Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan Volume Ii Part 13

Accompanied by this beautiful girl, who is graceful as well as beautiful, and an old servant, I paid many visits, and found all the houses arranged in the same fashion. I was greatly impressed by their scrupulous cleanliness. The floors of hardened clay are as clean as sweeping can make them, and the people are clean in dress and person.

The women, many of whom are very handsome, are unveiled, and do not even wear the _chadar_. The very becoming head-dress is a black coronet, from which silver coins depend by silver chains. A red kerchief is loosely knotted over the back of the head, on which heavy plaits of hair are looped up by silver pins. This girl pa.s.sed with me through the crowds of strange men unveiled, with a simplicity and maidenly dignity which were very pleasing. It was refreshing to see the handsome faces, erect carriage, and firm, elastic walk of these Kurdish women after the tottering gait of the shrouded, formless bundles which pa.s.s for Persian women. The men are equally handsome, and are very manly-looking.

These Kurdish villagers are Sunnis, and are on bad terms with their neighbours, the Shiahs, and occasionally they drive off each other's cattle.

On leaving this pleasant place early next morning the _ketchuda_ and a number of men escorted me for the first _farsakh_, and with my escort of _sowars_ increased by four wild-looking "road-guards," riding as it seemed good to them, in front or behind, sometimes wheeling their horses at a gallop in ever-narrowing circles, sometimes tearing up and down steep hills, firing over the left shoulders and right flanks of their horses, lunging at each other with much-curved scimitars, and singing inharmonious songs, we pa.s.sed through a deep ravine watered by a fine stream which emerges through gates of black, red, and orange rock into a long valley, then up and up over long rolling hills, and then down and down to a large Ilyat camp beside a muddy and nearly exhausted stream, where they feasted, and I rested in my _shuldari_.

Two or three times these "road-guards" galloped up to shepherds who were keeping their flocks, and demanded a young sheep from each for the return journey, and were not refused. The peasants fear these men much. They a.s.sert that, so far from protecting caravans and travellers, they are answerable for most of the robberies on the road, that they take their best fowls and lambs without payment, and ten pounds of barley a day for their horses, and if complaints are made they quarter themselves on the complainant for several days. For these reasons I object very strongly to escorts where they are not absolutely needed for security. I pay each man two _krans_ a day, and formerly gave each two _krans_ daily as "road money" for himself and his horse, but finding that they took the food without paying for it, I now pay the people directly for the keep of the men and horses. Even by this method I have not circ.u.mvented the rapacity of these hors.e.m.e.n, for after I have settled the "bill" they threaten to beat the _ketchuda_ unless he gives them the money I have given him.

The Ilyat women from the camp crowded round me with a familiarity which, even in savages, is distressing, a contrast to the good manners and un.o.btrusiveness of the women of Geokahaz.

On the way to Sanjud, a Kurdish village in a ravine so steep that it was barely possible to find a level s.p.a.ce big enough for my tent, there is some very fine scenery, and from the slope of Kuh Surisart, on the east side of the Gardan-i-Mianmalek, the loftiest land between Hamadan and Urmi, the view is truly magnificent. The nearer ranges stood out boldly in yellow and red ochre, in the valleys indigo shadows lay, range beyond range of buff-brown hills were atmospherically glorified by brilliant cobalt colouring, and the hills which barred the horizon dissolved away in a blue which blended with the sky. In that vast solitude the fine ruins of the fortress palace of Karaftu, where the fountain still leaps in the deserted courtyard, are a very conspicuous object.

From the Mianmalek Pa.s.s there is a descent of 5000 feet to the Sea of Urmi, and the keen edge of the air became much blunted ere we reached Sanjud. Nearly the whole of the road from Hamadan has been extremely solitary. We have not met or pa.s.sed a single caravan, and on this march of seven hours we did not see a human being. Yet there are buff-brown villages lying in the valleys among the buff-brown hills, and an enormous extent of country is under tillage. In fact, this region is one of the granaries of Persia.

Sanjud is a yellow-ochre village of eighty houses built into a yellow-ochre hillside, above which rises a high hill of red mud. It is not possible to give an idea of the aspect of the country at this season. Sheep and goats certainly find pickings among the rocks, but the visible herbage has all been eaten down. The thistles and other fodder plants have been cut and stacked in the villages. Most of the streams are dry, and the supplies of drinking water are only pools, much fouled by cattle. The snows which supply the sources of the irrigation channels have all melted, and these channels are either dry or stopped. There has scarcely been a shower since early April, and for nearly six months the untempered rays of the Persian sun have been blazing upon the soil. The arable land, ploughed in deep furrows, has every furrow hardened into sun-dried brick. Villages of yellow or whitish baked mud, supporting on their dusty roofs buff stacks of baked fodder, are hardly distinguishable from the baked hillsides. The roads are a few inches deep in glaring white dust. Over the plains a brown dust haze hangs.

