The Boundary Question.--Koordish Chiefs.--Torture of
Artin, an American Christian.--Improved State of Society in
Turkey.--Execution of a Koord.--Power of Fatalism.--Gratitude of
Artin's Family.
One of the most important of the affairs which were to be settled at
Erzeroom was the geographical position of the boundaries between the
two empires, for along the whole line there ran a broad belt of a kind
of debatable land, upon which every man felt it his duty to shoot at
every other man whom he did not get near enough to run through with
his long spear, or knock upon the head with his mace, these ancient
style of weapons being still in use among the Koords. For the purpose
of gaining local information, many of the chiefs and principal persons
of the wild districts in question were brought up to Erzeroom to be
examined before the plenipotentiaries and commissioners. Some of these
were most original individuals. The following extract from a letter,
written upon the spot, will give a faint idea of two or three of
these singular chieftains.
Extract of a Letter.
"Erzeroom, August 11th, 1843.
"One day passes much like another at Erzeroom, and though there
seldom occurs any thing new to me, perhaps, as it would be all new
to you, you may like to hear how I pass my time, so I will give
you a sort of journal of the proceedings of yesterday, that you
may see how I occupy myself in this outlandish place. First of
all, I got up in the morning, ate my breakfast, and then walked
about the terrace on the top of the house. At eleven o'clock a
messenger came from Enveri Effendi, to ask us to go to his house
at one. So at one o'clock we went; the Russian commissioner,
with his suite, came also. At the door of Enveri Effendi's house
I saw a fine mare, with very peculiar housings. It was held by a
negro, and a Bedouin Arab was sitting on the ground near it. The
head-stall was made of a red silk garter, which went over its head,
and was attached to the bit by a piece of green leather strap;
the saddle was a common Arab saddle, but the housings, made of
wadded red silk, ended in two immense tassels, one on each side
of the horse's tail, and almost as large; the shovel-stirrups
were beautifully embossed and inlaid with silver, and there was
a heavy mace of the same workmanship under the right flap of
the saddle. This curious horse belonged to Sheikh Thamir, the
chief of the Chaab tribe, and ex-sovereign of all the land at
the mouths of the Euphrates. All the time that I was examining
the horse and talking about its accouterments, the Turkish guard
were presenting arms, and they looked very much relieved when I
turned round and went into the house.
"The staircase of this palace is like a chicken-ladder, and the
hall at the top, where the servants wait, like a little barn
or stable in England. Here, as I was kicking off my goloshes,
I was seized by Enveri Effendi himself, who had come up behind
me. This was considered as an excellent good joke by the
Chaoushes, servants, &c., who stood in a row to receive us;
so we went into the selamlik (or reception room) together, and
there I was introduced to three of the most picturesque people
I have ever seen. The first was Osman Pasha, late Governor
of Zohab; the second, Sheikh Thamir, whose horse I had been
looking at outside; the third was yclept Abdul Kader Effendi,
chief secretary to the government of Bussorah. These persons
were dressed in flowing robes of various colors; they had long
beards, and enormous turbans of Cashmere shawl. All three were
remarkably ugly, strange-looking men, and I can not describe to
you the peculiar way in which their clothes were put on, and the
wild and almost magnificent appearance they presented. There were,
besides these and ourselves, B---- Pasha and four other gentlemen,
in the modern Turkish dress. The three commissioners and their two
dragomans sat on the divan under the window, all, except myself,
with their legs sticking out, like people waiting for an operation
in a hospital. Enveri Effendi sat on a cushion on the floor, in the
right-hand corner, and the others were ranged on the two sides of
the room. As we were fourteen people, on a sudden fourteen servants
rushed into the room with pipes; then one brought coffee on a tray,
the brocade covering of which was thrown over his left shoulder;
and then came a man bringing to each of us a cup, well frothed up,
and in a zarf, or outer cup, of a different kind, according to
the rank of the person to whom it was presented. Enveri Effendi
and the three commissioners had cups of enameled gold, the rest
of the Pashas, &c., of silver. When this ceremony was concluded,
the door was shut, the servants disappeared, a curtain was drawn
across the door, and two chaoushes, with muskets, put to guard
it outside. Then Enveri Effendi lifted up his voice, and, after
swinging himself about, and grunting two or three times, he told
us that the gentlemen in the turbans had brought up a number of
old firmans, teskerès, and other papers relating to the lands
between Zohab and the Persian Gulf; that he had examined them,
and that now he begged the commissioners to put any questions
they chose to the worthies before them respecting the lands, &c.
