_coute que coute_ to start to-morrow. For my own part I prefer the
freedom even with the "swinishness" of a caravanserai to receiving
hospitality for which no fitting return can be made.
I. L. B.
LETTER IV
SARIPUL-I-ZOHAB, _Jan. 21_.
The rain at last ceased, and after the _katirgis_ had squabbled for an
hour over the baggage, we got off at ten, two days ago, very grateful
for shelter and hospitality under such untoward circumstances. Six
Bashi Bazouks and two _zaptiehs_ on foot in ragged and incongruous
uniforms escorted us to the Turkish frontier.
The streets were in a terrible condition, and horse and footmen, after
an attempt to march in pairs, fell perforce into a floundering and
disorderly single file, the footmen occasionally pulling themselves
out of mud holes by the tails of the horses. Outside the town there
was an expanse of mud and flooded water-channels which broke up the
last attempt at a procession, and led to a general _sauve qui peut_.
The mire was tenacious and up to the horses' knees, half the mules
were down with their loads, Hadji rolled into the mud, my capable
animal snorted and struggled, some went on banks and some took to
streams, the asses had to be relieved of their loads, and the air was
full of shouts and objurgations, till after much delay the forlorn
rabble all struggled to the _terra firma_ of a gravelly slope,
splashed from head to foot.
The road crosses low, rolling, gravelly hills, with an occasional
outcrop of red sandstone, and ascends on the whole. The sun was
bright, but the wind was strong and very cold. The Bashi Bazouk escort
was altogether harum-scarum and inconsequent, careering in circles,
and firing at birds (which they never hit) from the saddle, and when
we reached some low hills bearing a bad reputation, the officer, in
order to represent danger and his vigilant care, threw them out in all
directions scouting for robbers, till we came to a steepish hill
crowned by a round tower with a mushroom top, a few ruinous mud
buildings, and a tattered tent. Here the escort formed into one line,
and the ragged garrison into another, with an officer facing them, and
were photographed as they shivered in the biting wind. This tower is a
Turkish frontier fort.
Soon afterwards the Persian frontier is crossed, the hills increase
considerably in size, and mud was exchanged for firm, rough gravel. A
feature of the otherwise featureless landscape is the frequent
occurrence of towers like martello towers, on hill-tops, placed there
for the shelter of the guards who formerly kept a look-out for
robbers. In the uninteresting gravel lie pebbles of jasper and agate,
emerald green, red, yellow, and purple. The first object of the
slightest interest in this new country was a village of Ilyats, built
of reed screens, with roofs of goat's-hair cloth, and with small yards
with reed walls in front. The women, who wore full trousers and short
jackets, were tall, somewhat striking-looking, and unveiled. Their
hair hung down in long plaits, and they wore red handkerchiefs knotted
at the back of the head.
There an escort of four Persian _sowars_ joined us. The type of face
was that with which we are familiar on Sasanian coins and sculptured
stones, the brow and chin receding considerably, and the nose thin and
projecting, the profile suggesting a beak rather than a human face,
and the skin having the appearance of being drawn so tightly over the
bones as to force the eyes into singular prominence.
[Illustration: A TURKISH FRONTIER FORT.]
A six hours' march ended at the wildly-situated village of
Kasr-i-Shirin, high on the right bank of the Holwan, with a plantation
of dates on the left bank and considerable cultivation in the valley.
It has only eighty houses of the most wretched construction, rivalled
in height and size by middens, the drainage of which wastes itself on
the wretched roadway. A caravanserai of the most miserable
description, a square fort with a small garrison, and some large
graveyards with domed tombs and curious obelisks, are the salient
features of this village. Its wretched aspect is accounted for by its
insecurity. It has been destroyed by robber tribes as often as there
was anything worth destroying, and it has been so tossed to and fro
between Turkey and Persia as not to have any of the special
characteristics of either empire.
We stopped short of the village, at a great pile of building on a
height, in massiveness and irregularity resembling a German medieval
castle, in which a letter had secured accommodation. It has been
unoccupied since its owner, Jan Mir, a sheikh of a robber tribe, and
the terror of the surrounding neighbourhood, was made away with by the
Persian Government.
