Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan Volume I Part 27

The great copper basins containing the food were heaped together in the middle of the carpets, and the guests, fifty in number, sat down, the men on one side, and the women on the other, the wives of the _ketchuda_ and his brothers serving. There were several _samovars_ with tea, but only three cups. A long bolster was the place of honour, and I occupied it alone till the village priests arrived,--reverend men with long beards, high black head-dresses, and full black ca.s.socks with flowing sleeves. All the guests rose, and remained standing till they had been ceremoniously conducted to seats. I found them very agreeable and cultured men, acquainted with the varying "streams of tendency" in the Church of England, and very anxious to claim our Church as a sister of their own. This banquet was rather a gay scene, and on a higher roof fully one hundred women and children dressed in bright red stood watching the proceedings below.

I proposed to see the church, and with the priests, most of the guests, and a considerable following of the onlookers, walked to it through filthy alleys. This ancient building, in a dirty and malodorous yard, differs externally from the mud houses which surround it only in having two bells on a beam. The interior consists of four domed vaults, and requires artificial light. A vault with a raised floor contains the altar and a badly-painted altar-piece representing the B. V.; a rail separates the men, who stand in front, from the women, who stand behind. A Liturgy and an illuminated medieval copy of the Gospels, of which they are very proud, are their only treasures.

They have no needlework, and the altar cloth is only a piece of printed cotton. Nothing could well look poorer than this small, dark, vacant building, with a few tallow candles without candlesticks giving a smoky light.

They have two daily services lasting from one to two hours each, and Ma.s.s on Sunday is protracted to seven hours! The priests said that all the men, except two who watch the flocks, and nearly all the women are at both services on Sunday, and that many of the men and most of the women are at both daily services, one of which, as is usual, begins before daylight. There is no school. The fathers teach their boys to read and write, and the mothers instruct their girls in needlework.

After visits to the priests' houses, a number of villagers on horseback escorted me back to Gandaman. The heat of those two days was very great for May, the mercury marking 83 in the shade at 10 A.M.

One hundred and thirteen people came for medicines, and in their eagerness they swarmed round both ends of the tent, blocking out all air. The ailments were much more varied and serious than among the Bakhtiaris.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WALL AND GATE OF LIBASGUN.]

The last march was a hot and tedious one of eighteen miles, along an uninteresting open valley, much ploughed, bounded by sloping herbage-covered hills, surmounted by parapets of perpendicular rock.

After pa.s.sing the large Moslem village of Baldiji, we re-entered the Bakhtiari country, ascended to the Bakhtiari village of Dastgird, descended to the plain of Chigakhor, skirted its southern margin, and on its western side, on two spurs of the great Kuh-i-Kaller range, with a ravine between them, the camps were pitched. In two days most of the tents were blown down, and were moved into two ravines with a hill between them, on which the Sahib on his arrival pitched his camp.

My ravine has a spring, with exactly s.p.a.ce for my tent beside it, and a platform higher up with just room enough for the servants. A strong stream, rudely brawling, issuing from the spring, disturbs sleep.

There is no possibility of changing one's position by even a six-feet stroll, so rough and steep is the ground. Mirza bringing my meals from the cooking tent has a stick to steady himself. At first there was nothing to see but scorched mountains opposite, and the green plain on which the ravine opens, but the _Hak[=i]m's_ tent was soon discovered, and I have had 278 "patients"! Before I am up in the morning they are sitting in rows one behind another on the steep ground, their horses and a.s.ses grazing near them, and all day they come. One of the chiefs of the Janiki tribe came with several saddle and baggage horses and even a tent, to ask me to go with him to the great plain of Khana Mirza, three days' march from here, to cure his wife's eyes, and was grieved to the heart when I told him they were beyond my skill. He stayed while a great number of sick people got eye-lotions and medicines, and then asked me why I gave these medicines and took so much trouble. I replied that our Master and Lord not only commanded us to do good to all men as we have opportunity, but Himself healed the sick. "You call Him Master and Lord," he said; "He was a great Prophet. _Send a Hak[=i]m to us in His likeness._"

I have heard so much of Chigakhor that I am disappointed with the reality. There are no trees, most of the snow has melted, the mountains are not very bold in their features, the plain has a sort of lowland look about it, and though its alt.i.tude is 7500 feet, the days and even nights are very hot. The interest of it lies in it being the summer resort of the Ilkhani and Ilbegi, a fact which makes it the great centre of Bakhtiari life. As many as 400 tents are pitched here in the height of the season, and the coming and going of Khans and headmen with tribute and on other business is ceaseless.

