Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan Volume I Part 11

LETTER VII

k.u.m, _Feb. 21_.

At five yesterday afternoon Abbas Khan rode in saying that the _taktrawan_, with the orderly much better, was only three miles off.

This was good news; a mattress was put down for him next the fire and all preparations for his comfort were made. Snow showers had been falling much of the day, there was a pitiless east wind, and as darkness came on snow fell persistently. Two hours pa.s.sed, but no _taktrawan_ arrived. At 7.30 Abbas Khan was ordered to go in search of it with a good lantern; 8, 9, 10 o'clock came without any news. At 10.30, the man whose corpse I had feared to see came in much exhausted, having crawled for two miles through the mire and snow. The _sowar_, who pretended to start with the lantern, never went farther than the coffee-room at the gate, where he had spent an unconscientious but cheery evening!

In the pitch darkness the _taktrawan_ and mules had fallen off the road into a gap, the _taktrawan_ was smashed, and a good white mule, one of the "light division," was killed, her back being broken. This was not the only disaster. Hadji had lain down on the borrowed mattress and it had taken fire from the live ashes of his pipe and was burned, and he was a little scorched.

The telegraphist was to have started for Isfahan the next morning with his wife and child in the litter, in order to vacate the house for the new official and his family, and their baggage had actually started, but now they are detained till this _taktrawan_ can be repaired. In the meantime another official has arrived with his goods and a large family, a most uncomfortable situation for both parties, but they bear it with the utmost cheerfulness and good nature.

Last night I made Hadji drink a mug of hot milk with two tablespoonfuls of brandy in it, and it worked wonders. This morning, instead of a nearly blind man groping his way about with difficulty, I beheld a man with nothing the matter but a small speck on one eye. It must have been snow-blindness. He looks quite "spry." It is not only the alcohol which has cured him, but that we are parting by mutual consent; and feeling sorry for the man, I have given him more than his wages, and his full demand for his journey back to Bushire, with additional warm clothing. M---- has also given him a handsome present.

I fear he has deceived me, and that the stone deafness, feebleness, idiocy, and the shaking, palsied gait of a man of ninety--all but the snow-blindness--have been a.s.sumed in order to get his return journey paid, when he found that the opportunities for making money were not what he expected. It is better to be deceived twenty times than to be hard on these poor fellows once, but he has been exasperating, and I feel somewhat aggrieved at having worked so hard to help a man who was "malingering." The last seen of him was an active, erect man walking at a good pace by the side of his mule, at least forty years thrown off. [He did not then leave k.u.m, but being seized with pleurisy was treated with great kindness by Mr. Lyne the electrician, and afterwards by the Amin-es-Sultan (the Prime Minister), who was visiting k.u.m, and who, thinking to oblige me, brought him up to Tihran in his train!] Those who had known him for years gave a very bad account of him, but said that if he liked he could be a good servant. It is the first time that I have been unfortunate in my travelling servant.

The English telegraph line, and a post-office, open once a week, are the tokens of civilisation in k.u.m. A telegraphic invitation from the British Minister in Tihran, congratulatory telegrams on our safety from Tihran, Bushire, and India, and an opportunity for posting letters, make one feel once more in the world. The weather is grim, bitterly cold, with a strong north-east wind, raw and damp, but while snow is whitening the hills only rain and sleet fall here. The sun has not shone since we came, but the strong cold air is invigorating like our own climate.

Taking advantage of it being Friday, the Mohammedan day of rest, when most of the shops are closed and the bazars are deserted, we rode through a portion of them preceded by the wild figure of Abbas Khan, and took tea at the telegraph office, where they were most kind and pleasant regarding the accident which had put them to so much inconvenience.

k.u.m is on the beaten track, and has a made road to Tihran. Almost every book of travels in Persia has something to say upon it, but except that it is the second city in Persia in point of sanct.i.ty, and that it thrives as much by the bodies of the dead which are brought in thousands for burial as by the tens of thousands of pilgrims who annually visit the shrine of Fatima, and that it is renowned for fanaticism, there is not much to say about it.

Situated in a great plain, the gleam of its golden dome and its slender minarets is seen from afar, and the deep green of its orchards, and the bright green of the irrigated and cultivated lands which surround it, are a splash of welcome fertility on the great brown waste. Singular toothy peaks of striated marl of brilliant colouring--red, blue, green, orange, and salt peaks very white--give a curious brilliancy to its environment, but this salt, which might be a source of wealth to the city, is not worked, only an a.s.s-load or two at a time being brought in to supply the necessities of the market.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SHRINE OF FATIMA.]

