Janiki tribe upon it, is the only fair spot in the savage landscape.
Elsewhere only a few wild flowers and a gnarled juniper here and there
relieve the fierce, blazing verdurelessness of these stupendous
precipices. Never, not even among the Himalayas, have I seen anything
so superlatively grand, though I have always imagined that such scenes
must exist somewhere on the earth. A pair of wild sheep on a ledge, a
serpent or two, and an eagle soaring sunwards represented animate
nature, otherwise the tremendous heights above, the awful depths
below, the snowy mountains, and the valley with its smile, were given
over to solitude and silence, except for the dull roar of the torrent
hurrying down to vivify the Khana Mirza plain.
After leaving Lahdaraz the path followed the course of the Sabzu
through grass and barley for a few miles. Then there is an abrupt and
disagreeable change to yellow mud slopes and high mud mountains deeply
fissured, the scanty herbage already eaten down by Ilyat flocks--a
desolate land, without springs, streams, or even Ilyat tents. Then
comes a precipice at an altitude of 7500 feet, through a cleft in
which, the Tang-i-Wastagun, the road passes, and descends to the plain
of Gandaman as something little better than a sheep track on a steep
hillside above a stream. The heat was fierce. A pair of stout
gardening gloves does not preserve the hands from blistering.
Spectacles with wire gauze sides have to be abandoned as they threaten
to roast the eyes. In this latitude, 32 deg., the heat of the sun at noon
is tremendous. At the precipice top I crept into a hole at the base of
a rock, for "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land," till the
caravan staggered up. It was difficult to brave the sun's direct rays.
He looked like a ball of magnesium light, white and scintillating, in
the unclouded sky.
On crossing the Tang-i-Wastagun we left behind the Bakhtiari country
proper for a time, and re-entered the Chahar Mahals, with their mixed
village population of Persians and Armenians. The descent from the
Tang-i-Wastagun is upon a ruined Armenian village with a large
graveyard. The tombstones are of great size, ten feet long by three
feet broad and three feet high, sarcophagus-shaped, and on each stone
are an Armenian epitaph and a finely-engraved cross. The plain of
Gandaman or Wastagun is a very large one, over 7000 feet in altitude,
and is surrounded mainly by high mountains still snow-patched, but to
the north by low rocky hills. Much of it is irrigated and under
cultivation, and grows heavy crops of wheat and barley. The pasturage
is fine and abundant, and the people breed cattle and horses. The
uncultivated slopes are now covered with red tulips and a purple
_allium_, and even the dry gravel added largely to the daily
increasing botanical collection.
[Illustration: ALI JAN.]
The camps were pitched on green turf near three springs, a quiet
place, but there was little rest. We were hardly settled before there
was a severe fight among the horses, my sour-tempered _Screw_ being
the aggressor. This was hardly quieted when there was a sharp
"scrimmage" between the _charvadars_ and the Agha's three young
savages, in which one of them, Ali Jan, was badly beaten, and came to
me to have a bleeding face and head dressed. After that the people
began to come in from the villages for eye-washes and medicines. They
have no bottles, nor have I, and the better-off bring great copper
jugs and basins for an ounce or two of lotion! A very poor old woman
much afflicted with ophthalmia said she had three sisters all blind,
that she had nothing for lotion, nothing in the world but a copper
cooking pot, and she cried piteously. I had nothing to give her, and
eventually she returned with an egg-shell, with the top neatly chipped
off. It is the custom to raise the hands to heaven and invoke
blessings on the _Hak[=i]m's_ head, but I never received so many as
from this poor creature.
The ride to the village of Gandaman, where we halted for two days, was
an agreeable one. After being shut up among mountains and precipices,
space and level ground to gallop over are an agreeable change, and in
the early morning the heat was not excessive. The great plain was a
truly pastoral scene. Wild-looking shepherds with long guns led great
brown flocks to the hills; innumerable yokes of black oxen, ploughing
with the usual iron-shod, pointed wooden share, turned over the rich
black soil, making straight furrows, and crossing them diagonally;
mares in herds fed with their foals; and shepherds busily separated
the sheep from the goats.
