Every attempt has been made to replicate the original as printed. No
attempt has been made to correct or normalize the spelling of
non-English words. Some illustrations have been moved from
mid-paragraph for ease of reading. (etext transcriber's note)
THE CRADLE OF MANKIND
AGENTS
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[Illustration: THE RIVER OF EDEN.
(THE ZAB ENTERING THE TYARI GORGES).
The view down stream from the mouth of the Ori valley, a little above
Tal. The distant snow peak is Ghara Dagh on the southern side of Tkhuma.
No. 1]
THE CRADLE OF
MANKIND
LIFE IN EASTERN KURDISTAN
BY
THE REV. W. A. WIGRAM. B.D. (Camb.) D.D. (Lambeth)
AUTHOR OF "THE HISTORY OF THE ASSYRIAN CHURCH"
AND
SIR EDGAR T. A. WIGRAM
AUTHOR OF "NORTHERN SPAIN"
ILLUSTRATED FROM SKETCHES AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY
SIR EDGAR T. A. WIGRAM
SECOND EDITION.
[Illustration]
A. & C. BLACK, LTD.,
4, 5 & 6, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.1.
1922
_First Edition published May, 1914._
_Second Edition, with two additional Chapters,
published Autumn, 1922._
_The truth is, that ye ken naething about our hill country, or Hielands
as we ca' them. They're a kind of wild world by themselves, full of
heights and howes, caverns, lochs, rivers and mountains, that it would
tire the very deevil's wings to flee to the tap of them. And the folk
are clean anither set frae the likes of huz; there's nae bailie-courts
amang them--nae magistrates that dinna bear the sword in vain. Never
another law hae they but the length of their dirks; the broad-sword's
pursuer, and the target is defender, and the stoutest head bears langest
out._
SIR WALTER SCOTT ("Rob Roy")
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION
The first sixteen chapters of this book were given to the public in the
spring of the year 1914. Since that date the country has acquired an
additional interest for Englishmen, owing to the British acceptance of a
"mandate" for its supervision and also to the picturesque and heroic
part played in the Great War by the "Assyrian" mountaineers.
While no attempt has been made to tell the full tale of "England in
Irak," it has been thought well to take the opportunity given by the
appearance of a second edition, and to bring the story of the Assyrian
nation up to the date of writing; and the facts which the two concluding
chapters record have been collected and verified during a prolonged
personal intercourse with the principal actors on the spot.
1922.
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
It requires at least four persons to compound a salad sauce, say the
Spaniards. The requisite incompatibilities can never co-exist in one. A
spendthrift should squander the oil, and a miser dole out the vinegar. A
wise man should dispense the salt, and a madman should do the stirring.
Similarly, it has been stated that it takes two people at least to write
a book of travel; a newcomer to give the first impressions and an old
resident to reveal the true inwardness of things.
Though the quality of the ingredients must remain of more importance
than the proportions, the authors of the present volume hope that at
least the latter are correct. One of the writers has spent but three
months in the country, the other has lived there for ten years. One was
quite ignorant of the East, and spoke no word of any Oriental language;
the other had become so intimate with the tribesmen of his own locality,
that they had even begun to tell him of their superstitions--the last
secret that they ever disclose.
And the country itself possesses most intense and varied interest. It
contains some of the grandest scenery, and some of the most venerable
monuments in the world. It is the very _fons et origo_ of our
Indo-European ancestors. Its traditions connect it with the Garden of
Eden, with Noah, and with Abraham. Its folk-lore preserves the old
Nature-worship which originated in the brains of the Ape-man. Its
history records the very dawn of civilization, and the rise and fall of
the earliest of the great empires. The every-day life of its present
inhabitants is to this hour the life of the Patriarchs, the life of
Europe in the Dark Ages, the life of the Highlands of Scotland in the
days of Stewart Kings.
It is not an accessible country, even when judged by half-civilized
standards. It is visited on sufferance only, even by its nominal rulers
themselves. Fortune has given to the authors the opportunity of
travelling through it, and of residing in it, and they have ventured to
set down in these chapters the impressions it has left upon their minds.
