one of the bravest, most
independent, and intelligent of all, cursed only by the black mark of
the blood-feud, and a terrible propensity to brigandage.
The way to our next station was across an undulating plain peopled
by Armenians, and sedentary Kurds of the Milli tribes. For miles and
miles we rolled along between ploughed lands, where the grain was
just beginning to send its green spikes above earth. From the north a
keen wind came at a temperature obviously lowered by the snow on the
hills, about whose shoulders rags of cloud were beginning to collect,
to drench the land and the travellers therein but a few days later.
In fact, rain had already fallen by the afternoon--when we found
ourselves upon a dreary and immense plain of mud, sticky, clayey soil,
into which the wheels and the horses sank. Our station, Charmelik, was
visible in the far distance, a distance we seemed never to be able to
reduce, for the sticky prospect spread out on all sides, and our speed
was about half a mile an hour. Sudden showers began to fly round the
country. One could count them as they descended from the hills, and
progressing swiftly--columns of dark rain descending from dense black
cloud-centres--did the round of the soaked plains, and apparently
returned to the mountains and the solid mass of cloud that hung about
them.
[Sidenote: CHARMELIK]
However, we did arrive at Charmelik at sunset, and put up in a little
room. The village is a Kurdish one, and talk among the inhabitants was
mostly of Ibrahim Pasha, the famous robber chief who held this country
in terror for so long.
So bad a character was he, this outlaw (who adopted his trade in
revenge for the Turkish treachery that brought his father to a
miserable end), that Kurd and Arab alike disclaimed him; Kurd asserting
that he was Arab, and Arab calling him Kurd.
The body of ruffians and thieves that joined him were of every
class--Turk, Armenian, Kurd, and Arab. All served under his standard,
and by his disregard for the property of any tribe or people he drew
upon himself the enmity of his own kinsmen, the Milli Kurds.
But like every astute robber and scoundrel in the Turkish dominions,
he bought the Sultan’s favour, and could and did ridicule all the
efforts of local government to catch him. For the most part he
frequented the hills that border on the Mesopotamian plain to the
north, but he was also a power in Viran Shahr and Harran to the south,
where he kept everyone in a lively fear of him. Not until the Turks
arranged themselves into a Constitution was this powerful brigand, by
a ruse, caught and killed, and the heterogeneous collection of rascals
dispersed.
The villagers of Charmelik related how his men would follow travellers
into the village, instal themselves in the best room, order a meal,
and having rested and smoked a pipe or two, stroll out, calmly load
the traveller’s effects upon his own cart and take them away to their
nearest camp. So much were their reprisals feared--for revenge upon a
village was burning and extermination--that not a single person dared
protest. Even Turkish officers and officials had to submit to this
treatment, and, so the reminiscent throng round the fire assured me,
suffer a good beating in the bargain for being of the detested race.
Altogether, Ibrahim Pasha’s was one of the most successful and best
organised of the Kurdish raiding parties, and numerically the most
powerful. The only other combination, formed solely for the purpose of
brigandage and revenge, was that of the Hamavand, whose acquaintance I
made later, in southern Kurdistan.
We left this village next morning in a freezing cold, and the sun
coming up, found us gradually ascending through gullies and defiles
into a considerable range of hills. In that much-abused country,
Persia, I have travelled many hundreds of miles by carriage, but
I must in justice say, that the worst tracks in that maligned and
unhappy country are paved boulevards compared to the carriage-ways
of Turkey. Here, within easy distance of the sea and of the
influence of Constantinople, the track passes untouched by any of
the French-speaking, liquor-loving effindis appointed to look after
such things; whereas in Persia there are excellent roads built by the
foreign enterprise that she sometimes welcomes and Turkey discourages;
and where the European engineer has not made smooth the way, the
Persian himself, with no other notion than to ease the pains of
travellers, has done his best, by clearing stones and putting down
causeways.
For hours we ascended ravines, and slid, banging, down hill-sides,
boxes and chattels of all descriptions almost taking charge despite
their substantial lashings. Do what one might, inconsequent
paraphernalia, eatables, small articles, would leap out and roll away,
and one had the greatest difficulty in exercising sufficient restraint
upon the overwhelming inclination to follow head first. For miles both
myself and the driver walked, helping the wheels over rocks, piloting
the carriage round corners of rocky zigzags, or helping the horses in
desperate efforts to haul up slopes.