The shrine of Fatima, the sister of Reza the eighth Imam, who sleeps at Meshed, is better to k.u.m than salt mines or aught else. Moslems, though they regard women with unspeakable contempt, agree to reverence Fatima as a very holy and almost worshipful person, and her dust renders k.u.m a holy place, attracting tens of thousands of pilgrims every year, although, unlike pilgrimages to Meshed and Kerbela, k.u.m confers no lifelong designation on those by whom it exists. Its estimated population is 10,000 souls, and at times this number is nearly doubled. Pilgrimage consists in a visit to the tomb of Fatima, paying a fee, and in some cases adding a votive offering. Vows of abstinence from some special sin are frequently made at the shrine and are carefully registered.

The dead, however, who are annually brought in thousands to be buried in the sacred soil which surrounds the shrine, are the great source of the wealth of k.u.m. These corpses travel, as to Kerbela, on mules, four being lashed on one animal occasionally, some fresh, some decomposing, others only bags of exhumed bones. The graves occupy an enormous area, of which the shrine is the centre. The kings of the Kajar dynasty, members of royal families, and 450 saints are actually buried within the precincts of the shrine. The price of interments varies with the proximity to the dust of Fatima from six _krans_ to one hundred _tumans_. The population may be said to be a population of undertakers. Death meets one everywhere. The Ab-i-Khonsar, which supplies the drinking water, percolates through "dead men's bones and all uncleanness." Vestments for the dead are found in the bazars.

Biers full and empty traverse the streets in numbers. Stone-cutting for gravestones is a most lucrative business. The _charvadars_ of k.u.m prosper on caravans of the dead. There is a legion of gravediggers.

k.u.m is a gruesome city, a vast charnel-house, yet its golden dome and minarets brighten the place of death.

The dome of Fatima is covered with sheets of copper plated with gold an eighth of an inch in thickness, and the ornament at the top of the dome, which is of pure gold, is said to weigh 140 lbs. The slender minarets which front this _imamzada_ are covered with a mosaic of highly-glazed tiles of exquisite tints, in which an azure blue, a canary yellow, and an iridescent green predominate, and over all there is a sheen of a golden hue. The shrine is inaccessible to Christians.

I asked a Persian doctor if I might look in for one moment at the threshold of the outer court, and he replied in French, "Are you then weary of life?"[22]

My Indian servant, an educated man on whose faithful though meagre descriptions I can rely, visited the shrine and describes the dome as enriched with arabesques in mosaic and as hung with _ex votos_, consisting chiefly of strips of silk and cotton. The tomb itself, he says, is covered with a wooden ark, with certain sacred sentences cut upon it, and this is covered by a large brown shawl. Round this ark, which is under the dome, Kerman, Kashmir, and Indian shawls are laid down as carpets. This open s.p.a.ce is surrounded with steel railings inlaid with gold after the fashion of the _niello_ work of j.a.pan, and the whole is enclosed with a solid silver fence, the rails of which are "as thick as two thumbs, and as high as a tall man's head." This _imamzada_ itself is regarded as of great antiquity.

Two Persian kings, who reigned in the latter part of the seventeenth century, are buried near the beautiful minarets, which are supposed to be of the same date. There are many mosques and minarets in k.u.m, besides a quant.i.ty of conical _imamzadas_, the cones of which have formerly been covered with glazed blue tiles of a turquoise tint, some of which still remain. It was taken by the Afghans in 1772, and though partially rebuilt is very ruinous. It has a mud wall, disintegrating from neglect, surrounded occasionally by a ditch, and at other times by foul and stagnant ponds. The ruinousness of k.u.m can scarcely be exaggerated.

The bazars are large and very busy, and are considerably more picturesque than those of Kirmanshah. The town lives by pilgrims and corpses, and the wares displayed to attract the former are more attractive than usual. There are nearly 450 shops, of which forty-three sell Manchester goods almost exclusively. Coa.r.s.e china, and pottery often of graceful shapes with a sky-blue glaze, and water-coolers are among the industries of this city, which also makes shoes, and tans leather with pomegranate bark.

The Ab-i-Khonsar is now full and rapid, but is a mere thread in summer. The nine-arched bridge, with its infamously paved roadway eighteen feet wide, is an interesting object from all points of view, for while its central arch has a span of forty-five feet, the others have only spans of twenty. The gateway beyond the bridge is tawdrily ornamented with blue and green glazed tiles. After seeing several of the cities of Persia, I am quite inclined to give k.u.m the palm for interest and beauty of aspect, when seen from any distant point of view.

