THE GREAT CAÑONS
(THE NESTORIAN "ASHIRETS" OF HAKKIARI)
Qudshanis is probably a spot that is unique on the world's surface; but
on leaving it for the south, the traveller soon finds himself in a land
that is fascinating enough, though plenty of parallels might be found
for it, even in the present orderly world, and numbers in the history of
every nation in the past. This land is the country of the Nestorian
"_ashirets_" of Tyari, Tkhuma, Diz, Baz, and a few other wild mountain
cantons; men who live under the peculiar conditions described in an
earlier chapter.
It is to be expected that the natural features of a land where so
primitive a state of things prevails will be rugged; and those of
Hakkiari are wild and strange enough to merit a special description. The
mountains are in fact a section of that great Taurus range, which
extends in a curve from the shores of the Mediterranean to somewhere
south of Baghdad. At this point they are pierced by a large river, the
Zab, which rises well to the north of them on the Armenian plateau; and
with rare determination bores its way clean through the range, till it
emerges on the Mesopotamian level to the south of it, and so falls into
the Tigris a little below Mosul. The cleft that it makes in the
mountains is one of the great _cañons_ of the world, comparable, in the
opinion of those who have seen all, to the gorges of Yosemite and the
"great Cañon of Colorado." Midway in its course the peaks of Supa Durig
and Koka Bulend, the two kings of that wilderness, stand opposite to one
another. Each is nearly fourteen thousand feet in height above the sea;
and as a bird flies, their crests are not more than twelve miles apart.
But the level of the river Zab that flows between them is only 4000 feet
above the sea at that point, so that the net depth of the gorge is over
9000 feet.
We presume that this insistence on the part of the river arises from the
fact that the huge wrinkle of the earth's surface which men call the
mountains of Taurus is of later date than the elevation of the plateau
to the north of it; and that consequently, as the rivers were already
flowing to the south, they steadily gouged away the barrier, as it was
being slowly heaved up. Or perhaps the Zab may have found some great
crevasse in the mountains which gave it the opportunity that it needed.
Whatever the process, the result has been a series of most magnificent
gorges, with walls falling almost precipitously from the level of
eternal snow to that of fig-tree, vine, and olive; and side ravines
which are scarcely inferior to the main gorge in grandeur. So narrow is
the chasm, and so steep the sides of it, that even at the river level
avalanches form a very real danger to spring travel, and must often be
crossed by hundreds in a day's march. Such crossing is not too easy; for
smooth snow at an angle of 40°, terminated by a drop into a swollen
torrent, may be dangerous for any caravan to traverse; and many are the
tales told of the escapes or deaths of mountaineers.
One man of our acquaintance was caught by a descending avalanche and
swept down the hill by the moving mass. While motion lasted, he was of
course fairly safe; but he had the wits to remember that the peril must
come when the foremost part of the great snow-slide was checked on the
level, and the hinder part, still advancing, squeezed itself together
like a telescoping railway train. By good luck he was upright when
motion ceased and he felt the snow consolidating round him. Working his
body frantically to and fro, he made as it were a little cell for
himself, so that he remained uncrushed; but he was buried and held a
prisoner, for his legs and feet were fast. There he remained for three
days, for a man can breathe through a considerable thickness of even
compressed snow; and there he was when his friends came out to search
for his dead body. They probed the snow with stick; and, as it happened,
poked one down actually into his chamber, so that he was able to catch
the end of it and hold on. He was extricated but little the worse.
An American missionary in the land had a similar experience in one of
the side valleys. He and his party made a rash attempt to cross a slope
of new snow, lying to the depth of perhaps six inches on the smooth
surface of old hard stuff; and naturally they started an avalanche. The
whole party of eleven men were borne down a matter of 2000 feet; and the
marvel was that only one of them perished.
At one particular place an enormous avalanche is an annual event, owing
to the peculiar configuration of the gorges. The winter fall on a whole
mountain side is artfully concentrated into one funnel-shaped valley,
which discharges into the Zab itself; and the snow-slide frequently dams
the stream for some hours. There is a profitable harvest of great fish
to be gathered in the dry bed below the dam at that time; though such
gleaning is of an unusually exciting character. For naturally when the
dam does go, it goes with a rush; and the point of safety is a good
distance above the normal level of the current!
The average width of the river in the mountains is perhaps fifty yards,
and its pace is very great; yet such temporary bridgings are not
uncommon. The writer has seen a case where an avalanche had not only
crossed the river, but had then been swirled round by the configuration
of the rocky slope on the other side, so that it overwhelmed a house
that had been built in what appeared to be an absolutely safe recess.
Seven lives were lost on that occasion, though one old man was found
living after six days burial under the snow, the roof-beams having so
fallen as to make a protection for his head.
In such a land as this, life is a hard matter; all cultivation is on
terraces, built as described above, and subject to the constant danger
of destruction by flood or avalanche.
Barring such accidents the terrace fields are fertile enough, if they
have a sufficiency of water; but this again has to be supplied them
artificially by leading the irrigation channels from the main stream
(often along precipitous faces of rock) and maintaining them carefully
when built. Millet and rice are the staple crops; the former furnishing
food both for man and beast, for its long stalks are excellent fodder.
Its grain is very sustaining as food, as we know from experience, but it
is not attractive. In fact bread made from it rather suggests that your
host has run short of flour, and has eked matters out with an equivalent
weight of sawdust! Even so, however, "it is better to eat millet bread
and carry a gun, than to be an unarmed _rayat_ under the Ottoman" under
present conditions.
Roads are of course unknown in the land, and there is no such thing as a
wheeled vehicle from one end of Hakkiari to the other. Tracks scramble
up the gorges along the slopes of shale, and climb by what are known as
_stangi_ over and round projecting noses of precipice. A _stanga_ is a
built up track; the stones being often held in place, by their own
weight only, on branches of trees stuck in crevices of the rock, and
projecting out over the torrent.