Close to the filthy walled Armenian village of Kunak there is a
conical hill with a large fort, in ruinous condition, upon it, and not
far off are the remains of an Armenian village, enclosed by a square
wall with a round tower at each corner. This must have been until
recently a place of some local importance, as it is approached by a
paved causeway, and had an aqueduct, now ruinous, carried over the
river on three arches. Not only the plain but the hill-slopes up to a
great height are cultivated, and though the latter have the
precariousness of rain-lands, the crops already in ear promise well.
Crossing a spur which descends upon the north side of the plain, we
reached Gandaman, a good-looking walled Moslem village of 196 houses,
much planted, chiefly with willows, and rejoicing in eight springs,
close together, the overflow of which makes quite a piece of water. It
has an _imamzada_ on an eminence and is fairly prosperous, for besides
pastoral wealth it weaves and exports carpets, and dyes cotton and
woollen yarn with madder and other vegetable dyes. The mountain view
to the south-west is very fine.
I was in my tent early, but there was little rest, for crowds of
people with bad eyes and woful maladies besieged it until the evening.
At noon a gay procession crossed the green camping-ground, four mares
caparisoned in red trappings, each carrying two women in bright
dresses, but shrouded in pure white sheets bound round their heads
with silver chains. The _ketchuda_ of the Armenian village of
Libasgun, two miles off, accompanied them, and said that they came to
invite me to their village, for they are Christians. Then they all
made the sign of the Cross, which is welcome in this land as a bond of
brotherhood.
Cleanly, comely, large-eyed, bright-cheeked, and wholesome they
looked, in their pure white _chadars_, gay red dresses, and
embroidered under-vests. They had massive silver girdles, weighing
several pounds, worn there only by married women, red coronets, heavy
tiaras of silver, huge necklaces of coins, and large filigree silver
drops attached down the edges of their too open vests. Their heavy
hair was plaited, but not fastened up. Each wore a stiff
diamond-shaped piece of white cotton over her mouth and the tip of her
nose. They said it was their custom to wear it, and they would not
remove it even to eat English biscuits! They managed to drink tea by
veiling their faces with their _chadars_ and passing the cup
underneath, but they turned their faces quite away as they did it.
They had come for the day, and had brought large hanks of wool to
wind, but the headman had the tact to take them away after arranging
for me to return the visit in the evening.
He seemed an intelligent man. Libasgun, with its 120 houses, is,
according to his account, a prosperous village, paying its tax of 300
_tumans_ (L100) a year to the Amin-ud-Daulat, and making a present
only to the Ilkhani. It has 2000 sheep and goats, besides mares and
cattle. It has an oil mill, and exports oil to Isfahan. The women
weave carpets, and embroider beautifully on coarse cotton woven by
themselves, and dyed indigo blue and madder red by their Gandaman
neighbours. This man is proud of being a Christian. Among the
Armenians Christianity is as much a national characteristic as pride
of race and strict monogamy. He remarked that there are no sore eyes
in Libasgun, and attributed it to the greater cleanliness of the
people and to the cross signed in holy oil upon their brows in
baptism!
I rode to this village in the late afternoon, and was received with
much distinction in the _balakhana_ of the _ketchuda's_ house, where I
was handed to the seat of honour, a bolster at the head of the
handsomely-carpeted room. It soon filled with buxom women in red, with
jackets displaying their figures, or want of figures, down to their
waists. From the red velvet coronets on their heads hung two graduated
rows of silver coins, and their muslin _chadars_ were attached to
their hair with large silver pins and chains. Magnificent necklaces of
gold coins were also worn.
[Illustration: ARMENIAN WOMEN OF LIBASGUN.]
Forty women sat on the floor in rows against the wall. Each had rosy
cheeks, big black eyes, and a diamond-shaped white cloth over her
mouth. The uniformity was shocking. They stared, not at me, but at
nothing. They looked listless and soulless, only fit to be what they
are--the servants of their husbands. When they had asked me my age,
and why I do not dye my hair, the conversation flagged, for I could
not get any information from them even on the simplest topics. Hotter
and hotter grew the room, more stolid the vacancy of the eyes, more
grotesque the rows of white diamonds over the mouths, when the happy
thought occurred to me to ask to see the embroidered aprons, which
every girl receives from her mother on her marriage. Two mountains of
flesh obligingly rolled out of the room, and rolled in again bringing
some beautiful specimens of needlework. This is really what is known
as "Russian embroidery," cross stitch in artistic colours on coarse
red or blue cotton. The stomachers are most beautifully worked. The
aprons cover the whole of the front and the sides of the dress. The
mothers begin to embroider them when their daughters are ten. The
diamond-shaped cloth is put on by girls at eight or nine. The women
would not remove it for a moment even to oblige a guest. The perpetual
wearing of it is one of their religious customs, only prevailing,
however, in some localities. They say that when our Lord was born His
mother in token of reverence took a cloth and covered her mouth, hence
their habit.