"Then we all looked at each other for a little time, then they all
looked at me. Then I took up my parable, and desired the dragoman
to ask Osman Pasha who he was. 'I am Osman Pasha,' said he; 'and
I and my family have been sovereigns (or hereditary governors
rather) of Zohab for seven generations.' Having asked him a
great many questions, and written down his answers, which made
him somewhat nervous, I turned to Sheikh Thamir. 'What is your
fortunate name?' said I; upon which Sheikh Thamir opened his eyes,
then he opened his mouth, then he looked at Abdel Kader, then he
shut his mouth again, and said nothing. So I asked him again who
he had the honor to be. Upon this, Abdel Kader, who appeared to
be his mentor or adviser, came and sat down by him, and said,
'He is Sheikh Thamir.' Sheikh Thamir upon this shouted out,
at the top of his voice, 'Yes, I am Sheikh Thamir, the son of
Gashban, who was the son of Osman, who was the son of--' 'Thank
you,' I said, 'I only wanted to know from your own lips who you
were, but am not particular as to the names of all your respected
ancestors.' However, Sheikh Thamir was not to be stopped in this
way when he had once begun, so he shouted out a long string of
names, and when he got to the end he said he was Sheikh of the
Sheikhs of the great tribe of Chaab, and commander of the district
of Ghoban, which his ancestors had held before him for one or two
hundred years--or more, or less, as I pleased. In answer to other
questions, which Abdel Kader always accompanied with his own notes
and commentaries, he said, 'I have no papers; we do not understand
such things. What do I know? I am an old man. I am forty-five years
of age; let me alone.' In course of time I did let him alone,
and a difficult thing it was to draw out any information from
this wild desert chief. Every now and then somebody else put in a
word. At about four o'clock the meeting broke up. We returned home
and dined, and in the evening went out riding. Passing some tents,
which the Pasha has set up at the other side of the town, near
a tank--the only place where there are any trees near Erzeroom,
and they are only about a dozen poplars--I saw a number of people,
so I went up to the tents, and found Sabri Pasha, the commander
of the troops, an Egyptian Pasha, who is come to buy horses for
Mohammed Ali--he has bought some hundreds; Bekir Pasha, some other
military Pashas, Namik Effendi, &c., two little sons of Sabri
Pasha, dressed in a very odd way, with petticoats of different
colored silks in stripes; he said it was the dress of the girls in
Albania, but I never saw any thing like it in that country. Here
we stayed and chatted with the Turks. The tents are superb; the
principal one was 100 feet long, with an open colonnade round it,
and lined inside with silk; rich Persian carpets were spread on
the ground. I have never seen so beautiful a tent. When the moon
rose I went away, a man carrying a meshaleh, a thing like a beacon,
on the top of a pole, with old cotton dipped in pitch burning in
it; it is the best light there is for out-of-doors, as it never
blows out, and gives much more light than any torches or lanterns.
"When I got home I paid my respects to the kid, who came out to
meet me; and to the little cow, eighteen inches high, who sat in
the door and would not get out of the way; and having drank tea,
I went to bed."