The opportunity of residence in this country, it may be stated, came to
one of the authors through his membership of the "Archbishop of
Canterbury's Assyrian Mission." This Mission (which consists of five or
six clergy of the Church of England) has been maintained in the district
in question, by successive Archbishops, for a period of about
twenty-five years. It exists at the request of the Patriarch and other
authorities of the "Nestorian" or "Assyrian" Church, and it works with
the object of educating the clergy and laity of that body, without
disturbing them in their membership of their own ancient and interesting
communion.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. BEYOND THE PALE OF THE RAILWAY 1
(ALEPPO AND URFA)
II. A LAND OF DUST AND ASHES 24
(DIARBEKR AND MARDIN)
III. THE MARCHES OF ANCIENT ROME 47
(DARA AND NISIBIN)
IV. THE BURDEN OF NEWER NINEVEH 69
(MOSUL)
V. THE TEMPLE OF THE DEVIL 87
(SHEIKH ADI)
VI. THE SKIRTS OF THE MOUNTAINS 111
(RABBAN HORMIZD, BAVIAN, AND AKRA)
VII. AN ORIENTAL VICH IAN VOHR 134
(THE SHEIKH OF BARZAN)
VIII. A MASTER OF MISRULE 158
(NERI AND JILU)
IX. THE DEBATABLE LAND 176
(GAWAR, MERGAWAR, AND TERGAWAR)
X. TWIGS OF A WITHERED EMPIRE 196
(URMI)
XI. A LAND OF TROUBLE AND ANGUISH 221
(URMI TO VAN)
XII. A SLOUGH OF DISCONTENT 235
(VAN)
XIII. THE LAND OF PRESTER JOHN 262
(QUDSHANIS)
XIV. THE GREAT CAÑONS 284
(TYARI AND TKHUMA)
XV. INTRUDERS IN A PANDEMONIUM 311
(AMADIA AND BOHTAN)
XVI. GRAVES OF DEAD EMPIRES 339
(MOSUL TO BAGHDAD)
XVII. OUR SMALLEST ALLY 359
XVIII. DEAD SEA FRUIT 392
GLOSSARY 417
INDEX 421
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PRINTED SEPARATELY
1. THE RIVER OF EDEN _Frontispiece_
_Facing Page_
2.MOSUL 33
3. SHEIKH ADI 48
4. THE "PICTURE ROCKS" OF BAVIAN 81
5. AKRA 96
6. ORAMAR 129
7. THE HERIKI VALLEY 144
8. THE MOUNTAINS OF TKHUMA AND JILU 176
9. THE CITADEL ROCK, VAN 209
10. THE QUDSHANIS MOUNTAINS 224
11. CHURCH OF MAR SHALITHA, QUDSHANIS 257
12. A MOUNTAIN BRIDGE 272
13. THE GORGE OF THE ZAB, TYARI 305
14. TRAVELLING IN LOWER TKHUMA 320
15. CHAL 353
16. ENTRANCE TO AMADIA 368
IN THE TEXT
17. THE MOUNTAINS OF DIZ AND TAL,
FROM THE PASS ABOVE QUDSHANIS 366
18. A BIT OF THE ROAD BETWEEN TAL AND JULAMERK 372
PLANS IN THE TEXT
GREAT GRANARY OF DARAS 51
CHURCH OF ST. JAMES AT NISIBIS 59
THE YEZIDI TEMPLE AT SHEIKH ADI 95
CHURCH OF MAR B'ISHU 185
QUDSHANIS: CHURCH OF MAR SHALITHA 273
TEMPLE OF ISHTAR'I BABYLON 355
MAP of EASTERN KURDISTAN
with inset of mesopotamia (insert at end)
THE CRADLE OF MANKIND
CHAPTER I
BEYOND THE PALE OF THE RAILWAY (ALEPPO AND URFA)
The belated Jinn who emerged out of Suleiman's Brass Bottle into
twentieth-century London found there, amid much that was strange to him,
some beings of his own kin. These were the railway locomotives,
obviously Jann like himself, but yet more oppressively treated; bound by
spells of appalling potency to labours more arduous and wearisome than
Suleiman had ever conceived.
And truly his blunder was plausible: for if Jann be extinct nowadays
(which one doubts after visiting Asia), then assuredly cylinders and
boilers are charged with the might of the Jann. They are set to work
regularly now instead of rarely and spasmodically; and though they raise
less dust and clamour their net output is considerably more. The slaves
of the Lamp and the Ring developed intense explosive energy, but their
effective radius was limited. They could rear Aladdin's palace in a
night, or transport him to Africa in a twinkling; but these more
domesticated Titans are capable of transmogrifying whole communities,
and advancing the clock of progress five hundred years at a span.
And now the modern Magrabis, the busy Western magicians, have let slip
these formidable Efrits against the City of Al Raschid himself: and one
fine morning his descendants will awake from the slumber of centuries to
find themselves environed by a new heaven and a new earth.
The Baghdad railway has started. It has penetrated inland to Aleppo.
"That great river, the river Euphrates," is bitted with its girders and
caissons. One more stride will carry it to Mosul across a country so
open and even that it needs but the bedding of the sleepers; and a
journey which now takes a fortnight will be accomplished in a ten-hour
run. What is now a mere stagnant backwater will thus be suddenly scoured
out by one of the main channels of the world's commerce; and who can
venture to calculate the changes which will follow? Western reform will
not convert the East any more than Alexander's conquests converted it;
but it may evolve unintentionally some new sort of Frankenstein's Man.
But meanwhile the East waits unconscious. It takes no thought for the
morrow. The shadow of coming events is perceived indeed, but not
understood. As it was in the days of Noë, so in most things, it still
continues: and the traveller of this generation may still find east of
Aleppo those manners and customs unaltered, which the next may find
clean swept away. Thus it is possible that some interest may attach to a
desultory description of life as it is for the moment still enjoyed, or
endured, in those regions; and which better ordered communities may
perhaps find rather _bizarre_.
Aleppo, the present railhead, is a large Oriental city, lying pooled in
a shallow depression round the great castle which dominates its roofs.
It is beginning to show signs of Westernization; and the quarter nearest
the railway station is blossoming with boulevards and hotels. But it is
the returning, and not the outgoing, traveller who will be most struck
by these symptoms. The latter will only be consumed with wonder that
such a crude and guileless imitation should be thought to pass muster as
the real thing. Outwardly the place is being refurbished, and the new
"Frank" houses flaunt themselves as bravely as their compeers around the
_Soko_ at Tangier; but within they are full of all Oriental uncleanness
and discomfort, for the Turk is quite satisfied as soon as he gets
veneered.
The major part of the town consists of narrow crooked and ill-paved
streets, overhung on each side by toppling wooden oriels, which almost
engage with each other like cogs across the road; and amid this maze of
grimy alleys lurk the mosques, the only noteworthy buildings, whose
minarets show up prominently from a distance, but afford little guidance
near at hand.