When the _ketchuda_ arrived he found the heat of the room unbearable
and proposed an adjournment to the lower roof, which was speedily
swept, watered, and carpeted.
An elaborate banquet had been prepared in the hope that the Agha would
pay them a visit, and they were much mortified at his non-appearance.
The great copper basins containing the food were heaped together in
the middle of the carpets, and the guests, fifty in number, sat down,
the men on one side, and the women on the other, the wives of the
_ketchuda_ and his brothers serving. There were several _samovars_
with tea, but only three cups. A long bolster was the place of honour,
and I occupied it alone till the village priests arrived,--reverend
men with long beards, high black head-dresses, and full black cassocks
with flowing sleeves. All the guests rose, and remained standing till
they had been ceremoniously conducted to seats. I found them very
agreeable and cultured men, acquainted with the varying "streams of
tendency" in the Church of England, and very anxious to claim our
Church as a sister of their own. This banquet was rather a gay scene,
and on a higher roof fully one hundred women and children dressed in
bright red stood watching the proceedings below.
I proposed to see the church, and with the priests, most of the
guests, and a considerable following of the onlookers, walked to it
through filthy alleys. This ancient building, in a dirty and
malodorous yard, differs externally from the mud houses which surround
it only in having two bells on a beam. The interior consists of four
domed vaults, and requires artificial light. A vault with a raised
floor contains the altar and a badly-painted altar-piece representing
the B. V.; a rail separates the men, who stand in front, from the
women, who stand behind. A Liturgy and an illuminated medieval copy of
the Gospels, of which they are very proud, are their only treasures.
They have no needlework, and the altar cloth is only a piece of
printed cotton. Nothing could well look poorer than this small, dark,
vacant building, with a few tallow candles without candlesticks giving
a smoky light.
They have two daily services lasting from one to two hours each, and
Mass on Sunday is protracted to seven hours! The priests said that all
the men, except two who watch the flocks, and nearly all the women are
at both services on Sunday, and that many of the men and most of the
women are at both daily services, one of which, as is usual, begins
before daylight. There is no school. The fathers teach their boys to
read and write, and the mothers instruct their girls in needlework.
After visits to the priests' houses, a number of villagers on
horseback escorted me back to Gandaman. The heat of those two days was
very great for May, the mercury marking 83 deg. in the shade at 10 A.M.
One hundred and thirteen people came for medicines, and in their
eagerness they swarmed round both ends of the tent, blocking out all
air. The ailments were much more varied and serious than among the
Bakhtiaris.
[Illustration: WALL AND GATE OF LIBASGUN.]
The last march was a hot and tedious one of eighteen miles, along an
uninteresting open valley, much ploughed, bounded by sloping
herbage-covered hills, surmounted by parapets of perpendicular rock.
After passing the large Moslem village of Baldiji, we re-entered the
Bakhtiari country, ascended to the Bakhtiari village of Dastgird,
descended to the plain of Chigakhor, skirted its southern margin, and
on its western side, on two spurs of the great Kuh-i-Kaller range,
with a ravine between them, the camps were pitched. In two days most
of the tents were blown down, and were moved into two ravines with a
hill between them, on which the Sahib on his arrival pitched his camp.
My ravine has a spring, with exactly space for my tent beside it, and
a platform higher up with just room enough for the servants. A strong
stream, rudely brawling, issuing from the spring, disturbs sleep.
