and definite. There is no shading away between the deep green of the
growing wheat and the yellow or red gravel beyond. The general
impression is one of complete nakedness. The flowers which in this
month bloom on the slopes are mostly stiff, leathery, and thorny. The
mountains themselves viewed from below are without any indication of
green. The usual colouring is grayish-yellow or a feeble red,
intensifying at sunset, but rarely glorified owing to the absence of
"atmosphere."
It is a very solitary route from Pul-i-Kala, without villages, and we
met neither caravans nor foot passengers. The others rode on, and I
followed with two of the Bakhtiari escort, who with Rustem Khan, a
minor chief, had accompanied us from Julfa. These men were most
inconsequent in their proceedings, wheeling round me at a gallop,
singing, or rather howling, firing their long guns, throwing
themselves into one stirrup and nearly off their horses, and one who
rides without a bridle came up behind me with his horse bolting and
nearly knocked me out of the saddle with the long barrel of his gun.
When the village of Charmi came in sight I signed to them to go on,
and we all rode at a gallop, the horsemen uttering wild cries and
going through the pantomime of firing over the left shoulders and
right flanks of their horses.
The camps were pitched on what might be called the village green.
Charmi, like many Persian villages, is walled, the wall, which is
much jagged by rain and frost, having round towers at intervals, and a
large gateway. Such walls are no real protection, but serve to keep
the flocks and herds from nocturnal depredators. Within the gate is a
house called the Fort, with a very fine room fully thirty feet long by
fifteen high, decorated with a mingled splendour and simplicity
surprising in a rural district. The wall next the courtyard is
entirely of very beautiful fretwork, filled in with amber and pale
blue glass. The six doors are the same, and the walls and the
elaborate roof and cornices are pure white, the projections being
"picked out" in a pale shade of brown, hardly darker than amber.
The following morning Miss Bruce left on her return home, and Mr.
Douglas and I rode fourteen miles to the large village of Kahva Rukh,
where we parted company. It is an uninteresting march over formless
gravelly hills and small plains thinly grassed, until the
Gardan-i-Rukh, one of the high passes on the Isfahan and Shuster
route, is reached, with its extensive view of brown mountains and
yellow wastes. This pass, 7960 feet in altitude, crossing the
unshapely Kuh-i-Rukh, is the watershed of the country, all the streams
on its southern side falling into the Karun. It is also the entrance
to the Chahar Mahals or four districts, Lar, Khya, Mizak, and
Gandaman, which consist chiefly of great plains surrounded by
mountains, and somewhat broken up by their gravelly spurs.
Beyond, and usually in sight, is the snow-slashed Kuh-i-Sukhta range,
which runs south-east, and throws out a spur to Chigakhor, the summer
resort of the Bakhtiari chiefs. The Chahar Mahals, for Persia, are
populous, and in some parts large villages, many of which are Armenian
and Georgian, occur at frequent intervals, most of them treeless, but
all surrounded by cultivated lands. The Armenian villages possess
so-called relics and ancient copies of the Gospels, which are
credited with the power of working miracles.[49]
The Chahar Mahals have been farmed to the Ilkhani of the Bakhtiaris
for about 20,000 _tumans_ (L6000) a year, and his brother, Reza Kuli
Khan, has been appointed their governor. Thus on crossing the Kahva
Rukh pass we entered upon the sway of the feudal head of the great
Bakhtiari tribes.
We camped outside the village, my tents being pitched in a ruinous
enclosure. The servants are in the habit of calling me the _Hak[=i]m_,
and the report of a Frank _Hak[=i]m_ having arrived soon brought a
crowd of sick people, who were introduced and their ailments described
by a blue horseman, one of the escort.
His own child was so dangerously ill of pneumonia that I went with him
to his house, put on a mustard poultice, and administered some Dover's
powder. The house was crammed and the little suffering creature had
hardly air to breathe. The courtyard was also crowded, so that one
could scarcely move, all the people being quite pleasant and friendly.
I saw several sick people, and was surprised to find the village
houses so roomy and comfortable, and so full of "plenishings." It was
in vain that I explained to them that I am not a doctor, scarcely even
a nurse. The fame of Burroughes and Wellcome's medicine chest has
spread far and wide, and they think its possessor _must_ be a
_Hak[=i]m_. The horseman said that medicine out of that chest would
certainly cure his child.[50] I was unable to go back to the tea which
had been prepared in the horseman's house, on which he expressed great
dismay, and said I must be "enraged with him."
