Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan Volume I Part 17

The desolation of this part of the route may be judged of from the fact that except the village of Kuhr[=u]d there is not an inhabited house for forty-six miles. The country traversed reminds me much of the least interesting part of the route from Lesser Tibet into Kulu.

Yesterday morning there was ice, and the roads were very slippery on the gradual descent from the plain which opens out after pa.s.sing Bideshk, the _chapar_ station, an hour from Soh. The twenty-four miles' ride over this gravelly waste, quite uninhabited, was very pleasant, as it was possible to gallop much of the way, and besides the beauty of the atmospheric colouring the mirage occurring in most remarkable forms rendered monotony impossible.

There were no caravans on the road, but I met several dervishes, and there is one here to whom I have given what he demanded--a night's lodging. He carries a large carved almsholder; and the panther skin on his shoulders, the knotted club, and his lean, hungry, fanatical face give him a dangerous look. All I have seen on this march have worn long matted bushy hair, often covering their shoulders, an axe in the girdle, and peculiar turbans decorated with phrases from the Koran.

They are the "mendicant friars" of Persia, and are under vows of poverty. Some are said to be learned; but they object to discussing religious matters with infidels, and almost nothing is known as to their beliefs. They hold universally the sanct.i.ty of idleness, and the duty of being supported by the community. The lower cla.s.ses hold them in reverence, and the upper, though they are apt to loathe them, treat them with great respect, for fear of laying themselves open to the charge of laxity in religious matters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DERVISH.]

Many of them deal in charms, and are consulted as astrologers. Some are professed tellers of stories, to which I am told no European could degrade himself by listening, but which are most palatable to a village audience; and at this moment this unwelcome guest of mine has a crowd listening to a narrative partly told and partly acted.

They are credited with many vices, among the least of which are hazy ideas as to mine and thine, opium and bhang smoking to excess, and drunkenness.

They have recognised heads or chiefs, to whom they show great deference. One of their vows is that of obedience; and besides paying to the chief a part of the alms they receive, he gives them orders as to the houses they are to infest, and though the nuisance is not so common as formerly, a dervish at the door is still a sign of being great or rich, or both. Their cries, and their rude blasts on the buffalo horn, which is a usual part of their equipment, are most obnoxious. In the larger towns, such as k.u.m and Kirmanshah, there are shops for the sale of their outfit--the tiger and panther skins, the axes, the knotted clubs, the almsbowls, etc.

Some are respectable, and enjoy much consideration, and I hope that many even of those whom a careful writer has called "disgusting vagabonds" are not humbugs; but the presumption is so much the other way that I am always glad when the ground admits of galloping past them, otherwise the dervish comes forward, with his knotted club much _en evidence_, with many compliments and good wishes, or else silently extends his almsholder, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. _Huk_ ("my right"). I usually have the means of appeasing, if not of satisfying him, but on the rare occasions when I have had no money the yells and maledictions have been awful.

The light and profane use of the Divine name is universal. The dervishes curse, but every one uses the name _Allah_ wherever they can bring it in. The _Ya Allah_, as an expression of fatigue, or discontent, or interest, or nothing, is heard all day, and the boy who drives a cow, or a team, or a mule in a caravan, cries _Ya Allah_ incessantly as an equivalent of "go along," and the gardener pushing his spade into the ground, the chopper with every blow of the axe, the labourer throwing up bricks, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es the same. _Mashallah_, _Inshallah_, interlard all conversation. When men are building, the perpetual sing-song of phrases such as these is heard, "Brother, in G.o.d's name toss me a brick," the other replying, "Brother, in G.o.d's name here is a brick."

The vocabulary of abuse is also very large, and often involves serious reflections on the female relatives of the person abused. I hear such harmless phrases as "son of a burnt father," "son of a dog,"

"offspring of a pig," etc., on all occasions.

Murcheh Khurt is a large village with a good deal of cultivation about it, a mosque or more, a _hammam_, a _chapar khana_, and a caravanserai. Here again I found that the smart foreign soldier attracted all the notice, and that before the people ceased to wonder at him I had pa.s.sed them. The _chapar khana_ was full of men, so I have had to sink to the level of a recessed den with a manger in front in a ruinous caravanserai crowded with Persian travellers, muleteers, mules, horses, and a.s.ses, and the courtyard half-choked with ruins. I had not seen the inside of one of these dens before. Travellers have exhausted the vocabulary of abuse upon them; possibly they deserve it in the "vermin season"; but there is nothing worse than a square and perfectly dark room, with unplastered walls blackened by the smoke and cobwebs of ages, and a door which will not fasten.