Mules can get along these roads fairly well, being to the manner born;
and sheep and goats do well enough also. But certain villages have a
happy immunity from the attentions of the raider, owing to the fact that
no quadruped can be driven along the tracks that lead from them. Such
cattle as they possess were either born on the land, or were carried up
in the days of their calfhood on men's backs. As for horses, it is a
tradition that they cannot be got through the gorges at all, and nobody
but a mad Englishman ever thinks of attempting such a thing. It has been
done twice, however; once by the writer, and once by a military Consul
from Van. Of course the horses were not ridden; and in fact had each of
them two men to look after their needs, one at the head to lead them,
and the other at the tail to hold them on to the track when it went
round sharp corners at a steep angle. This secured that when the poor
beast slipped at such a place, he did not fall into the river, but onto
the track; after which a man held his head down to prevent his
struggling to rise (which would have meant disaster), till all the men
who could get a hold of him were gathered round. Then came the signal,
"Are you ready--lift!" and the astonished horse found himself raised
with a straight hoist upwards, like a baby, and so set on his feet once
more. Thus they were got through; but they all left their shoes behind!
The bridges which cross the river form quite a feature of the land, and
show considerable engineering skill; though the crossing of them needs a
steady head as they are constructed at present. In principle, they are
true cantilevers. Piers are built at some convenient place, and a long
"bracket" of poplar trees is built out over the stream from each
shoreward side. The butts are weighted down with stones, and the
projecting ends are perhaps forty feet apart. Two long poplars are then
slung side by side between the ends of the converging brackets, and a
floor of withy hurdles makes the bridge complete.
As the trunks are very elastic, the whole structure swings considerably
even if it does remain horizontal. Often, however, it acquires a
pronounced tilt to one side or the other; and in any case a three-foot
track without any sort of parapet is narrow for a bridge. By old rule,
you ought not to look down in crossing such a place, lest the sight of
the torrent whirling below should unnerve you. In this case, however,
look down you must, and make the best of the vision of the torrent as
seen through the withy hurdle floor; for that floor is full of holes and
other traps and stumbling blocks, and if you trip, disaster follows!
Even natives sometimes condescend to be led across these places, or even
to crawl; but animals vary as much as menfolk in their behaviour on such
occasions. The writer has known a plains-bred horse walk over one of
these bridges as if to the manner born, without even a man to his tail;
and has seen a mountain-bred mule jib till he had to be ignominiously
towed through the river by a combination of tethering and baggage ropes!
One would expect that the useful donkey would be the very best of all
possible animals for use in this land; but the Assyrians of Tyari have a
prejudice against him. "He that is Lord of Ears"--his name is quite
unmentionable,--is _iyba_ for the _ashirets_. _Iyba_ is an institution
that needs some explaining. The word means "shame;" but the European
presently gets the impression that it can be extended to cover any
mortal thing which he orders, and which for any reason the native does
not want to do. Anyway, the poor donkey is _iyba_, and no mountaineer
will own one. A legendary man of Tyari dared to do so once; but life was
made such a burden to him by the jeers of all his kin, that at last he
hove the unfortunate jackass into the Zab from one of the bridges we
have been describing, and was free of further reproach. A mule is
honourable enough, if you are so fortunate as to own one; but it is
etiquette to address a hybrid beast like that in Kurdish (which is a
second tongue to all mountaineers); whereas your ox, being a proper and
biblical sort of animal, is addressed in Syriac, which is a good
Christian tongue.
So far does prejudice against the ass go, that when the Gospel for Palm
Sunday has to be read, the priest (who usually translates the text as he
reads from the "Old Syriac" of the Pshitta into the Vernacular)
substitutes a word that means "colt" for "ass." One poor rector, who
determined to be faithful to the text, found that sundry "aggrieved
parishioners" were complaining of him to the Patriarch for a shameless
falsification of the sacred Scriptures.
Nor is there a prejudice only against the ass. Few mountaineers will eat
the hare, or the pig, in that these come under Levitical prohibition.
And as regards the eating of other animals, we remember this
conversation with a certain trusted servant and steward, which speaks
for itself. "Tell me O Rabbi; is the thing really true which they say,
that the French do eat frogs?"
"It is true, O deacon; and they say that they are good."
"Rabbi; if we had a man who did that in Tkhuma, we should kill him."
Hitherto, there has been no law in the land (as may perhaps be inferred
from the foregoing paragraph), but tribal custom has ruled; and in
consequence Hakkiari has been the home of good manners, and of that
self-respect which comes from a sense of natural superiority to the
plainsman! This last is strongly developed among them; "The greatest
nation in all the world," said an _ashiret_ Christian one day, "is the
English. Next to that comes the Tyari." (One may readily guess that this
was the speaker's own tribe.) "Third, but a long way behind these, is
the Russian. There are no other nations."
This sense of congenital superiority brought the writer into rather hot
water, when in the year 1904 he brought a select party of these wild
Highlanders down to the city of Van, there to receive at his hand
instruction that (it was hoped) would "soften their morals and not allow
them to be ferocious."
They came, they deposited their goods; they ate a meal. And forthwith
went out into the street and began to thrash all the Armenians they
could find! There was some sort of excuse urged, "The dogs dared to
laugh at our long hair, Rabbi." But the real reason, as subsequently
explained, was the general feeling that the sooner these inferior beings
learnt to know their place, the better it would be for the comfort of
everybody!
Next day a complaint came in from an American mission, also established
in the town. These _ashirets_ had caught the Armenian headmaster of
their school, and were playing leap-frog over him in the street, greatly
to the scandal of his pupils, who were, however, all too scared (or
possibly too appreciative) to attempt a rescue!