The plain, which is about seven miles long by three broad, is quite level. Near the south-east end is a shallow reedy mere, fringed by a fertile swampiness, which produces extraordinary crops of gra.s.s far out into the middle of the level.

Near the same end is a rocky eminence or island, on which is the fortress castle of the Ilkhani. The "season" begins in early June, when the tribes come up from the warm pastures of Dizful and Shuster, to which they return with their pastoral wealth in the autumn, after which the plain is flooded and frozen for the winter. At the north end are the villages of Dastgird and Aurugun and a great deal of irrigated land producing wheat. Except at that end the plain is surrounded by mountains; on its southern side, where a part of the Sukhta range rises into the lofty peak of Challeh Kuh, with its snow-slashes and snow-fields, they attain an alt.i.tude of 12,000 or 13,000 feet.

It is not easy, perhaps not possible, to pa.s.s through the part of the Bakhtiari country for which we are bound, without some sort of a.s.sistance from its feudal lords, a responsible man, for instance, who can obtain supplies from the people. Therefore we have been detained here for many days waiting for the expected arrival of the Ilkhani. A few days ago a rumour arrived, since unhappily continued, that things were in confusion below, owing to the discovery of a plot on the part of the Ilkhani to murder the Ilbegi. Stories are current of the number of persons "put out of the way" before he attained his present rank for the second time, and it is not "Bakhtiari custom" to be over-scrupulous about human life. No doubt his nephew, the Ilbegi, is a very dangerous rival, and that his retainers are bent on seeing him in a yet higher position than he now occupies.

A truce has been patched up, however, and yesterday the Ilkhani and Isfandyar Khan arrived together, with their great trains of armed hors.e.m.e.n, their _harams_, their splendid studs, their crowds of unmounted retainers, their strings of baggage mules and a.s.ses laden with firewood, and all the "rag, tag, and bobtail" in attendance on Oriental rulers. Following them in endless nocturnal procession come up the tribes, and day breaks on an ever-increasing number of brown flocks and herds, of mares, a.s.ses, dogs, black tents, and household goods. When we arrived there were only three tents, now the green bases of the mountains and all the platforms and ravines where there are springs are spotted with them, in rows or semicircles, and at night the camp fires of the mult.i.tude look like the lights of a city.

Each clan has a prescriptive right to its camping-ground and pasture (though both are a fruitful source of quarrels), and arrives with its _ketchuda_ and complete social organisation, taking up its position like a division of an army.

When in the early morning or afternoon the tribe reaches the camping-ground, everything is done in the most orderly way. The infants are put into their cradles, the men clear the ground if necessary, drive the pegs and put up the poles, and if there be wood--of which there is not a stick here--they make a fence of loose branches to contain the camp, but the women do the really hard work.

Their lords, easily satisfied with their modic.u.m of labour, soon retire to enjoy their pipes and the endless gossip of Bakhtiari life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PERSO-BAKHTIARI CRADLE.]

After the ground has been arranged the tents occupy invariably the same relative position, whether the camp is in a row, a semicircle, a circle, or streets, so that the cattle and flocks may easily find their owners' abodes without being driven. The tents, which are of black goats' hair cloth, are laid out and beaten, and the women spread them over the poles and arrange the rest, after which the inside is brushed to remove the soot. In a good tent, reed screens are put up to divide the s.p.a.ce into two or more portions, and some of the tribes fence round the whole camp with these screens, leaving one opening, and use the interior for a sheepfold. The small bushes are grubbed up for fuel. The women also draw the water, and the boys attend to the flocks. Many of the camps, however, have neither fences nor environing screens, and their inmates dwell without any attempt at privacy, and rely for the safety of their flocks on big and trustworthy dogs, of which every camp has a number.