The air is cool and the sky blue, and sitting at the open door is very pleasant. Mahboud and two of the servants caught cold at Kuhr[=u]d and are ill, and my Arab has a chill too. He is a very stupid horse. His gentle eyes never change their expression, and his small ears rarely move. He has little sense or affection, but when he is patted his proud neck takes on a loftier arch. Gentle as he is to people he is a brute to other horses. He would like to fight every one of them, to stand on his hind-legs and grapple them round the shoulders with his fore-feet and bite their necks, roaring and squealing all the time. He and Mahboud's horse are inveterate enemies, and one of the few difficulties of the journey is the keeping them from a regular stand-up fight.

This village is an oasis in the desert. I have been through its gates, barely wide enough to admit an a.s.s loaded with brushwood, with the _seraidar_ and Mirza, walked through its narrow alleys, and inadvertently stumbled into a mosque where a great crowd of women were listening to a story of one of the twelve Imams told by a _mollah_, looked down upon it and over the adjacent country from a house roof, visited several houses, in which some of the inmates were ill and desired "Feringhi medicine," had a long conversation with the _ketchuda_, who came to see me to ask for eye lotion, and with the _seraidar_, and altogether have had quite a pleasant day.

_Chapar Khana, Gez._--I am sitting in one of the three doorless doorways of my loft, grieving that the journey is just over, and that this is the last night of the exhilarating freedom of the desert. I rode twenty-four miles before one o'clock to-day, over a level uncultivated plain, bordered as usual by ranges of mountains. In fact, while I write of levels and plains it must be understood that Persia is chiefly a land of hills rising from a table-land from 3400 feet to 6000 feet in alt.i.tude, and that the traveller is rarely, if ever, more than fourteen or fifteen miles from mountains from 2000 to 6000 feet above the plain from which they rise, crowned by Demavend, whose imposing summit is 18,600 feet above the sea. The hills beyond Isfahan have a.s.sumed lofty proportions, and some of the snowy mountains of Luristan are to be seen in the far distance.

It is nearly an unmitigated waste between Murcheh Khurt and Gez, dest.i.tute even of tufts of wormwood; but the latter part of the march is through a stoneless alluvial desert of dry friable soil, soft springy galloping ground which water would turn into a paradise of fertility; and water there has once been, for not far from the road are the remains of some _kanaats_.

The questions naturally arise in a traveller's mind, first, what becomes of the enormous amount of snow which falls on the mountains; and next, how in a country so arid as the plateaus of Central Asia water for irrigation, and for the basins and fountains which abound in rich men's houses, is obtained.

Wells, unless the artesian borings shortly to be begun in the Tihran desert should be successful, are all but unknown, except for supplying drinking water, and there are scarcely any reservoirs, but ingenuity has devised a plan of subterranean water-channels, which besides their other advantages prevent loss by evaporation. Tihran has thirty-five of them, and the water which they distribute is naturally expensive, as the cost of making them is great.

It is on the slope of a hill that the spring is found which is the original source of supply; this is tapped at some depth, and its waters are led along a tunnel about four feet high by two feet wide lined with baked pottery where the ground is soft, and having a slight fall to the next spring or well, which may be from twenty-five to even sixty yards off.

As the labourers dig they draw up the earth and arrange it in a circle round the shaft, and as they come to water they draw up the mud and pour it on the top of the earth, where it dries and hardens, and below, the water is conducted as a running underground stream across great plains, its progress marked by mounds which have been compared to ant-hills and craters, but to my thinking are more like the shafts of disused mines.

Hundreds of these _kanaats_ are seen, ruined and dry, and are the resort of porcupines and jackals. To construct a _kanaat_ may call a village or series of villages into being. The letting it fall to ruin is one cause of deserted villages. Those which are not lined require annual repairs, which are now going on, but frequently the complete fall of the roof destroys the fall of the water, and the tunnel becomes irreparable.

The peasants are obliged to buy the water, for they cannot steal it, and the making of a _kanaat_ is often a lucrative speculation. Pigeons live in them, and many of them are full of fish, which foreigners amuse themselves by poisoning by throwing a mixture of _cocculus indicus_ with dough down the wells, when the poisoned but wholesome fish rise to the surface. They usually recover when they are left in the water. Dr. Wills describes them as having a muddy taste. The _kanaats_ are a feature of Persia.