Stealing, properly so called, is almost unknown in the mountains. There
are of course a good many things that are practically held in common,
and which you take when you need, such as pasturage for instance; but
theft is very rare and punished with exemplary severity. A father of
unusually Roman disposition has actually been known to assent to the
death sentence passed on his son when that young man had so far
disgraced himself as to steal. It must be owned, however, that death was
only adjudged in this case because nobody could think of any
alternative. No prison was available; and yet something must be done
under the circumstances; so what was there for it but to shoot the man?
The Patriarch forbade that penalty, and the unworthy mountaineer was
only banished from his valley.
It is of course clearly understood in Hakkiari--and one hopes that the
English reader understands it also--that robbery and theft are not at
all the same thing. Any gentleman may go on the raid. His plunder is his
lawful property, and his exploit a source of legitimate pride. In fact,
their code is exactly similar to that of another thorough gentleman,
Evan Dhu Maccombich; "He that steals a cow from a poor widow is a thief,
but he that lifts a herd of cattle from the Sassenach is a gentleman
drover." The good folk of Tyari have been in the habit for generations
of imitating the heroes of another of Scott's novels in these matters;
for a tithe of all the plunder got in raids went always to the Church of
Mart Miriam (Lady Mary, _i.e._ the Blessed Virgin), in the valley of
Walto. "They paid tithe on every drove they took from the south; and if
they were something lightly come by, and their confessor knew his
business, I have known them make the tithe a seventh." Alas, however,
those days are passing; and though the devotion of the men of Tyari is
as good as ever, the profits of raids are not what they were.
One case, indeed, is recorded (his Holiness the Patriarch is our
authority for the tale) when the raiders had some scruples about
disposing of their spoil. The heroes of the incident were the men of Diz
valley, who had successfully lifted a cow from some Kurdish neighbours,
and were proposing that she should furnish a sumptuous Christmas
banquet. Some scrupulous soul, however, had grave doubts whether the
beast, having been Mussulman property so lately, was clean enough for a
religious purpose of that kind.[135]
The worthy rector of Diz rose to the occasion when this religious
difficulty was put before him. _Rabbi qasha_ exorcised the cow; and so
was honoured with an invitation to the banquet at which she subsequently
figured as the _pièce de resistance_!
We have given in a previous chapter the "rules to govern the conduct of
a gentleman in case of feud;" and the only occasion when these do not
hold, is when a _Jehad_ is proclaimed by Moslems. When you go to war in
the name of Allah and religion, you are naturally entitled to commit any
atrocity you like, and usually do so. The old courtesies, too, were
further abrogated as the result of the Armenian massacres of 1895. The
systematic outraging of the women then was part of the Turkish plan, and
seems to have been the deliberate order of Abdul Hamid. When such acts
had been once authorized by the Khalif, it was natural that the lower
type of Kurd should not readily return to the better ways of his fathers
in more ordinary raids.
Speaking generally, however, feuds are carried on with great lightness
of heart, much gaiety, and very little malice. The writer has known men
who were at open feud with one another meet in the household of the
English Mission (where of course, truce was observed), and chaff one
another in most friendly wise as they shared tea with the English
"apostles." In war time even "booby traps" (or something like them) were
not unknown; and once the men of Tyari rejoiced in a score gained over
an opponent, who feared to make any attack upon a position held in truth
by a dozen men and boys, because they suddenly found themselves
confronted with a formidable battery of artillery which they had not
credited the Tyari men with possessing at all.
As a matter of fact, the cannon were mere dummies; and were neither more
nor less than beehives (the local beehive is a long narrow thing, in
shape much resembling an old-fashioned eel-trap), which had been
artfully faked for the occasion and plastered all over with black mud!
The heroes of this exploit were so delighted with their score, that they
set to work to make a cannon of their very own. A hollow poplar trunk
formed the barrel this time, and it was wrapped round with bands of iron
on a system not unlike that on which a modern "wire-wound" gun is made
at Elswick, though the materials were hardly such as Messrs. Armstrong's
inspector would have approved.
The engine was only meant to bluff their enemies, and did that well on
at least one occasion; but the temptation to see what it could do got
too much for its possessors, and they (with the wonderful courage of
ignorance) charged the thing and fired it! Of course, it burst; but the
providence that guards schoolboys guarded these boys too, and nobody was
hurt.
Some years ago, the chances in these feuds and battles were about even;
and had they continued so the writer could not have found it in his
heart to advocate the abolition of so ancient and interesting a form of
sport, nor would any of the combatants have wished it. It is true that
the Christians had usually to face odds in numbers; but they had strong
positions to defend, and such a reputation as fighting men, that the
Kurds themselves admitted that when you went against the men of Tyari
and Tkhuma, it was well to have odds of five to one in numbers on your
side. Then, however, each side used old guns of much the same character;
flint-locks to wit, with home-made powder and bullets. This, as noted
elsewhere, is not the case now; for the Kurds have been equipped with
more modern arms. The powder the folk of the mountains manufactured for
themselves, being able to get sulphur in plenty in their hills, and
burning their own charcoal. Nitre could always be gathered in some
caverns where the sheep were folded, but our knowledge of chemistry does
not enable us to say exactly how. Bullets were easy to come by, for lead
crops out in thick veins in certain gorges, and can be absolutely cut
out of the rock in chunks for the purpose. As for the casting, it is
wonderful what unsuspected uses there are for a thimble! Nobody dreams
of using it hereabouts as an assistance to sewing; but when set in a
lump of clay, it makes a very tolerable bullet-mould!
