JULFA.
Illness and death of horse—Groom takes
sanctuary—Sharpness of Armenians—Julfa
houses—Kūrsis—Priests—Arachnoort—Monastery—Nunnery—Call
to prayer—Girls’ school—Ancient language of the
Scriptures—Ignorance of priests—Liquor traffic—Sunday
market—Loafers—Turkeys—Church Missionary school—Armenian
schools.
I was given quarters in Ispahan that did not possess a stable, and I
had to hire one a good way off. This cost me one of my horses, for my
careless groom, instead of giving the animals “teleet,” the mixture of
grass and straw, simply filled their mangers with clover, and, leaving
them to their fate, went to enjoy himself in the town. The natural result
followed: I was hurriedly summoned to the stable, and found my Myedesht
horse “Armchair” (I had given him this name on account of the ease of
his paces) flinging his head about against the ground, from which he was
unable to rise; he had acute inflammation of the bowels, as I found from
an examination after death.
At that time, knowing little or nothing of the diseases of horses, I was
compelled to send for a native farrier, and let him work his wicked will
on the poor beast. The treatment he employed was to put on a quantity
of heavy clothing, canter the animal furiously about, and deprive him
of water; in about four hours he died. I have since had horses who
suffered in a similar way, notably in one case where I was offered ten
tomans for a horse which cost sixty. I bled him largely and saved his
life, but his hoofs were never any good afterwards, becoming hollow, and
he was chronically foundered. I had better have dealt. Bleeding, in my
experience, is the only remedy; of course, the violent cantering is the
very worst possible thing.
During the excitement, my groom, a Persian of Kermanshah, slipped away,
and I found that he had taken sanctuary in the Armenian Cathedral. I,
however, as he was a Mussulman, got him with some difficulty away, gave
him the thrashing he deserved, and kicked him out.
I found that in Julfa the cost of living was much higher than in
Kermanshah, the Armenians never allowing anything to be sold to the
English save at a high price; and in this manner a sort of special rate
was paid by the Europeans. The remedy we adopted was to buy everything
from the town, and this answered so well that, in about six months, our
pay went twice as far as before. Mr. Walton, the superintendent, with
some difficulty got a bazaar list with the real prices of the usual
necessaries _as sold in the town of Ispahan_, and circulated it among the
staff. These prices turned out to be nearly the same as those we had paid
in Kermanshah.
Julfa itself was, for an Armenian village, unusually pleasant in
appearance. The Armenians are essentially gardeners, and each house
had its vineyard or orchard; the water for irrigating these was led
in open channels through the middle of the principal streets, and the
edges of these channels were thickly planted with “zoban-i-gungishk,”
or “sparrow-tongue,” a quick-growing kind of willow, so called from the
pointed leaf. This tree makes the best firewood, giving a lasting ember;
the trees are lopped each year, and the twigs and branches are used for
making thatch, over poplar or plane poles, for roofing those rooms which
are not arched. In Ispahan most rooms have an arched roof.
The houses in Julfa are all built of mud bricks; some of them are very
ancient, going back to four hundred years. The clay of Ispahan is very
tenacious; and as the walls, particularly of the older houses, are built
from four to five feet thick, very substantial dwellings are the result,
warm in winter but cool in summer.
The Armenians almost invariably at that time (1871) built their rooms
with arched brick roofs; these were quite impervious to the weather and
delightfully cool in summer. The cold in winter was very great, but as
the Armenian does not use an open fire, but sits the greater part of his
time, his feet under a “kūrsi,” or platform having a brazier under it,
and is very warmly clad in wool and skins, he does not feel it.
These “kūrsi” (literally platforms) are an economical arrangement used
in every Armenian house. A small hole is dug in the floor (in summer it
is planked over); in this is placed a clay fire-pan, half full of wood
ashes; on them are a few handfuls of lighted charcoal. The “kūrsi,” a
frame eighteen inches high, and varying from two feet square to four,
is placed over this fire, and over this “kūrsi” is laid a “lahāf,” or
thickly-wadded cotton quilt of such size as to cover the “kūrsi” and
extend beyond it for a yard and a half. Around the “kūrsi” are placed
thin mattresses or cushions; on these the whole family sit by day, and
here they all sleep at night. In the day the “kūrsi” acts as a table, on
which the meals are eaten; at night the feet are kept thoroughly warm
by the fire-pot and the quilt. As the Armenians never wash more than
once a month, and very seldom that, the “kūrsi,” with its heat, forms a
nidus for the vermin with which they are infested; but it enables them
to support the cold of their large and airy rooms at a minimum cost for
fuel. Whole families thus sleeping in one apartment, guests, married
couples, children and all, does not tend to promote morality, which with
these people is at a very low ebb.