On another occasion certain men represented to me that a Christian
oda bashi, or chamberlain of a khan or inn, had been unjustly seized
and tortured by the authorities, to make him confess to a robbery that
had taken place in his khan, which in reality had been perpetrated by
two Turkish soldiers; but the oda bashi being a Christian, neither his
evidence nor that of any other Christian could be taken in opposition
to that of a Mohammedan, according to the Turkish law. The case was
brought before me, and I took some interest in it. I had no authority
whatever to deal with such questions as these, and it was only by
representations to the Pasha that I was enabled to obtain justice
for the unlucky oda bashi.
Finding the case taken down at the time from the word of mouth of
some of those who moved in it, I thought it might be interesting
as a picture of manners in an out-of-the-way country, and I subjoin
it without making any alterations in the language of this piece of
justiciary business.
Case of Artin, Oda Bashi, an Armenian.
"Erzeroom, August 2d and 12th, 1843.
"A merchant, named Mehemed, brought his merchandise to the Khan
Ghengé Aga Khan, where he slept. Two soldiers slept near him. In
the morning his goods were gone; he accused the soldiers (who were
the only people who had been near him) of the robbery; they denied
it, and were let off by the judge at the mekemmé, before whom
they had been taken. A Turkish woman, named Zeilha, saw the two
soldiers bury something, upon which she told the merchant that his
goods were buried at such a place by the soldiers. He went there,
and found half the goods; the soldiers, therefore, were again
taken up, when they confessed to the theft of half the goods,
but said that the oda bashi, an Armenian, named Artin, had taken
the other half. Artin was accordingly taken before the tribunal of
the Kiaya; the Pasha ordered him to be tortured on his declaring
himself ignorant of the theft. A tass (metal drinking-cup) of hot
brass was put about his head; afterward a cord was tied round his
head, two sheep's knuckle-bones were placed upon his temples, and
the cord tightened till his eyes nearly came out. As he would not
confess, his front teeth were then drawn one at a time; pieces of
cane were run up under his toe-nails and his finger-nails. Various
tortures have been inflicted on him in this way for the last twelve
days, and he is now hung up by the hands in the prison of the
Seraskier, where he will be kept and tormented till he confesses
or dies. This is the deposition of his wife Mariam, who begs me to
interpose to save her husband, who, she declares, slept at home,
and not in the khan, on the night when the robbery took place."
According to the Turkish law, two witnesses of unimpeachable character
are sufficient to convict any man of any crime, on their accusing him
before the cadi. Only in the case of adultery four male witnesses are
required. A woman's evidence is never taken, nor is that of a Christian
or a foreigner held good in any case against a Mohammedan. These
two soldiers, however, being convicted thieves, their evidence was
not valid according to the law, and the oda bashi seems to have been
taken up and tortured by an entirely arbitrary act of the Pasha. I
went to the palace, and these are the words of Kiamili Pasha, the
Governor and Viceroy of Erzeroom.
"You are mistaken; the man has not been tortured; I have proof that
he was at the khan that night; he has been found guilty by the court
(mekemmé) on proper evidence, and sent to me to receive the punishment
due to his offense. As I wished to recover the goods stolen for the
benefit of their owner, the merchant Mehemed, I threatened the oda
bashi that if he did not tell what he had done with his share of the
property, it was in my power to inflict these tortures upon him.
"After this he desired to be allowed to speak to the two soldiers
who had possession of the other half of the goods. I consented,
and sent him to the prison at Selim Pasha's palace, where they were
confined. As I would not trust to the report of Selim Pasha's people,
I sent a confidential man of my own, who was put in a place where
he overheard all that passed. The oda bashi said to the soldiers,
'If you will say I am innocent, I will share my portion of the stolen
goods with you, and you will gain by this, as your share has been taken
from you, and I shall get off freely. Do this, and nobody will know.'
"The oda bashi was brought back to his prison: when I asked him what
he had said to the soldiers, he told me quite another story. Then
I spoke to him in his own words, whereat he was astonished, but he
kept silence. He is still in prison, and I am thinking what to do with
him; but he has not been tortured in any way; and as you seem to take
an interest in his case, I will set him free, and give him to you,
to show my friendship for you."