One skilful old priest of our acquaintance earned quite a good income
by converting muzzle-loaders into "Martinis," which is the general term
for any sort of breech-loader. He was a very fair smith, and though his
copies of the Martini lock and breech mechanism might not have passed
the War Office standard, they were very satisfactory for their owners.
Some artists hope to improve the local brand of gunpowder. One of the
first questions put to us during our wanderings in the mountain glens
was, "Rabbi, is it oak charcoal or walnut that you English use for the
making of your gun-medicine?" "Neither, but willow," said we, that piece
of unclerical information having somehow stuck in our mind from some old
"book of useful knowledge." Hence it would appear that the most unlikely
things come in useful at times, for the answer materially increased our
prestige.
Many a primitive practice and habit goes on in these mountains, but
perhaps the most startling to a stranger is the taking of the bath
_coram publico_; a custom which is common to both Christians and Kurds.
The _rationale_ of the habit is sound enough. Mud floors get damp and
unhealthy with the weekly wash, and the much splashing of water that it
entails; let it then be done in the open, by the spring or river, where
a fire can be lit to heat the water and for the comfort of the bather.
It is a little disconcerting for the European at first, and seems a
startling drop back through a good many centuries, when you turn a
corner in the road suddenly, and find yourself confronted by a group of
maidens, who have put all their clothes in the big copper to wash, and
are engaged in performing that office for one another. However, if the
stranger is embarrassed, they are not. It is not manners to stare of
course; and they sit still undisturbed till the man has passed, without
even interrupting their conversation. Good narrow-minded folk at home
say that they have no sense of decency. That, however, is an absolute
libel; and it is far more near to the truth to say that it is the sense
of indecency that is absent, as it was in the Garden of Eden. Layard had
experience of this custom when he brought men of these tribes down to
Mosul to work at his excavations. This he did for convenience' sake, in
that they, having only a mountaineer's superstitions, were immune to
those of the plain; and did not raise the same difficulties about
digging in the mounds that the Arabs did. Naturally, his excavators
brought their wives and daughters to cook for them; and naturally, those
ladies brought their habits, and took their tubs as they had always done
at home. When it was represented to them by their employer that they had
scandalized the decent and respectable city of Mosul by so doing, they
replied innocently, "But, sahib, if the Mussulmans object, they need not
look." A Saturday tub in Tyari is a solemn and proper ceremonial. All
the family go down together, and the washing is carried out, in true
Homeric style, by the ladies personally. The old women scrub the old
men, and the damsels the youths. When the men have finished the girls
take their tubs.
Certainly one poor Englishman had a painful experience, when he, a
newcomer to the country, took a walk down the valley of Tyari on a
Saturday afternoon. Turning a corner abruptly, he found a fair maiden
sitting in all innocence in her bath. The Englishman had been properly
brought up, so he averted his gaze, and passed by, as far away as the
narrow limits of the path allowed. However, the damsel had been properly
brought up too, but in a rather different school; and seeing that it was
a _qasha_ (Priest), who was passing, she sprang out of her bath and came
to kiss his hand as politeness dictates. Saint Anthony fled, totally
misunderstanding her purpose; and the damsel followed after, ejaculating
plaintively "Rabbi, Rabbi, what have I done that you will not allow me
to kiss your hand?" It is said that he ultimately covered his eyes with
his left hand, and extended his right at arm's length for the salute.
However, a very few weeks' experience gave him perfect indifference to
the spectacle.
Old chivalrous rules of the obligation of hospitality still hold in the
mountains; and a conspicuous instance of this was given by one of the
Nestorian _maliks_ in the January of 1907. As a general rule, no effort
is made to march troops through these hills, for it is at once toilsome,
useless and dangerous. In that month, however, a company of infantry
were sent through the gorge of the Zab, with orders to report at
Julamerk, a seat of government to the north of it; the object probably
being to show that the thing could be done.
Being at best but half-trained men of Kurdish blood, and knowing that
they had been sent where no troops had gone before, they naturally got
more and more "jumpy" as they penetrated the gorge, and began to see an
ambush behind every rock. Thus when they met a party of four Tyari men
descending the road, they opened fire on them and shot down the lot!
This was not, we believe, the cold-blooded murder that it seemed, but a
pure fit of nerves on the part of undisciplined men. However, having
done it, they were naturally more frightened than ever at what they had
done; and fairly ran for it (so far as anyone can run on those roads,
which is not very fast), to the house of a prominent Christian _malik_
of Tyari, Ismail of Chumba. They crossed the bridge to his house; and so
demoralized were they that they did not even secure safety by breaking
it down behind them, a result that could have been secured by ten
minutes' work with a pocket-knife. They told the chief that they had
killed his own clansmen without provocation, and asked him to protect
them! It says much for mountain chivalry that he recognized the claim of
the suppliant without hesitation, and promised to do his best, _if_ it
was in his power to control his own tribesmen under the circumstances.
Those tribesmen gathered very soon for their revenge, and came up the
valley towards Chumba in force; and then the _malik_ went out and met
them at the bridge, to urge that the thing had been after all an
accident, so to speak, and not a butchery, and that it must be judged as
such. A long and hot discussion followed; the tribesmen saying, with
some force, that they did not care whether the thing was an accident or
not; their men were dead, and they would have blood for blood. All
arguments were tried in vain, till at last the mountaineers summed up,
"It is no good, _malik_; you have done your best, but we must have our
revenge, and that is our last word. Stand out of the way."
At that Ismail took his stand on the bridge and used his final argument.
"If that is your last word, now hear mine. These men are my guests now,
and have eaten my bread and are in my house. What they did before is
nothing to me; and if it were my own brother they had killed I would
guard them now. If you dare to attack, I and mine will defend them; and
you will have to kill your own chief before you lay hand on any one of
his guests." At that the avengers held back and hesitated till night
fell; and under that cover, Malik Ismail and his son Shlimun escorted
their guests into safety by the tracks over the hills, and led them
unharmed to Julamerk. The whole was as fine an act of chivalry as these
days can show.