There is no possibility of changing one's position by even a six-feet
stroll, so rough and steep is the ground. Mirza bringing my meals from
the cooking tent has a stick to steady himself. At first there was
nothing to see but scorched mountains opposite, and the green plain on
which the ravine opens, but the _Hak[=i]m's_ tent was soon discovered,
and I have had 278 "patients"! Before I am up in the morning they are
sitting in rows one behind another on the steep ground, their horses
and asses grazing near them, and all day they come. One of the chiefs
of the Janiki tribe came with several saddle and baggage horses and
even a tent, to ask me to go with him to the great plain of Khana
Mirza, three days' march from here, to cure his wife's eyes, and was
grieved to the heart when I told him they were beyond my skill. He
stayed while a great number of sick people got eye-lotions and
medicines, and then asked me why I gave these medicines and took so
much trouble. I replied that our Master and Lord not only commanded us
to do good to all men as we have opportunity, but Himself healed the
sick. "You call Him Master and Lord," he said; "He was a great
Prophet. _Send a Hak[=i]m to us in His likeness._"
I have heard so much of Chigakhor that I am disappointed with the
reality. There are no trees, most of the snow has melted, the
mountains are not very bold in their features, the plain has a sort of
lowland look about it, and though its altitude is 7500 feet, the days
and even nights are very hot. The interest of it lies in it being the
summer resort of the Ilkhani and Ilbegi, a fact which makes it the
great centre of Bakhtiari life. As many as 400 tents are pitched here
in the height of the season, and the coming and going of Khans and
headmen with tribute and on other business is ceaseless.
The plain, which is about seven miles long by three broad, is quite
level. Near the south-east end is a shallow reedy mere, fringed by a
fertile swampiness, which produces extraordinary crops of grass far
out into the middle of the level.
Near the same end is a rocky eminence or island, on which is the
fortress castle of the Ilkhani. The "season" begins in early June,
when the tribes come up from the warm pastures of Dizful and Shuster,
to which they return with their pastoral wealth in the autumn, after
which the plain is flooded and frozen for the winter. At the north end
are the villages of Dastgird and Aurugun and a great deal of irrigated
land producing wheat. Except at that end the plain is surrounded by
mountains; on its southern side, where a part of the Sukhta range
rises into the lofty peak of Challeh Kuh, with its snow-slashes and
snow-fields, they attain an altitude of 12,000 or 13,000 feet.
It is not easy, perhaps not possible, to pass through the part of the
Bakhtiari country for which we are bound, without some sort of
assistance from its feudal lords, a responsible man, for instance, who
can obtain supplies from the people. Therefore we have been detained
here for many days waiting for the expected arrival of the Ilkhani. A
few days ago a rumour arrived, since unhappily continued, that things
were in confusion below, owing to the discovery of a plot on the part
of the Ilkhani to murder the Ilbegi. Stories are current of the number
of persons "put out of the way" before he attained his present rank
for the second time, and it is not "Bakhtiari custom" to be
over-scrupulous about human life. No doubt his nephew, the Ilbegi, is
a very dangerous rival, and that his retainers are bent on seeing him
in a yet higher position than he now occupies.
A truce has been patched up, however, and yesterday the Ilkhani and
Isfandyar Khan arrived together, with their great trains of armed
horsemen, their _harams_, their splendid studs, their crowds of
unmounted retainers, their strings of baggage mules and asses laden
with firewood, and all the "rag, tag, and bobtail" in attendance on
Oriental rulers. Following them in endless nocturnal procession come
up the tribes, and day breaks on an ever-increasing number of brown
flocks and herds, of mares, asses, dogs, black tents, and household
goods. When we arrived there were only three tents, now the green
bases of the mountains and all the platforms and ravines where there
are springs are spotted with them, in rows or semicircles, and at
night the camp fires of the multitude look like the lights of a city.
Each clan has a prescriptive right to its camping-ground and pasture
(though both are a fruitful source of quarrels), and arrives with its
_ketchuda_ and complete social organisation, taking up its position
like a division of an army.
When in the early morning or afternoon the tribe reaches the
camping-ground, everything is done in the most orderly way. The
infants are put into their cradles, the men clear the ground if
necessary, drive the pegs and put up the poles, and if there be
wood--of which there is not a stick here--they make a fence of loose
branches to contain the camp, but the women do the really hard work.
Their lords, easily satisfied with their modicum of labour, soon
retire to enjoy their pipes and the endless gossip of Bakhtiari life.
