SHAHR-I-ZUR
After four days’ stay in Sulaimania I rose early one morning, in answer
to the summons of a muleteer, and, having packed my belongings and
laid in a small stock of bread, mounted my steed, bade farewell to old
Mustafa Beg, and set out in the dusk before sunrise upon my journey to
Halabja, the place I had come all the way from Constantinople to see.
The road from Sulaimania to Halabja was one of three safe routes out
of that town, being away from the Hamavand country, but even here the
presence of robbers belonging to the shaikhs rendered it impossible for
any but a large caravan to travel. We were therefore to join a main
caravan outside the town. This Halabja caravan is a weekly affair, and
goes very regularly, being conducted by natives of that place.
It was impossible when traversing the town not to notice how much
Persian architecture has influenced the buildings of Sulaimania. All
the older and better houses are built upon the Persian model, the upper
rooms with glass doors giving the place the appearance of a town of
Persian Kurdistan. Everything is very ruinous now, and the perennial
insecurity effectually prevents any attempts at improvement.
Leaving behind us these decaying streets and houses we came out
under the graveyard on the hill, where it had been arranged that the
caravan should collect. However, we found no caravan, but only three
women squatting on the ground clasping bundles; and a half-dozen Jaf
horsemen, bound about with three or four cartridge belts each, and
carrying rifle, knife, and revolver, sat among the young wheat their
horses were cropping. One by one the travellers turned up--men on foot,
on donkeys, on mules, women perched high upon platforms of bedding
hiding everything save the heads and legs of their steeds.
[Sidenote: LEAVE FOR HALABJA]
We were accompanied by an officer going to Khaniqin via Halabja, and
he had been granted an escort of twenty soldiers as far as the latter
place. These at last appeared, and assuming the dignities of escort to
the caravan, blew a bugle several times in the hopes of inducing it to
start.
Our caravan was a large one; half of its members were women returning
from Sulaimania to their native places, villages along the Persian
frontier--Kurds all, except for three blatant Bagdadiennes accompanying
their husbands, Turkish officials, to Khaniqin. The little party to
which I was attached had also its female element, an elderly woman of
the mountain lands of Aoram, mother-in-law of the muleteer, and as such
allowed to ride free of charge upon a minute ass, which expressed its
unwillingness to proceed by sitting down frequently, in streams for
choice.
Once under way over the rolling spurs of the Azmir mountains, our
military escort began to display that zeal for duty which they never
fail to exhibit. Their duty, however, when on the march and in towns
has always seemed to me and to the inhabitants to begin and end with a
practical study of the science of combined annoyance and roguery, theft
and violence, as bearing upon the populace, and in this they attain
remarkable proficiency.
On this occasion their first action was to cast from their donkeys
three or four inoffensive Kurds, and appropriate their animals. An
hour out from Sulaimania the sun began to grow hot, and the soldiers
thirsty, and the water-pots of all travellers were emptied despite
protest, and because of it in two instances, where the soldiers
wantonly broke the pot and spilled its contents.
There was considerable talk of robbers, for the road skirted the
country of the rebellious Hamavand Kurds, and the sudden appearance
of some horsemen upon a hillock caused the guard some uneasiness and
alarm. Being armed with Mauser rifles, they were forced to show some
spirit, and retiring precipitately to a depression they fired a volley
at the riders, fortunately hitting no one. The perfectly peaceable
enemy stopped and shouted something sarcastic, and by their dress and
dialect were recognised as fellows of our own half-dozen horsemen.
On learning this the condition of the army became piteous. Some six
or seven, whose fear of tribal reprisals overcame the influence of
military discipline, made off at the double for town, forgetting the
men they had fired upon. These, seeing from afar the situation, set off
after them with shouts of well-assumed fury. The remainder were penned
about by our own horsemen and were receiving a merciless pounding with
the butts of rifles wielded wisely and ably from the superior position
of horseback. The “yuzbashi”[58] screamed in vain Turkish for bugler
and “bash chaush.”[59] But both lay, one squashed under a horse’s heel,
and the other senseless beneath the belly of a donkey that answered the
yuzbashi with vociferous braying.
Had it not been that among us were a number of people of the Jaf tribe,
into whose lands we were entering, the riders would have now left us,
and entrenched among the hillocks farther on would have attacked and
looted the caravan. Fortunately their anger soon subsided, and the
remaining soldiers, bruised, torn and pitiful, once more resumed their
slouch towards Halabja, keeping as far as possible from the rest of us.
Under the mounting sun we put the hillocks and gullies of Sulaimania
behind us, till ascending a last long slope the plain of Shahr-i-Zur
lay before us, a broad valley dotted with the black tent encampments of
the Jaf tribe, and the many mounds that stand there, relics of ancient
inhabitants and recent villages destroyed by the order of a famous
shaikh, a Sulaimanian saint and notorious scoundrel.
[Sidenote: HALABJA]
The eastern edge of this mountain-bound plain lies under the shadow of
the great mountain wall of Aoraman, frontier of Persia, a wall bounding
the countries of the most secluded and perhaps mysterious of the tribes
of Kurdistan, Aorami and Rizhoi, and of those worshippers of the
Muhammadan saint Ali, who call him God.
Halabja, or Alabja, as it is written, a speck on the far-rising slope
of the plain, was perfectly visible thirty miles away, and between
us and it was the perfect desolation beloved of the Turk. His hand
here nowadays is but feeble, and this district, once a fertile and
prosperous Persian province and still Persian in everything but name,
is entirely under the control of Uthman Pasha, head of the Jaf Kurds,
who own little or no subjectivity to the Turkish Government, and with
the worst possible grace tolerate the presence of the few Turkish
officials at Halabja. Post and telegraph they abolished long ago,
refusing to pay money for patches of paper to stick upon letters they
could carry themselves, and finding a use for telegraph wire in the
manufacture of chains and bullets; so that now, while Halabja possesses
a full-blown post and telegraph master, the office is as much a
sinecure as that of the tax collector, who sits in Sulaimania and begs
crumbs of pay from Uthman Pasha.
This Shahr-i-Zur, whose mounds are full of the coins of Sasanian
Persia and the tokens of Assyria, was till a few decades back the old
sub-province of Gulambar,[60] “The Amber Flower,” from all reports one
of the most beautiful of all the beauties of Kurdistan.
Thickly inhabited by Aoramani tribesmen and Chaldeans, it possessed
innumerable fruit and flower lands, had, and has still, a fine supply
of sweet water, and cool breezes from the high mountains to temper the
heat of the plain.[61]
But the Turks gained possession, and, blight that they are, killed
everything, so that now its only people are the Jaf nomads, who pass
and repass every spring and autumn. All this I had learned, and so
looked with more than usual interest upon the scene till we were
hurried up by the horsemen, who had descried a large body of Hamavand
riders in the distance. With bustle and hurry we fled to the shelter
of a cluster of tents, the residence of a tiny tribe--the Muan--whose
village, deserted in summer, lay half a mile distant in a grove of
willow-trees.
Here we threw our loads upon the plain, and each little party built
about itself a barricade of its own belongings. Wheaten bread being
unknown at this time of the year among the villagers, we had brought
our own, and this we supplemented by a big pot of “du,” the national
drink of Kurdistan.
With nightfall came rain, and unsheltered as we were, all of us became
very wet. Scorpions, which abounded, having, too, an aversion to damp,
took shelter under us, and what with wind, thunder, rain, scorpions,
regiments of fleas, and intermittent firing, we slept very little, and
were not sorry to load again in the cool early morning. The muleteer’s
mother-in-law had fared worst, for she had acted as sentinel all night,
her chief duties being to drag slothful pack-animals from off our
bedding, upon which they would stand and stamp, adding another nuisance
to the night. The soldiers, tired and disgusted with life, were very
dismal this second morning. Drenched and footsore, stiff from their
drubbing of the previous day, a walk of thirty miles through the heat
of Shahr-i-Zur appeared a gigantic affliction indeed. Half-way across
the plain, where the stagnant air soaked up warm vapours from the water
standing in the depressions, we came to a great goat-hair canopy,
surrounded by minor establishments of the same material. This was the
encampment of Mahmud Pasha Jaf, the most powerful man in these parts,
and the only signs of his magnificence were the glorious carpets, the
rows of leather trunks, and the silk quilts hanging in the sun to let
the fleas escape.[62]
[Sidenote: A PASHA’S ENCAMPMENT]
We reached Halabja in the afternoon, a little town set among gardens.