Ever since leaving k.u.m all the dry and hard parts of the road have been covered with the industrious "road beetle," which works, like the ant, in concert, and carries on its activities at all seasons, removing from the road to its nest all the excreta of animals, except in regions where even animal fuel is so exceptionally scarce that boys with a.s.ses and ponies follow caravans for the same purpose. These beetles hover over the road on the wing, and on alighting proceed to roll the ball towards the nest, four or five of them standing on their hind-legs and working it forwards, or else rolling it with their heads close to the ground. Their instinct is wonderful, and they attract the attention of all travellers. They are about the size of a small walnut. Otherwise there is little of animated life to be seen on this route.

No day has had fewer noticeable objects. Two or three _abambars_, several caravanserais in absolute ruins, and a magnificent one in partial ruins are its record.

Gez consists of this post-house and a decaying caravanserai. From the roof as I write I watch the grooming of a whole row of _chapar_ horses. As each pad is removed there is a horrid revelation of wounds, deep ulcers, sores often a foot long, and in some cases the white vertebrae of the spine are exposed. These are the wretched animals which often carry men from fourteen to seventeen stone who ride fifty miles in a day. It is hard enough even with extreme carefulness to keep the back of a horse all right on a continuous journey, but I never before saw animals ridden in such a state. They wince pitifully when their pads are put on again.

The desert is all around, purpling in the sunset, sweeping up to low broken ridges, and to some higher hills in the north-west covered with new-fallen snow. That the waste only requires water to make it prolific is apparent, for below these walls wheat is growing luxuriantly in some deep pits, irrigated from a dirty ditch out of which the drinking water comes. Nothing can be got, except by sending to a village a mile away.

Four of the men are ill, one with inflammation of the eyes, another with an abscess, and a third, a very strong man, with something like bilious fever, and a _charvadar_ with malarial fever. The strong man's moans often become howls. He insists that he shall die to-night. These two afternoons have been much taken up with making poultices and medicines, and I shall be glad for the poor fellows to reach Isfahan and the care of a competent doctor.

_Julfa, April 2._--I daresay this journey seems longer to you than it did to me. It was very pleasant, and its goal is pleasant, and a most kind welcome and the refinement of cultured English people go far to compensate for the loss of the desert freedom and the easy stride of the Arab horse.

I started the caravan at nine yesterday, with two men with bandaged eyes, and other two hardly able to sit on their mules; Mahboud, who is really more seriously ill than any of them, keeping up his pluck and capableness to the last. The man who threatened to die at Gez was very much better the next morning.

Soon after leaving Gez the country changes its aspect, the road becomes very bad, and pa.s.ses through nine miles of rich cultivation--wheat, barley, opium, and vegetables growing abundantly; orchards are numerous, villages with trees and gardens succeed each other rapidly, water abounds, and before the gate of Isfahan is reached, domes and minarets rising among cypresses, planes, and poplars indicate the remains of the former capital of Persia.

Inside the shabby gateway the road to Julfa lies among rows of mean mud houses, heaps of ruins, and shabby provision bazars; and that mile or more of Isfahan was the one disagreeable part of the journey.

It was about the last day of the holidays, and the bazars, alleys, and open s.p.a.ces were full of men in gay attire, and companies of shrouded women were moving along the quieter roads. It was too warm for the sheepskin coat which had served me so well at k.u.m, and I had dressed with some regard to European sensibilities. The boys began to shout "A Feringhi woman! a Nazarene woman!" and then to call bad names; then men began to make up fiendish laughs,[32] and the howls and outcries gathered strength as I went on at the inevitable foot's pace, spitting being quite common, poor Mahboud constantly turning to me a perturbed wretched face, full of annoyance at the insults of his co-religionists, which it would have been dangerous to resent. It was a bad half-hour.

Before pa.s.sing the residence of the Amir-i-Panj (the commander of 5000) near the Julfa gate the uproar died away, and once through the gate and in the _Chahar Bagh_ (four gardens) there was peace. A bad road of cobble stones, with a double avenue of once magnificent planes, some once ornamental tanks, very high walls, pierced by storied gates, ornamented with wild designs on plaster in flaring colours, above which a blue dome is a conspicuous object, leads to a handsome bridge of thirty-three arches, with a broad level roadway, and corridors for foot pa.s.sengers on either side, over the Zainderud, then came fields with springing wheat, a few houses, a narrow alley, and two or three miles from Isfahan the gate of its Armenian suburb, Julfa.