When they move the bulk of the labour again falls on the women. They first make the baggage into neat small packages suited for the backs of oxen; then they take up the tent pegs, throw down the tents, and roll them up in the reed screens, all that the men undertake being to help in loading the oxen. It is only when a division halts for at least some days that this process is gone through. In fine weather, if a tribe is marching daily to its summer or winter camping-grounds, the families frequently sleep in the open.

The chief's tent is always recognisable by its size, and is occasionally white. I have seen a tent of a wealthy Khan fully sixty feet long. A row of poles not more than ten feet high supported the roof, which was of brown haircloth, the widths united by a coa.r.s.e open st.i.tch. On the windward side the roof was pinned down nearly to the top of a loosely-laid wall of stones about three feet high. The leeward side was quite open, and the roof, which could be lowered if necessary, was elevated and extended by poles six feet high. If the tent was sixty feet long, it was made by this arrangement twenty feet broad. At the lower end was a great fire-hole in the earth, and the floor of the upper end was covered with rugs, quilts, and pillows, the household stuff being arranged chiefly on and against the rude stone wall.

The process of encamping for a camp of seventy tents takes about two hours, and many interruptions occur, especially the clamorous demands of unweaned infants of mature years. De-camping the same number of tents takes about an hour. A free, wild life these nomads lead, full of frays and plots, but probably happier than the average lot.

Below the castle is the great encampment of the chiefs, brown tents and white bell tents, among which the tall white pavilion of the Ilkhani towers conspicuously. The Ilkhani and Ilbegi called on me, and as they sat outside my tent it was odd to look back two years to the time when they were fighting each other, and barely two weeks to the discovery of the plot of the dark-browed Ilkhani to murder his nephew.

The Ilkhani's face had a very uncomfortable expression. Intrigues against him at Tihran and nearer home, the rumoured enmity of the Prime Minister, the turbulence of some of the tribes, the growing power of the adherents of Isfandyar Khan, and his own baffled plot to destroy him must make things unpleasant. Several of the small Khans who have been to see me expect fighting here before the end of the summer. The Ilkhani had previously availed himself of the resources of my medicine chest, and with so much benefit that I was obliged to grant a request which deprived me of a whole bottle of "tabloids."

In the evening I visited the ladies who are in the castle leading the usual dull life of the _haram_, high above the bustle which centres round the Ilkhani's pavilion, with its crowds of tribesmen, mares and foals feeding, tethered saddle horses neighing, cows being milked, hors.e.m.e.n galloping here and there, firing at a mark, a.s.ses bearing wood and flour from Ardal being unloaded--a bustle masculine solely.

Isfandyar Khan, with whose look of capacity I am more and more impressed, and Lutf received us and led us to the great pavilion, which is decorated very handsomely throughout with red and blue _applique_ arabesques, and much resembles an Indian _durbar_ tent. A brown felt carpet occupied the centre. The Ilkhani, who rose and shook hands, sat on one side and the Ilbegi on the other, and sons, Khans, and attendants to the number of 200, I daresay, stood around. We made some fine speeches, rendered finer, doubtless, by Mirza; repeated an offer to send a doctor to itinerate in the country for some months in 1891, took the inevitable tea, and while the escorts were being arranged for I went to the fort.

It is the fortress of the Haft Lang, one great division of the Bakhtiari Lurs, which supplies the ruling dynasty. The building is a parallelogram, flanked by four round towers, with large casemates and a keep on its southern side. It has two courtyards, surrounded by stables and barracks, but there is no water within the gates, and earthquakes and neglect have reduced much of it to a semi-ruinous condition. Over the gateway and along the front is a handsome suite of well-arranged balconied rooms, richly decorated in Persian style, the front and doors of the large reception-room being of fretwork filled in with amber and pale blue gla.s.s, and the roof and walls are covered with small mirrors set so as to resemble facets, with medallion pictures of beauties and of the chase let in at intervals. The effect of the mirrors is striking, and even beautiful. There were very handsome rugs on the floor, and divans covered with Kashan velvet; but rugs, divans, and squabs were heaped to the depth of some inches with rose petals which were being prepared for rose-water, and the princ.i.p.al wife rose out of a perfect bed of them.