It is distinguished by three great houses, those of Adela Khanum, whose
name is best translated as “Lady Justice”; of Tahir Beg and Majid
Beg, her stepsons. These, with a clean and well-built bazaar, give
Halabja a distinction it totally lacked fifty years ago, when it was an
insignificant village. The stranger in Halabja usually has to accompany
his muleteer to the house where he stables his beast, for there is as
yet no caravanserai, though one will be built soon. But I had made
friends with a merchant of Halabja who knew, as all the inhabitants of
Halabja must, Lady Adela, and he insisted that my “knowledge, learning,
breeding, and politeness” would gain me a warm welcome from this
renowned lady; and that were I to instal myself in a private house she
would be offended when she heard, as she of course would do, of the
arrival of a Persian, that rare traveller in that part of Kurdistan.
He told me to go boldly to the house of Tahir Beg, which was connected
by doors and a bridge to that of Lady Adela, and state that I was a
Persian scribe and merchant travelling through her lands, and relying
upon her favour. This I resolved to do, and entering a great deserted
courtyard, I rode up to the raised verandah and dismounted. A couple
of servants strolled up, looked at me and my belongings, and asked who
I was. I introduced myself as I had been advised, and they invited me
to a seat while they informed Lady Adela, who was in the other house.
Her they found just risen from a siesta, and returned shortly with a
message expressing her pleasure at having the opportunity of meeting a
Persian from Shiraz, the first ever seen in her country, and granting
me an upper room in Tahir Beg’s house, whence I could look out over
garden, plain, and mountain. Here carpets were spread, tea was brought,
with cigarettes, by men who spoke a little Persian; and two saucy
Kurdish maids, their turbans cocked at a rakish angle, submitted me to
a cross-examination while they smoked cigarettes.
Lady Adela, shortly after, sent another message to say that she would
see me next morning in private audience, a comparative term in this
land of retainers and patriarchal custom. Dinner was brought in upon
two great trays, pilau, sour meats, curds, a sweetmeat and sherbet, and
followed by a man with a roll of new bedding, upon which I was glad
enough to stretch and sleep.
Before proceeding with the narrative, it is advisable to give some note
upon the family and tribe of the Jaf, and more particularly upon the
extraordinary woman in whose house I was a guest--a woman unique in
Islam, in the power she possesses, and the efficacy with which she uses
the weapons in her hands.
The Jaf tribe is an ancient one, and has from the earliest history
of Kurdistan been powerful, and renowned for the manner in which its
chiefs agree and hold together. This trait of character--coherency--so
rare among the greater Kurdish chieftains, has won for the tribe wealth
and power, so that now various chiefs own such important towns as
Panjwin, Halabja, and Qizil Rubat, besides numerous villages and lands,
which they have acquired by purchase.
These, the property of individuals, are not connected in any way with
the “Jaf land”--that is, the country over which the migratory tribe has
the right of passage, domicile, and cultivation, and which is theirs by
ancient right, gift, and conquest, belonging to the tribe as a whole.
[Sidenote: JAF HISTORY]
From the time when Bagdad returned to the hands of the Turks in the
17th century, the Jafs have been in contact upon the west with that
nation,[63] and have for about two hundred years recognised the Sultan
as their overlord, as well as the Khalifa, or spiritual head of Sunni
Islam, to which section they belong. They have, however, as a tribe,
maintained more than semi-independence up to the present day, Mahmud
Pasha holding himself responsible only for a yearly sum payable to the
Sultan. In the 18th century, when the bulk of the tribe left their old
lands in Juanru of Persia, two sections of the tribe seceded and took
up their quarters with the Persian Guran tribe, with whom they still
remain. These are the Jaf-i-Qadir Mir Waisi, and the Taishi. Within
more recent times, another section--under one, Fattah Beg--separated
and retired to Persia, in the Kermanshah province.
Except for these insignificant sections, the great Jaf tribe is as
united as it ever was. From time to time it is called upon to undertake
the chastisement of smaller tribes who may misbehave, and act for the
Turks as Wardens of the Marches, unmolested by their sovereign ruler.
The tribe itself--that is, the people who wander every spring from
Qizil Rubat to Panjwin and Saqiz--are under the immediate supervision
of Mahmud Pasha, who accompanies them. His elder brother, Uthman
Pasha, is, as mentioned before, appointed by the Sultan’s ruler, or
Qaim Maqam, of the district of Shahr-i-Zur. This is a government of
some considerable importance, and is a frontier one, necessitating the
possession of armed power upon the part of the ruler. Uthman Pasha, who
can call upon the tribe, of course possesses this.
But here we must make a slight digression to bring in Lady Adela, who
comes from over the border. The Persian province whose land runs up to
the borders of Shahr-i-Zur is Ardalan. This Ardalan was formerly a
kingdom under a dynasty of petty Kurdish princes who, though they were
virtually independent, yet acknowledged the suzerainty of the Shah of
Persia. For five hundred years these princes reigned, holding court at
Sina, which is still the capital of Ardalan.
Under their enlightened rule, art and literature grew at Sina,[64]
literature of a Persian and Kurdish nature, which is just being
discovered now,[65] the town was beautified with fine houses and
gardens, and Sina became a place the records of whose beauty are
conspicuous in the books of all travellers who have passed by it.
However, dynasties die out, and this was no exception to the rule. The
Ardalan Khans (as the rulers were called) made a defensive alliance
with the ruling dynasty of Persia, the Qajars, and one married a
daughter of Fath Ali Shah, who ruled over Persia at the beginning of
the 19th century. This lady succeeded her husband, and ruled over
Ardalan with a firm and just hand. After her came her son, and after
him, Persian Governors--for Nasir ud Din, Shah of Persia, a strong
ruler, whose aim was to bring all the old semi-independent states
directly under his rule, forbade the succession upon the death of the
last Vali of Ardalan, Ghulam Shah Khan, and replaced him by his own
fierce relative, Mu’tamid ud Douleh.
Side by side with these Sultans and Valis there grew up and existed
another powerful family, that of the Vazirs, or ministers of the
princes, who owned the town of Duaisa, near Sina. This family was not
exterminated nor even deprived of office, but continued in place till
to-day, when the chief accountant of Kurdistan, as the province is now
called, is a descendant of the old family of Vazirs.
[Sidenote: ADELA KHANUM]
The old Jaf Pashas had been forced to keep upon good terms with the
dynasty of Ardalan, and from time to time marriages were effected
between the Jaf and Ardalan chiefs and petty chiefs.
These alliances were looked upon with great disfavour and some alarm
by the Turks, whose keenest desire is to see the Jaf on bad terms with
their neighbours in Persia. Consequently when Uthman Pasha in 1895
announced his intention of marrying into the family of the Ardalan
Vazirs, some futile opposition was offered by the Turkish Government.
However, he proceeded to Sina and brought home to Halabja, then an
insignificant village, as bride, a lady of the Vazir family whose
father occupied an important position in Teheran.
Once installed at Halabja, Lady Adela proceeded, aided by the prestige
of her family, to assert her position, a procedure not opposed by
Uthman Pasha. She built two fine houses, finer than any edifice
in Sulaimania, upon the Sina model, importing Persian masons and
artificers to do the work. Her servants were all Persian subjects, and
in Halabja she instituted in her new houses a little colony of Persian
Kurds, and opened her doors to all travellers from and to that country,
and kept continual communications with Sina, five days’ journey away.
Gradually the official power came into her hands. Uthman Pasha was
often called away to attend to affairs, and occasionally had to perform
journeys to Sulaimania, Kirkuk, and Mosul on matters of government.
So Lady Adela, governing for him in his absence, built a new prison,
and instituted a court of justice of which she was president, and so
consolidated her own power, that the Pasha, when he was at Halabja,
spent his time smoking a water pipe, building new baths, and carrying
out local improvements, while his wife ruled.