Persians always use round numbers, and the _ketchuda_ says that the
village has 300 Persian houses, and 100 more, inhabited during the
winter by Ilyats. It has mud walls with towers at intervals, two
mosques, a clear stream of water in the principal street, some very
good houses with _balakhanas_, and narrow alleys between high mud
walls, in which are entrances into courtyards occupied by animals, and
surrounded by living-rooms. The only trees are a few spindly willows,
but wheat comes up to the walls, and at sunset great herds of cattle
and myriads of brown sheep converge to what seems quite a prosperous
village.
_May 5._--Yesterday, Sunday, was intended to be a day of rest, but
turned out very far from it. After the last relay of "patients" left
on Saturday evening, and the last medicines had been "dispensed," my
tent was neatly arranged with one _yekdan_ for a table, and the other
for a washstand and medicine stand. The latter trunk contained some
English gold in a case along with some valuable letters, and some
bags, in which were 1000 _krans_, for four months' travelling. This
_yekdan_ was padlocked. It was a full moon, the other camps were quite
near, all looked very safe, and I slept until awakened by the
sharpness of the morning air.
Then I saw but one _yekdan_ where there had been two! Opening the
tent curtain I found my washing apparatus and medicine bottles neatly
arranged on the ground outside, and the trunk without its padlock
among some ruins a short distance off. The money bags were all gone,
leaving me literally penniless. Most of my store of tea was taken, but
nothing else. Two men must have entered my tent and have carried the
trunk out. Of what use are any precautions when one sleeps so
disgracefully soundly? When the robbery was made known horsemen were
sent off to the Ilkhani, whose guest I have been since I entered his
territory, and at night a Khan arrived with a message that "the money
would be repaid, and that the village would be levelled with the
ground!" Kahva Rukh will, I hope, stand for many years to come, but
the stolen sum will be levied upon it, according to custom.
The people are extremely vexed at this occurrence, and I would rather
have lost half the sum than that it should have happened to a guest.
In addition to an escort of a Khan and four men, the Ilkhani has given
orders that we are not to be allowed to pay for anything while in the
country. This order, after several battles, I successfully disobey.
This morning, before any steps were taken to find the thief, and after
all the loads were ready, officials came to the camps, and, by our
wish, every man's baggage was unrolled and searched. Our servants and
_charvadars_ are all Moslems, and each of them took an oath on the
Koran, administered by a _mollah_, that he was innocent of the theft.
_Ardal, May 9._--I left rather late, and with the blue horseman, to
whom suspicion generally pointed, rode to Shamsabad, partly over
gravelly wastes, passing two mixed Moslem and Armenian villages on a
plain, on which ninety ploughs were at work on a stiff whitish soil.
Shamsabad is a most wretched mud village without supplies, standing
bare on a gravelly slope, above a clear quiet stream, an affluent of
the Karun. This country has not reached that stage of civilisation in
which a river bears the same name from mouth to source, and as these
streams usually take as many names as there are villages on their
course, I do not burden my memory with them. There is a charming
camping-ground of level velvety green sward on the right bank of the
river, with the towering mass of Jehanbin (sight of the world), 12,000
feet high, not far off. This lawn is 6735 feet above the sea, and the
air keen and pleasant. The near mountain views are grand, and that
evening the rare glory of a fine sunset lingered till it was merged in
the beauty of a perfect moonlight.
After leaving Shamsabad the road passes through a rather fine defile,
crosses the Shamsabad stream by a ten-arched bridge between the
Kuh-i-Zangun and the Kuh-i-Jehanbin, and proceeds down a narrow valley
now full of wild flowers and young wheat to Khariji, a village of
fifty houses, famous for the excellent quality of its opium. From
Khariji we proceeded through low grassy hills, much like the South
Downs, and over the low but very rough Pasbandi Pass into an irrigated
valley in which is the village of Shalamzar. I rode through it alone
quite unmolested, but two days later the Sahib, passing through it
with his servants, was insulted and pelted, and the people said,
"Here's another of the dog party." These villagers are afflicted with
"divers diseases and torments," and the crowd round my tent was
unusually large and importunate. In this village of less than fifty
houses nearly all the people had one or both eyes more or less
affected, and fourteen had only one eye.