At once on crossing the bridge there was a change. Ruddy, cheery-looking unveiled women in red gowns, and pure white _chadars_ completely enveloping their persons, moved freely about, and the men wore neither the becoming turban nor the ominous scowl of Islam. In the quaint narrow streets were churches with open vestibules, through which pictures of the thorn-crowned Christ and of sweet-faced Madonnas were visible; priests in black robes and women in white glided along the narrow roads. There was the fresher, purer air of Christianity, however debased and corrupted. In the low-browed churches divine honours are paid to a crowned and risen Christ, and the white-robed women have been baptized into His name. Never again will the Julfa alleys be so peaceful and lovable as yesterday, when they offered a haven from the howling bigots of Isfahan.

Dr. Bruce has not returned from Baghdad, but Mrs. and Miss Bruce welcomed me very kindly, and I am already forgetting my unpleasant reception. I. L. B.

FOOTNOTE:

[32] I can imagine now what a h.e.l.lish laugh that was with which "they laughed Him to scorn."

I was a month in Julfa, but never saw anything more of Isfahan, which is such a fanatical city that I believe even so lately as last year none of the ladies of the European community had visited it, except one or two disguised as Persian women.

LETTER XII

JULFA, _April 17_.

Mr. George Curzon wrote of Julfa: "The younger Julfa is a place wholly dest.i.tute of superficial attractions, consisting as it does of a labyrinth of narrow alleys closed by doors and plentifully perforated with open sewers. Life there is 'cabined, cribbed, confined' to an intolerable degree, and it is a relief to escape from its squalid precincts."

I dare not write thus if I would! It is now the early spring. The "sewers" are clear rapid streams, margined by gra.s.s and dandelions, and shaded by ash trees and pollard willows in their first flush of green. The "narrow alleys" are scrupulously clean, and there is neither mud nor dust. If I go up on the roof I see a cultivated oasis, gardens prolonged indefinitely concealing the desert which lies between them and the bold mountain ranges which surround this lofty and breezy plain. Every breeze is laden with the delicious odour of the bean blossom. A rapid river spanned by n.o.ble bridges hurries through the oasis it has helped to create, and on its other side the domes and minarets of Isfahan rise out of ma.s.ses of fine trees, and bridges and mosques, minarets and mountains, are all seen through a most exquisite pink mist, for hundreds of standard peach trees are in full bloom, and look where one may everything is _couleur de rose_.

I quite admit that Julfa consists of a "labyrinth of alleys." I can never find my way about it. One alley with its shady central stream (or "sewer"), its roughly paved paths on either side, its mud walls pierced by low doors, is very much like another, and however lucky one may be in "happening on" the right road, it is always a weary time before one escapes from between mud walls into the gardens and wheatfields, to the blossoming beans, and the exquisite wild-flowers among the wheat.

As to the "cabined, cribbed, confined" life, I can give no testimony from personal knowledge. All life in European settlements in the East appears to me "cabined, cribbed, confined," and greatly devoid of external interests. Perhaps Julfa is deficient in the latter in an eminent degree, and in a very small foreign community people are interested chiefly in each other's affairs, sayings, and doings. Lawn tennis, picnics, and dinner parties are prevalent, the ordinary etiquette of European society prevails, and in all cases of need the residents are kind to each other both in life and death.

The European society is divided into three circles--the missionaries, the mercantile community, and the telegraph staff. The British agent, Mr. Aganoor, is an Armenian.[33] No Christians, Armenian or European, live in Isfahan, and it is practically _defendu_ to European women.

This transpontine restriction undoubtedly narrows the life and interests of Julfa. It is aggravating and tantalising to be for ever looking at a city of 60,000 or 70,000 people, the fallen capital of the Sufari dynasty, and never be able to enter it.

This Christian town of Julfa has a certain accessible historic interest. Shah Abbas, justly surnamed the Great, conceived the sagacious project of introducing among his Persian subjects at Isfahan--then, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, a magnificent capital--the Christian habits of trading, sagacity, and thrift, for then as now the Armenians had commercial dealings with China, India, and Europe, and had imported several arts into Persia.

This project he carried out in truly despotic fashion by moving almost the whole population of Julfa on the Araxes, on the modern Russo-Persian frontier, to the banks of the Zainderud, making over to it the best lands in the neighbourhood of Isfahan. Many years later the new Julfa was a place with twenty-four churches, great prosperity, and an estimated population of 40,000. Its agriculturists were prosperous market-gardeners for the huge city of Isfahan, and it had likewise a great trading community, and was renowned for the making of jewellery and watches.

It has now a dwindling population of about 3000, chiefly elderly men, women, and girls, the young men, after receiving a good education in the Church Mission and other schools, flying from its stagnation to India, Java, and even Europe. The twenty-four churches are reduced to twelve, and these with the vast cemetery in the desert at the base of Kuh Sufi are its chief objects of interest, apart from those which are human and living.