Here and there was a little patch of cultivation among the stones, and
a spring made green narrow places in almost every valley. As we neared
Urfa, our next stopping-place, ancient cave-dwellings, now unoccupied,
began to occur, and bits of carved stone here and there lay about.
In one flat plain, some two miles across, were the remains of a large
square building, of the style one associates with pre-Muhammadan times,
when mud did not enjoy its present popularity with masons.
[Sidenote: URFA]
However, our troubles ceased suddenly, for turning a particularly bad
corner we found ourselves upon a very well-made road that continued all
the way into Urfa. This is, I believe, the only made road in Syria, and
was the outcome of a project to construct a military and commercial
route as far as Diarbekr. The effort expired a few miles north-east
of Urfa. Once upon this, we saw what would have been our fate without
it, and I quite believed the driver’s statement that, previous to its
construction, the passes were not negotiable by wheeled vehicles.
On the way we met with a proof of the curious devotion that leads the
Musulman from the remotest corners of Asia to Mecca. An old man, in
garments that reminded me of Khorasan of Eastern Persia, overtook us,
his stride taking him at a greater pace up the hill than our slow walk.
I asked him, as a venture, in Persian where he came from, and learned
that he was a pilgrim returning on foot from Mecca to Bokhara. His
journey he estimated would have taken him nearly a year, from the time
he started from his native town to the time he saw it again. He had
the appearance of fifty or more years, but none of the feebleness that
might be expected, and marched along--having that day done some twenty
miles of mountain--as if he were just set out.
Beside the road, as we neared Urfa, there were, in bad repair, remains
of an ancient causeway, the original road to the west from Edessa, as
Urfa was known in pre-Christian days. Along the paved way of square
blocks of stone the armies of the Roman and the Parthian had passed in
the days when men worshipped Venus and Astarte.
Urfa, at the foot of this considerable range, stands upon some
hillocks, and once the hideous dwelling of the Governor--built in
imitation French style--is passed, the ancient nature of the town
becomes evident. The peculiar blackness of the massive walls, whose
ruins stand everywhere, the style of the bridges that span the ravine
amid the city, the citadel mounds, topped with ruins of buildings all
of that blackened stone, tell something of the history of Edessa. And
in the hills above the light yellow cliffs that look down, are the
innumerable cave-dwellings of the ancients, now occupied by nondescript
families of sedentary Kurds.
We drew up at a large caravanserai at the edge of the ravine above
mentioned, and I took one of a row of rooms upon its spacious roof,
that afforded a promenade from which one could look up at the
honeycombed hills, or view the clustered houses upon the hummock
forming the Armenian quarter. Contrary to custom, the room, which
opened upon the roof, and faced the courtyard, possessed glassless
windows, looking down upon the street and a coffee-house. This is not
enclosed, but is an extension of the actual coffee-room, the other
side of the caravanserai. Along the moat edge, benches are arranged,
and trees and matting shelters keep the sun off. Along the strip of
road running between this café and the caravanserai walls the town
auctioneers paraded every morning, selling every conceivable article,
from a handful of cartridges to a horse.
Bids were made by the guests in the café as he passed and repassed
singing out the last offer. In many cases his price not being reached,
he would hand the horse, or whatever it might be, back to the owner
and go on with something else, producing the under-priced animal next
morning.
As in nearly all the towns of this empire, half the population of
the streets and nine-tenths of all the café and corner loafers were
effendis in uniform, who never by any chance appeared to have any kind
of duties. In fact, Urfa, I was told, possessed a larger proportion
than any other town of these undesirable fowl. Fortunately, they did
not worry me: I was to learn their skill in annoyance later. Here
the attractions of coffee and pipes apparently outweighed those of
the possible piastre of the traveller. The population, apart from
these signs of Turkish might, is composed of Kurds and Arabs, and an
enormous number of Armenians. The Kurds come from the north, mostly
out of the hills of Mamuret ul Aziz; the Arabs are from the plains of
Mesopotamia, and probably have the claim to be considered the original
inhabitants. The language is Kurdish and Arabic. Kurdish is understood
by all, for it has forced itself upon the partially alien population
as it does everywhere, displacing older established languages with its
extraordinary virility and vitality.