Between Shalamzar and Ardal lies the lofty Gardan-i-Zirreh, by which
the Kuh-i-Sukhta is crossed at a height of 8300 feet. The ascent
begins soon after leaving the village, and is long and steep--a nasty
climb. The upper part at this date is encumbered with snow, below
which primulas are blooming in great profusion, and lower down
leathery flowers devoid of beauty cover without adorning the hillside.
Two peasants went up with me, and from time to time kindly handed me
clusters of small raisins taken from the breasts of dirty felt
clothing. On reaching the snow I found Rustem Khan's horse half-buried
in a drift, so I made the rest of the ascent on foot. The snow was
three feet deep, but for the most part presented no difficulties, even
to the baggage animals.
At the summit there were no green things except some plants of
_artemisia_, not even a blade of grass, but among the crevices
appeared small fragile snow-white tulips with yellow centres, mixed
with scarlet and mauve blossoms of a more vigorous make. At that great
height the air was keen and bracing, and to eyes for months accustomed
to regions buried in dazzling snow and to glaring gravelly wastes,
there was something perfectly entrancing about the view on the
Bakhtiari side. Though treeless, it looked like Paradise. Lying at the
foot of the pass is the deep valley of Seligun, 8000 feet high, with
the range of the Kuh-i-Nassar to the south, and of the Kuh-Shah-Purnar
to the north--green, full of springs and streams, with two lakes
bringing down the blue of heaven to earth, with slopes aflame with the
crimson and terra-cotta _Fritillaria imperialis_, and levels one
golden glory with a yellow ranunculus. Rich and dark was the green of
the grass, tall and deep on the plain, but when creeping up the
ravines to meet the snows, short green sward enamelled with tulips.
Great masses of naked rock, snow-slashed, and ranges of snow-topped
masses behind and above, walled in that picture of cool serenity, its
loneliness only broken by three black tents of Ilyats far away. So I
saw Seligun, but those who see it a month hence will find only a brown
and dusty plain!
The range we crossed divides the Chahar Mahals from the true Bakhtiari
country, a land of mountains which rumour crests with eternal snow, of
unexplored valleys and streams, of feudal chiefs, of blood feuds, and
of nomad tribes moving with vast flocks and herds.
Mehemet Ali, a new and undesirable acquisition, was loaded with my
_shuldari_, and we clambered down the hillside, leading our horses
amidst tamarisk scrub and a glory of tulips, till we reached the
level, when a gallop brought us to the camps, pitched near a vigorous
spring in the green flower-enamelled grass.
That halt was luxury for man and beast. Later the air was cool and
moist. The sun-lit white fleeces which had been rolling among the
higher hills darkened and thickened into rain-clouds, drifting
stormily, and only revealing here and there through their rifts
glimpses of blue. A few flocks of sheep on the mountains, and the
mules and horses revelling knee-deep in the juicy grass, were the sole
representatives of animated life. It was a real refreshment to be away
from the dust of mud villages, and to escape from the pressure of
noisy and curious crowds, and the sight of sore eyes.
Towards evening, a gallop on the Arabs with the Bakhtiari escort took
us to the camp of the lately-arrived Ilyats. Orientals spend much of
their time in the quiet contemplation of cooking pots, and these
nomads were not an exception, for they were all sitting round a
brushwood fire, on which the evening meal of meat broth with herbs was
being prepared. The women were unveiled. Both men and women are of
quite a different type from the Persians. They are completely clothed
and in appearance are certainly only semi-savages. These tents
consisted of stones rudely laid to a height of two feet at the back,
over which there is a canopy with an open front and sides, of woven
goat's-hair supported on poles. Such tents are barely a shelter from
wind and rain, but in them generations of Ilyats are born and die,
despising those of their race who settle in villages.
There were great neutral-tint masses of rolling clouds, great banks of
glistering white clouds, a cold roystering wind, a lurid glow, and
then a cloudy twilight. _Hak[=i]m_ threw up his heels and galloped
over the moist grass, the Bakhtiaris, two on one horse, laughed and
yelled--there was the desert freedom without the desert. It was the
most inspiriting evening I have spent in Persia. Truth compels me to
add that there were legions of black flies.