I replied, "I am glad to hear that the man has not been tortured, for
in England we consider torture to be an act of unnecessary cruelty;
but your story alters the case. The man is certainly guilty, and as I
only asked for justice in this case, and I wish in all things to see
justice done, I will not have the man; let him be punished according
to the law, only do not torture him.
"The other day you hung a Koord opposite my windows; he was a murderer,
and you did right: it is by acts like these that a country such as
this can be kept in order, and that protection is assured to those
who do well."
"I am sorry," said the Pasha, "that they hung the Koord before your
windows. I told them not to hang him before the house of the Persian
plenipotentiary, where there is a gibbet; but to take him to any
place where the Koords resorted, and as there are many coffee-houses
near you, that is the reason probably why they hung him there. His
story is a curious one: I have been looking after him for the last
three years; he has robbed and murdered many people, though he was
so young a man, but he had always escaped my agents. At last, a few
days ago, he stole a horse, in a valley near here, from a man who
was traveling, and whom he beat about the head and left for dead. He
brought the horse to Erzeroom and offered it for sale, when the owner,
who had recovered, saw him selling the horse, and gave him up to the
guard. He was brought up for judgment before me, when I said to him,
Who are you? After a silence, the man said, 'There is a fate in this,
it can not be denied. I am * * * *, whom you have been searching for
these three years. My fate brought me to Erzeroom, and now I am taken
up for stealing one poor horse. I felt when I took that horse that
I was fated to die for it. My time is come. It is fate.' And he went
to be hung without any complaint."
I said he deserved it, and hoped others would take warning by his
death.
"I hope they will," the Pasha said, "but among the Koords of this
country there are so few who do not deserve punishment, that if you see
two persons you may be sure that one has stolen something. You can not
see two people together here but that at least one has been a thief."
"Well," I answered, "the British commissioners are two people whom
your excellency has often seen together, but I hope, in our case,
when we leave the pashalik of Erzeroom, we may be convicted of having
stolen nothing but your good opinion;" and so I took my leave.
In the evening, hearing that the wife of the oda bashi was in my house,
I said to Paolo Cadelli, my servant, that my desire to liberate the
Armenian was changed; that he had not been tortured, but he was a
thief. "How!" said Paolo, in a great state of excitement; "a thief
he may be, but tortured he certainly was, for in the morning did I
not go forth into the bazaar to get wrappers (pestimal) of Persian
silk? I went to the Bezestein, and there did I not see the chief of
the criers of the Bit Bazaar? he is my friend. Did I not get from
him the embroidery, the cloth of gold which you have, which is in
your room? And we went, did we not go together, to the court of
the palace of the Pasha? It is opposite, is it not opposite to the
entrance of the Bezestein? Do not the soldiers present arms to you
there when you go in? Yes. There I went, and I saw the Armenian,
a poor devil--quite a poor devil--sitting down like a monkey,
altogether quite stupid with fear and martyrdom. They had martyred
him; they had drawn his teeth; his finger-ends and toes were black,
by reason of the canes they had run into them; his thighs had been
torn by pincers; he was half dead. He said to the people, 'What
can I do? I am innocent; kill me; but I can not restore goods which
I have not got.' Ah! he is a Christian. Is he not a Christian--an
Armenian? That is what these Turks do. They have not tortured the
soldiers who are guilty. Certainly they have not, but this man has
been tortured because he is an Armenian. They are Turks, my master
(padrone); are they not Turks? They are all Turks; that is what they
do;" and with many ejaculations Paolo went away to cool down his
indignation in the open air.
I was surprised at this account. Yesterday, August 5, * * * Pasha
came to breakfast, and I begged him to find out the truth. In the
afternoon I was at Enveri Effendi's house; * * * Pasha was there,
and he said the man had not been tortured; that the account given
me by Kiamili Pasha was correct; that the man was out of prison,
but that the Pasha would seek for him and send him to me.