[Sidenote: EDESSA]
The town is not a large one, but its bazaar is very busy, and its
Government House always thronged with people. There is a square with a
few trees, and the place is sprinkled with bits of old buildings, some
adapted to modern use, and others built into new walls. Under the hills
one is shown the Pool of Abraham, who is supposed to have performed
various feats here. The water-supply is plentiful, the scenery around
beautiful in its ruggedness and the fantastic nature of its hills,
and I was told that there are very pretty gardens in the immediate
vicinity. It is one of those places one sees so often in Asiatic
Turkey, where life could be peaceful among beautiful surroundings and
prosperity assured, were it not for the Turks and their misrule.
Urfa, or Edessa as the Romans called it, stood in Assyrian times upon
the borders of Greater Assyria, and “the lands of Nairi,” the highlands
immediately to the north, which are now known as the western end of
Kurdistan, and its name does not appear as a city till the time of the
Roman invasion, when we hear of it as the capital of the country of
Osrhœne, whose kings were always called Abgarus, according to the Roman
mutilation of the Semitic name. The people were Arabs; and Edessa,
while capital, marked the most northerly point of the kingdom.
At the same time the kingdom was on the northern marches of
Mesopotamia, and always being in a position of a frontier state between
Roman and Parthian, Arab and mountaineer--either Armenian or Kurd,
though it is not known if the Kurds had spread so far west--was
subjected to the fury of all its neighbours in wars, and played traitor
to each on many occasions.
After the break-up of the Empire of Alexander, about the third century
B.C., Mesopotamia fell into the hands of the Seleucid princes, and as
they weakened, the northern portion of their kingdom fell before the
advancing Romans. It was with Pompey (65 B.C.) that the king of Edessa,
Abgarus, king of the people of Osrhœne, made a treaty, and accepted
actual if not formal vassalage.
Ten years later, Crassus, as already mentioned, made his expedition
against the rising power of Parthia, and was deceived and deserted by
Abgarus after being lured into a position of danger. Thereupon Edessa
became allied to Parthia, and incidentally saved itself from the
destruction consequent upon conquest.
A century later, and we see the Parthian Empire torn over a question
of succession: Meherdates, a Parthian prince, at the suggestion of
Rome, proceeds to win his kingdom by the sword from Godarz. _En route_
he passes by Edessa, and now the Abgarus, with a ready facility for
duplicity, after feasting him, sets him upon a road he knows will
end in disaster. His theory was fully borne out by the defeat of the
pretender at Erbil.
After the death of this versatile monarch, little is heard of Edessa
till A.D. 115, when the Emperor Trajan established himself there, in
preparation for an invasion of Parthia. Edessa was a convenient spot
for such a step, being within easy reach of the Mediterranean _via_
Aleppo, and commanding the road from Syria to the East.
Having prepared his army, he set out southwards; but while he subdued
southern Mesopotamia, the reigning Abgarus, taking an advantage of
Trajan’s absence, promptly rebelled, and ejected the Roman garrison
installed in the citadel, whose ramparts and walls still stand on the
southern side of the city.
Vengeance overtook this effort at independence, for during the next
year (A.D. 116), Lucius Quietus, a Roman general, captured the place
and burnt it.
Yet once more we hear of Edessa before it sinks into the temporary
obscurity that followed the fall of the Roman power in Mesopotamia. In
one of the last attempts of Rome finally to crush the Parthians (A.D.
197), Severus, who came from France to try and recover the territories
(Edessa among them) recently conquered by Vologases V. of Parthia,
found Edessa on his way to the East, and the reigning Abgarus, always
ready to turn a complacent face to the man in power, submitted without
a murmur, and handed over his sons to the Romans as hostages.
It was not perhaps remarkable that Edessa, after these centuries of
strife between the great empires, that saw the ebbing and flowing
tide of Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman and Parthian, Roman and Arab,
sweep by and over it, possessed a population of which the Roman and
Greek element, particularly the latter, was an important section. When
Christianity began to spread, the proximity of Edessa to Antioch made
it easy for the bishops of those early days to travel there, and so we
find as a result of the efforts of converts a college springing up in
very early times.
Though there were doubtless many of the Greeks in this college, we are
told that it was the Chaldeans who founded it, and made it famous for
its erudition, and particularly its knowledge of the medical science.
Doubtless Chaldean, Greek, and Arabic were all spoken there; the last
certainly, for Arab pupils of the college, natives of the land towards
Mecca and Medina, were relations of the early Muhammadan saints,
notably Abu Bekr.