In the early morning, after riding round the south-east end of the
valley, we passed by the lake Seligun or Albolaki, banked up by a
revetment of rude masonry. The wind was strong, and drove the
foam-flecked water in a long line of foam on the shore. Red-legged
storks were standing in a row fishing. Cool scuds of rain made the
morning homelike. Then there was a hill ascent, from which the view of
snowy mountains, gashed by deep ravines and backed by neutral-tint
clouds, was magnificent, and then a steep and rocky defile, which
involved walking, its sides gaudy with the _Fritillaria imperialis_,
which here attains a size and a depth of colouring of which we have no
conception.
In this pass we met a large number of Ilyat families going up to their
summer quarters, with their brown flocks of sheep and their black
flocks of goats. Their tents with all their other goods were packed in
convenient parcels on small cows, and the women with babies and big
wooden cradles were on asses. The women without babies, the elder
children, and the men walked.
Whatever beauty these women possessed was in the Meg Merrilees style,
with a certain weirdness about it. They had large, dark, long eyes,
with well-marked eyebrows, artificially prolonged, straight prominent
noses, wide mouths with thin lips, long straight chins, and masses of
black hair falling on each side of the face. Their dress consisted of
enormously full dark blue cotton trousers, drawn in at the ankles, and
suspended over the hips, not from the waist (the invariable custom in
Persia), and loose sleeved vests, open in front. The adult women all
wear a piece of cotton pinned on the head, and falling over the back
and shoulders. The men had their hair in many long plaits, hanging
from under felt skull-caps, and wore wide blue cotton trousers, white
or printed cotton shirts over these, and girdles in which they carried
knives, pipes, and other indispensables. All wore shoes or sandals of
some kind. These men were very swarthy, but the younger women had rich
brunette complexions, and were unveiled.
Some bad horse-fights worried the remainder of the march, which
included the ascent of an anemone-covered hill, 7700 feet high, from
which we got the first view of the Ardal valley, much cultivated, till
it narrows and is lost among mountains, now partly covered with snow.
In the centre is a large building with a tower, the spring residence
of the Ilkhani, whose goodwill it is necessary to secure. Through a
magnificent gorge in the mountains passes the now famous Karun. A
clatter of rain and a strong wind greeted our entrance into the
valley, where we were met by some horsemen from the Ilkhani.
The great Ardal plateau is itself treeless, though the lower spurs of
the Kuh-i-Sabz on the south side are well wooded with the _belut_, a
species of oak. There is much cultivation, and at this season the
uncultivated ground is covered with the great green leaves of a fodder
plant, the _Centaurea alata_, which a little later are cut, dried,
and stacked. The rivers of the plateau are the Karun and Sabzu on the
south side, and the river of Shamsabad, which brings to the Karun the
drainage of the Chahar Mahals, and enters the valley through a
magnificent _tang_ or chasm on its north side, called Darkash Warkash.
The village of Ardal is eighty-five miles from Isfahan, on the Shuster
caravan route, and is about 200 from Shuster. Its altitude is 5970
feet, its Long. 50 deg. 50' E. and its Lat. 32 deg. N.
On arriving here the grandeur of the Ilkhani's house faded away.
Except for the fortified tower it looks like a second-rate
caravanserai. The village, such as there is of it, is crowded on a
steep slope outside the "Palace." It is a miserable hamlet of low
windowless mud hovels, with uneven mud floors, one or two feet lower
than the ground outside, built in yards with ruinous walls, and full
of heaps and holes. It is an _olla podrida_ of dark, poor, smoky mud
huts; narrow dirt-heaped alleys, with bones and offal lying about;
gaunt yelping dogs; bottle-green slimy pools, and ruins. The people
are as dirty as the houses, but they are fine in physique and face, as
if only the fittest survive. There is an _imamzada_, much visited on
Fridays, on an adjacent slope. The snow lies here five feet deep in
winter, it is said.
When we arrived the roofs and balconies of the Ilkhani's house were
crowded with people looking out for us. The Agha called at once, and I
sent my letter of introduction from the Amin-es-Sultan. Presents
arrived, formal visits were paid, the Ilkhani's principal wife
appointed an hour at which to receive me, and a number of dismounted
horsemen came and escorted me to the palace. The chief feature of the
house is a large audience-chamber over the entrance, in which the
chief holds a daily _durbar_, the deep balcony outside being usually
thronged by crowds of tribesmen, all having free access to him. The
coming and going are incessant.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF ARDAL.]