The accommodation consisted of great, dark, arched, vaulted rooms,
with stone-flagged floors, noble in size, but needing fifty candles
and huge log fires to light up and warm their dark recesses, and
gruesome and damp with one candle and a crackle of twigs. They were
clean, however, and their massive walls kept out the cold. The village
is at an elevation of 2300 feet, and the temperature has greatly
changed.
The interest of Kasr-i-Shirin is that it lies among masses of ancient
rubble, and that the slopes which surround it are completely covered
with hewn and unhewn stones of all sizes, the relics of a great city,
at the western extremity of which the present wretched hamlet
stands.[11] The walls, which are easily traced, enclose an irregular
square, the shortest front of which is said to be three miles long.
They are built of roughly-hewn blocks of gray and red sandstone, and
very hard mortar or concrete. The blocks are so huge in many places as
to deserve the often misused epithet Cyclopean.
Within this enclosure are remains of houses built of water-worn round
stones, which lie in monstrous heaps, and of a large fort on an
eminence. In another direction are the ruins of an immense palace of
quadrangular form, with only one entrance, and large underground rooms
now nearly choked up. There are remains of what must have been very
fine archways, but as the outer coating of hewn stone and all the
decorations have fallen off, leaving only the inner case of rough
rubble and concrete, the architectural forms are very badly defined,
and the aspect of what must once have been magnificent is now
forbidding and desolate. The remains of an aqueduct cut in the rock,
and of troughs and stone pipes by which water was brought into the
palace and city, from a distance of fifteen miles, are still traceable
among the desolations, but of the beautiful gardens which they
watered, and with which Khosroe surrounded the beautiful Shirin, not a
trace remains. There was a pale sunset, flushing with pale pink
distant leagues of sodden snow, and right across a lurid opening in a
heavy mass of black clouds the great ruined pile of the palace of
Khosroe the Magnificent stood out, a dismal commentary on splendour
and fame.
The promise of the evening was fulfilled the next day in windy rain,
which began gently, but afterwards fell in persistent torrents, varied
by pungent swirls of sleet and snow. Leaving the gash through cliffs
with curious stratification in white and red, formed by the Holwan,
the day was spent in skirting or crossing low hills. The mud was very
deep and tenacious, and the rate of progress barely two miles an hour.
There were no caravans, travellers, or population, and no birds or
beasts. The rain clouds hung low and heavy, mists boiled up from among
the folds of the hills, the temperature fell perceptibly. It was
really inspiriting for people protected by good mackintoshes.
After riding for six hours the rain changed into sleet and wet snow,
blotting out the hills and creating an unnatural twilight, in which we
floundered in mud up to the mules' knees into the filthiest village I
have ever seen, a compound of foul, green ditches, piles of dissolving
manure, mud hovels looking as if they were dissolving too, reed huts,
and an Ilyat village, grouped round the vilest of caravanserais, the
entrance to which was knee-deep in mire. To lodge in it was voted
impossible, and the escort led us in the darkening mist and pelting
sleet to an adjacent mud hamlet as hopeless-looking on the other side
of the bridge, where, standing up to the knees of the mules in liquid
manure, we sought but vainly for shelter, forded the Holwan, and
returned to the caravanserai through almost impassable slush.
It was simply loathsome, with its stench, its foulness, and its mire,
and was already crowded and noisy with men and beasts. There was a
great courtyard with arched recesses all round, too abominable to be
occupied, too exposed and ruinous, even had they been cleaned, to give
shelter from the driving sleet. The last resource was to pass through
an archway into the great, lofty mule stable, on both sides of which
are similar recesses or mangers, about ten feet by seven and about
eight feet high. The stable was of great size and height with a domed
roof. Probably it runs half-way round the quadrangle at the back of
the uninhabitable recesses. There were at least four hundred mules in
this place, jangling their great bells, and crowds of _katirgis_,
travellers, and _zaptiehs_, all wet and splashed over their heads with
mud, some unloading, others making fires and feeding their mules, all
shouting when they had anything to say, the Babel aggravated by the
clatter of the rattles of a hundred curry-combs and the squeals of
fighting horses.
[Illustration: LODGINGS FOR TRAVELLERS.]
The floor was deep with the manure of ages and piled with bales and
boxes. In the side recesses, which are about the height of a mule's
back, the muleteers camped with their fires and their goods, and laid
the provender for their beasts in the front. These places are the
mangers of the eastern caravanserai, or _khan_, or inn. Such must have
been the inn at Bethlehem, and surely the first step to the
humiliation of "the death of the cross" must have been the birth in
the manger, amidst the crowd and horrors of such a stable.