The great castle which dominates Aleppo occupies the flat summit of an
immense mound, not much smaller than that of Corfe Castle, which is
piled conspicuously upon a gentle eminence just within the confines of
the city. The core of this mound may be natural, but the bulk of it is
artificial; for it was originally one of the great High Places of that
Baal worship which flourished pre-eminently in Northern Syria, and which
has left us similar monuments of its dominion in the neighbouring mounds
at Homs and Baalbek. The base of this mound is encircled by a deep dry
moat, and its sloping sides are revetted with masonry; while its crest
is crowned by the towers and walls which form the _enceinte_ of the
citadel, and access is provided at one end only through a most
magnificent gate. The citadel owes its present form to Saladin, who is
said to have employed as his workmen the captive Crusaders whom he had
taken at the battle of Tiberias. There are some Western features in the
building which give colour to this supposition; but the place was a
notable stronghold long previous to Saladin's day.
Aleppo was one of the few fortresses that made a respectable defence
against the Moslems at the time of their first irruption. None of the
great frontier towns to the eastward,--Edessa, Amida and Dara--so much
as stood a real siege. Such was the bitterness of party strife, both
civil and religious, within the Byzantine Empire at that period, that
the Arab invaders were welcomed rather than resisted in these lands.
The citadel of Aleppo, however, was defended by a certain Youkinna, till
even the redoubtable Caled, "the Sword of Allah," began to despair of
success. Only the direct command of the Khalif Omar had induced him to
persevere with the leaguer when a valiant slave named Dames volunteered
to attempt a _coup de main_. Caled approved his design; and to favour
its execution withdrew his forces to a distance. Thus Youkinna, rather
too readily, assumed that the siege was raised. The sentinels relaxed
their vigilance, and the garrison had taken to carousing, when Dames
with thirty companions crept up in the darkness to the walls. With the
stalwart slave as their base they built up a human ladder, each man in
succession clambering on to the shoulders of those below. The man on the
seventh tier gripped the battlements, and scrambled over them, and then,
letting down his turban, hauled up his associates one by one. Cutting
down the few guards they encountered the Moslems then made for the
gateway, and succeeded in gaining possession of it ere the garrison was
fully aroused. Here they maintained themselves till daybreak when Caled
arrived to relieve them, and Youkinna thereupon surrendered, seeing that
further resistance was vain.
Aleppo accepted its fate and has since remained Mohammedan. The
Byzantines did indeed temporarily recover it little more than three
hundred years later, when the waning power of the Abbasside Khalifs
enabled Nicephorus and Zimisces to push their armies almost to Baghdad.
But this was a transitory conquest; a plundering raid rather than an
occupation. The Greeks and Romans had always been alien intruders, and
now their Asiatic provinces had reverted to Asia for good.
Another equally transitory raid left a more enduring impression--not
indeed upon Aleppo in particular, but upon Mesopotamia at large. For in
the year 1400 the country was visited by that most destructive of all
conquerors, the terrible Timour the Tartar. He signalized his capture of
Aleppo, as usual, by the erection of a gigantic pyramid of human heads;
and (as was not unusual) he solaced himself while the pile was being
reared by discussing theological problems with the learned doctors of
the town. Poor wretches! they must have felt rather like a regiment of
philosophers paraded for an interview with the Theban Sphinx; especially
when their dangerous questioner opened proceedings with the bland
inquiry, "Which are the true martyrs,--those who die fighting for me, or
for my foes?" But fortunately they had an Oedipus among them who parried
the thrust by quoting the words of the Prophet, "All who die fighting
for conscience' sake are martyrs, no matter under what ensign they
fall."
The conquests of Timour may be regarded as closing the history of
Mesopotamia; that first and most striking chapter in the history of the
civilization of the world. Here mankind had first emerged from
barbarism, and constructed the city of Babylon. Here had arisen the
successive great empires that had their seats at Carchemish, at Nineveh,
at Persepolis, at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and at Antioch; and here after
aeons of conquest and re-conquest there could yet arise the splendours
of Baghdad. Invincibly fertile and populous the land still seemed able
to revive after each successive devastation; but at last its power of
recuperation was exhausted; and after Timour's day there is no more left
to tell. Other conquerors had destroyed and rebuilt; but the Tartars
were only destroyers. They razed the cities to the dust; they massacred
every living creature; they demolished even the irrigation works that
gave fertility to the fields. And the desert which spreads to this day
over all the plains to the eastward is, far more truly than his
mausoleum at Samarcand, the monument of Timour the Lame.
Yet Aleppo itself was near enough to the sea to recover even from this
disaster; and within 150 years of Timour's conquest it was once more one
of the chief marts of the East. Hither came the London Turkey merchants,
among them the "Master of the Tiger." Hither, with the Venetians, came
Othello, to have his memorable encounter with the "heathen Turk." John
Verney was trading here in the middle of the seventeenth century, and
describes it as "the most famous city in all the Grand Seignior's
dominions for the confluence of merchants of all nations." Among the
commodities dealt with he enumerates the "oak galls for dyers" which are
still a valuable harvest in the Kurdistan mountains; but he makes no
mention of the liquorice, which is now the most important of all.
Aleppo owes its prosperity chiefly to the Arabs; for though, under the
name of Berea, it was well known both to the Greeks and Romans, it never
appears in their days to have been a particularly important place. No
doubt it profited by the decline of Antioch, which had been the second
city in the Byzantine Empire. The new direct railway line to Iskanderun
harbour will henceforth augment its importance; and when the completion
of the Baghdad railway links it up with Constantinople and India it may
even attain the position once held by Antioch itself.
Our own business at Aleppo was confined to the hire of a carriage to
convey us and our baggage and our fortunes across the desert to Mosul.
This was a subject which involved us in some three days' delicate
diplomacy; and eventually we closed with a contractor who offered to
take us through at the price of nine pounds for a nominal fortnight's
journey,[1] with two mejidies (about seven shillings) extra for every
day that we chose to call a halt.