The palace or castle is like a two-storied caravanserai, enclosing a
large untidy courtyard, round which are stables and cow-houses, and
dens for soldiers and servants. In the outer front of the building are
deep recessed arches, with rooms opening upon them, in which the
Isfahan traders, who come here for a month, expose their wares.
Passing under the Ilkhani's audience-chamber by a broad arched passage
with deep recesses on both sides, and through the forlorn uneven
courtyard, a long, dark arched passage leads into a second courtyard,
where there is an attempt at ornament by means of tanks and willows.
Round this are a number of living-rooms for the Ilkhani's sons and
their families, and here is the _andarun_, or house of the women. On
the far side is the Fort, a tall square tower with loopholes and
embrasures.
A Cerberus guards the entrance to the _andarun_, but he allowed Mirza
to accompany me. A few steps lead up from the courtyard into a lofty
oblong room, with a deep cushioned recess containing a fireplace. The
roof rests on wooden pillars. The front of the room facing the
courtyard is entirely of fretwork filled in with pale blue and amber
glass. The recess and part of the floor were covered with very
beautiful blue and white grounded carpets, made by the women. The
principal wife, a comely wide-mouthed woman of forty, advanced to meet
me, kissed my hand, raised it to her brow, and sat down on a large
carpet squab, while the other wives led me into the recess, and seated
me on a pile of cushions, taking their places in a row on the floor
opposite, but scarcely raising their eyes, and never speaking one
word. The rest of the room was full of women and children standing,
and many more blocked up the doorways, all crowding forward in spite
of objurgations and smart slaps frequently administered by the
principal wife.
The three young wives are Bakhtiaris, and their style of beauty is
novel to me--straight noses, wide mouths, thin lips, and long chins.
Each has three stars tattooed on her chin, one in the centre of the
forehead, and several on the back of the hands. The eyebrows are not
only elongated with indigo, but are made to meet across the nose. The
finger-nails, and inside of the hands, are stained with henna. The
hair hangs round their wild, handsome faces, down to their
collar-bones, in loose, heavy, but not uncleanly masses.
Among the "well-to-do" Bakhtiari women, as among the Persians, the
hair receives very great attention, although it is seldom exhibited.
It is naturally jet black, and very abundant. It is washed at least
once a week with a thin paste of a yellowish clay found among the
Zard-Kuh mountains, which has a very cleansing effect.
But the women are not content with their hair as it is, and alter its
tinge by elaborate arts. They make a thick paste of henna, leave it on
for two hours, and then wash it off. The result is a rich auburn tint.
A similar paste, made of powdered indigo leaves, is then plastered
over the hair for two hours. On its removal the locks are dark green,
but in twenty-four hours more they become a rich blue-black. The
process needs repeating about every twenty days, but it helps to fill
up the infinite leisure of life. It is performed by the bath
attendants.
In justice to my sex I must add that the men dye their hair to an
equal extent with the women, from the shining blue-black of the Shah's
moustache to the brilliant orange of the beard of Hadji Hussein, by
which he forfeits, though not in Persian estimation, the respect due
to age.
Some of the Ilkhani's children and grand-children have the hair dyed
with henna alone to a rich auburn tint, which is very becoming to the
auburn eyes and delicate paleness of some of them.
The wives wore enormously full black silk trousers, drawn tight at the
ankles, with an interregnum between them and short black vests, loose
and open in front; and black silk sheets attached to a band fixed on
the head enveloped their persons. They have, as is usual among these
people, small and beautiful hands, with taper fingers and nails
carefully kept. The chief wife, who rules the others, rumour says, was
also dressed in black. She has a certain degree of comely dignity
about her, and having seen something of the outer world in a
pilgrimage to Mecca via Baghdad, returning by Egypt and Persia, and
having also lived in Tihran, her intelligence has been somewhat
awakened. The Bakhtiari women generally are neither veiled nor
secluded, but the higher chiefs who have been at the capital think it
_chic_ to adopt the Persian customs regarding women, and the inferior
chiefs, when they have houses, follow their example.