I heard that, after I went to the Pasha, the Pasha sent for the
Kiaya, and finding the oda bashi had been tortured, he found great
fault with him, and ordered the man to be released the next day. He is
sentenced, as he understands, to pay the half of the value of the goods
stolen. While I was with the Pasha, the Tophenkyi Bashi was enraged
with this poor victim for getting the assistance of the Franks, as
he thought that we were come to the Pasha on his account, whereas our
visit was on public business in no way connected with this affair. It
appears that while we were sitting on the divan in the Pasha's hall
of audience, the Tophenkyi Bashi was employed during the same time
in inflicting additional torments on the unfortunate oda bashi; he
snapped his pistol at his head, and informed him that the Pasha had
given orders that he was to be hanged in the course of the day. The oda
bashi, after we had rescued him from his various tormentors, presented
himself before me. He was a good-looking man, about thirty-five
years of age, with a black beard, and respectably dressed in blue,
in the style usually adopted by the Armenian Christians. He said
he had been tortured by the order of the Kiaya Bey; the bones were
put to his temples, some of his teeth drawn, his nails pierced, his
left thigh torn with pincers; he was hung up by the arms by ropes,
but the hot cup was not placed upon his head. He showed me the marks
of the pincers and other scars about his body--evident proofs of the
truth of his assertion. The two soldiers who were convicted of having
stolen the goods (the oda bashi being entirely ignorant of the whole
transaction) were to be brought before the Council on the following
Monday. They are now in prison, and will be sentenced to pay the
other half of the value of the stolen goods. This information the
oda bashi received from the merchant Mehemed, the owner of the lost
property. He has not heard any other particulars about the soldiers.
From the above account it appears that much injustice may probably
be carried on by the inferior officers of the government which never
gets to the ears of the Pasha, small officials being notoriously
more tyrannical than greater men. The Pasha himself appears to be a
kind-hearted, well-intentioned man in a general way; but, in cases
where his own interest is not directly concerned, he does not look
into the affairs of the pashalik with sufficient keenness to prevent
his subordinate officers from practicing various acts of oppression
and extortion, according to the fashion of the good old times, when
Turkey, like the United States of America, was a land of liberty,
where every free and independent citizen had the right to beat his own
nigger; for, according to some doctors of the law, pashas, vizirs, &c.,
might cut off a few heads every day for no given reason, but just for
amusement. The Sultan had the privilege of destroying fourteen lives
per day of his faithful subjects, who might have committed no crime;
after that number, some reason was expected to be shown for the further
use of the sword and bow-string on that day. Now the case is altered:
fewer crimes are committed in Turkey than in London, and the Turkish
pashas endeavor to stop such practices as are considered discreditable
on the part of the inferior officers; though they have to contend with
great difficulties in a country where it is hardly possible to get at
the truth, and where the inferior officers have for generations been
accustomed to plunder those below them, directly they are out of sight
of the higher authorities; trusting to the want of communication,
the slight knowledge of writing, and the many obstacles in the way
which prevent the poor man's story getting to the ears of the Pasha
or the Sultan, who, in these days at least, are anxious to remedy
such abuses, and to distribute justice with a tolerably impartial
hand. I had great satisfaction in hearing afterward that, owing to my
exertions in this and other cases--the good cause being taken up warmly
by Colonel Williams, after I was gone--all torture was authoritatively
abolished in the pashalik of Erzeroom; and I am in hopes that, except
in some snug little dungeon in the rocky castle of a half independent
Koordish chief, this horrible custom is almost extinct.