She built a bazaar in Halabja, a square construction having four
covered rows of shops connected by alleys of more shops, all covered
in and domed with good brick arches, and trade flowed in to Halabja,
which grew to considerable importance. Such importance did the place
attain that the Turks actually grew jealous, and to obtain a hold over
it, put up a telegraph line, to which the tribesmen objected, and
expressed their objection by cutting down the wire. At the same time
Lady Adela advised the Turks not to repair it, for she too objected
to the incursion of Turks upon her territory, and warned them that as
fast as they built up telegraph wires her people should cut them down.
And so to-day Halabja possesses no telegraph line, though a uniformed
official lives there and rejoices in the title of Post and Telegraph
Master. Every summer, when the climate of Halabja becomes oppressively
hot, the court of Lady Adela repairs to a little village in the hills,
or to a town in Persian territory, where some three or four months are
passed.
In and around Halabja Lady Adela has instituted the Persian fashion
of making gardens, apart from the gardens around the houses, and now
outside the little town are several of the graceful and thickly treed
gardens which are only seen in Persia, gardens which are wildernesses
of large shady trees, with unsuspected bowers and flower-beds in their
shady depths.
So here, in a remote corner of the Turkish Empire, which decays and
retrogrades, is one little spot, which, under the rule of a Kurdish
woman has risen from a village to be a town, and one hill-side,
once barren, now sprinkled with gardens; and these are in a measure
renovations of the ancient state of these parts.
Shahr-i-Zur, or Sharizur, used to be called by some Shahr-i-Bazar,
and until recently its capital was a place called Gulambar, which is
under the Aoraman mountain, and there is a legend to the effect that
at earlier times a village called Ahmad Kulwan, across the northern
mountains, used to be the capital.
However that may be, in the Sasanian times of Persia, when
Qasr-i-Shirin was built, and Farhad hewed at the mountain of Bisitun,
there was a great town named Hulwan. This was about the year A.D.
400. Hulwan and its territories extended up to what is now known as
Shahr-i-Zur, and behind the site of the modern Halabja, in the hills
which form an amphitheatre behind it, there was a large town called
Sasan. Here were great stone buildings, and their ruins still stand,
ordinary walls and pillars of the great Sasanian age of Persia.
There is every indication, besides legend, to show that a great
city existed here, and in the Shahr-i-Zur plain below were a number
of villages whose inhabitants cultivated its rich and well-watered
soil. To-day there are but a number of large, high mounds, a sure
indication of ancient inhabitation. Shahr-i-Zur was so well protected
by its hills, that it is no wonder that the ancient kings looked upon
it as a specially favoured spot, and favourable to development and
commerce. Around all sides is a high ring of mountains, except upon the
north-west, and besides its ring of hills a swift, strong river shuts
them in upon the southern side.
[Sidenote: HULWAN]
Across this, from Sasan, a great bridge was built into the territory
of Hulwan, a part of which still stands. Shahr-i-Zur means the “Strong
City,” and Shahr-i-Bazar, “The Market Town”--both equally appropriate
names, but there is no proof as to which was originally employed to
designate the plain.
Among the hill villages, high up in the ravines of the frowning walls
of Aoraman, religious shaikhs lived and died, and there are to-day
several holy individuals living in little villages perched thousands
of feet up under the mighty and frowning wall of the great mountain.
In the plain, Kurd and Christian lived in peace, till the ascent to
power of a certain Abdul Qadir, a fanatic, and slaughterer of all who
displeased him. Shahr-i-Zur possessed in his time (about two hundred
years ago) a mixed population, and its Kurdish people still spoke
the ancient dialect known as Shahr-i-Zuri, a tongue of old Persia,
rejoicing in grace of form and sound, now only to be heard in Aoraman,
much corrupted.
This fanatic was the cause of a massacre of Christians, and the
Chaldeans inhabiting the plain fled to the mountains, to Kirkuk, and
to Bagdad. The Shahr-i-Zuri, who were upon bad terms with some of the
local ruffians employed in the massacre, dispersed and disappeared,
and left Shahr-i-Zur a waste. Gulanbar, a small town, was deserted and
laid bare, with its villages along the mountain foot. These have become
partially reoccupied, and are now shadows of what they formerly were.
In 1821 or thereabouts a Persian prince, Muhammad Ali Mirza, invaded
and took it, but in a subsequent battle fought near Halabja he was
mortally wounded, and retiring across the river, left it in the hands
of a Turkish pasha of Bagdad.
Nevertheless the Persians claim Shahr-i-Zur, for it was once theirs,
and they conquered it again and again, and to-day it stands upon the
strip of land, a debated territory within the borders of which, an
international commission has sagely remarked, “the frontier may be
assumed to exist.”
When Sulaimania was yet under the rule of the descendants of Sulaiman
Pasha, Gulanbar was made the seat of a Qaim Maqam, and the necessary
three “mudirliqs” were instituted in the plain. So matters went
until Uthman Pasha, who is chief of the section of the Pushtamala
Jafs, settled in Halabja, and as has been shown, proceeded to make
it important. Gulanbar never recovered its ancient importance and
prestige, and Halabja began to outstrip its neighbours across the
plain, until the Qaim Maqam, now Uthman Pasha, was transferred to
Halabja, and Gulanbar was made the residence of a subsidiary “mudir.”
At the time of my visit, there were settled in Halabja, besides Uthman
Pasha and his wife, Majid Beg and Tahir Beg, sons of the pasha’s
former wife. Majid Beg has now succeeded to the chieftainship of the
Pushtamala, for the old man died in October 1909 and was buried in
Biara, a mountain village reckoned very holy in these parts.[66]
[Sidenote: HISTORY OF THE JAF]
It is not more than about a hundred and twenty years since Uthman
Pasha’s section of the tribe has been settled in Halabja. Originally
the Jaf tribe lived in a country to the south-east of Halabja, in
Persian territory, called Juanrud. Here they were independent, until
the Vali of Ardalan succeeded in capturing the chief, his son, and
brother, and executing them. Fighting ensued, and the Jafs, who had
made themselves very unpopular with the Ardalan princes, first by
the fact of their independence, and second by their arrogance and
hostility, were expelled. The nomad section, called the Muradi, fled,
some 50,000 people in all, to the pasha of the newly rising Sulaimania,
and he conferred upon them the land they now occupy, which extends
from Qizil Rubat, in the south, to Panjwin, upon the Persian frontier,
in the north. A certain number of sedentary Jafs remained upon the
ancestral lands, but suffering under the rule of the son of the
Ardalan prince, deserted to the Guran tribe, and became part of them,
submitting to their sultans.
Certain others remained, undismayed by the defection of their fellows,
and still live in Juanrud--Persian subjects who have forgotten that
they were ever Jaf Kurds.
Meanwhile the Muradi section, of which the chief sub-tribe was
the Pushtamala, flourished and increased. The Pushtamala, the
aristocratic section, continued to be that from which the chief was
drawn until after the time of Muhammad Pasha, who, when he died, left
three sons--Uthman, Mahmud, and Muhammad Ali. These separated the
territories, while keeping close touch and living in harmony. Mahmud
Pasha took charge of all the tribe, with whom he travels while it is
upon its spring and autumn migrations between the mountains and the
lowlands. Uthman Pasha took Gulanbar and Halabja and the Shahr-i-Zur
lands, and, increasing in power and wealth, eventually gained the
government of the district. Muhammad Ali Beg, the third son, remained
at Qizil Rubat, where he owns many lands and gardens, and lives a life
of ease and content.[67] Under these three sections of the Pushtamala
there are the sub-tribes of ’Amala, Jaf-i-Sartik, Jaf-i-Tilan, Mikaili,
Akhasuri, Changani, Rughzadi, Terkhani, Bashaki, Kilali, Shatiri,
Haruni, Nurwali, Kukui, Zardawi, Yazdan Bakhshi, Shaikh Isma’ili,
Sadani, Badakhi, Musai, and the Tailaku.