The odour was overpowering and the noise stunning, and when our wet,
mud-covered baggage animals came in, adding to the din, there was
hardly room to move, far less for the roll in which all mules indulge
when the loads are taken off; and the crush resulted in a fight, and
one mule got his fore-feet upon my "manger," and threatened to share
it with me. It was an awful place to come to after a six hours' march
in rain and snow, but I slid off my mule into the recess, had it
carpeted, put down my chair, hung a blanket up in front, and prepared
to brave it, when the inhabitants of this room, the one place which
has any pretensions to being a room in the village, were bribed by an
offer of six _krans_ (about four shillings) to vacate it for me. Its
"pretensions" consist in being over a gateway, and in having a door,
and a square hole looking on the street; a crumbling stair slippery
with mud leads up to it. The roof leaks in every direction, and the
slimy floor is full of pools, but it is luxury after the caravanserai
stable, and with one waterproof sheet over my bed and another over
myself I have fared well, though the door cannot be shut, and the rest
of the party are in the stable at an impassable distance.
Our language happily has no words in which the state of this village
can be described. In front of this room is a broken ditch full of
slimy greenish water, which Hadji took for my tea! There has been a
slight snowfall during the night, and snow is impending. We have now
reached a considerable altitude, and may expect anything. Hadji has
just climbed the stair with groans of "_Ya Allah_," and has almost
wailed out, "Colonel says we go--God help us."
_Kirrind, Jan. 23._--From Saripul-i-Zohab we are taking the most
southerly of the three routes to Kirmanshah traversed by Sir H.
Rawlinson in 1836.[12] A sea of mud varied by patches of sodden snow,
walls of rock with narrow passes, great snow-covered mountains, seen
spectrally for a minute at a time through swirling snow-clouds, black
tents of nomads, half-drowned villages, and a long, cold, steep
ascent, among scrub oaks and dwarf ash, to snow which was not melting,
and the hospitalities of a Kurdish village, comprise the interests of
the march from Saripul to Myan Tak, so far as they lie on the surface,
but in various ways this part of Kurdistan has many interests, not to
be absolutely ignored even in a familiar letter.
Here the Ilyats, who are supposed to constitute a fifth of the rural
population of Persia, are met with in large numbers, and their brown
flocks and herds are still picking up a scanty subsistence. The great
chief of this, the Gur[=a]n tribe, holds the region on an annual
payment to the Persian Government, gives grain to his tribesmen, and
receives from them, of corn one-half, and of rice two-thirds of the
crop. These people sow their grain in early spring, and then move up
with their flocks to the mountain pastures, leaving behind only a few
men to harvest the crops. They use no manure, this being required for
fuel, and in the case of rice they allow a fallow of at least seven
years. There are very few cultivators resident upon these lands, but
Ilyat camps occur frequently.
The region is steeped in history. The wretched village of Saripul is
the Calah of Asshur and the Halah of the Israelitish captivity,[13]
and gave to the surrounding country the name of Chalonitis, which we
have on our old maps. A metropolitan See in the fifth century A.D.,
soon after the institution of the Nestorian hierarchy, it was called
Calah, Halah, and Holwan. If the Diyalah be the ancient Gyndes,
noteworthy for the singular delay of Cyrus on his march to Babylon,
and Saripul the ancient Holwan, and if in addition to the numerous
Chaldaean and Sasanian remains there are relics of Semiramis and of the
fire-temples of the Magi, the crowd of historic associations is almost
too much for one day, and I will return to the insignificant details
of the journey.
We left at nine, crossed the Holwan by a four-arched brick bridge, and
in falling snow and deep mud rode over fairly level ground till we
came to an abrupt range of limestone rock, with a natural rift, across
which the foundations of a wall still remain. The clouds were rolling
low, and the snow was driving wildly, so as to make it impossible to
see the sculptured tablet described by Rawlinson and Layard, on which
a high-priest of the Magi is represented, with one hand raised in
benediction, and the other grasping a scroll, the dress being the
pontifical robe worn by the Zoroastrian priests, with a square cap,
pointed in front, and lappets covering the mouth. Above this is a tomb
with an ornamented entrance.