These ladies have no conversation, and relapse into apathy after asking a few personal questions. Again they said they wished to see the Agha, of whose height and prowess many rumours had reached them, but when I suggested that they might see him from the roof or balcony they said they were afraid. Again they said they had such dull lives, and regretted my departure, as they thought they might come and see my tent. I felt sorry for them, sorrier than I can say, as I realised more fully the unspeakable degradation and dulness of their lives. A perfect rabble of dirty women and children filled the pa.s.sages and staircase.

On one of my last evenings I rode, attended only by Mirza, to the village of Dastgird to see two women whose husband desired medicines for them. This village is piled upon the hillside at the north end of the valley and a traveller can be seen afar off. I had never visited any of the camps so slenderly escorted, and when I saw the roofs covered with men and numbers more running to the stream with long guns slung behind their backs and big knives in their girdles, I was much afraid that they might be rude in the absence of a European man, and that I should get into trouble. At the stream the _ketchuda_, whose wives were ill, and several of the princ.i.p.al inhabitants met me. They salaamed, touched their hearts and brows, two held my stirrups, others walked alongside, and an ever-increasing escort took me up the steep rude alley of the village to the low arch by which the headman's courtyard--all rocks, holes, and heaps--is entered.

Dismounting was a difficulty. Several men got hold of _Screw_, one made a step of his back, another of his knee, one grasped my foot, two got hold of my arms, all shouting and disputing as to how to proceed, but somehow I was hauled off, and lifted by strong arms up into the _atrium_, the floor of which was covered with their woven rugs, across which they led me to an improvised place of honour, a _karsi_ covered with a red blanket. A bra.s.s _samovar_ was steaming hospitably on the floor, surrounded by tea-gla.s.ses, trays, and sugar. The chief paid me the usual Persian compliment, "Your presence purifies the house;" men crowded in, shrouded women peeped through doorways; they served me on bended knees with tea _a la Russe_, and though they shouted very loud, and often all together, they made me very cordially welcome. They send their flocks with some of their people to warmer regions for the winter, but the chief and many families remain, though the snow is from seven to nine feet deep, according to their marks on a post.

I rode to the camp where the wives were, with the Khan and a number of men on foot and on horseback, a messenger having been sent in advance.

In the village the great sheep-dogs, as usual, showed extreme hostility, and one, madder than the rest, a powerful savage, attacked me, fixing his teeth in my stirrup guard, and hanging on. The Khan drew a revolver and shot him through the back, killing him at once, and threatened to beat the owner. _Screw_ was quite undisturbed by the incident.

The power of the _ketchuda_ or headman of a group of families is not absolute even in this small area. His duties are to arrange the annual migrations, punish small crimes summarily, to report larger crimes to the Khan, to collect the tribute, conjointly with the Khan, and to carry out his orders among the families of his group. Private oppression appears to be much practised among the _ketchudas_, and under the feeble rule of Imam Kuli Khan to be seldom exposed. The _ketchuda's_ office, originally elective, has a great tendency to become hereditary, but at any moment the Ilkhani may declare it elective in a special case.

Though the offices of Ilkhani and Ilbegi are held only annually at the pleasure of the Shah, and the _ketchudas_ are properly elective, the office of Khan or chief is strictly hereditary, though it does not necessarily fall to the eldest son. This element of permanence gives the Khan almost supreme authority in his tribe, and when the Ilkhani is a weak man and a Khan is a strong one, he is practically independent, except in the matter of the tribute to the Shah.

It was in curbing the power of these Khans by steering a shrewd and even course among their feuds and conflicts, by justice and consideration in the collection of the revenues, and by rendering it a matter of self-interest for them to seek his protection and acknowledge his headship, that Sir A. H. Layard's friend, Mohammed Taki Khan, succeeded in reducing these wild tribes to something like order, and Hussein Kuli Khan, "the last real ruler of the Bakhtiaris,"

pursued the same methods with nearly equal success.