The tribes still left in Persian territory upon the ancestral lands are
the Qubadi, Babajani, Waladbegi, Ainakhi, Imami, Daprishi, Dilataizhi,
Mirabegi, Daitiri, and Namdar Begi; while those who took protection
under the Guran tribe, and have become Guran in name, were the Qadir
Mir Waisi, Taishai, Qalkhanchagi, Yusif Yar Ahmadi, Kuyik, Nairzhi, and
the Gurgkaish. These are, of course, Persian subjects, and resist the
attempts of the Turkish Jafs to induce them to come over the frontier
and join the great tribe, for they are quite content to call themselves
Guran and be Persian subjects.
The horsemen at the disposal of Mahmud Pasha, Majid Beg (successor of
Uthman Pasha), and Muhammad Ali Beg, is 4000 men, who are always armed
with Martini rifles, and are ready at a few hours’ notice to fight
for their chiefs. This and a light tax paid to the Turkish Government
are the only obligations the tribesmen have to their chiefs; and of
course, while nominally under the control of Mahmud Pasha, they are
really independent in their actions, looting and raiding without fear
of retribution, for they conform to tribal rule by acknowledging Mahmud
Pasha, accompanying the rest of the tribe, paying their taxes, and
providing fighters when necessary.
[Sidenote: HALABJA]
It was natural that when Uthman Pasha married into the aristocracy of
Persian Kurdistan, the Turks were much offended, for his first wife
had been recommended by the Turkish Government, a person of whom they
thoroughly approved, and through whose influence they hoped to make
Uthman Pasha more Turkish in his sympathies than before. That he should
have, upon her death, married a member of the contumacious Ardalan
nobility, who had always been, and ever are, loyal to Persia, was a
blow to Turkish prestige in Kurdistan which the effendis have resented
ever since; and when Lady Adela acquired much of the power they had
given to Uthman Pasha, they furiously bit the fingernail of impotence,
and thought of many futile schemes for breaking her influence.
This lengthy diversion from the narrative was necessary to explain the
nature of the people among whom I found myself at Halabja, a place
unique in Turkish Kurdistan, in being the residence of such powerful
Kurdish people as Uthman Pasha, Lady Adela, Tahir Beg, and Majid Beg,
and in being absolutely in the possession of the three huge mansions in
which they lived.
The morning after my arrival broke to the sound of clinking tea-glasses
outside the door of my room, and opening it I was confronted by a
couple of retainers bearing the apparatus of tea “à la persane,” a big
brass samovar, a basin to wash saucers and glasses, and the little
waisted Persian tea-glasses and china saucers themselves.
The bedding was rolled up and carried away, and hot sweet tea served,
three glasses being the orthodox number. During the space between
the glasses one smoked, and a decent interval was allowed to elapse
between their presentation. The ceremony over, the paraphernalia was
carried away, and the day being officially commenced, I set out to see
Lady Adela.
In the manner of Kurdistan this was a private interview, so I found no
more than twelve servants, retainers, and armed men standing at the
door. The room was long and narrow, two walls of which were pierced
with eight double doors opening on to the verandah, the other walls
being whitened and recessed, as is done in all Persian houses. The
floor was carpeted with fine Sina rugs, and at the far end stood a
huge brass bedstead piled high with feather quilts. Before and at the
foot of this lay a long, silk-covered mattress, and upon it sat the
Lady Adela herself, smoking a cigarette. The first glance told her
pure Kurdish origin. A narrow, oval face, rather large mouth, small
black and shining eyes, a narrow, slightly aquiline hooked nose, were
the signs of it; and her thinness in perfect keeping with the habit
of the Kurdish form, which never grows fat. Unfortunately, she has
the habit of powdering and painting, so that the blackened rims of
her eyelids showed in unnatural contrast to the whitened forehead and
rouged cheeks. Despite this fault, the firmness of every line of her
face was not hidden, from the eyes that looked out, to the hard mouth
and chin. Her head-dress was that of the Persian Kurds, a skull-cap
smothered with rings of gold coins lying one over the other, and bound
round with silk handkerchiefs of Yezd and Kashan. On each side the
forehead hung the typical fringe of straight hair from the temples to
the cheek, below the ear, and concealing it by a curtain of hair, the
locks called “agarija,” in the tongue of southern Kurdistan. The back
hair, plaited, was concealed under the silk handkerchief that hangs
from the head-dress. Every garment was silk, from the long open coat,
to the baggy trousers. Her feet were bare, and dyed with henna, and
upon ankle and wrist were heavy gold circlets of Persian make. Upon her
hands she wore seventeen rings, heavily jewelled, and round her neck
was a necklace of large pearls, alternating with the gold fishes that
are the indispensable ornament of the Persian Kurd, and of many of the
Persians themselves.
[Sidenote: A GREAT LADY]
A woman fanned her, while another held cigarettes ready, and a maid
waited with sherbet and rose-water. As I entered, Lady Adela smiled
and motioned me to a seat beside her on the mattress, and gave me the
old-fashioned Kurd greeting:
“Wa khair hatin, wa ban i cho, ahwalakitan khassa shala.” (“You are
welcome; your service is upon my eyes; your health is good, please
God.”)
And it was in the peasant tongue of Sina, her native place, not the
sloppy, mouthing dialect of Sulaimania; and I replied in the same,
grateful to hear the language with which I had grown familiar a year
before in Persian Kurdistan.
Her tones were peculiar, not those of a woman, and though not deep,
were clear and decisive, and abrupt. Persian she understood perfectly,
though a little shy of speaking it before one whom she only knew as a
Persian. After asking me particulars of my journey, and news of Shiraz
and its people, that she knew of by repute, she asked me to read her
a letter in Persian that had just come from Teheran, and was so taken
with the accent of Shiraz, that she was not satisfied till I had
repeated the epistle three times, remarking to her servants:[68]
“Bravo! that is the true Persian speech, the sweetest of all God’s
languages.”
After that she refused me permission to speak Kurdish, and insisted
upon Persian, exacting long explanations of any Shiraz idiom new to her.
For an hour or more the interview lasted, then she rose and earnestly
desired to know if I was quite comfortable, gave orders for new
carpets and better bedding for me, and then retired, and for the first
time spoke Persian as a farewell, bidding me return to the official
“divan,” which she held every afternoon.
I was returning to my room, when a serving-man told me that I must go
and call upon Tahir Beg, second son of Uthman Pasha by his first wife,
who lived in the other end of the big house wherein I had my room. This
chief, who owns some land at Halabja, has acquired a reputation for
considerable literary skill, and speaks besides Kurdish, Persian and
Turkish, in the former of which he writes a good deal of poetry. He has
also a slight knowledge of French.
As is the habit among such people, he keeps open house, and callers
arrive at all times of the day and interview him.
I found him in a great three-sided room, or summer portico, which
opened upon the roof of the entrance lobby and some rooms attached
thereto. From the open side a magnificent view of Shahr-i-Zur and the
Azmir Mountains spread before one, clear and rose-coloured in the
morning light. Round the portico were ranged wide, high benches, upon
which it is possible to sit, dangling a leg that does not reach the
ground, or to squat in the Oriental fashion. Carpets were spread upon
the ground and over the benches, and just outside, on the roof, a
number of armed Kurds stood in attendance. Tahir Beg sat meditating,
upon a bench covered with a fine rug, apparently oblivious of an old
sayyid, a scowling priest in a great turban, and a Turkish bimbashi in
full uniform. He was a wild-looking man. His heavy eyebrows shaded the
bulging blue eyes of an opium-smoker, but the vacillating expression
was mitigated by the strong aquiline nose and firm chin. His mouth
was concealed by a heavy, fair moustache. He wore the usual Kurdish
garments--long, flowing, striped silk robes--and in his belt carried a
Colt repeating pistol and a great dagger. His headgear was that of a
Jaf chief--fringed silk handkerchiefs wound in a turban broader at the
top than at the base, and the fringes hung about his ears and forehead,
giving him a wild and ferocious appearance.
[Sidenote: A JAF CHIEF]
He had been informed of my arrival, and replied to my greeting in
perfect Persian, without a trace of Kurdish accent, inviting me to a
seat beside him. He asked a few questions, whence had I come, and where
going, and did I speak French, answering to my affirmative with “Et moi
aussi, je sais un peu,” a surprising utterance from a Kurdish chief who
has never quitted his native hills.