This famous school was dissolved by Zeno the Isaurian,[5] and the
Chaldeans, with no loss of zeal, transferred it to Susa, in Khuzistan
of south-west Persia, whence the now famous missionaries of the
Chaldeans to China were despatched.
In 1124 A.D. it had become one of the western strongholds of the
followers of Hasan Sabbah, the Ismailis or Assassins of Crusading fame,
and when they were finally stamped out, a large number were slain in
Edessa, or as it was then called, Urfa; and since then it has taken an
ordinary place in the scheme of the general history of Mesopotamia,
acquiring evil notoriety recently (1895) for the terrible massacres of
Armenians under Turkish instigation.
At Urfa I made the acquaintance of three characters, samples of
the curious results of the shattering of races and medley of their
remnants which has taken place over western Asia. I had noticed two
or three times on my way from Aleppo another carriage with three
occupants, and at Urfa found them occupying the room next to mine.
Their appearance was remarkable. The eldest and leader of the party was
a sinister-looking man, with a big hooked nose, and a huge mouth which
opened at one corner to display the only two teeth he possessed. Upon
his head he wore a turban, and an old overcoat and Turkish trousers,
extremely baggy in the leg and tight at the ankles, completed his
visible attire.
The next in importance was a Kurdish-looking fellow, dark, but with
a humorous twinkle in his little eyes. The headgear was Kurdish too,
the style affected by the northern races. A felt basin cap wound round
with a blue cloth is the head-dress of these people. He had adopted the
peculiar form of head handkerchief usual among the mountain Chaldeans;
that is, instead of making a regular turban, he rolled his cloth till
it made a thick rope, and then twisted it round his felt cap three
or four times. He wore also the hairy Kurdish zouave jacket and wide
trousers. In fact, to the experienced eye he appeared a Kurd of the
Erzeroum district. The third of this trinity was all that the others
were not--absurdly fat, his hairless face formed a grinning moon under
his tiny fez. As coat he wore a garment reaching a little below his
waist, made of shot blue silk, and the bagginess of the upper end of
his trousers exaggerated his already ample breadth to the point of
ludicrousness.
These queer creatures, when in their carriage, spent a great part of
their time chanting in Gregorian tones in a language neither I nor
the coachman could make out. Now and then they would sing a Kurdish
song or a little doggerel in Turkish. Their conversation was carried on
in Arabic and Kurdish, which two of them spoke equally well; only the
middle man, who appeared so Kurdish, confined himself to that language.
At night, now, in the caravanserai, I had a chance of listening to the
crew, and heard them talk in the Kurdish called Kermanji, in Arabic,
in Turkish, and then in this dialect of theirs which contained a good
many Kurdish words. This was distinctly tantalising, and next morning
I made the acquaintance of the one I set down as pure Kurd. He was
very hearty; we spoke in Kurdish, and I found that they had already
ascertained from my driver that I was a southern Kurdish Haji. I now
learned that they, too, were returning from Mecca, and were natives of
Sert, a small town south of Lake Van. No sooner had I heard this than
the secret of their dialect was out. I remembered tales the Chaldeans
of Urumia and Dilman in Persia tell of the mysterious “Gavarnai,” who
come from inaccessible passes among the Kurdish mountains, Gavarnai
calling themselves Christian, but often fleeing from Gavarnai who were
Musulman. The solution of the Gavarnai question is as follows:--
[Sidenote: MYSTERIOUS COMPANIONS]
The district of Sert and the Gavar (or rock) district of Kurdistan
is one of the most inaccessible of the many sealed corners of this
mountain country, and it was here that the descendants of the Chaldeans
and Assyrians fled before the hordes of the Tatars in the early
fifteenth century, finding an asylum among the Kurdish tribes.
Here in the beautiful valleys of Sert they settled, and many became
Musulman among the Kurds. Others fled from Sert before the blood-feuds
of their own kinsmen, who gradually learned from the Kurds a hardy
recklessness and bravery unknown of their ancestors of the towns and
plains, and pushed farther into the mountains.
In quite recent times the village of Khusrava, now a considerable town,
was founded by a Chaldean fugitive or explorer from the Sert valleys,
named Nicolai, about 1780.
This statement I put here upon the authority of a native of Khusrava,
and leave it as it stands, not without remark, however, that the
neighbouring town of Salmas was in pre-Muhammadan days a Chaldean
bishopric, where there were undoubtedly a large number of Chaldeans
among--but not intermarried--with the Armenians of that region.