But things have changed, and a fresh era of broils and rivalries has set in, and in addition to tribal feuds and jealousies, the universally-erected line of partisanship between the adherents of the Ilkhani and Ilbegi produces anything but a pacific prospect. These broils, and the prospects of fighting, are the subjects discussed at my tent door in the evenings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DASTGIRD TENT.]

The Dastgird encampment that evening was the romance of camp life. On the velvety green gra.s.s there were four high black canopies, open at the front and sides, looking across the green flowery plain, on which the Ilkhani's castle stood out, a violet ma.s.s against the sunset gold, between the snow-streaked mountains. There were handsome carpets, mattresses, and bolsters; _samovars_ steaming on big bra.s.s trays, an abundance of curds, milk, and whey, and at one end of the largest tent there were two very fine mares, untethered, with young foals, and children rolling about among their feet. I was placed, as usual, on a bolster, and the tent filled with people, all shouting, and clamouring together, bringing rheumatism ("wind in the bones"), sore eyes, headaches ("wind in the head"), and old age to be cured. The Khan's wife, a handsome, pathetic-looking girl, had become an epileptic a fortnight ago. This malady is sadly common. Of the 278 people who have come for medicines here thirteen per cent have had epileptic fits. They call them "faintings," and have no horror of them. Eye diseases, including such severe forms as cataract and glaucoma, rheumatism, headaches, and dyspepsia are their most severe ailments. No people have been seen with chest complaints, bone diseases, or cancer.

In the largest tent there was a young mother with an infant less than twenty-four hours old, and already its eyebrows, or at all events the place where eyebrows will be, were deeply stained and curved. At seven or eight years old girls are tattooed on hands, arms, neck, and chest, and the face is decorated with stars on the forehead and chin.

Though children of both s.e.xes are dearly loved among these people, it is only at the birth of a son that there is anything like festivity, and most of the people are too poor to do more even then than distribute sweetmeats among their friends and relations. The "wealthier" families celebrate the birth of a firstborn son with music, feasting, and dancing.

At the age of five or six days the child is named, by whispering the Divine name in its ear, along with that chosen by the parents.

After a long visit the people all kissed my hand, raising it to their foreheads afterwards, and the Khan made a mounting block of his back, and rode with me to the main path. It was all savage, but the intention was throughout courteous, according to their notions. It became pitch dark, and I lost my way, and should have pulled _Screw_ over a precipice but for his sagacious self-will. One of the finest sights I have seen was my own camp in a thunderstorm, with its white tents revealed by a flash of lightning, which lighted for a second the black darkness of the ravine.

The next morning the Khan of Dastgird's servants brought fifteen bottles and pipkins for eye-lotions and medicines. In spite of the directions in Persian which Mirza put upon the bottles, I doubt not that some of the eye-lotions will be swallowed, and that some of the medicines will be put into the eyes!

_June 8._--The last evening has come after a busy day. The difficulties in the way of getting ready for the start to-morrow have been great. The iron socket of my tent-pole broke, there was no smith in the valley, and when one arrived with the Ilkhani, the Ilkhani's direct order had to be obtained before he would finish the work he had undertaken. I supplied the iron, but then there was no charcoal. I have been tentless for the whole day. Provisions for forty days have to be taken from Chigakhor, and two cwts. of rice and flour have been promised over and over again, but have only partially arrived to-night. Ha.s.san has bought a horse and a cow, and they have both strayed, and he has gone in search of them, and Mirza in search of him, and both have been away for hours.

Of the escorts promised by the Ilkhani not one man has arrived, though it was considered that the letter to him given me by the Amin-es-Sultan would have obviated any difficulty on this score. An armed sentry was to have slept in front of my tent, and a _tufangchi_ was to have been my constant attendant, and I have n.o.body. Of the escort promised to the Agha not one man has appeared. In this case we are left to do what General Schindler and others in Tihran and Isfahan declared to be impossible, viz. to get through the country without an escort and without the moral support of a retainer high in the Ilkhani's service. Whether there have been crooked dealings; or whether the Ilkhani, in spite of his promises, regards the presence of travellers in his country with disfavour; or whether, apprehending a collision, both the Ilkhani and Ilbegi are unwilling to part with any of their hors.e.m.e.n, it is impossible to decide.

I. L. B.

END OF VOL. I