As if this effort were too much for him, he subsided into silence,
and thus we sat for a space, the quiet unbroken save for the service
of coffee “à la turque,” which the servants handed round. Once he
conferred a mark of his favour upon me by handing me a cigarette from
his box, and lighting it for me himself.
Presently another Turkish official, arrived from Khaniqin _en route_
for Sulaimania, came in, and being a loquacious fellow, insisted
on carrying on a conversation, which was confined to short Turkish
monosyllables on Tahir Beg’s part.
He cut the interview short by suddenly rising and retiring to a private
room, whereupon we dispersed.
I had yet another call to make. When I had left Sulaimania I had
purchased two bills for two hundred and fifty and one hundred and
fifty krans (about eight pounds), upon a Jew of Halabja, and t had
been recommended by my friend Matti, the Mosul Christian, to go to one
Mansur, a native of Sina of Persian Kurdistan, and a Chaldean. This
person was a petty merchant, and agent of a greater than himself in
Sina, known as Haji Khanaka. As he was from the native place of Lady
Adela, he had from the first installed himself in a lower room of her
house, and for years had lived as her guest, paying no rent, owning no
furniture, and buying no food, for her kitchen supplied him with his
excellent meals. In return for this hospitality he performed certain
small duties, as a correspondent to merchants and Chaldeans in Sina
with whom Lady Adela had dealings, and procured for her any special
stuffs or cloths she might require. He was indistinguishable from a
Kurd of Sina, for he wore the short tunic, plaited Persian frock-coat,
and a turban wound about a felt skull-cap, which is the costume of
Ardalan.
He spoke Kurdish, too, absolutely perfectly, and knew Persian quite
well. He had already received a letter from Matti regarding myself,
and welcomed me to Halabja, putting himself entirely at my service.
He lived in a dark lower room, furnished with a couple of carpets and
some felts. Upon either side of the far end were the beds, that served
their own purpose at night, and during the day were used as couches.
They consisted of but a mattress upon the ground, and a roll, composed
of pillow and coverlet. Between these beds, exactly at the head of the
room, was a large Russian iron box, the mark of the merchant, and above
it upon a mud shelf a little heap of devotional books in the Chaldean
language. As I entered, Mansur was sitting before the iron box smoking
a Persian water pipe, and he rose as I came in, advanced, and with
ceremony bowed me to the bed which occupied the highest position, that
is, the left-hand far corner of the room as one enters at the opposite
end.
He lamented the unfortunate times that had fallen upon Turkish
dominions, for he had suffered very considerably in pocket from
robberies of his goods in transit from Sulaimania and Kirkuk.
He had also lent a certain amount of money to Uthman Pasha, and cursed
the Turks, who, by keeping the Pasha in Sulaimania, prevented his
collecting his personal revenues to pay his debts. In Halabja itself he
had but little business, except in spring and winter, when the Kurds
brought from the mountains the valuable skins he purchased and sent to
Sina, whence his co-religionists take them to Nijni-Novgorod for the
fair every summer. It was his habit to go home to Sina every year and
stay there the summer; but this year, owing to the amount of debts with
Lady Adela and the Pasha, he had been ordered by his employer to remain
till some wheat had been harvested, or some tobacco sold, when he could
press for payment.
[Sidenote: HALABJA BAZAAR]
After partaking of tea, he proposed that we should take a stroll in the
bazaar and see the drawees of my two bills; so we set out, quitting the
courtyard by a low, insignificant door which gave on to a _cul-de-sac_
leading to a narrow and dirty street. This in turn became a kind of
open square, one side of which was occupied by a row of booths, where
the occupants were busy roasting “kebabs,” cutting up sheep, and
purchasing fruit from peasants newly in from the gardens. This was the
food bazaar of Halabja, and Mansur told me that but seven years before,
there was but waste ground here, where now almost the centre of the
little town lay.
The bazaar was entered by a great door, and its wall formed a third
side of the little square, a good, solid wall built of the best brick.
The entrance gave on to one side of a long, vaulted passage, each side
of which was occupied by shops, and which turned at right angles at
short distances from the main doorway.
The plan of the bazaar, designed by Lady Adela, is more that of what
we understand by a market. In shape it is exactly square, with an
entrance at the middle of each side. An avenue of shops runs round
inside the walls, and another passage connects two of the doors,
cutting the parallelogram into two equal halves. The shops are raised
upon a brick platform, or rather are at a height of two feet from the
ground, and have a brick platform of that height before them, upon
which the proprietor squats or puts his wares. The shop itself is but a
great cupboard, the front of which takes out, being made of panels of
wood, or shutters. Within are shelves upon which the goods are stacked,
and if the proprietor be a Jew, an iron strong-box in front of the
equipment.
There are in the Halabja bazaar fifty-two such shops, and probably
twenty of these are occupied by linen-drapers and cloth merchants,
chiefly Jews, who are the principal part of the commercial population.
The bazaar, where all the news of the town and district are brought,
and whence culled by the curious, had already heard of my arrival, and
as I entered in company with Mansur I found myself greeted by Kurd and
Jew alike. This cordiality did not, however, extend to business, for to
my disgust the Jew upon whom I had purchased my little bills refused to
meet them, and I found that the Sulaimania seller had promised to send
goods to him for the value of the bills, but being short of money, had
drawn the drafts and sold the goods on his own account in Sulaimania.
Matti, who had in Sulaimania procured them for me, had fortunately
guaranteed them, so I was not more than temporarily inconvenienced,
for, as Mansur said, “He who stays with Lady Adela has no need of
money.”
It appeared that I was the first Persian they had ever seen in Halabja,
and considerable curiosity was evinced as to my native place. Sitting
upon a carpet before the shop of the Jewish merchant, a little crowd
of interested Kurds and Jews collected, endeavouring with some success
to talk to me in Persian, and one and all descanting upon the beauties
of Halabja, utterly refusing to believe that the Shiraz whence I came
could be larger or finer, or that Kurdish was not understood there.
Most remarkable was the space Lady Adela took up in their affairs and
conversation. She had, in building this bazaar which attracted trade
and was a source of profit to merchants, at the same time done the best
thing for her own pocket that she could possibly have devised, for she
was heavily in debt to the occupants, and had naturally the widest
option as to when she should pay. It was reported that she always did
pay in the end; and for this reason, and also the excellent reason that
makes a tenant submissive to a powerful landlord, no one attempted to
limit her purchases, which in cloth and stuffs were really enormous.
The prices these Jews charged to her, too, were exorbitant, and they
excused themselves for this by an account of the interest lost by
delay, much as one’s tailor must do.
[Sidenote: LADY ADELA’S RECEPTION]
We spent all the morning in the bazaar, and returned for lunch,
which appeared about noon. In the afternoon, about the time tea was
served--for the Persian invented afternoon tea long before Europe--we
went to the divan of Lady Adela. The long room this time was crowded
to its fullest. Near the mattress of Lady Adela two others had been
put, one for Majid Beg, the Pasha’s eldest son, a man of forty-five
or thereabouts, and Tahir Beg, both of whom usually called in the
afternoon. The former was already there, a stern Kurd, totally unlike
his rakish-looking younger brother. A much bigger man, his grave face
was much more of an English cast than any other Kurd I ever saw, though
an immense number of them have the features and appearance of the Saxon
races.
Blue eyes, a fair complexion, short, straight nose, stubbly moustache
and square chin, were the facial features one noticed at once; and he
sat, hand upon hip, making no remark to anyone, occasionally nodding
in reply to something Lady Adela said. All the Jaf chiefs have this
characteristic of silence, and will sit for hours sometimes without
uttering a syllable. Round the room, squatting against the wall, were
all sorts and kinds of Kurds. Natives of Halabja and the district were
there; two stray Hamavands, on goodness knows what business, sat there
silent and awkward, dark-featured, wild-looking men, who kept their
rifles in their hands and their alert eyes ever on the glance this way
and that, from sheer force of habit. A black-browed priest from Pava,
a village in Persian Kurdistan, three peasants from Sina, and various
merchants, went to make up a collection of all sorts of southern Kurds.