The carriage in which we proposed to achieve our _hegira_ consisted of a
sort of four-wheeled coster's barrow, endowed with flea-like agility by
a perfect cat's-cradle of springs. It had a seat in front for the
driver, and a shelf behind on which our baggage could be corded; but
there were no seats for the passengers, and accordingly we spread our
sleeping bags upon a thick litter of straw. Most of the springs and many
of the spokes had been broken and the fractures had been swathed in
string. This required great quantities of string. Finally the tarpaulin
tilt which enclosed the body of the vehicle (and which was ostensibly
designed for shelter) proved useful for fielding the cargo whenever it
got skied by the jolts. Such a carriage is known as "an _araba_," or
alternatively as an _yaili_--a name which is probably onomatopoeic,
for it is about the "slithiest" thing that runs on wheels.[2]
This equipage was drawn by four scraggy ponies; not that it weighed
anything worth mentioning, but because the roads were bad. Two of the
beasts were harnessed to the pole, and two tacked on by traces outside,
like the team of a Homeric chariot. They could seldom be induced to
trot, and generally our rate of progress fell even below the minimum
that is ordinarily expected of "hollow jades of Asia"; for we cannot
have averaged more than twenty miles a day. Our driver was a lank, dank,
hook-nosed creature who reminded us irresistibly of Ikey Moses in the
old Ally Sloper cartoons, and who looked as if he had been shipwrecked
on a desert island a great many times and always in the same suit. He
grumbled much at the amount of our baggage, and a great deal more
because we insisted that he should carry a good supply of fodder; but we
think that he--or at all events his horses--must eventually have felt
grateful to us for not having given way.
The road, as it issues from Aleppo, rises gradually on to a heathy
upland somewhat similar to Salisbury Plain. Here it soon becomes a mere
wheel track--a good enough path to lead to a moorland farmstead, but a
poor sort of thing to confide in for a journey of 200 miles. At every
two or three leagues its stages are marked off by villages; generally
forlorn little groups of one-storied flat-roofed stone hovels, but
sometimes a more pretentious affair where the houses rise to two stories
and which (on the strength of such superiority) feels justified in
calling itself a town. Often even the meanest of these were formerly
towns indeed, and instead of being called El Bab or Membij, were known
by such high-sounding names as Bambyce and Hierapolis.[3] The hummocks
and hollows which mark the foundations of their ancient edifices form a
wide margin all around the outskirts, and the surface is strewn for acre
on acre with dislocated fragments of columns and great squared blocks of
stone. At one point where we made a short halt, we were able to decipher
a few tags of Latin inscriptions;--_cos_, _divi_, _cæsar_ and a few
other similar words. They were deeply, but rudely incised, as though cut
in sheer idleness by some unoccupied soldier. A householder who saw us
examining them led us to the door of his hut where he showed us another
inscription. In this case the lettering was Arabic, and we could read no
more than the name of Allah:--a fact which caused great consternation to
our householder, for he had been using it as a threshold.
We halted each night at some village _khan_, the Turkish synonym for the
better known Persian word _caravanserai_, which forms the common house
of entertainment both for man and beast. A typical _khan_ consists of a
great square courtyard full of foul dust in dry weather and of fouler
mud in wet. Often have we felt inclined to bless the hard frost at night
in winter time, which has enabled us next morning to walk to our
carriage on the top of the mud instead of wading through. The courtyard
is enclosed by a range of miserable hovels--the sort of shanties which
might perhaps pass muster as tool sheds in allotment gardens, those
"lodges in gardens of cucumbers," which Isaiah considered the nadir of
dilapidation. Some of these take rank as stables and others as guest
chambers. In point of comfort and cleanliness there is little to choose
between them; but occasionally the guest chambers are on an upper story,
and then the humans are somewhat better off than the brutes. Let us
assume, not to be too sanguine, that our room will be on the ground
floor; and, not to be too despondent, that we shall get a room to
ourselves.
Such a room will be about 9 feet square, and will boast a ramshackle
door and (perhaps) a shuttered window. Its floor will be about six
inches below the level of the yard--we mean the mud. It will be
furnished, like the Prophet's chamber, with "a bed, a stool, and a
candlestick;" _videlicet_--with a rush mat or a rough plank bedstead, a
small table (this only occasionally), and a paraffin lamp upon the wall.
For a small additional fee the _Khanji_[4] will bring us a charcoal
brazier; but (not wishing to be asphyxiated) we must leave this to burn
outside until the blue flames subside. Here we are at liberty to make
our own beds, and to cook and eat such provisions as we may have brought
with us. The room is never swept, and prudent travellers will often take
the precaution of bringing their own carpet with them. The regular
charge for such an apartment is five piastres (10_d._) a night.
Our fellow guests are mostly Kurds or Arabs, with Syrians and Armenians
rather more sparsely intermixed. They may be told apart by their
languages, or less certainly by their dress; for the Arabs are the only
folk hereabouts who adhere very scrupulously to their own distinctive
costume. This consists of a gown, generally of some striped or plain
soft-coloured material, reaching almost to the feet, and girt about the
waist with a bright coloured sash. A V-shaped opening from neck to waist
shows an embroidered shirt-front under, and over all is worn an _abba_
or Arab cloak. The _abba_ is generally of woollen fabric, either dark
brown, or boldly striped with black and white or brown and white in
broad and narrow stripes arranged alternately. For winter wear it is
often made of sheepskin, worn woolly side out during wet weather, and
woolly side in during dry. On their heads they wear a bright coloured
head cloth, either of silk or cotton, which is kept in position by a
double coil of soft black rope forming a sort of wreath. They usually
wear their hair long.