[Illustration: A PERSO-BAKHTIARI CRADLE.]
After the ground has been arranged the tents occupy invariably the
same relative position, whether the camp is in a row, a semicircle, a
circle, or streets, so that the cattle and flocks may easily find
their owners' abodes without being driven. The tents, which are of
black goats' hair cloth, are laid out and beaten, and the women spread
them over the poles and arrange the rest, after which the inside is
brushed to remove the soot. In a good tent, reed screens are put up to
divide the space into two or more portions, and some of the tribes
fence round the whole camp with these screens, leaving one opening,
and use the interior for a sheepfold. The small bushes are grubbed up
for fuel. The women also draw the water, and the boys attend to the
flocks. Many of the camps, however, have neither fences nor environing
screens, and their inmates dwell without any attempt at privacy, and
rely for the safety of their flocks on big and trustworthy dogs, of
which every camp has a number.
When they move the bulk of the labour again falls on the women. They
first make the baggage into neat small packages suited for the backs
of oxen; then they take up the tent pegs, throw down the tents, and
roll them up in the reed screens, all that the men undertake being to
help in loading the oxen. It is only when a division halts for at
least some days that this process is gone through. In fine weather, if
a tribe is marching daily to its summer or winter camping-grounds, the
families frequently sleep in the open.
The chief's tent is always recognisable by its size, and is
occasionally white. I have seen a tent of a wealthy Khan fully sixty
feet long. A row of poles not more than ten feet high supported the
roof, which was of brown haircloth, the widths united by a coarse open
stitch. On the windward side the roof was pinned down nearly to the
top of a loosely-laid wall of stones about three feet high. The
leeward side was quite open, and the roof, which could be lowered if
necessary, was elevated and extended by poles six feet high. If the
tent was sixty feet long, it was made by this arrangement twenty feet
broad. At the lower end was a great fire-hole in the earth, and the
floor of the upper end was covered with rugs, quilts, and pillows, the
household stuff being arranged chiefly on and against the rude stone
wall.
The process of encamping for a camp of seventy tents takes about two
hours, and many interruptions occur, especially the clamorous demands
of unweaned infants of mature years. De-camping the same number of
tents takes about an hour. A free, wild life these nomads lead, full
of frays and plots, but probably happier than the average lot.
Below the castle is the great encampment of the chiefs, brown tents
and white bell tents, among which the tall white pavilion of the
Ilkhani towers conspicuously. The Ilkhani and Ilbegi called on me, and
as they sat outside my tent it was odd to look back two years to the
time when they were fighting each other, and barely two weeks to the
discovery of the plot of the dark-browed Ilkhani to murder his nephew.
The Ilkhani's face had a very uncomfortable expression. Intrigues
against him at Tihran and nearer home, the rumoured enmity of the
Prime Minister, the turbulence of some of the tribes, the growing
power of the adherents of Isfandyar Khan, and his own baffled plot to
destroy him must make things unpleasant. Several of the small Khans
who have been to see me expect fighting here before the end of the
summer. The Ilkhani had previously availed himself of the resources of
my medicine chest, and with so much benefit that I was obliged to
grant a request which deprived me of a whole bottle of "tabloids."
In the evening I visited the ladies who are in the castle leading the
usual dull life of the _haram_, high above the bustle which centres
round the Ilkhani's pavilion, with its crowds of tribesmen, mares and
foals feeding, tethered saddle horses neighing, cows being milked,
horsemen galloping here and there, firing at a mark, asses bearing
wood and flour from Ardal being unloaded--a bustle masculine solely.
Isfandyar Khan, with whose look of capacity I am more and more
impressed, and Lutf received us and led us to the great pavilion,
which is decorated very handsomely throughout with red and blue
_applique_ arabesques, and much resembles an Indian _durbar_ tent. A
brown felt carpet occupied the centre. The Ilkhani, who rose and shook
hands, sat on one side and the Ilbegi on the other, and sons, Khans,
and attendants to the number of 200, I daresay, stood around. We made
some fine speeches, rendered finer, doubtless, by Mirza; repeated an
offer to send a doctor to itinerate in the country for some months in
1891, took the inevitable tea, and while the escorts were being
arranged for I went to the fort.