What struck me most was the great multitude of priests in the place.
India and Batavia are supplied with priests from Julfa; these priests are
under the jurisdiction of a bishop, whose head-quarters are the so-called
monastery, or Egglesiah Wang, literally “big church.” He is assisted
by a monk of jovial port, the Kalifa Kuchek, or, as he is familiarly
termed, the little bishop. This little bishop, who has held his post for
many years, is much and deservedly respected in the place. Nominally
the jurisdiction of Julfa is in the hands of the bishop; literally,
the little bishop attends to this temporal power, and gives general
satisfaction.
The Arachnoort, or bishop, at the time of my arrival was one Moses; and
he added to his income, regardless of consequences, by accepting bribes
to make priests; some of the priests he made he accepted as little as
ten pounds for, and many could neither read nor write. His successor,
the present bishop, a man of singularly prepossessing appearance and
blameless life, does not do this, and exacts a fair education and a good
character in his candidates for ordination.
A very amusing instance showing this occurred in 1881. I had a dirty,
drunken cook, whom, though knowing his work, I had to discharge for
drunkenness and dishonesty; he was notoriously a great blackguard, but a
clever fellow. To my astonishment in a day or two I met my drunken cook,
dressed in sad-coloured garments, washed and sober. I was much surprised
at the change for the better, and was told that the reason was that he
was to be made a priest in a day or two. I inquired of the little bishop,
and was told that he had offered a bribe of twenty pounds, or kerans five
hundred, to be made a priest; but that, as the bishop did not like to
hurt the man’s feelings, he had told him to live cleanly, keep sober, and
that with study he might hope in time for ordination, but that just at
that time it was impossible to comply with his wishes. The man’s feelings
were thus spared. Alas! for the cook; in a few days he was found, as
usual, drunk and incapable in the street, and compelled to say, “Nolo
episcopari.”
The “Egglesiah Wang” (great church) was formerly a large monastery, and
many monks inhabited it; the cells are now mostly used as store-rooms.
Besides the Arachnoort and the little bishop, there were only two monks
in my time, of whom one died; the other, after offering himself as a
convert to Protestantism, and then to Catholicism (previously he had
even tried to turn Mussulman), was sent to Etchmiadzin, in Armenia, on
condition of being subsequently reinstated, and there was subjected by
the patriarch to severe discipline, and forgiven. He has not returned.
The nunnery is still flourishing, and there are many nuns; some of them
have attained a great age. They are harmless women, whose only fault is
a love of the bottle; they fast religiously, and conduct their services,
which are very frequent, by day and night, with great regularity. There
was a time when the Julfa churches were not allowed to have bells, and
over each church-roof is a board, hung from two posts. This is drummed on
with mallets, at first slowly, then fast, for some fifteen minutes before
each service at the nunnery; and, as my house was near it, I can testify
to the punctuality of at least the call to prayers, at half-past three
A.M. and other unearthly hours.
These boards are used on every church save the “Wang,” which is provided
with a handsome bell-tower, standing in its inner court on four
substantial brick columns, and covered by a dome-like roof; it is at
least one hundred and thirty feet high.
On Sundays, Saturday afternoons, and all feast-days, the knocking is
deafening, and the awakening power is certainly greater than the bell to
those in the neighbourhood. We may yet have it adopted in England as one
of the _primitive forms_ of the early Church.
Great scandals have at times arisen in this nunnery. A nun, the sister of
a deserving artist who had learnt his profession in India, was starved
and beaten to death, and the corpse buried at night-time by the nuns on
account of her alleged irregularities. The elder nuns are very fanatical
and ignorant old women. A curly-headed young Armenian, who was detected
on the premises by them, and excused himself on the ground that he wished
to convert them to Protestantism, of which faith he was a paid teacher,
nearly met with the fate of Orpheus; that enterprising youth, after
having an application for increase of pay refused, left religion as a
business and took to dealing in skins, which offered more scope for his
talents. So much care had been expended on his education that he could
read the New Testament in the original Greek; he, however, wisely left a
calling for which he felt he had no vocation.