The language of these Assyrians, sometimes called Neo-Syriac, or
Aramaic, has remained and is spoken, though now known as a language of
the Christians, by a great part of the sedentary Musulman population of
the Sert plain, who, though calling themselves Kurds, are of Chaldean
descent.
Such were two of my new acquaintances, the eldest and youngest. My
particular friend, though he knew the dialect, came from a hill
village, and besides proving his Kurdish origin also carried further
proof in his appearance and manners. We became very good friends, and
made many excursions about the bazaars of Urfa together, his tongue,
always ready for badinage in any of four languages, assuring him a
welcome everywhere.
At Urfa I renewed acquaintance with the Kurdish cigarette, which I
suppose must be a unique pattern. The form has been evolved doubtless
by necessity, for the tobacco produced in Kurdistan could never be
rolled into an ordinary cigarette. Instead of pressing, keeping damp,
and eventually cutting the leaf, the Kurds dry it, and pound it to a
coarse powder, which to the uninitiated but intending smoker provided
with cigarette papers would present an insurmountable difficulty.
Consequently a special form of paper, affording employment in its
manufacture to hundreds of women in Diarbekr and Mosul, has been
invented.
The paper is thicker and coarser than an ordinary cigarette paper, and
at least twice as long, and in the packets one buys they are already
stuck together, forming slightly tapering tubes. A long slip of thick
paper 1 inch broad is taken, and rolled into a plug which is inserted
in the narrow end, its natural spring retaining it in place. Tobacco is
then poured in from the top, and after sufficient coaxing and shaking
down, the edges of the paper are turned in to retain the contents. The
greatest disadvantage of this style of cigarette is that the tobacco
being absolutely dry, and in tiny chips, does not hold together when
smoked, the glowing head continually falling off.
[Sidenote: DEPARTURE FROM URFA]
Here in Urfa little else was smoked, and as I knew that eventually I
must get used to them, I resolved to procure decent cigarettes as long
as possible. So I hunted high and low for Turkish Regie productions,
and at last found a dozen boxes, the purchase of which impressed my
Kurdish friend immensely, for these are the one thing in Turkey of
which the price is fixed and about which it is useless to haggle; also,
compared to native cigarettes, they are terribly dear. These that I
bought were twenty for threepence--still double and treble the price
of Kurdish cigarettes. The purchase of these luxuries gained me the
honorary title of effendi from my acquaintances, a title that never
left me till I got buried in the frontier mountains of Persia.
We stayed two days at Urfa, and my new acquaintances of Sert were
detained still longer. So, in departing, I bade them farewell till
Diarbekr, where we should meet again.
From Urfa the road to Diarbekr keeps a mean way between ranges of
mountains, the Karaja in the south-east and the high Kurdistan ranges
to the north-west, called in ancient times Masius and Niphates
respectively by the Romans. In many places the track brings one
near the Euphrates, and traverses a number of ravines carrying down
tributary streams. The general aspect of the country all the way is
great rolling uplands, across which wind and rain come with express
velocity and piercing cold. I believe the road from Severik to Diarbekr
is impassable from December to February. Certainly when we passed in
early April, snow was lying in patches not far away. The prospect is
always immense, always dreary, for, though there is water to be got in
any one of the innumerable gullies of these immense plains, and though
the soil is fertile enough, the Turkish blight is upon the land. In the
distance, more particularly to the north, are the sullen, frowning
masses of the Kurdistan mountains, at this time of the year half hidden
in black clouds, and before and behind apparently limitless plains
rising gradually to the east, till at the highest point one looks down
over the undulating desert with a curious feeling of being left out
in the desolation of utter abandonment, unsheltered from wind, rain,
and snow, and lost in the immensity of a silent death-like solitude of
infinitely sinister aspect.
And these plains and mountains have from immemorial time been the
boundaries, natural and political, of the south and north lands. The
high dark range over north--Niphates we must call it, since to-day it
has lost its general name--gives birth to the Tigris, the “Arrow.”[6]
It was also the northern boundary of Assyria under the first great
Assyrian monarch, Tiglath-Pileser I. (1100 B.C.). Behind its frowning
walls lay the mysterious lands of the Nairi, whom the Assyrian
monarchs, greater than any of their descendants, succeeded in subduing,
or found necessary to keep chastised periodically. The proudest boast
of the Assyrian monarchs was ever that they had penetrated the lands of
Nairi and subdued their petty kings. And afterwards, the lands of Nairi
were called “Gordyene,” which is “Kurdian” or Kurds, no more and no
less, a fact which supports the Kurdish claim to possession of the land
ever since the first Aryan in the birth of time came forth from central
Asia to people the West.