That it is a "holy" city, and that a pilgrimage to its shrine is supposed to atone for sin, are its great interests. Its population is composed in large proportion of _mollahs_ and _Seyyids_, or descendants of Mohammed, and as a whole is devoted to the reigning Shiah creed. It has a theological college of much repute, established by Fath' Ali Shah, which now has 100 students. The women are said to be very devout, and crowd the mosques on Friday evenings, when their devotions are led by an _imam_. The men are fanatically religious, though the fanaticism is somewhat modified. No wine may be sold in k.u.m, and no Jew or Armenian is allowed to keep a shop.

k.u.m, being a trading city, manufactures a certain amount of public opinion in its business circles, which differs not very considerably from that which prevails at Kirmanshah. The traders accept it as a foregone conclusion that Russia will occupy Persia as far as Isfahan on the death of the present Shah, and regard such a destiny as "fate." If only their religion is not interfered with, it matters little, they say, whether they pay their taxes to the Shah or the Czar. To judge from their speech, Islam is everything to them, and their country very little, and the strong bond of the faith which rules life and thought from the Pillars of Hercules to the Chinese frontier far outweighs the paltry considerations of patriotism. But my impression is that all Orientals prefer the tyrannies and exactions, and the swiftness of injustice or justice of men of their own creed and race to good government on the part of unintelligible aliens, and that though Persians seem pretty comfortable in the prospect of a double occupation of Persia, its actual accomplishment might strike out a flash of patriotism.

Probably this ruinous, thinly-peopled country, with little water and less fuel, and only two roads which deserve the name, has possibilities of resurrection under greatly changed circ.u.mstances. Of the two occupations which are regarded as certain, I think that most men, at least in Central and Southern Persia, would prefer an English occupation, but every one says, "England talks and does not act," and that "Russia will pour 100,000 troops into Persia while England is talking in London."

I. L. B.

FOOTNOTE:

[22] I spent two days at k.u.m five weeks later, and saw the whole of it in disguise, and in order to attain some continuity of description I put my two letters together.

LETTER VIII

CARAVANSERAI OF ALIABAD, _Feb. 23_.

Twelve hours and a half of hard riding have brought us here in two days. No doctor could be obtained in k.u.m, and it was necessary to bring the sick men on as quickly as possible for medical treatment. It was bitterly cold on the last day, though the alt.i.tude is only 3400 feet, and it was a tiresome day, for I had not only to look over and repack, but to clean the cooking utensils and other things, which had not been touched apparently since we left Baghdad!

This is a tedious part of the journey, a "beaten track" with few features of interest, the great highway from Isfahan to Tihran, a road of dreary width; where it is a made road running usually perfectly straight, with a bank and a ditch on each side. The thaw is now complete, and travelling consists of an attempt to get on by the road till it becomes an abyss which threatens to prove bottomless, then there is a plunge and a struggle to the top of the bank, or over the bank to the trodden waste, but any move can be only temporary, the all-powerful mire regulates the march. The snow is nothing to the mud.

Frequently carca.s.ses of camels, mules, and a.s.ses, which have lain down to die under their loads, were pa.s.sed, then caravans with most of the beasts entangled in the miry clay, unable to rise till they were unloaded by men up to their knees in the quagmire, and, worst of all, mules loaded with the dead, so loosely tied up in planks that in some cases when the mule flounders and falls, the miserable relics of humanity tumble out upon the swamp; and these scenes of falling, struggling, and even perishing animals are repeated continually along the level parts of this scarcely pa.s.sable highroad.

Our loads, owing to bad tackle, were always coming off, the groom's mule fell badly, the packs came off another, and half an hour was spent in catching the animal, then I was thrown from my horse into soft mud.

Cultivation ceases a short distance from k.u.m, giving place to a brown waste, with patches of saline efflorescence upon it, on which high hills covered partially with snow send down low spurs of brown mud.

The water nearly everywhere is brackish, and only just drinkable.

After crossing a rapid muddy river, nearly dry in summer, by a much decayed bridge of seven or eight low arches, we reached _terra firma_, and a long gradual ascent and a series of gallops brought us to the large caravanserai of Shashgird, an immense place with imposing pretensions which are fully realised within. In the outer court camels were lying in rows. A fine tiled archway leads to an immense quadrangle, with a fine stone _abambar_ or covered receptacle for water in the middle. All round the quadrangle are arched recesses or mangers, each with a room at the back, to the number of eighty. At two of the corners there are enclosed courtyards with fountains, several superior rooms with beds (much to be avoided), chairs, mirrors, and tables fairly clean--somewhat dreary luxury, but fortunately at this season free from vermin. That caravanserai can accommodate 1000 men in rooms, and 1500 mules.

To-day's long march, which, however, has had more road suitable for galloping, has been over wild, weird, desolate, G.o.d-forsaken country, interesting from its desolation and its great wastes, forming part of the Kavir or Great Salt Desert of Persia, absolutely solitary, with scarcely a hamlet--miles of the great highway of Persia without a living creature, no house, no bush, nothing. Later, there were some vultures feasting on a dead camel, and a mule-load of two bodies down in the mud.