With their chivalry goes as is often the case with mountaineers, a vein
of what we can call nothing but school-boyishness. The pure lark of a
fight appeals to them irresistibly. In the spring of 1912, the men of
one particular Christian district known as Salabekan contrived to carry
out a most successful raid against their neighbours over the hill, the
Kurds of Châl. It was only an episode in a feud that had dragged on for
many years, but was executed with some skill; the raiders securing 500
sheep without even waking their late owners! When they were well on
their way home, however, it occurred to some young hotheads that there
is really no satisfaction in lifting your enemy's sheep, unless you know
that he knows who has scored off him!
_Now Simmy, Simmy of the side,_
_Come out and see a Johnstone ride!_
sang the old moss-trooper who had looted Crichton's stable; so,
agreeably to "the Galliard's" principles, they went back again to the
village, there to fire shots and shout contumely till the Kurds were
awakened and came out. Then of course a fight resulted, in which three
or four men were killed. This excited our wrath; not because we grudged
them a Kurd or so; still less the sheep that they had fairly earned, and
which were very likely theirs originally anyhow; but because among the
Kurdish dead was a policeman (the Agha of Châl being a Government
_mudir_ among other things), and we feared that a dead policeman would
take a great deal of explaining! However, it all ended happily, the
officer not being missed! Still, we thought it only our duty to urge the
desirability of making up the feud upon Mar Shimun; and asked him if he
could not use his patriarchal influence in that direction. His Holiness
quite agreed with us that it was most desirable. "Really, the Christians
ought to make peace now. They are three corpses and four guns to the
good!"
With their "larkishness" goes also a boy's touchiness and sensitiveness
to a slight. The writer once went down through the district of Tkhuma,
having as companion one of the chiefs of the canton, whose guest he
naturally was when passing the man's village. A few weeks later he
returned; to be met at the border of the district by another chief, one
Yalda, of almost equal influence with his previous host.
"It is my hope that you are going to stay with me this time Rabbi."
As the answer was not given immediately, the gentleman proceeded to
explain the necessity of the case.
"You see, you stayed with Giwergis when you were here before; and that
was all right, as you came down with him. This time though, you ought to
come to me. If you do I shall be very glad to see you; but if you
don't--well I fear that the only thing for me is to shoot you!"
The invitation was accepted, and no more pleasant host could any man
have had.
A sad scandal is related of a certain apostle of teetotalism who found
himself in a mountain village on the day of a wedding feast. He was
cordially invited to stop and share in the feasting and dancing; and did
so--to reprove excesses and see that decorum was preserved. In due
course the governor of the feast invited him to take wine with him, and
this the total abstainer a little too curtly declined. The mountaineer
bristled up immediately. Such a refusal was a downright insult. And
literally at the pistol's mouth the poor guest had to gulp the draught
down. Nor was that the end of his woes. The other guests were all ripe
for frolic; and all that afternoon the unhappy man was haunted by a
procession of rollicking caterans, each equipped with a practicable
rifle and a large goblet of wine. Of course there was no refusing such
very insistent hospitality; and over the inevitable _dénouement_ we feel
ourselves constrained to draw a veil.
The fact is though, that boys with guns in their hands can be dangerous,
when their feelings are hurt, or when for any reason they are
frightened; and then they may turn against their best friends. Only once
in his twenty-five years of residence did Dr. Browne find these
mountaineers turn really nasty with him, and on that occasion, the men
concerned were our good friends of Tkhuma; though the blame did not
really rest on them.
A certain Roman Catholic intriguer in the nation desired to dispose of
Dr. Browne's influence, and was not particular either as to the methods
he employed or as to the result of them, whether for the foreigner or
for his own people. Having ascertained that Dr. Browne was proposing a
journey into Tkhuma, and having discovered some details of his plans, he
sent a message down into the district. "See here, that Englishman is
coming down your way with a companion; and his real intent is to destroy
your religion. You will see that when he comes he will do this and
that--things that look quite innocent, but which will be a sign to you
that I speak truth. Then do you deal with him according to your zeal."
Down came the Englishman with his companion, and did the acts named, to
find that he had roused a storm. For some days both were kept as
prisoners in the house of one of the village chiefs; and matters got so
far that the leading men were actually debating, in the presence of
their captives, whether they should kill them or not. This question
occasioned a quarrel, and knives were drawn in the dispute. Then Dr.
Browne stepped forward, knowing of course what the trouble was about
(for he spoke the Syriac tongue like a native), but (we are convinced)
only stirred by the scandal of Christians quarrelling and fighting with
one another. He, the prisoner in their hands, rebuked them paternally
for that sin; talked to them generally for their good; and finally
issued his orders that before proceeding with the discussion the two
that had drawn knives on one another should exchange the kiss of peace!
Well, they did. Being slightly ashamed of themselves, they kissed and
made friends like the children that they are. But after they had done
that, at the order of the Englishman, it was really impossible to go on
discussing whether they should kill him; and so the whole incident
closed!
Courage, coolness and humour are a necessity for the European who would
wander here; but with them he is practically as safe as in London. Men
deficient in those qualities may at any time find themselves in an
awkward position; as befell a certain unfortunate "Frank" who came into
the land to study Kurdish folk-lore, "without a pass from Roderick Dhu."
He had disregarded the advice given him, to take some "Nestorian" from
the house of the Patriarch, who could guarantee his character and
explain his naturally puzzling proceedings to both Kurd and Christian;
and took instead an Armenian who knew nothing of the land.