Here Roman, Parthian, and Greek invader have turned back and set
their faces once more to the merciless plains and downs. Those
gloomy hill-sides have looked down upon the broken armies of all the
greatest Eastern nations, Assyria only excepted, and watched them
as they crawled away, to the south and west, relinquishing all hope
of penetrating the dread country of the fierce Gordyene, forbear of
the not less fierce Kurd of to-day. Strange it is that this sturdy
nation, whose name has stood for rebellion, bravery, and untamable
spirit, should never have taken rank among the more transitory peoples
who never subdued it. Except that they were the Medes--or we imagine
them to be--they have no claim to the historian’s enthusiasm--at any
rate, these western Kurds have not. They remain as ever, indomitable,
invincible, proud, unsubdued, broken only by their own quarrels, hating
the Powers that nominally rule them. Secure in their defiles and
mountains, and in their archaic language, they cede no jot of their
exclusiveness, let the West press never so hard.
[Sidenote: A TURKISH ROAD]
This digression from narrative is permitted, I hope, by the lack of
detail worth recording about the road from Urfa to Diarbekr. Except
that for the first half, for two days, the fiendish genius of some
Turkish engineer has induced him to scatter boulders and call it a
road, and then lay down 3 feet of clay on marshy ground, and call that
a road too, the track calls for no remark. There is but one station of
any interest, Suverek.
Referring to notes, I find that two objects struck me as remarkable
when approaching this squalid town upon the plain. One is a square
white building, with rows of glass windows all round, a porched
doorway in front, a Turkish flag on top. This is the Governor’s
house, an example of mean European architecture, isolated, from the
small surroundings that give it a spurious importance, looking cold,
miserable, hollow, and infinitely shoddy, in that vast landscape of
plain and distant hill. The other feature is the mound, like that of
Aleppo, upon which are the remains of the Governor’s house that the
rulers of twenty centuries ago put there, for whose might and whose
right, and whose strong hand the country may sigh as it looks there
upon the work of a mighty past, and here upon those of a little present.
Modern Suverek is a mean town of one-storeyed houses of black stone,
inhabited by sedentary Kurds and Armenians, who are, I believe,
permanently on bad terms, as these two races always are. There are no
streets as we know them; the hovels are clustered together, leaving
alleys of a particular filthiness between. The traveller perforce
puts up in a ruinous caravanserai which is situated fortunately on
the edge of the town, and looks out through its broken doorway to
the desert. The people are peculiarly surly and ill-mannered, and
despite the size of the place nothing seems to be purchasable. When we
arrived it was quite within the nature of things to find all my sugar
finished, and so, leaving my room in charge of an aged Arab woman I
found cupping herself outside in the courtyard, I set out to explore.
My first question to the Armenian who acted as doorkeeper, elicited
the fact that there was a shop round the corner. So round the corner
I waded through pestilential mire, and found the shop. It was an open
booth--the shop of the East--and the stock-in-trade just required three
glances to sum it up. There was a small boy playing with a greyhound.
Behind, upon a sloping shelf, a bag of stones, called cheese in these
parts, where last year’s cheese is a delicacy, and the fresh article
scorned. Two bunches of onions and a few boxes of matches completed the
emporium. So I took my trousers up one more turn, and set forth among
the alleys, displacing Armenian infants from mud-baths, disputing the
right of way with armed Kurds, and finally finding myself in a mosque
courtyard, where I was promptly accosted by a priest, who asked my
religion, and receiving the answer “Islam,” still doubtful, called
upon me to repeat the creed, which done to his satisfaction I made
use of him as a guide, and with his assistance found a shop similar
to the first, where the owner was more enterprising and kept not only
sugar--and sold at a fanciful price--but tea and cigarettes.
Bread, too, I found, but solely by the priest’s goodwill, for, taking
compassion upon this strange Haji, he took me to someone’s house where
bread was being cooked in an earth-oven, and procured for me ten flaps
for twopence.