We were now among a very strange and mysterious people, of whose
ancestry and actual beliefs very little is known. They are Ali-Ilahis,
but Europeans often speak of them as "Davidites," from their special
veneration for King David. This tomb in the rift is called
Dukkani-Daoud, or David's shop, and the people believe that he still
dwells there, and come on pilgrimages and to offer animals in
sacrifice from all parts of Kurdistan. He is believed to work as a
smith, and the _katirgis_ say that he makes suits of fine armour. A
part of the tomb which is divided from the rest by a low partition is
believed to be a reservoir containing the water which he uses to
temper his metal. A great mound with some building in the centre, on
the right of the road near this gorge, though properly it bears
another name, is called by the people "David's Fort." Jewish
traditions abound, specially concerning David, who is regarded by the
tribes as their great tutelar prophet.
The Gur[=a]ns and Kalhurs, who are the nomadic inhabitants of this
district, are of a very marked type of physiognomy, so Israelitish
indeed that, taken along with certain traditions of their origin,
their Jewish names, and their veneration for David, they have been put
forward as claimants to the dignity of being the "lost tribes." The
great Hebrew traveller of the twelfth century, to whom I have referred
before, believed that the whole of the Ali-Ilahis were Jews, and
writes of 100 synagogues in the Zagros mountains, and of 50,000 Jewish
families in the neighbourhood.
As we shall be for some days among these people, I will abbreviate Sir
H. Rawlinson's sketch of their tenets. He considers that Ali-Ilahism
bears evident marks of Judaism, mixed up with Moslem, Christian, and
Sabaean legends. The Ali-Ilahis believe in 1001 incarnations of the
Godhead in a series; among them Benjamin, Moses, Elias, David, Jesus
Christ, Ali and Salman his tutor, the Imam Houssein and the Haft[=a]n
(or seven bodies), the chief spiritual guides in the early ages of
Islam, "and each, worshipped as a Deity, is an object of adoration in
some locality of Kurdistan." The tomb of one of these, B[=a]b[=a]
Yadg[=a]r, is their holy place, and this was regarded as the dwelling
of Elijah at the time when the Arabs invaded Persia. All these
incarnations are regarded as of one and the same person. All that
changes is the bodily form of the Divine manifestation. There are
degrees in the perfection of the development, and the most perfect
forms are Benjamin, David, and Ali.
Practically, however, the metaphysical speculations involved in this
creed of successive incarnations are unknown, and the Imam Ali, the
cousin of Mohammed, is the great object of worship. Though professing
Mohammedanism the Ali-Ilahis are held in great horror by "believers,"
and those of this region lie under the stigma of practising unholy
rites as a part of their religion, and have received the name of
"Chiragh Sonderan," the putters-out of lights.[14] This accusation,
Sir A. H. Layard observes, may be only a calumny invented, like many
another, to justify persecution.
Passing through the rift in the Dukkani-Daoud range which has led to
this digression, we entered an ascending valley between the range
through which we had passed and some wild mountains covered with snow,
which were then actively engaged in brewing a storm. Farther on there
was irrigation and cultivation, and then the wretched village of Pai
Tak, and the ruins of a bridge. There, the people told us, we must
halt, as the caravanserai at the next place was already full, and we
plunged about in the snow and mud looking for a hovel in which to take
shelter, but decided to risk going on, and shortly began the ascent of
the remarkable pass known as "The Gates of Zagros," on the ancient
highway between Babylonia and Media, by which, in a few hours, the
mountain barrier of Zagros is crossed, and the plain of Kirrind, a
part of the great Iranian plateau, is reached.
This great road, which zigzags steeply up the pass, is partly composed
of smoothed boulders and partly of natural rock, somewhat dressed, and
much worn by the continual passage of shod animals. It is said to be
much like a torrent bed, but the snow was lying heavily upon it,
filling up its inequalities. Dwarf oaks, hawthorn, ash, and other
scrub find root-hold in every crevice. All that may be ugly was draped
in pure white, and looking back from the surrounding glitter, the view
of low ranges lying in indigo gloom was very striking. On the ascent
there is a remarkable arch of great blocks of white marble, with a
vaulted recess, called the "Tak-i-Girreh," "the arch holding the
road," which gives the popular name of Gardan-i-Tak-i-Girreh (the pass
of Tak-i-Girreh) to the ascent, though the geographers call it
Akabah-i-Holwan (the defile of Holwan).