The Kurds also in the plain villages often wear an Arab type of costume;
but the muleteers and other travellers are clad in a nondescript garb
which seems based upon a Turkish original. The typical Turkish trousers
are made from a piece of stuff whose width is equal to the length of the
leg from waist to ankle. This is folded to form a square, sewn up the
sides, and furnished with a cord run round the top to gird in at the
waist. A couple of holes for the feet are cut at the two bottom corners,
and the garment is then complete. This of course leaves an immense
amount of slack between the legs, and superior tailors get rid of this
to some extent by a certain amount of shaping; but a very sufficient
surplus is always allowed to remain. Above this is worn a waistcoat,
with a coloured sash and a kind of zouave jacket. The waistcoat, the
lappets of the jacket, and the pockets of the trousers are often adorned
with braiding; and the rough frieze of which the dress is composed is
generally blue, black or brown. Sheepskin jackets are often worn in
winter time.
On their heads they wear sometimes an Arab head cloth, sometimes a
Turkish fez, sometimes the conical felt cap of the Kurds and Syrians,
either with or without a turban. In cold weather they swathe the ends of
their turbans about their faces, muffling themselves up to the eyes and
making themselves look even more complete ruffians than they did before.
The officials and well-to-do classes wear what they consider to be
European costume, but always top it off with a fez.
One of the first impressions which besets a traveller in these parts is
the reality of the curse of Babel. For a curse it is most emphatically,
though some of our home-bred cranks would appear to regard it as a
blessing; and it is devoutly to be wished that all those crack-brained
politicians who are seeking to promote the revival of Erse and Gælic and
Cymric might be awarded some practical experience of the realization of
their dreams. The Swiss boasted that he had three native languages; but
the inhabitants of Asiatic Turkey are provided with at least six. Arabic
is dominant on the plains; Syriac and Kurdish in the mountains; Armenian
on the plateaus to the northward; and Greek in western Asia Minor.
Turkish, except in Anatolia, is only the official language; but we
suppose it deserves recognition along with the other five. Naturally
each of these main stems branches off into dialects by the score; and if
these are to be reckoned separately the Turkish Empire is still as
polyglot as that of Nebuchadnezzar himself.
No one of course speaks all the languages; but no one can get on at all
comfortably without speaking a minimum of two. That number will probably
enable him at least to find an interpreter in most of the villages which
favour the four remaining tongues.
The nationalities are as diverse as the languages, and are interwoven
together in the most bewildering entanglement; not by separate districts
dovetailed into one another like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, but by
tiny fragmentary communities dispersed like different grains shaken up
vigorously in a bag. The village is the largest unit; and where one
village is Syrian, the next may be Kurdish, the next Armenian, the next
Yezidi; all out of sympathy with each other and all resolutely refusing
to mix. Here and there in the medley one may find occasionally a
specimen which has no affinity whatever with any neighbouring
nationality. Membij, for example, is a village of Circassians, fugitives
from the Russian occupation who were given an asylum here by the Sultan
Abdul Hamid. We have sometimes wondered whether this extraordinary
mixture may not be the fruit of the policy adopted by the ancient
Assyrians, who were wont to disperse their captive nations through all
the length and breadth of their domain; but the same thing is seen in
the European provinces of Turkey where Assyrians and Persians never
penetrated, and where Serbs, Bulgars, Greeks and Roumanians form an
equally tangled skein.
English critics talk glibly enough of Turkey being an Asiatic Power, and
being capable of regenerating herself by concentrating her energies in
Asia. They seem to be under the delusion that Turkey in Asia is mainly
inhabited by Turks! As a matter of fact (except as aforesaid, in
Anatolia) one may live for years in Asiatic Turkey without so much as
meeting a single Turk. Even the official classes are largely Circassians
and Arnauts; and the bulk of the population are Arabs and Armenians and
Syrians and Greeks and Kurds, all of whom are profoundly disaffected and
only acquiesce in Turkish rule because they will on no account support
each other in usurping its place.
The problem of Asiatic Turkey, like the problem of Thrace and Macedonia,
is simply that none of the component races can be trusted to govern the
rest, and that all are so inextricably intermingled that it is
impossible to parcel them out into distinct homogeneous States. We must
own some sympathy with the Turks, the old conquering race, who once
fully vindicated their hegemony. But their day is now past: their
natural force abated. And though they still hold the tiller (thanks to
the dissensions among their crew) they have no longer the strength to
keep the ship under control. Their empire is too great for their
shrunken numbers to govern, and they find themselves choked by the
subject races with whom they have failed to assimilate.
On the third day after leaving Aleppo we reached the banks of the
Euphrates; here a broad and rapid river, divided into three or four
channels by a string of flat sandy islets. The right bank, from which we
descended, is formed by a range of chalky hills breaking off into cliffs
here and there; but the left bank is lower and flatter with an edging of
conglomerate rock; and under each bank is a wide foreshore of greyish
sand, which is of course all covered whenever the river is high. Its
waters must have been singularly shrunken when Xenophon forded it at
Thapsacus, a hundred miles lower down, and found it no more than breast
deep; for here it is quite unfordable and can only be crossed by
ferries.
The ferry boats are big spoon-shaped craft with low square bows and high
pointed sterns. They are built of very rough planking, which looks as if
it could not possibly be watertight, and some very vigorous caulking
must have been employed to attain that end. They are steered by a huge
flimsy paddle, formed of two or three poles roughly lashed together and
pivoted upon the stern post; and what motive power is required is
supplied by an iron-shod punt-pole. A crew of two men, one to steer and
one to punt, work these unwieldy arks from a small half-deck at the
stern.