Accompanied by this man, he went down into the land of Tkhuma, which is
as wild a district of Christian _ashirets_ as any in Hakkiari. It was
just after harvest, and folk had nothing to do; so a little friendly
fight was in progress between two Christian villages. Of course the
foreign traveller was stopped and questioned by armed men, who demanded
who he was and what he had come for. Had he told the truth, and said
that he was neutral in the dispute, he might have been as safe as the
Kenites were, when Sisera was fighting out his quarrel with certain
Israelitish _ashirets_: but his wretched Armenian was panic-struck, and
was at some pains to explain that his master had come down in the
interests of one particular faction, and was the intimate friend of its
leader. As a matter of fact (though he did not realize it till too
late), the gentlemen who had stopped him were prominent leaders on the
other side. Hence, taking the man's own account of himself as true, they
were much disposed to deal with him as an enemy and a spy.
Fortunately they postponed sentence till they had reported the case to
Mar Shimun; and the Patriarch ordered that he should be released, that
his property (which had naturally been confiscated) should be returned
to him, and that he should be conducted out of the district. They
obeyed, only retaining one "kodak" as a trophy, and led him to their
frontier. Still, it was not in human nature to refrain from representing
that the journey was very dangerous; and that they could not dream of
letting so honoured a man go without a large escort--and a large fee for
each member of it, payable in advance.
Thus escorted, the traveller was taken to the border of the Christian
territory, where as luck would have it, they encountered a party of Châl
Kurds.
"What have you there?" said the Châl men.
"A Frank of sorts, who says he wants to study your manners and customs,"
said the Tkhumans.
"Hand him over to us, and he shall have ample opportunity," said the
Kurds.
So he had; for having been once robbed by the Christians, he was now
robbed over again by the Kurds, and this time there was no Patriarch to
appeal to. Thus it was a very tattered and woe-begone traveller who was
at last delivered at Amadia. He was certainly uninjured personally, save
in self-esteem; but otherwise nothing was left him but the clothes he
stood up in, which were not many; and perhaps he was fortunate in
retaining as much as that!
Amadia is the nearest Government centre to the Tyari and Tkhuma
districts; and in connexion with it we may here recount an adventure of
that worthy old _qasha_ Tuma mentioned in the last chapter. His
reverence had come down to the place, accompanied by a deacon, on some
business of his own; and both had been promptly arrested. It was not
for any particular crime, but perhaps in the expectation that some
reason would turn up if they were kept long enough; perhaps on the
principle of tribal responsibility for the acts of any individual, for
the men of Tyari had been doing some raiding about that time!
Government having some experience of the fact that Tyari men are hard to
catch and harder to hold, a sentry was kept permanently in the cell with
the pair, and another posted outside it. Still, the _qasha's_
pocket-knife was not taken from him, but left him for his meals. Of
course, the cell door had to be opened at times; and on one of these
occasions the key (which according to local custom was not of metal, but
a notched slip of wood) was given to the _qasha_ to hold for a moment.
Instantly he "spaced" the notches with his thumb, which is the usual way
of measuring anything in this country, and noted the shape of the key.
Before very long, the sentry contracted the habit of going to sleep in
the cell; and in those intervals, priest and deacon contrived to get a
slat of wood out of the roof, and set to work with no other guide than
the memory of the measure taken, to make a duplicate key. It was soon
finished; and one morning the sentry's slumber was rudely interrupted,
by finding both his prisoners at his throat. He was tied up and gagged
quietly; and then came the exciting moment, when the key was first tried
in the door. Greatly to the credit of the locksmiths, it fitted; and
soon the sentry outside the door, who was not more watchful than his
fellow, was safely locked up beside him in the cell and left to await
discovery. The priest and deacon were off, on the road to their own
mountains; with two good Martini rifles, late Government property, as
compensation for their stay at the Government house!
Wild tribesmen on the one side with a tribesman's virtues and vices,
attractive mischief-loving boys on another, are all these mountaineers;
but there are other aspects of their character that show them as capable
of acting like devoted men. This comes out most markedly in their
attachment to their own historic Church and their readiness to work on
its behalf. One good case of this came to the writer's knowledge in the
village of Rabat, in Tal. Here the brother of the headman of the village
was murdered by some Kurds; and the crime must have been one of peculiar
atrocity, for even the leathery Kurdish conscience was so severely
shocked that the local Aghas decreed that a blood-fine must be paid; and
a sum of £60 was actually handed over in cash at their order. The
headman accepted the money, as a sign that the feud was finally closed,
but declared that he would take no compensation for his brother's death.
He handed over the whole sum (a far larger amount than he had ever seen
before or was likely to see again) for the repair of the village church,
which stood in great need of it. Spurred by this example the whole
village turned to, and the edifice was pulled down and rebuilt; every
man, woman and child in the place helping to drag the stones from the
mountain, tending the kilns where the lime was burnt, or assisting in
some other way. The land being almost treeless, the fuel for the kilns
was provided by the sacrifice of many of the walnut trees that grew
round the village; and be it noted that these were not only valuable
property in themselves, but also the source of the one luxury allowed to
these people during their long and rigid Lent. The gift meant that the
donors would most of them live on millet bread and water, and nothing
else, for several Lents to come; so it may be understood that those who
gave a walnut tree gave what cost more than the signing of a cheque. No
man took a penny for his labour, save a party of artisans from another
district, under whose directions the whole was carried out;[136] and as
these guilds of builders have that secret of proportion that a modern
architect often strives for in vain, the result has been a singularly
impressive building, vaulted, and proof against everything save wanton
destruction; a monument for some centuries to come of the devotion of
the villagers to their church.