The Koord above mentioned was hanged in so original a manner that
I must shortly describe it, as it took place immediately under my
window. What we called at school a cat-gallows was erected close to a
bridge, over the little stream which ran down the horse-market, between
my house and the bottom of the hill of the citadel. The culprit stood
under this; the cross-beam was not two feet above his head; a kawass,
having tied a rope to one end of the beam, passed a slip-knot round
the neck of the Koord, a young and very handsome man, with long black
hair; he then drew the rope over the other end of the beam, and pulled
away till the poor man's feet were just off the ground, when he tied
the rope in a knot, leaving the dead body hanging, supported by two
ropes in the form of the letter V. Hardly any one was looking on,
and in the afternoon the body was taken down and buried.
I shall always consider this case as a remarkable instance of the
power of fatalism over the mind of an ignorant and superstitious
man. This Koord was entirely the cause of his own execution: no
one knew him by sight at Erzeroom, and there was not the slightest
necessity for his declaring his name to the Pasha, and confessing
that he had committed murders and outrages of all kinds among the
villages of Koordistaun. His punishment for stealing a horse would not
have been very severe, and, but for his voluntary admission that he
was a notorious malefactor, for whom the police had long been on the
look-out, he might have been alive to this day, to rob and murder, till
somebody shot him, or he became too old for the exertion. Fatalism,
in other cases, has a powerful influence over the true believers in
the armies of Islam. The soldier goes to battle with the firm belief
that, if his hour is not come, the cannon of the enemy can have no
power over him; and that if his hour is arrived, the angel of death
will call him, whether he may be seated on his divan, or walking in
full health in his garden at home: just as readily does he bow his
head to fate in one place as in another. By this institution of the
Koran, the wonderful genius of Mohammed has gained many a victory by
the hands of his trusting and believing followers for the caliphs
and sultans of his creed. Some of the reforms of Sultan Mahmoud,
by treating lightly many of the ancient prejudices of the Osmanlis,
have shaken the throne under his feet. The progress of infidelity,
which has begun at Constantinople, is the greatest temporal danger
to the power of the Turkish empire. The Turk implicitly believes the
tenets of his religion; he keeps its precepts and obeys its laws; he
is proud of his faith, and prays in public when the hour of prayer
arrives. How different, alas! is the manner in which the divine
laws of Christianity are kept! The Christian seems ashamed of his
religion; as for obeying the doctrines of the Gospel, they have no
perceptible effect upon the mass of the people, among whom drunkenness,
dishonesty, and immorality prevail almost unchecked, except by the
fear of punishment in this world; while in Turkey not one tenth part
of the crime exists which is annually committed in Christendom.
A few days after this occurrence, as I was sitting in the summer
chamber at the top of the house, I heard a most extraordinary shuffling
and screeching behind the curtain which hung over the door; the curtain
shook about, and numerous subdued voices and noises were heard, which
sounded like cocks and hens suffering from strangulation. I shouted
out to know what in the world was going on; after a while the kawass
drew aside the curtain, and along the floor advanced a most strange
and incomprehensible procession of several women and men, crawling
on their hands and knees, each with a cock or a hen in their hands,
whose fluttering, and screaming, and crowing now broke forth in full
chorus; one or two got away, and flew about the room, as its owner,
making use of her hands to walk with, was unable to hold the terrified
fowl. This procession advanced to the divan, and, without saying a
word, the foremost woman seized hold of one of my legs, which was
inadvertently sticking out, and, holding on to my ankle, kissed my
foot, and burst out into a string of exclamations in Armenian, no one
word of which made any impression on my understanding. Being horribly
alarmed, I kicked as well as I could, and, having escaped into the
remotest corner of the divan, I begged to know what all this portended;
and on the chickens being caught, and comparative silence obtained,
I found that these were the family of the poor oda bashi, who had
brought the chickens as a present, and came with tears to thank me
for saving their father, brother, or husband. They were really pained,
poor people, when I would not accept the cocks and hens, for, though
of little value, it looked like receiving a bribe for justice; and,
after a long explanation of my strange notions, they walked off in
smiles upon their hind legs, the cocks crowing triumphantly on their
way down stairs.