Our carriage was backed into one of the boats over the bows, to the
accompaniment of an infinity of yelling, and sundry mules and camels
were disposed as packing round the sides. Then away we drifted,
broadside on, down the rapid stream; wriggled into a back eddy under the
lee of one of the islands; and eventually stranded safely about half a
mile down upon the further shore. The boats had to be towed up stream a
mile or more before they were able to recross; and we were lucky to have
found them on the right bank, for the process of getting them over might
well have meant an hour's delay.
The point where we crossed the river is unmarked by any village, but a
considerable town named Birijik lies about thirty miles up stream.
A lordlier city once dominated these solitary reaches; for fifteen miles
nearer lies the little village of Jerablus, and all around Jerablus lie
the mighty mounds which cover the ruins of Carchemish, and among which
the gangs of workmen employed by the British Museum are now engaged in
recovering the long hidden secrets of the ancient Hittite kings.
Carchemish was the capital of the Hittites, that most ancient and most
mysterious of all the great nations which once held dominion over
northern Syria. Their history is still a sealed book to us; for though
we have recovered many of their inscriptions, we have as yet found no
key to their decipherment. All that we know of them at present has been
gleaned from the records of Egypt and Assyria. We are still awaiting the
day when another Rosetta Stone shall unlock for us the secrets of a
people, whose capital was already a dead city when Nebuchadnezzar
defeated Pharaoh Necho under its walls 600 years before Christ.
But though the Hittites have vanished utterly for so many thousand
years, we may still trace their influence in the handiwork of the
natives to this day. The villages which border the Euphrates--and a few
others nearer Aleppo--are entirely distinct in character from all those
in the districts around. The houses are not square and flat-roofed like
those in ordinary villages; but circular conical buildings, of a shape
between a beehive and a sugar-loaf, built of sun-dried mud, and packed
tightly together within a walled enclosure, looking exactly like the
haycocks in a crowded rick-yard in England. Houses of precisely this
shape are represented on the Egyptian bas-reliefs recording the conquest
of the _Khati_ by the Pharaoh Rameses II; and there can be little doubt
that the type has persisted continuously down to the present time. It
may even perhaps be argued with a certain amount of plausibility that
the men who build such villages are remotely of Hittite blood!
The villages in Asiatic Turkey are ordinarily the property of some
landowner; and the system of tenure is worth mentioning, for it must
date from Patriarchal times. The Government claims as revenue an eighth
of all the produce;[5] and the remaining seven-eighths is divided
equally between the village owner and the cultivators. The villagers
have also to pay to the Government an eighth of the value of the fodder
computed to have been consumed by their flocks and herds; and have
further to deliver the Government eighth free of charge at the
tax-farmers' storehouses. By law this obligation is restricted to one
hour's journey--_i.e._ there is supposed to be a storehouse in every
village--but in practice they have often to carry it three or four times
as far. They have also to pay a land tax of about 5 per cent. They keep
all the straw as their perquisite; and it is the landlord's duty to
provide them with the seed grain.
This sounds as if the landlord got the lion's share of the profits. And
if he be miserly he does; but most of them interpret their signoral
duties in a more liberal spirit. The landlord is expected to keep a
guest house in his village, and a man in charge of it. Here anyone, be
he villager or traveller, can get a free meal and free lodging. One big
man in this district is reputed to expend food to the value of £1000
annually in such hospitality, including corn to the value of £400 in
bread alone. Moreover, the landlord acts as a sort of savings bank to
his villagers. If any of them is in distress and applies to him, he will
relieve him. He will never think of sparing as long as his barns hold
anything. He lives simply, as they do; and he holds that "Allah will
provide."
All payments should be considered as being made in kind, not in money;
for coin is scarce in Turkey, and not very generally used.[6] Even if
it were more plentiful it is but a fluctuating security; for the coins
in common use are the silver ones, and these are never current at their
face value.[7] The gold £1 Turkish, nominally worth 100 piastres,
fetched at the time of our visit from 102 piastres at Mosul to 114 at
Aleppo; and the value of Mejidies (nominally 20 piastres), and of 5
piastre-pieces, varied also in different degrees. This is not all the
fault of the Government; for while home trade and industry must be
sorely hampered by such eccentricities, the Constantinople banks (which
are run by European syndicates) are not altogether displeased. They can
make a profit on the deal, for they hold most of the bullion: and when
any particular coin has much appreciated anywhere, they can unload their
stock of it at that particular place.
Eastward from the Euphrates our track leads over rather lower country,
an open undulating heathland which melts gradually into alluvial plain.
Here and there, dispersed about the surface, are wide patches of stony
ground; and where the track chances to skirt them it is usually found
that many of the stones have been piled up into little pillars, five or
six one upon the other making a column about two feet high. Each patch
will contain twenty or thirty of these little pillars. They are set up
by casual wayfarers as a sort of votive memorial, just as the Patriarch
Jacob set up his pillar at Bethel.
A similar habit prevails in the mountain districts; but there it is more
customary to insert the votive stone in the forked branch of a tree.
Cairns also are frequently seen at the sides of the paths in the
mountains; but these are generally erected to mark the site of some
murder, and it is usual for each passer-by to add his stone to the pile.
If you were a friend of the victim you deposit your offering gently; if
you were his enemy you hurl it on vindictively. Thus the pile grows
apace any way, and it is to be presumed that his _manes_ are appeased.
Near the village of Seruj we reach the outskirts of the great plain of
Mesopotamia. Its levels stretch away southward as far as the eye can
see. But our track edges still to the left and presently enters the hill
country, the first and lowest undulations of the great mountain range
towards the north.
It must have been on some of these spurs that the wrecks of Crassus'
army found refuge after their great defeat by the Parthians in the year
53 B.C. Carrhae, which gave its name to the battle, lay in the midst of
the plains some twenty-five miles to the southward, and the actual scene
of the fighting was some distance further south still: but the beaten
troops made for the mountains, their only asylum from their pursuers;
and here the last cohorts were surrounded and forced to lay down their
arms.