Every one, even to the shopkeepers and the priest, carried the large
Kurdish dagger. Menservants stood about round the door and by their
mistress and master, and a stack of guns in the corner represented
the property of a number of the assembly. Outside the room in the
verandah the overflow pressed their noses against the glass doors and
occasionally shouted remarks, often enough in answer to Lady Adela’s
comments. Rakish-looking handmaids in flowing robes and turbans set
askew, stood about, or brought cigarettes, fanned Lady Adela--for the
room and the day were warm--or fetched scissors and tape for the silk
cloth she was inspecting. A Jew of the bazaar was displaying to her
his wares, taking huge orders for all kinds of stuffs, and squatted
before her, making notes in Hebrew on a dirty scrap of paper. The
maids advised, criticised, and chose cloth and stuff for themselves,
which Lady Adela would promptly refuse, or occasionally grant them,
for she treated them remarkably well. The audience made remarks upon
the proceedings, often enough chaffing Lady Adela regarding her
purchases, when she would retort in quick Kurdish with the best humour,
everyone joining in the laugh which not infrequently was against her.
A shopkeeper arrived with a bill long overdue, and she endorsed it
on the back, making him the owner of a quantity of wheat when the
harvest should be in, for she possessed no hard cash, or professed
to own none. While she yet measured silk, two riders still in their
scarlet riding-boots, rifle on shoulder, stumped in, leading between
them a wretched Arab tribesman, clad in the traditional raiment, the
single shirt that has gained for the Arab the nickname “Trouserless”
from Kurd and Turk. His head was bare, for he had lost his “kefia” and
“agal,” and he shrank and shivered as he was thrust forward into the
assembly. Never had he seen so wild and fierce-looking a gathering.
Even Lady Adela, in her bright garments, her eyes flashing from under
a big turban with hanging tassels, set askew, had the barbaric and
ferocious Kurdish appearance of the stories, and the sight of so many
of these big-boned, armed men cowed the miserable Arab, used only to
ragged creatures like himself. Nor was his discomfort at all eased by
the laughter that greeted his appearance. His guards, too, seemed to
regard the affair as a joke.
[Sidenote: A CULPRIT]
Lady Adela asked the cause of this apparition, and the guard, with
the air of one who relates a funny story, told how the captive had
attempted to rob one of the villages of Shahr-i-Zur. It appeared that
for some reason he had gone to Sulaimania with camels, and having
become separated from his mates, was attempting to find his way back
to the lowlands _via_ the Khaniqin road. He had begged for, and been
granted shelter and food at the house of a Kurdish peasant, and was
put to sleep in a shed where a donkey was stabled. He had stolen from
here a chain, and having no place to conceal it, wound it round his
waist under his shirt, and made off in the dusk of the early morning.
The peasant, spying his flight, on principle pursued him, when the
accelerated pace and the weight of the chain together shook it from
its place, and, falling about his ankles, tripped up the unfortunate
Arab. The Kurd caught him, and finding nothing handier than the chain,
bound his legs with it and left him to stew in the sun, till two of
Lady Adela’s riders coming up, he handed over his capture, and he was
brought into Halabja, running at the horses’ stirrups.
The chain, retained as an evidence of his guilt, they had hung around
his neck; and as he fell upon the floor weeping and trying to crawl to
the feet of Lady Adela to kiss them, the company failed to maintain
their seriousness, even the stolid Majid Beg joining in the general
laugh.
An interrogation of the culprit should now have taken place, but no
one appeared to know Arabic, except the one word “Uskut” (“Be quiet”),
which was used, and not without need, for the fellow’s wails and
weeping filled the room.
The only remark Lady Adela felt called upon to make was one against her
own people, and which was received in good enough part:
“What shall be the fate of him who would steal from a Kurd? Are not
the Kurds supposed to be the worst robbers on earth? Take him away and
loose him.”
As they hauled him to his feet and dragged him from the room, his
wailing redoubled, for he must have thought he was going to execution
instead of to liberty.
As he went out, Tahir Beg was announced, and everybody got up on his
feet while he entered, slowly followed by a string of people, who found
places somehow among the throng. Tahir Beg himself picked his way among
them and took a seat upon the mattress near by, urbanely inviting me to
a seat beside him, when he commenced a conversation about the merits of
French and Persian.
After his arrival the divan did not last long. First Majid Beg left,
then Lady Adela, rising, retired to an inner room, and the company was
dismissed. Tahir Beg asked me to come to his evening reception upon
the roof, which took place every night. Returning to my room, I found
a caller in the person of a clerk or scribe of Tahir Beg, who was
smoking one of my cigarettes and gazing out of the window. Like most
of the inhabitants of this queer household he was a Persian subject,
native of Sina, but wore the long Jaf dress and zouave jacket. He,
however, refused to part with the Sina head-dress, and still wore the
low skull-cap surrounded by fringed silk handkerchiefs. He had several
matters to discuss. First to recommend a man who had applied for the
post of personal servant to me--him I arranged to see in the morning;
next, to ask me the right price of a Browning pistol, which he had
purchased for seven liras; and lastly, to know if I possessed any books
in Persian. I had an old torn copy of _Saadi_, and this I gave him, and
he sat there reading it indifferently and going into rhapsodies over
verses he barely understood, but whose sonorous syllables and broad
vowels appealed to the Kurdish ear. It must also be remarked that among
the more cultivated Kurds of the south it has always been the fashion
to affect a passion for Persian, which is the reason of so many of the
Kurdish poets writing almost solely in that language, and neglecting
their own language, which lends itself to poetry of the ballad type
very excellently.
[Sidenote: A KURDISH LOVE AFFAIR]
This young man, Hasan by name, had, I heard afterwards, the reputation
of being the “blood” of the place, and a rhymester, doubtless in
imitation of his accomplished master, whose verses it was his duty
to write down at dictation. He had, it appeared, killed someone in a
fight at Sina, and had fled to Halabja for Lady Adela’s protection
till the affair could be settled. He had then fallen in love with a
maid of his patroness, by name Piruza, a pert girl of Sauj Bulaq, of
the Mukri--also a Persian Kurd. I had the pleasure later of witnessing
their somewhat hoydenish flirtations. This is one of the most
remarkable features of Kurdish life. Among other Muhammadan nations,
whose women are strictly secluded, marriages can only be matters of
arrangement by third parties; but among the Kurds, where the women are
practically as free as in any European country--except that they do not
go to the bazaar--free intercourse between the sexes is the rule, and
the result is a large number of love marriages, which is all for the
good of a race so simple in habits and life.
Hasan attempted to fix upon me the profession of doctor, for someone
had already hinted that a man and a Persian who had seen Europe and
possessed a large trunk, evidently hailing from far lands, must be
a doctor. With considerable skill he led the conversation round to
medicine and illnesses, and involved me in a long discourse about them,
and finding my opinions apparently sound, left me, to confirm the
rumour.
Having dined, I found my way in the dark to beyond Tahir Beg’s portico,
and found three benches arranged so as to make three sides of a square
upon the roof. Upon the middle one Tahir Beg sat, silent as usual,
and upon the others an equally silent company of merchants, a couple
of priests, and two Turks in uniform. I was given a place by the host,
and wrapping myself in my camel-hair cloak, gathered my feet under me,
and added my silence to that of the others after I had received the
greetings of the company and returned them one by one.
After some time a Turk who was opposite me, addressed me in his own
language, asking if I had been to Constantinople, and receiving an
affirmative reply, began to question me as to where I had stayed and
how I had liked it. I was forced to say I had lived in Stamboul, for
I feared that if I said that I had been in Pera he might wonder, and
justly, what a Persian was doing in that exclusively European quarter.
Fortunately my excursions to Stamboul had been frequent, and I knew
it well, and he, thinking he had found in me a sympathiser, launched
out upon an eulogium of that city, and cursed the fate that exiled
him to the farthest corner of Kurdistan. He spoke disparagingly of
Halabja at last, led to it by his comparisons of Turkey and Kurdistan,
and immediately Tahir Beg awoke from his silence, and in a curt
sentence asked why he had not stayed in Constantinople, which would
have conduced to everybody’s comfort. Finding the atmosphere hostile,
the official--a bimbashi unattached--took his leave without further
conversation.