True it is that this devotion may take bizarre shapes at times. One
district was annoyed by the proselytising efforts of some Romish
teachers, who were seeking (of course quite rightly on their
principles) to draw away the Nestorians to another obedience, and had
succeeded with a certain number of them. A zealous deacon of the old
church, much annoyed at this declension from the ways and faith of the
fathers, disclosed to the writer a notable scheme for soaking the walls
of the little Roman chapel with paraffin, and setting light to it during
service, so as to dispose of chapel and worshippers at once.
In some natural horror, his Rabbi rebuked him, making him recite the
Sixth Commandment and other appropriate passages of scripture. He
certainly promised to respect Western prejudices in the matter, and kept
his word loyally; but incidentally showed that quotation is a game at
which two can play. "What you say is true no doubt Rabbi. But yet you
know that these Papists are after all little better than idolaters; and
it is written that the good King Josiah did bid his people burn the
idolaters' bones!"
A case that is perhaps even stranger was the sad lot of a Jewish
village, which was situate, for its sins, in the land of Berwar, just
within comfortable raiding distance of Tyari territory. Jewish villages
are rare in the land, but there are a few; mostly claiming descent from
the "ten tribes" which were settled here by Sargon.
If the descent so claimed be correct, the lot of these poor Hebrews was
doubly hard; for they were raided on three successive Good Fridays by
the Tyari men, not because of any feud, but purely out of respect for
the day! Something had to be done, in the raiders' opinion, to show
their abhorrence of an act about which they had much the same feelings
as King Clovis; and much the same uncertainty as to dates.
The episode was mediæval, but the people are mediæval; and even more
civilized people sometimes use the Jews equally ill. The Tyari men must
have sung with right good will in those years, the anthem of their
Easter vigil service: "Woe to the people of the Jews!"
That strange observances, beliefs, and superstitions should linger in
this corner of Asia, even to a greater extent than in other parts, is
natural enough. Second sight, however (to take one widespread
phenomenon), does not seem to be so common a faculty here as is the case
in Scotland; or it may be simply that the Oriental is more chary of
speaking of such a matter to a foreigner. Still, we have heard of cases;
notably that of a Seer whom his fellow tribesmen consulted on all
matters of importance, and who foretold at the last the disaster that
would befall them in one special raid. "If you go out to battle now;" he
said, "you will flee seven ways before the Mussulmans; and though you
yourself, chief, will be saved by a willow tree, death will be my
portion." The prophecy was literally fulfilled; the Christians being
routed in the skirmish, and scattered. The Seer himself (whom the Kurds
had intended to spare) was killed by a random shot; and the chief took
to flight, and being pursued, had to save himself by swimming the Zab.
He was, however, swept away by the current and only escaped by clinging
to a projecting branch of willow.
[Illustration: THE GORGE OF THE ZAB, TYARI.
One of the reaches near Tal.
No. 13]
One case of this second-sight, or vision, concerned the writer himself
when making a late autumn visit to Qudshanis from Van in 1907, in
company with the late Bishop Collins of Gibraltar. We were expected at
the place; but terribly bad weather made them not only give up hope of
our arrival, but even hold special services of prayer for our safe
return to Van. Under these circumstances, a certain deacon of Tkhuma,
Nwiya[137] by name, who was servant to the Rev. W. H. Browne, came
rushing in to his master early one morning in great excitement. "They
are coming, Rabbi; they are coming after all. I saw them in a vision by
night, and they will be here this day. But I saw them coming up the
valley, not down it as Mr. Wigram said he would come. The bishop was
wearing a black hat, and Mr. Wigram a white one." Three hours later, the
_avant-courier_ we had sent before us actually arrived; and in the
course of the day the party reached Qudshanis by the route named by the
deacon (which had been adopted when the more direct route proved
impassable), the bishop wearing an astrakhan fur cap, and the writer a
sun-helmet. Any suspicion of confederacy may be ruled out of the
question without hesitation, for it was a physical impossibility; and
clairvoyance, or some form of thought transference, seems to be the most
natural explanation of so strange a coincidence of foreword and fact.
Every nation has, of course, its own superstitions about the mystery of
birth, as exemplified in the case of our own ancestors by the belief in
"the changeling." In the case of these Nestorians, the danger that
menaces the new-born is a sort of fearful night-hag, called the
_khwarha_, that carries off and destroys the child. To guard against her
visits, the child must be watched day and night for the first days of
its life (baptism is usually administered on the eighth day), while an
onion and a wool-comb must be kept in the same room. The smell of the
former makes the spirit sneeze and deprives her of power; while the
latter (which is of iron and so exercises a protective influence of
itself) entangles her long locks, so that she flees in terror.[138] An
old man in the household of the Patriarch tells how he was once set to
take his turn at watching a certain important infant, and was so far
negligent that he went out of the room to smoke a cigarette. As he did
so, he saw the terrible _khwarha_ approach, change herself into the form
of an ibex with very long horns (deponent sayeth not what was her
appearance previously, which is a pity), and dash into the room. Of
course the conscience-stricken watcher dashed in after her; but to his
huge relief found his charge sleeping quietly (a happy effect due no
doubt to the protective influence of the comb and the onion), so all
ended well. Still that moment is a remembrance of horror to that old man
to this day.
Here, as in other districts that we have referred to, the power of
faith-healing is a very real thing. Recourse is had to any church that
chances to be "Lord of Name" for that purpose, and the result is quite
often successful. Certain ordeals have to be gone through at times,
success in them being an omen of success in the prayer. Thus the church
of Mar Abd-Ishu, in Tal (once the hermitage of an ascetic of great
local fame, and situated in a cave high up on an almost inaccessible
precipice), is a great place of resort for childless couples who desire
offspring. After prayer, it is the proper thing to pass through "Mar
Abd-Ishu's passage," which is a natural cleft in the rock, somewhat
analogous to St. Wilfrid's needle at Ripon.