After the deep mud of the earlier part of the march it was a pleasure
to ride through pure, deep, powdery snow, and to find the dirt of the
village of Myan Tak, a Kurdish hamlet situated on a mountain torrent
among steep hills and small trees, covered with this radiant mantle.
The elevation of the pass is 4630 feet, but Myan Tak is at a lower
altitude an hour farther on.
The small and ruinous caravanserai was really full of caravans
detained by the snowstorm, and we lodged in a Kurdish house, typical
of the style of architecture common among the settled tribes. Within a
wide doorway without a door, high enough for a loaded mule to enter,
is a very large room, with a low, flat mud roof, supported on three
rows of misshapen trunks of trees, with their branches cut off about a
foot from the stem, all black and shiny with smoke. Mud and rubble
platforms, two feet high, run along one side and one end, and on the
end one there is a clay, beehive-shaped fireplace, but no chimney.
Under this platform the many fowls are shut in at night by a stone at
the hole by which they enter. Within this room is a perfectly dark
stable of great size. Certainly forty mules, besides asses and oxen,
were lodged in it, and the overflow shared the living-room with a
number of Kurds, _katirgis_, servants, dogs, soldiers, and Europeans.
The furniture consisted of guns and swords hanging on the walls.
The owner is an old Kurd with some handsome sons with ruddy
complexions and auburn hair. The big house is the patriarchal roof,
where the patriarch, his sons, their wives and children, and their
animals, dwell together. The women, however, had all been got rid of
somehow. The old Kurd made a great fire on the dais, wood being
plentiful, and crouched over it. My bed was pitched near it, and
enclosed by some reed screens. With chairs and a table, with routes,
maps, writing materials, and a good lantern upon it, an excellent
dinner of soup and a leg of mutton, cooked at a bonfire in the middle
of the floor, and the sight of all the servants and _katirgis_ lying
round it, warm and comfortable, and the knowledge that we were above
the mud, the clouds of blinding smoke which were the only drawback
scarcely affected the cheerfulness and comfort of the blazing,
unstinted fire. The doorway gave not only ample ventilation but a
brilliant view of snow, and of myriads of frosty stars.
It was infinitely picturesque, with the fitful firelight falling on
the uncouth avenues of blackened tree-stumps, on big dogs, on
mild-eyed ox faces and long ass ears, on turbaned Indian heads, and on
a confused crowd of Turks, Kurds, and Persians, some cooking, some
sleeping, some smoking, while from the black depth beyond a startling
bray of an ass or the abortive shriek of a mule occasionally
proceeded, or a stray mule created a commotion by rushing in from the
snow outside.
I slept comfortably, till I was awakened early by various country
sounds--the braying of an ass into my ear (for I was within a few
inches of the stable), the crowing of cocks, and some hens picking up
crumbs upon my bed. The mules were loaded in the living-room. The
mercury was only 26 deg. at 9 A.M., and under cloudless sunshine the
powdery snow glittered and crackled. There were difficulties ahead, we
heard. The road heavily blocked with snow was only just open, and the
Persian post, which should have passed forty-eight hours before, had
not been heard of, showing that the snow is very deep farther on.
It was beautiful, that uplifted, silent world of snow and mountains,
on whose skirts for some miles grew small apple and pear trees, oak,
ash, and hawthorn, each twig a coral spray. In the deepest depression,
among great rocks, now masses of snow, tumbles a now partially
arrested stream, gleaming with icicles, one of the head-waters of the
Holwan. After getting through this picturesque forest of scrub, the
road emerges on the plateau of the Kirrind valley, the greatest
altitude of which is about 5800 feet. It is said to be irrigated and
fertile. It is now, as I describe it, a wide valley, without a tree or
bush, a rolling plain of snow from two to three feet deep, marked only
by lines made by birds' feet and the beating of the tips of birds'
wings, the track across it a corrugated trench, wide enough for one
mule, the sun brilliant, the sky blue, the surface of the snow
flashing light from millions of crystals with a glitter not to be
borne, all dazzling, "glistering," silent,--a white world and a blue
heaven, with a sun "shining in his strength,"--light without heat.