Some miles from Shashgird, far from the road, there is a large salt lake over which some stationary mists were brooding. Beyond this an ascent among snow clouds along some trenched land where a few vines and saplings have been planted leads to a caravanserai built for the accommodation of state officials on their journeys, where in falling snow we vindicated our origin in the triumphant West by taking lunch on a windy verandah outside rather than in the forlorn dampness of the inside, and brought a look of surprise even over the impa.s.sive face of the _seraidar_.

When we left the snow was falling in large wet flakes, and the snow clouds were drifting wildly among the peaks of a range which we skirted for a few miles and then crossed at a considerable height among wonderful volcanic formations, mounds of scoriae, and outcrops of volcanic rock, hills of all shapes fantastically tumbled about, chiefly black, looking as if their fires had only just died out, streaked and splotched with brilliant ash--orange, carmine, and green--a remarkable volcanic scene, backed by higher hills looking ghastly in the snow.

After pa.s.sing over an absolutely solitary region of camel-brown plains and slopes at a gallop, M---- a little in front always, and Abbas Khan, the wildest figure imaginable, always half a length behind, the _thud_ of the thundering hoofs mingling with the screech of the cutting north wind which, coming over the snowy Elburz range, benumbed every joint, on the slope of a black volcanic hill we came upon the lofty towers and gaudy tiled front of this great caravanserai, imposing at a distance in the solitude and snow clouds, but shabby on a nearer view, and tending to disintegrate from the presence of saltpetre in the bricks and mortar.

There are successions of terraces and tanks of water with ducks and geese upon them, and buildings round the topmost terrace intended to be imposing. The _seraidar_ is expecting the Amin-es-Sultan (the Prime Minister) and his train, who will occupy rather a fine though tawdry "suite of apartments"; but though they were at our service, I prefer the comparative cosiness of a small, dark, damp room, though with a very smoky chimney, as I find to my cost.

_British Legation, Tihran, Feb. 26._--The night was very cold, and the reveille specially unwelcome in the morning. The people were more than usually vague about the length of the march, some giving the distance at twenty-five miles, and others making it as high as thirty-eight. As we did a good deal of galloping and yet took more than seven hours, I suppose it may be about twenty-eight. Fortunately we could desert the caravan, as the caravanserais are furnished and supply tea and bread.

The baggage mules took ten hours for the march.

The day was dry and sunny, and the scenery, if such a tract of hideousness can be called scenery, was at its best. Its one charm lies in the solitude and freedom of a vast unpeopled waste.

The "made road" degenerates for the most part into a track "made"

truly, but rather by the pa.s.sage of thousands of animals during a long course of ages than by men's hands. This track winds among low ranges of sand and mud hills, through the "Pa.s.s of the Angel of Death,"

crosses salt and muddy streams, gravelly stretches, and quagmires of mud and tenacious clay, pa.s.sing through a country on the whole inconceivably hideous, unfinished, frothy, and saturated with salt--the great brown desert which extends from Tihran to Quetta in Beloochistan, a distance of 2000 miles.

On a sunny slope we met the Prime Minister with a considerable train of hors.e.m.e.n. He stopped and spoke with extreme courtesy, through an interpreter, for, unlike most Persians of the higher cla.s.s, he does not speak French. He said we had been for some time expected at Tihran, and that great fears were entertained for our safety, which we had heard at k.u.m. He is a pleasant-looking man with a rather European expression, not more than thirty-two or thirty-three, and in spite of intrigues and detractors has managed to keep his hazardous position for some years. His mother was lately buried at k.u.m, and he was going thither on pilgrimage. After the usual compliments he bowed his farewells, and the gay procession with its brilliant trappings and prancing horses flashed by. The social standing of a Persian is evidenced by the size of his retinue, and the first of the Shah's subjects must have been attended by fully forty well-mounted men, besides a number of servants who were riding with his baggage animals.

Shortly after pa.s.sing him a turn among the hills brought the revelation through snow clouds of the magnificent snow-covered chain of the Elburz mountains, with the huge cone of Demavend, their monarch, 18,600 feet[23] in height, towering high above them, gleaming sunlit above the lower cloud-ma.s.ses. Swampy water-courses, a fordable river crossed by a broad bridge of five arches, more low hills, more rolling desert, then a plain of mud irrigated for cultivation, difficult ground for the horses, the ruins of a deserted village important enough to have possessed two _imamzadas_, and then we reached the Husseinabad, which has very good guest-rooms, with mirrors on the walls.