An easy passage is a sign of the granting of the prayer; but failure
does not imply (as in the English parallel) a bad private character. It
only means that the saint expects his fee; and this must be promised him
before he will grant what is required. As a matter of fact, a slim
person can usually get through the hole easily, but an adult can only do
so at one particular angle; and if he is not fortunate enough to hit on
this, he may have difficulty; for no assistance may be given by the
unauthorized spectator. A Kurdish chief attempted it once to the
writer's knowledge, seeing that he desired a son; but he stuck firmly in
the crevice and could neither get back nor forward! Scared almost out of
his wits, he jumped at the idea that a gift to the saint might let him
through; and when small gifts were not accepted, he raised his terms
till he was offering all his sheep and half his rifles, and still the
saint held on! He was then told, however, that big bribes were no good;
but that he must promise exactly what the saint happened to want, and
that his Holiness was sometimes very capricious. The Kurd had to go
through a good deal of exercise in guessing what it was that a saint in
paradise, who had been an ascetic on earth, would be most likely to
covet; but at last he hit on the right thing (or got into precisely the
right position), and was released on promising some forty-five piastres,
or eight shillings. It is pleasing to add that he paid up faithfully,
and that he subsequently got the son that he desired; so that his
respect for Christian institutions has much increased.
This shrine, indeed, has a high reputation among all faiths. It has only
been robbed once, by Kurds; and on that occasion the robbers were
promptly put to death by their own fellow tribesmen, and the spoil
returned.
Lunacy meets with a peculiar treatment among the men of Tyari (their
neighbours declare that all the tribe are mad together, and support that
statement by various tales at their expense, which it is well not to
repeat in their vicinity[139]). When all visits to a church of Name
fail, the patient is absolutely buried alive. He is prepared for burial
exactly as if he were a corpse, borne to the graveyard on a bier, and
interred with the full church service. A small opening is left for him
to breathe through; and at the end of twenty-four hours, he is carefully
resurrected. The nervous shock has often beneficial results; but
naturally not always.
It must be owned, too, that the last case in which this treatment was
tried to the knowledge of the writer produced a good deal of
ill-feeling, because it was so doubtful whether the man was cured or
not. He was buried quite properly; and his friends came at the right
time to disinter him. But as soon as the stones were removed, he sprang
up, exclaiming, "I am risen! I am risen! it is the Last Day!" Then,
looking round disgustedly on the men who had come to assist him:
"Whoever would have expected to see _you_ at the Resurrection of the
Just?"
Query: is that man still mad? His friends would like to think so. But
they have an uneasy feeling that he "knows a hawk from a hernshaw when
the wind is southerly."
If the Tyari men are thus buried prematurely at times, there was an
ancient custom among them (now extinct for generations), according to
which they could dispense with burial altogether. Like many uncivilized
peoples, in all climates, they had a habit of putting the aged out of
the way of the young when they had no more joy in life; and in their own
case got rid of them by throwing them down a special one of the numerous
precipices in their country. The story goes that the habit came to be
stopped through one particular man, who was carrying up his own father
to dispose of him in the time-honoured way. As he scaled the mountain,
he put down his burden to rest for a minute, at one particular tree;
and as he did so, he heard the old man chuckle.
"And what have you got to laugh at now?" said the son.
"Ah well, I was just remembering"; said the old fellow. "It came to my
mind how when I was carrying my old father up here, I put him down to
rest myself just at this same tree; and it seemed to me rather comic.
Your son, little Yaqub, will do just the same with you when your time
comes, no doubt."
That set the son, who had hitherto been acting just as custom decreed,
thinking about things in a new way. He had to admit that he did not like
the idea of his little son carrying him up in this fashion to throw him
down a precipice; and perhaps it might be that his own old father did
not quite like it either! So the end of his cogitations was that he
carried the old man down again, and faced the horror of refusing to do
as his fathers had done. Thus the custom fell into disuse.
Good people in England will of course be startled at the idea of such a
custom ever having prevailed among even "nominal Christians;" in
blissful ignorance of the fact that our own ancestors acted in very
similar fashion when they were at a similar stage of development. Human
nature is much the same all the world over; and we believe that the
practice of killing off the old people (useless mouths to fill) did not
die out in Christian Sweden till the fifteenth century. The "family
clubs" used for dispatching them were usually kept in the churches![140]
NOTE. One of the quaintest of the stories told at the expense of
these "Men of Gotham" was related to the writer by Mar Shimun, who
is a singularly good raconteur. It befell once in the time of
summer that the sun was hidden by clouds. This is so unusual a
phenomenon in that favoured land that the men of Tyari held a
solemn meeting to discuss what could be done in the matter; and
decided that the day-star had probably got entangled in a cave on
the lip of their tremendous gorge, and that if it was not
disentangled at once disastrous consequences would follow. A
deputation went up accordingly to do their best; and the first man
to reach the cave mouth at once stooped and looked into the
darkness, where he saw two luminous orbs. "It's all right," he said
to his friends; "here is the sun and the moon, too. I will crawl
in and let them loose." In he crawled accordingly; but found that
unluckily for him the lights were the eyes of a leopard, and it,
skilful animal, took off his head with one snap. As he did not come
out again, or answer to questions, his companions pulled him out by
the heels--when, behold, he had no head on. "Dear, dear," said the
leader, "this is very odd. Tell me, some of you, had Yukhanan his
head with him when we came up, or did he leave it in the house?" No
man was quite sure on that point, so all went down to ask his wife.
"O Sinji, wife of Yukhanan, say now. Did your man leave his head
down here when we went up the hill this morning, for we cannot find
it now?" Sinji searched in the house, but presently came out with
the news: "It is not here, anyhow." "Ah, well," said the leader,
"he must have dropped it on the way up. The boys will find it and
bring it down when they drive home the goats at sunset."