Tahir Beg then began to ask me about various places, and drifted into
a political conversation, in which he discussed the Balkan and Cretan
questions, showing himself remarkably well informed, indeed far more
_au courant_ with the subject than myself, who took little interest in
such things. However, I could give him information upon points nearer
home, upon the northern frontier, where the Turks were encroaching
upon Persian territory. Great interest was evinced by all those
present in the current political events, and, like most Kurds, they
showed themselves more in sympathy with the Royalists than with the
Popularists, whom they regarded as a number of mischievous busybodies
without any talent for ruling their fellows, an opinion very true to
a great extent. The feeling against the Turkish Parliament was strong
enough too, for Sultan Abdul Hamid had always regarded the Kurds more
mildly than his predecessors, and had done his best to bring them into
touch with the semi-civilisation of Constantinople, without capturing
their chiefs by treachery or imposing undue taxes. Was it not also
Sultan Abdul Hamid who had given to the northern Kurds arms and
ammunition, and a uniform, and called them Hamidie Cavalry, and let
them loose to loot and raid where they pleased?
[Sidenote: POLITICAL OPINIONS]
The system of government by representation is repugnant to the Kurd,
whose rule has always been by hereditary chiefs, in whom the ruling
instinct is born, and who are undoubtedly the fittest of their race and
tribe to be at its head. And if the Kurdish nomad is reckoned unfit and
not sufficiently intelligent to know what is best for him, what then
of the Turkish peasant, an oaf of the understanding of a cow, and as
inferior to the Kurdish peasant in wits as the sloth is to the horse.
Thus these Kurds argued, and argued truly, making yet a very good case
for despotic government in Eastern Asiatic Turkey and Kurdistan.
While we were drinking coffee out of little Turkish cups, someone
started the question of where Lady Adela would go for the summer
months. There was some difficulty this year about it, for the Pasha
had been kept in Sulaimania by Government affairs, and still remained
there, so the necessary arrangements for moving the great household
were as yet unmade.
Lady Adela generally went to a hill village in the Aoraman Mountain,
or to a little place called Merivan, in Persian territory. Tahir Beg
usually followed, or went to his town of Panjwin, three days’ journey
from Halabja, where a great gathering of Jaf chiefs and tribes took
place each year, a sort of summer conference; and the other Kurdish
leaders came in numbers to spend a short time there, to hear what
passed, and to keep up friendly relations with the Jafs. From Sina a
large number of “Begzada,” or aristocrats, came to see Tahir Beg and
talk Persian poetry; and more serious chiefs from Persian Kurdistan
came too, but not to Tahir Beg, for their business was with the
powerful Mahmud Pasha, who had come with the tribe to Panjwin by June.
By the time this discussion was finished, and no one the least bit
more enlightened than before, it was late, and Tahir Beg rose, and by
departing broke up the party, which dispersed.
Next morning Lady Adela sent for me to read some Persian to her. I
found her busy with correspondence, and she handed me several letters
to read to her, and at her dictation I took down several replies,
correcting her Persian where it departed from the proper idiom. While
thus engaged, one, Amin Effendi, was announced, and followed close upon
the heels of the servant. He was a curious man to look at, for he had
not the Kurdish appearance at all. A tall, broad man with a huge face,
little blinking blue eyes of the colour one sees in north Germany, pale
straw-coloured hair, a long, prominent, bony nose, and a smirk that
apparently he could not banish from his wide mouth.
He was well-dressed, and carried in his hand a little roll of paper,
as if to indicate his superior position. With considerable assurance
he came in and took a seat upon one of the large leather trunks ranged
round the room. Lady Adela, to whom he was evidently some kind of
dependent, asked him what he wanted; and he replied, that hearing of my
presence he had called now, hoping to meet me. He had heard, he said,
that I had been to Europe, and could speak French and English, and was
moreover a doctor, and could take photographs. All these qualifications
and achievements he dwelt upon, implying untold congratulations upon
their possession, his servile smirk never leaving him. Lady Adela
ordered him to speak French with me, and he, to my surprise, addressed
me in that language, which he had some difficulty in speaking,
continually inserting Kurdish words in the conversation. He told me he
had known it well once, and it appeared certainly that it was more a
case of having forgotten than ignorance. But what forced itself upon
the attention was the remarkable accent with which he spoke French, for
had we been in Europe, he would have announced by his pronunciation a
German nationality. One did not expect that of a Kurd speaking French,
and I naturally asked him where he learned it, and received an evasive
reply. In answer to my question as to his trade and occupation, he
informed me with some pride that he was Lady Adela’s doctor, and wanted
to know where I had graduated for the profession. I disclaimed any
knowledge of surgery, and told him that whoever might be responsible
for the rumour of my qualities as a physician, it was not myself, at
which he appeared somewhat relieved, and told Lady Adela what I had
said, while I followed it up with strong confirmation. Soon after, he
took his leave and I mine.
[Sidenote: A RENEGADE]
So much curiosity had the man aroused in me that I went to my new
friend, Mansur the Christian, to ask who was this Amin Effendi--the
very name was not Kurdish.
“That creature!” he exclaimed, with a snort of disgust, “may the curse
of Iscariot be upon him!” and then, hastily remembering he spoke to a
Musulman, fell to a sudden silence.
“Well,” I said, “why?”
“As you can see,” he replied, “he is no Kurd. He is by birth a German
of Constantinople whose father sold pills, but who was forced to leave
the city owing to some crime he committed. He had two sons, this Amin
Effendi and another. These came to Bagdad, and there did that which
was wrong, and had to fly. Fate brought them this way to Halabja, when
finding themselves upon the borders of Kurdistan, they feared to go
forward, and having no means of going back, threw themselves upon
the mercy of the Qazi, and turned Musulman. Uthman Pasha protected
this one, and the other one went to the patronage of Shaikh Ali of
Tavila, where he now is. They took the names Amin Effendi and Ali
Effendi, and are both renowned for the meanness of their nature, their
petty intrigues, and their ignorance and idleness. This Amin Effendi
professes to be a doctor, but whatever a man or woman may submit to him
for cure he has but one remedy, to sell them at a high price the Epsom
salts he buys in the bazaar from the Jews. So none go to him, and he
lives by the bounty of Lady Adela, who sometimes gives him a suit of
clothes and allows him to pretend that he is her doctor.”
“He has heard, by the way, that you are a doctor; and as you have been
to Europe he will think that you are accomplished, and will use every
means in his power to discomfit you, so I warn you to be on your guard
against him.”
This surprising account I heard with interest and also with some
little feeling of apprehension, which, however, left me when I
thought how long the individual had been here, and how he must have
completely forgotten Europe. Nevertheless, there were certain things
he might easily have made the subject of awkward enquiries had he
been so disposed. For instance, my box had upon it in large letters,
E.B.S., quite a sufficiently remarkable fact for one who knew European
characters, and me as Ghulam Husain. Hitherto the initials had raised
no comment, for I had ever since Diarbekr kept the trunk in a canvas
bag, which made it appear--_en route_--like a bale of goods; but
here, to get at something, I had taken it out, and there it stood, an
obviously London trunk--obviously English.
How truly Mansur had spoken of his mean spirit was proved that very
evening. I had eaten my dinner, and was quietly smoking, when a tap
came upon the door. Now a Kurd does not know what it is to knock
at one’s portal--he either throws it open, or shouts from the other
side; and so I knew it must be Amin Effendi. I unlatched the door, and
he came in with the air of one who comes surreptitiously upon some
errand of importance. As he entered he glanced over his shoulder, and
disregarding my invitation to the carpet, sat upon the box, his abba
covering it effectually. He began to speak in French, the peculiar
nature of which would have rendered intercourse difficult had I not
known Kurdish and been able to discount his German accent.
[Sidenote: AN EVENING CALL]
“Che voulez,” he commenced, “un ... un ... wurd, petit, peu de nitrate
d’argent pour des darman ... medecang, c’est très nécessaire.”
This I understood to be a request for nitrate of silver for medical
purposes, but I speedily assured him that I had none, and he as quickly
passed over what had evidently been an excuse for coming. Drawing his
cloak close about him, he leant forward to where I sat upon my carpet,
and lowering his voice, in halting phrases told me the subject of what
I put down here.