The nuns visit the sick, and teach, under the superintendence of an able
priest (Mesrop), all the Julfa girls. They are instructed in the elements
of religion, and taught to read the Scriptures, without understanding
them, in ancient Armenian, and to embroider, or to knit socks. The
Armenian Scriptures and prayers are written in ancient Armenian, which
is a language as different from the modern dialect as nineteenth-century
English is from that of Edward the Confessor. Consequently, all the
people, and most of the priests, do not understand either the Scriptures
or the prayers, which many can read. I was present at the burial of a
Christian child by the Shiraz priest; the poor man could neither read nor
write, but he was prompted with the beginning of each prayer by a member
of the congregation, who could read the ancient tongue; as he had these
prayers all by heart he, on getting the cue, recited them fluently.
A great portion of the service in an Armenian church is performed behind
a curtain, which is raised and lowered at intervals. The sacrament is,
I believe, not administered to the laity. The services are inordinately
long. I was present once at a wedding, and the ceremony certainly lasted
two hours.
Baptism is performed by total immersion, and the infant is anointed in
seven places with a cruciform mark, with green oil, said to be brought
from Etchmiadzin.
A priest, as a rule, is sent forth for two years to either India or
Batavia—_where_ he goes is the important point. If he be sent to Bombay,
or a large community of rich Armenians, he returns with enough to keep
him for life and provide for his children; if to a poor village, he
returns as poor as he went; he then is without duty for perhaps five
years. All this is arranged by the Arachnoort, and is usually determined
by the amount of bribe tendered by the priest to him; kissing, in fact,
goes by favour.
Some few of these priests are well educated, and have made the most
of the advantages of their stay in India—notably the vicar, Kashish
(priest) Mardyros. He is an enlightened man, and honest, but he can never
become bishop, for the bishop must be a monk, and is always sent from
Etchmiadzin.
The present Arachnoort speaks only ancient Armenian, Constantinople
Turkish, and a little Persian, and the power for good or evil is mostly
in the hands of the little bishop and vicar. A priest may _marry_ before
he receives priest’s orders, but if his wife dies he cannot re-marry, and
the widowed priest often becomes a monk. This rule leads to a good deal
of immorality, some of the priests being of very bad repute.
Another cause of crime in Julfa is the existence of a barely-concealed
traffic in liquor with the Mussulmans of the town. Certain wine-sellers
are tolerated by the venal authorities; these men allow the Persians
to frequent their houses at all hours of the day or night, selling to
them dreadful mixtures of sour wine and arrack. A Persian is never a
tippler—he drinks till he is mad drunk, or till overcome by sleep. As a
rule the Armenian receives him as a guest, and he deposits his weapons
with his host for their mutual safety. He then hands over his money, and
drinks it out. Of course scenes of violence ensue: stabbing is common. A
fatal case again occurred during my last stay in Julfa. I have been twice
myself threatened in the street by men carrying naked knives; on the
second occasion I thrashed the man severely, and took away his knife.
Any appeal to the authorities would be useless. They reply, “He went to
Julfa to get drunk; what can you expect?”
A few months after my arrival I removed to comfortable quarters in the
Shireh-Khaneh, or wine-sellers’ street. Unfortunately mine was the first
house; at all hours of the day and night violent knocks would be given
at my door by intending arrack-buyers. I could only reluctantly, and as
a last resource, administer a good beating to the knockers. This, after
a time, had the desired effect. In my street, too, a sort of Alsatia or
Tiger Bay was established; all the houses were inhabited by wine-sellers
save my own, and down this street the inebriates from the town, and their
Armenian friends, were in the habit of swaggering, often with drawn
swords (kammer). On meeting these men I always used to thrash them, and
gradually this nuisance too was abated, and when they got drunk, they got
drunk on, and not off, the premises of the wine-sellers. All the Julfa
houses are made with small low doorways, and massive doors are provided,
of great thickness. In many of the wine-sellers’ houses a beam is kept,
which leans against the door, the end going into the ground; the door is
then safe against the attacks of those without.
All the old gardens and vineyards, too, are protected by low doors, some
yard square, constructed of _stone_ six inches thick; these revolve on a
pin, and are like those figured as “stone shutter at Bashan” in ‘The Rob
Roy Canoe in the Holy Land.’
There is a weekly market held each Sunday in the little maidān, or
square, of Julfa; it is well attended. Raw cotton, fruit, grey shirting,
chintzes, and notions, are sold here, and also _beef_, for the Armenian,
unlike the Persian, is a beef-eater. Fairly good meat is obtained; one’s
cook goes with a chopper and hacks off what is wanted; they have no idea
of any difference in the value of joints.