Carrhae was a place of ill-omen for the Romans, for only 300 years later
another similar disaster befell them upon the same ground. Here in the
year 260 the Emperor Valerian was defeated and captured by Sapor I, the
King of the Sassanid Persians, who had by this time inherited the
Arascid Parthians' domains. Roman accounts assert that the hapless
Emperor was flayed alive; but the Persians more credibly relate that he
was kept a prisoner, and employed in building the great bridge across
the Karun river at Shushter.[8] Both accounts agree that after his death
his skin was stuffed, and preserved as a grim trophy in the Palace at
Seleucia Ctesiphon.
A short distance within the hills our track struck the great metalled
road that runs from Birijik to Urfa. It is a road which, as far as it
goes, might be called good in any country: but only the Urfa half of it
is completed; it comes to an untimely end not far from the point where
we struck at, which was somewhere about a third of the way to Birijik.
The remaining section, however, served us admirably, and we trundled
along it in fine style for the last three hours of our day's journey,
threading a winding rocky valley which debouched at the back of the
town.
Oriental cities as a rule are rather a disappointment to sightseers.
Picturesque they are indeed, but in such a squalid fashion that much of
their charm is blighted. They are a mere agglomeration of hovels, with a
few fine features here and there. We have even heard it said of
Constantinople itself that, having seen the approach to the Golden Horn,
the traveller had better take his departure; for that every nearer
inspection brings a fresh disillusionment in its train. Urfa, however,
may rank as one of the exceptions. It is beyond question the most
picturesque city in Mesopotamia. And, being built chiefly of stone, it
has some dignity in its dilapidation, and wears its tattered finery with
an aristocratic air.
Urfa lies just at the foot of the hills, half enclosed by two bold
limestone promontories. The upper part of the town is pooled in the bay
between them, and the lower and larger portion is split out into the
plain. It is almost surrounded by its ancient walls, which are largely
of Roman workmanship; and its mosques and minarets and all its prominent
buildings are constructed almost entirely of a rich golden-brown stone.
The streets are of course mere alleys, narrow and tortuous; but retain
here and there many traces of architectural ornamentation; and among and
around the houses grow cypresses and other trees. The principal mosque,
once a Christian cathedral, is an old Byzantine basilica, and above it
rises conspicuously a noble octagonal tower. The present Armenian church
is also of great antiquity, though hardly of the First Century, which is
what the Armenians claim.[9]
The promontory to the west of the town is crowned by the ancient
citadel; now a mere shell, but imposing from its situation, and
surmounted by two lofty Roman columns formerly a portion of a temple
portico.[10] Towards the town the hill is precipitous, but on the
further side the slope is gradual; and accordingly the whole of this
face, together with the two return ends, is defended by one of the most
magnificent dry moats that exists anywhere in the world. It is hewn out
of solid rock, with sides that are absolutely vertical; and may measure
even now about thirty feet deep and not less than thirty feet wide.
Formerly it could be crossed at two or three places by narrow wooden
drawbridges; and the posterns to which they gave access can still be
seen in the walls. At what epoch this moat was constructed we did not
feel competent to determine. The walls are partly Saracenic, partly
Roman, and partly Sassanian; they are now extremely ruinous and of no
very formidable height.[11]
Urfa in classical days was known by the name of Edessa, and was the
capital city of that king Abgarus of Osroëne, whose Epistle to our Lord
is included among the Apocryphal Gospels. This tale is something more
than a legend, for it dates from the beginning of the fourth century;
and is related by the historians Eusebius and Moses of Khorene, who both
profess to have derived their authority from contemporary documents
which they had themselves inspected among the royal archives at Edessa.
They tell us how the king was afflicted with leprosy, and how he sought
in vain to be cured by the physicians and sorcerers of his own land. How
at length he heard report of the miracles that were being wrought in
Judaea by Jesus the Prophet of Galilee; and how he dispatched
ambassadors to Him, entreating Him to come and heal his disease and to
instruct his people, offering Him at the same time a secure asylum from
the hatred of the unbelieving Jews. These ambassadors were the "certain
Greeks"[12] who are mentioned in St. John's Gospel as having been
introduced to our Lord by Philip on the day of His triumphant entry into
Jerusalem; and they brought back to Abgarus a verbal message (or some
say an actual letter dictated by our Lord to Thomas) promising that one
of His Apostles should be sent to Edessa in due time.
Accordingly soon after the Ascension the Apostle Thaddeus was sent by
Thomas to preach the Word in Osroëne. He came and healed Abgarus of his
leprosy; and the king and all his people thereupon embraced the
Faith.[13] Thaddeus himself passed onwards to Armenia and Eastern
Mesopotamia, where he founded the Parthian or Assyrian, now called the
"Nestorian," Church.
We may at least say of this legend that it is nearly as well
authenticated as that which attributes the foundation of the Church of
Rome to Peter; and far better than those which claim Spain for James the
Great, or Britain for Joseph of Arimathea. The stories have this much in
their favour--that at all events they are not mutually contradictory.
Peter and James are conceded to the West; while Eastern tradition
contents itself with Thomas and Thaddeus and Bartholomew. One would
expect only the illustrious names in any mere fabricated tales.
At least it is historically certain that the Gospel was brought to
Edessa almost within the Apostolic ages; and that Edessa formed the main
distributing centre for the preachers who evangelized the East.