Fortunately good water was abundant in the courtyard of the serai,
where a nozzle poured out a plentiful supply, filling a broken cistern
and half the yard. Hither came all the Kurdish women to get their
supplies, and I spent an hour sitting on my door-step watching for
an ugly girl--and saw none. We had great difficulty in getting away
next morning, for the Armenian keeper of the place demanded a mejidie
(3s. 4d.) for horse provender from the coachman, and 1s. for my room,
which had leaked upon me all night. An hour was wasted in the doorway
disputing. Half a dozen Armenian loafers hung upon the horses’ heads
while we endeavoured to quell the screams and expostulations of the
keeper of the place. We were forced to pay in the end, or stay where we
were, the only satisfaction being that we passed off a bad five-piastre
piece upon them, and gave the trouble of changing a lira. And so we
drove away, cursing Christians and pagans in general and Armenians in
particular.
[Sidenote: A PASSPORT DIFFICULTY]
Next day we had crossed the high plains and got into the warm desert
towards Diarbekr. As we approached, the black walls rose above the
horizon, and occasionally the gully where the Tigris runs would be
apparent, the yellow of the cliff face showing against the duller
colour of the plain. Approaching from the west, Diarbekr is not
beautiful nor remarkable. In the middle of a great desert, the river,
too, hidden by its cliff banks, Diarbekr appears as a citadel of
black stone without any green or vegetation. Nearer views revise the
unfavourable first impression, for on the slopes and the lands by the
river banks, there are splendid gardens, which in this month of April
were dressed in all the delicate hues of blossom and new leaf. The fine
bluff upon which the city stands, looking up and down the river, is, of
course, invisible from the west, facing the rising sun as it does.
My driver told me to prepare my passport, for he assured me we should
not be allowed to pass the gates through the walls without showing
our credentials. So I produced my passport and got it ready--that
traitorous document, proclaiming me English, British-born, and
Christian!
I began to wonder how the “Kurdish Haji” would look if questions were
asked of the driver, to whom by now I had employed so many pious
Musulman expressions and ventilated such orthodox sentiments, besides
conducting myself in the manner of any other travelling Asiatic, that I
knew he would swear to my Islamism. Not only that, but the police would
certainly never believe that I was a European, my style of travelling,
the only language I knew well--Kurdish--being convincing arguments
against such a possibility. So it was not that I was afraid of being
found out, but that I regarded with some trepidation the possibility
of being accused of having stolen another’s passport, a very heinous
crime indeed. English passports and European correspondence would serve
me little among people where Europeans are very rarely seen, in places
where the Englishman seldom, if ever, travels, and never in such guise.
The weather, too, had done its best to disguise me. I was darkened by
wind and sun; nine days’ black beard scraped the chest left bare by a
buttonless shirt. My trousers were muddy and torn, and I wore a long
overcoat, very much like the robes of any of the myriads of Turkish
subjects who affect a semi-European dress.
[Sidenote: DIARBEKR]
There was no alternative, however; one could not stop outside in the
plain nor enter unperceived, so we drew up just outside the gate in the
massive walls at a police post, and an official demanded my passport.
I handed it to him, and held my breath. The coachman who had seen this
done a thousand times, and took no interest fortunately, seized the
opportunity to descend and buy some cigarettes at a shop near by. The
effendi, unusually civil for his class, asked me where I came from,
and by what route, and where I was going. Hearing that my destination
was Mosul, he seemed to lose interest, but produced a pocket-book and
prepared to note particulars of my passport, when I observed that
he held it upside down and made illegible marks in his book, and I
realised that no art of the Constantinople passport clerk could betray
me, for he was utterly illiterate. He asked my name, and still fearing
eventualities, I repeated my own name very indistinctly, which he aptly
transliterated as Ali as-Sūn, after which all was plain sailing, for
he presupposed that I was a Haji, which the coachman confirmed, and I
let him know I was a British subject, the supplementary fact that I
was Persian-born being supplied by the driver, and so with a polite
good-day we passed on.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER III:
[4] Ragozin, Assyria.
[5] Layard, _Nineveh_, vol. i., p. 249 _n._ Humboldt, _Cosmos_, vol.
ii., ch. 5.
[6] The name Tigris, which we adopted from Western historians, is the
mutilated version of the Medic “tighra,” modern Persian and Kurdish
“tir,” an arrow.