Here, too, the Persian women hawk their cotton-yarn and buy socks,
which are hand-knitted in Julfa by the Armenians, of wool, and also of
cotton. Any hard-working woman can keep herself in Julfa by knitting; the
earnings barely exceed five kerans (three and ninepence) a month; but
this, with economy, is enough to keep and clothe them.
As a rule the Armenian women are industrious and notable housewives. In
the summer they knit socks in groups at the doors of their houses, and
gossip; in winter they do the same around the kūrsi, as long as it is
light. Wine is made by all, and the jars used in the fermenting are often
very ancient, some being two and three hundred years old.
Most of the men who work do a little market-gardening, and many have
orchards or vineyards. But the more active and brighter travel to India
or Batavia, and often make fortunes in retail trade; some have even
established well-known houses in Manchester, Liverpool, and London.
Many enter the Persian service; these generally apostatise. The effect
of this emigration on the inhabitants of Julfa is deleterious in the
extreme. The rich relations rarely forget the family in Julfa, and there
are consequently a number of people subsisting on what the successful
husband, father, or son, sends as a pension. These will not work, but
prefer to drag on a life of idleness on a pittance. I often have asked
a man, “What are your resources?” and he has replied, “My relatives
at Bombay,” etc., as the case may be. Armenians at times rise to high
employ: the chief of the Arsenal to the Shah is an Armenian, so is the
Ambassador in London.
The first day of my arrival in Julfa I was visited by twenty-six priests;
they were all regaled with brandy. The next day there were twenty-nine,
including the original twenty-six, who called again. However, I treated
them this time to tea, saying I had no more brandy. The third day no more
priests came.
Near the banks of the river is the old church of “Soup Gework,” or “St
George.” This is celebrated for being the receptacle of two miraculous
stones, which have reputed power in the healing of diseases. They are
said to have flown from Etchmiadzin, in Armenia, in one night, and are
the ordinary stones of the country brought to Julfa by some rich citizen
in bygone days for some building which was never erected.
There are also the ruins of the old church of the Jesuit Fathers standing
in its garden. There is nothing remarkable in it. It is a plain brick
building, less pretentious than most Julfa churches, and whitewashed
inside; it is rapidly going to decay, as are many other of the Julfa
churches, for the population is lessening by emigration.
The successful Armenian seldom returns; when he does, he repairs his
father’s house, buys up the gardens round it, and his estate is usually
devoured at last by the priests and the Persian authorities.
At one time turkeys were bred in Julfa, but the Governor of Ispahan
having imposed a tax of a certain number of fat birds at the New Year,
the Julfa Armenians allowed them to become extinct. At the present
moment—thanks to the protective presence of the English in Julfa—the
Armenians are quite on an equality with the Persians, nay, even treat
them with a certain amount of arrogance. When I first came to Julfa, no
Armenian dared to ride a horse, and all used to get off their donkeys
when they saw a Persian of position.
Education has advanced. The English missionary school and its energetic
teacher, Mr. Johannes—who, educated in England, left the Nassick School,
where he was a master, to take charge of the C.M.S. school—has effected
wonders. The boys, really well educated, go off at about seventeen
to India, and get their living respectably; and the C.M.S. has done
really good _educational_ work; as to the proselytising, _no Mussulman
convert has ever been made_. Many fanatics of the Baabi sect have sought
and obtained temporary protection, to which they owe their lives, but
as a Christianising influence it is at present a failure, though the
enterprise has been carried out regardless of cost, even in the most
liberal manner.
The American mission at Teheran has really succeeded in making some
headway.
However, the at present (in regard to converts) abortive mission to Julfa
has in the educational department certainly done wonders, and has given
an impetus to the native schools, which previously, heavily subsidised
by successful Armenian emigrants, had done no work at all, and were
battened on by a set of hungry priests and mirzas, who on some pretext or
other sent away their pupils for five days out of seven, and declared a
holiday. Where the income went nobody knew; this much was apparent, there
was no result.
The long fasts of the Armenian Church are loyally kept by the poorer of
the Armenian community and by the villagers. They occupy altogether a
sixth of the whole year, and in them no eggs or meat may be eaten, only
vegetables, fruits, grain, and vegetable oil, but wine and spirits are
freely indulged in.