Osroëne in Abgarus' days formed a sort of buffer state between the
Parthian and Roman Empires; and a little later it experienced the usual
fate of buffer states, and was absorbed by the Empire of Rome. Under its
new suzerains Edessa took rank as an important frontier fortress, and
stood many a siege in the long-drawn wars between the kings of the
Sassanid Persians and the Emperors of Byzantine Rome. Moreover it was a
great educational centre, the seat of a famous university, which was
eventually suppressed by the Byzantine Emperor Zeno in the year 489 on
the ground that it was tainted by the heresy of Nestorianism.
But Edessa has acquired one peculiar interest in the eyes of Western
historians from the fact that it was the easternmost conquest that was
ever achieved by the Crusades. When Godfrey de Bouillon reached Antioch
in the year 1097 his brother Baldwin was in command of one of the
divisional armies that sallied forth to raid the country round about.
Many of the Crusading chieftains won themselves little principalities in
the course of these plundering expeditions; but Baldwin had better luck
than any, though it does not appear that it was any better deserved. He
penetrated eastward to Edessa; and found that city governed by a petty
Christian kinglet, who welcomed the Crusaders effusively and adopted
Baldwin as his successor. How far such welcome and adoption were
voluntary we have no means of ascertaining. Probably the poor Christian
Emir felt that he could not help himself. At any rate, he was killed
soon after in an insurrection (not without suspicion of Baldwin's
connivance), and the latter reigned in his room.
Upon Godfrey's death in 1100, Baldwin became King of Jerusalem, and made
over his principality to his cousin Baldwin du Bourg. He, too, succeeded
to Jerusalem in his turn in 1118; and the next Count of Edessa was
Jocelyn, a fine old fighter, whose exploits made his name a terror to
every Paynim in the land. Neither Baldwin II nor Jocelyn were altogether
in luck's way. Both were taken captive near Edessa by Balak the Prince
of Aleppo, and confined together in the strong castle of Khortbert.
Jocelyn succeeded in escaping, and presently had the satisfaction of
slaying Balak in battle with his own hand: but Baldwin remained a
prisoner for a period of seven years.
Jocelyn died in 1132, leaving his feeble-spirited son to succeed
him,[14] and thereafter the fortunes of the Crusaders began very rapidly
to wane. Their first invasion had been happily timed; for the last great
Seljuk Sultan, Malek Shah, had died two or three years previously, and
had left his empire to be disputed among his four sons. Thus for a time
there had been no single great ruler to unite the Moslems against the
Christians. But now a new power was being built up by Zanghi the Atabek
at Mosul; and under him, and his successors Noureddin and Saladin, it
grew more formidable every year. Zanghi--Sanguin, as the Crusaders
called him--laid siege to Edessa in 1144, and Milicent the queen regent
of Jerusalem found herself powerless to send aid. Zanghi breached the
walls by undermining one of the towers; the stormers overtook the flying
garrison before they could enter the citadel; and an indiscriminate
massacre brought the Christian dominion to an end.
There are still a good number of Christians both Armenian and Syrian at
Urfa, and the Syrian Monastery of Rabban Ephrem stands conspicuously at
the head of the bay. Rabban Ephrem was a handsome young monk, a refugee
from Nisibis when that city was ceded to Persia. He came to Urfa in
search of an eligible hermitage, and encountered there (so says the
legend) a damsel with roguish eyes.
"Oh damsel, why dost thou look upon me?" demanded the scandalized
solitary. "Man should keep his eyes fixed on the ground; for it is
written that out of it he was taken."
"Verily it is as thou sayest;" responded the damsel demurely. "Wherefore
woman may look upon man freely, for it is written that woman was taken
out of man."
"Lo! here is wisdom indeed," exclaimed the anchorite in amazement. "If
the women of Urfa are so wise, how wise must the men be! Of a surety I
will make my abode here, and gather wisdom at the fountain head."
So Rabban Ephrem settled down at Urfa, probably in one of the rock-cut
cells in the hill fronting the castle. But as he was misguided enough to
exclude all the women from his monastery, we fear it is only too
probable that he did not get as much wisdom as he hoped.
But the real patron saint of Urfa is no other than the Patriarch
Abraham; for the Moslems all believe implicitly that Urfa is Ur of the
Chaldees.[15] They have here Abraham's cradle, and his tomb (which they
never allow Christians to look upon); and they have the Pool of Abraham
also, which is the principal sight in all their town.
Abraham's Pool is a great stone tank which is fed by a never-failing
spring. Along one side rise the domes and minarets of Abraham's Mosque
(which is also inviolable by Christians) and the steps by which pious
Moslems descend into the Pool to bathe. In the pool live Abraham's carp.
The water is positively thick with them. No one is permitted to catch
them so long as they remain in their Sanctuary; but they venture at
their own proper peril into the stream which flows out from one end. It
is considered a pious act to feed them; and the great fat gluttons
follow us as we walk along the margin, with their heads bobbing out of
the water, begging for handfuls of boiled maize. When we throw them
_largesse_ there is such a rush for it that many of them got hoisted
bodily out of their element on their fellows' backs; and it must be
regretfully added that they often gorge themselves so immoderately that
they float away gasping, belly uppermost, as though they were in an
apoplectic fit.
Abraham's interest in the pool is explained by a delicious legend. He
had refused to worship fire when ordered to do so by Nimrod; and the
mighty conqueror was so exasperated that he hurled him with his own
hands from the summit of the citadel rock into a burning fiery furnace
which he had kindled for his reception at the bottom. The Patriarch
dropped unhurt, though it was a long cast even for Nimrod; and the
fountain sprang up at the touch of his feet and extinguished the fiery
furnace.
If this explanation should appear to be not quite sufficiently coherent,
we can only admit that primitive Paganism tells a much more plausible
tale. The pool belonged of old to Derceto (Dagon, Atergatis), the
ancient Syrian fish-goddess. They are lineal descendants of her carp
that inhabit its waters to this day.