“You are, sir, a civilised man; I too am a civilised man, for I was not
always thus;--my father was a distinguished doctor in Constantinople,
and I was his eldest son, educated in the best schools and colleges. It
was ill-fortune that sent me to the East, and an execrable stroke of
bad luck that landed me here among the savages of Kurdistan. It is now
thirteen years that I languish here, and I have lost the power, did I
possess the means, to go back to Europe, which I have forgotten, and
whose customs and language I only remember as one remembers a beautiful
dream. Ah, sir, what folly induced you to leave civilisation and
comfort and trust yourself among these cut-throats, these brigands?”
“Why,” I said, “my country lies much farther yet, this is but a stage
upon the way, and I am well content to stay awhile where I find
kindness, as I do from those whom you call barbarians.”
“Have a care,” he whispered, “you know not the depths of duplicity and
insincerity in which the life of this place is sunk. Even now those who
smile upon your face, frown at your back and seek to destroy you, and
it is for that that I am come to warn you. There is a rumour, spread
by I know not whom, that you are a Persian of the revolutionary party,
seeking to spy out the land here, and disaffect the chiefs against the
Turks. And with such they have a short way here. There was last year
a foreigner who came from Sina, and he told us all he came to collect
the ancient dialect of Aoraman. He was, he said, a Dane, but I tried
him, and he could not speak German. But not desiring to be a party to
his discomfiture, I warned him that he was upon dangerous ground, and
that I knew him for a Russian, for he had books in that language in his
possession, and I saw maps in his tent; for he was very friendly, and
invited me to sit with him. So I warned him, but he persisted in his
assertion of innocence. Well, one morning he was looking at a distant
hill through a pair of field-glasses, and I was struck by their strange
appearance, and taking an opportunity to examine them found a small
camera concealed within. At this time Tahir Beg began to be suspicious,
for he more than any of the chiefs resents the appearance, nay the
very name, of a Ferangi, and he communicated with Uthman and Mahmud
pashas. These each gave the traveller a note which he might show to the
head-men as he passed their villages. It permitted him to stay half an
hour in any spot, but upon the thirty-first minute he was to be shot.
In one day he was out of our lands and far away. Now, I would not draw
any comparison between yourself and that spy, for I am convinced of
your _bona fides_; but Tahir Beg has suspected you, and has advised
Lady Adela to keep a watch upon you. There is a feeling against you,
and I warn you that the consideration would not be granted you that was
accorded to the Russian, for you are but a Persian, and a bullet would
settle all affairs simply and quickly. This morning Tahir Beg was
for having you examined and shot; but I, knowing your excellence, and
weeping inwardly for you, pleaded and gave my own guarantee that you
were but what you professed to be, a perfectly innocuous person. Till
at last I so prevailed that he relinquished the subject; but if you
will take my advice you will not extend your stay.
[Sidenote: THE RENEGADE’S TALE]
“Ah, sir, you know the old German proverb, ‘The mountain looks fine
from afar, but how disappointing when under it.’ Such is but too true
of this place. From afar, where the traveller talks of the hospitality
of Lady Adela, the great houses, the gardens, the bazaar of Halabja,
he forgets the savageness, the incredible treachery and insecurity
which makes life here a tremulous fear. Ah, these people, they but
seek to squeeze out of a man what he has, and then kill him. Think not
that they will give you anything here, nor treat you kindly except you
pay for it tenfold. Take my advice, my friend, flee from this nest of
scorpions before yet they sting you to death, quit this town of hungry
vultures while the flesh remains upon your bones and before it grows on
theirs. Look at me, what do I possess? I walk about in these wretched
clothes seeking only to protect even them from the rapacious appetite
of some predatory Kurd.”
“Yet,” I said, “it seems to me that since the day you arrived from
Bagdad, a fugitive, possessing less even than this, you were worse
off then than now, when by the Pasha’s beneficence you possess house,
clothes, wife, children, and the wherewithal to keep them all.”
“Ah, you do not understand,” he protested feebly, and was silent for a
while. Then once again he took up his tale of alarm and warning, but
I had had enough, and to get rid of him began to ridicule him for a
European turned Musulman, and to ask him where the sect of the Sunnis
was a whit better than us of the Shi’a--questions he funked--and
departed.
It had not sufficed to alarm me, all this rigmarole, but I was made
aware of the existence of a mean and cowardly enemy at Halabja,
whose favourite weapon was obviously slander. Fortunately this was
that Kurdistan where it is the habit to shout one’s affairs upon the
house-tops and bill-sides, and slander has a short life, usually
terminated by an unexpected bullet.
So, upon the house-top system I resolved to go straight to Tahir Beg,
pretend a high and mighty resentment of such treatment of a guest, and
bid him an abrupt farewell. By this means I should be able to tell
exactly by his manner what his thoughts were. If he suspected me, he
would raise no objection to my departure.
So, groping my way along the dark verandah, I found him upon his
roof among the usual cronies, and took my place upon his right among
the silent throng. After some time he asked whether I had made any
arrangement for staying here awhile, as he was very anxious to study
French with me. I put on a resentful air, and answered that I was
leaving Halabja in a very few days; and in reply to his question why,
told him that a guest was not accustomed to receive night messengers of
evil, speaking evil of his host, and that if the ancient Kurdish law
of hospitality were to be thus violated I had better leave at once. At
this the company pricked up their ears, and at the mention of Kurdish
hospitality a black look crossed their faces, and a murmur went around,
partly of astonishment at my audacity, and partly of censure and
resentment at such a statement in the Jaf house. It also roused Tahir
Beg, and he not unnaturally demanded immediate explanation of such
statements, whereupon I frankly told him all that had occurred.
To my surprise the company showed considerable amusement, and even
Tahir Beg himself nearly smiled; but before he could offer any reply,
old Sayyid of Barzinjan, a privileged elder, said: “Dost thou not know
this foolish creature Amin Effendi, nor know that this is what he
does for every stranger here, thereby ruining our name and alarming
our guests. Take no notice. He is a mean man among the meanest, and
being an incompetent fool, naturally fears that you, whom he knows
only as a doctor, will cut the ground from under his feet, and gain
his dismissal. Wait till to-morrow, go to see Lady Adela, but do not
mention the affair to her.”
[Sidenote: THE RENEGADE’S DISGRACE]
Tahir Beg, making no assertion contrary to this, added that I must
take no notice of the creature--a renegade, the meanest of the mean, a
deceitful and little-minded individual who could only disgrace those
who supported him. He then, as if to make up for the resentment I had
felt, devoted himself to a long and cordial conversation upon various
subjects, and showing me such attention that it was clear from the
behaviour of the company when I left that Amin Effendi’s attempt to get
rid of me had but improved my position, with Tahir Beg at any rate.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER X:
[58] Yuzbashi = major.
[59] Bash chaush = sergeant.
[60] The Kurds have corrupted the name, in an appropriate way, to
“Khwolmur,” “the Dead Land.”
[61] The district is mentioned in some ancient works as Siazurus, and
was an important district of Holwan in Sasanian times.
[62] An unusual dirtiness of habit must not be attributed to the
Kurds because of the mention of the excess of fleas. The plains of
Mesopotamia, Syria, and Kurdistan breed millions of these vermin in the
sand and dust, and quite as many are found in the desert places as in
the habitations. They disappear in July, to reappear in the spring.
[63] By the Turko-Persian Treaty of 1639, the Jafs were reckoned part
Turkish and part Persian subjects.
[64] There was even a special court language, the graceful and
euphonious Guran dialect, an ancient Persian tongue, which is still
spoken by the Aoramani tribe and certain of the Guran settled people.
The common people spoke the Kurdish, which is to-day the language of
Sina town.
[65] There is in the British Museum an uncatalogued manuscript of poems
which the author has identified as being a collection of works of
famous Kurdish poets of the court of Sina.
[66] Later information tells of the death of Majid Beg also.
[67] The writer stands indebted to Muhammad Ali Beg Jaf for a large
portion of the historical matter relating to the Jaf tribe, in all
matters concerning which this well-read and well-informed Kurdish
gentleman is an enthusiast.
[68] Lest this seems an unwarrantable claim to a knowledge of Persian
not to be expected of a European, the author would mention that he has
lived among the Shirazi, as one of themselves, without their knowledge
that he was other than a Shirazi.