This rainless and sun-scorched land lives by the winter snows, and the snowfall of the Zagros ranges is the most interesting of all subjects to the cultivator of Western Persia. If the country were more populous, and the profits of labour were secure, storage for the snow-water would be an easy task, and barren wastes might sustain a prosperous people; for the soil, when irrigated, is prolific, and the sun can always be relied upon to do his part. The waste of water is great, as considerably more than half the drainage of the empire pa.s.ses into _kavirs_ and other depressions. The average rainfall on the central plateau is estimated by Sir Oliver St. John at five inches only in the year.

My arrival at Sanjud was not welcome. The _ketchuda_ sent word that he was not prepared to obey the orders of the _Sartip_ of Achaz. I could buy, he said, what I could get, but he would furnish neither supplies nor guards for the camp. I did not wonder at this, for a traveller carrying an official letter is apt to be palmed off on the villagers as a guest, and is not supposed to pay for anything.

I went to see the _ketchuda_, and a.s.sured him that I should pay him myself for all supplies, and a night's wages to each watchman, and the difficulty vanished. Many of the handsome village women came to see me. The _ketchuda_ made me a feast in his house, and when I bade him farewell in the morning he said solemnly, "We are very glad you have been our guest, we have suffered no loss or inconvenience by having you, we should like to be protected by the great English nation." This polite phrase is frequently used.

The Persian Kurds impress me favourably as a manly, frank, hospitable people. The men are courteous without being cringing, and the women are kind and jolly, and come freely and unveiled to my tent without any obtrusiveness.

The _ketchuda_ sent eight guards to my camp at night, saying it was in a very dangerous place, and he did not wish his village disgraced by a stranger being robbed so near it. He added, however, that six of these men were sent for his own satisfaction, and that I was only to pay for the two I had ordered.

My journey, which is through a wild and little frequented part of Persia, continues to be prosperous. The climate is now delightful, though at these lower alt.i.tudes the middle of the day is rather hot.

It was a fertile and interesting country between Sanjud and Sain Kala, where I halted for Sunday. The road pa.s.ses through the defiles of Kavrak, along with the deep river Karachai, from the left bank of which rises precipitously, at the narrowest part of the throat, the fine mountain Baba Ali. A long valley, full of cultivation and bearing fine crops of cotton, a pa.s.s through the red range of Kizil Kabr, and a long descent brought us to a great alluvial plain through which pa.s.ses the river Jagatsu on its way to the Dead Sea of Urmi. Broad expanses of shingle, trees half-buried, and a number of wide shingly water-channels witness to the destructiveness of this stream. A severe dust storm rendered the end of the march very disagreeable, as the path was obliterated, and it was often impossible to see the horses'

ears. In winter and spring this Jagatsu valley is completely flooded, and communication is by boats. There are nearly 150 villages in the district, peopled almost entirely by Kurds and Turks, and there are over 200 nomad tents. The Jagatsu is celebrated for its large fish.

When the storm abated we were close to Sain Kala, a picturesque but ruinous fort on a spur of some low hills, with a town of 300 houses at its base. In the eastern distance rises the fine mountain Pira Mah, and between it and Sain Kala is a curious mound--full of ashes, the people said--a lofty truncated cone, evidently the site of an _Atash-Kardah_, or fire-temple. This town is in the centre of a very fertile region. Its gardens and orchards extend for at least a mile in every direction, and its melons are famous and cheap--only 6d. a dozen just now.

It is a thriving and rising place. A new bazar is being built, with much decorative work in wood. The junction of the roads to Tabriz from Kirmanshah and Hamadan, with one route to Urmi, is in the immediate neighbourhood, and the place is busy with the needs of caravans. It looks much like a Chinese Malay settlement, having on either side of its long narrow roadway a row of shops, with rude verandahs in front.

Among the most prominent objects are horse, mule, and a.s.s shoes; pack-saddles, _khurjins_, rope, and leather. Fruiterers abound, and melons are piled up to the roofs. Russian cottons and Austrian lamps and mirrors repeat themselves down the long uncouth alley.

The camping-ground is outside the town, a windy and dusty plain. Here my eight guards left me, but the _ketchuda_ shortly called with a message from the _Sartip_ commanding a detachment of soldiers and the town, saying that a military guard would be sent before sunset. Sain Kala is in the government of Sujbul[=a]k, and its people are chiefly Kurds with an admixture of Turks, a few Persians, mainly officials, and the solitary Jew dyer, who, with his family, is found in all the larger villages on this route.

An embroidery needle was found sticking in my _dhurrie_ a few days ago, and I had the good fortune not only to get some coa.r.s.e sewing-cotton but some embroidery silks at Sain Kala, and having a piece of serge to work on, and an outline of a blue centaurea, I am no longer dest.i.tute of light occupation for the mid-day halt.

Truly "the Sabbath was made for man"! Apart from any religious advantages, life would be very grinding and monotonous without the change of occupation which it brings. To stay in bed till eleven, to read, to rest the servants, to intermit the perpetual _driving_, to obtain recuperation of mind and body, are all advantages which help to make Sundays red-letter days on the journey; and last Sunday was specially restful.

In the afternoon I had a very intelligent visitor, a _Hak[=i]m_ from Tabriz, sent on sanitary duty in consequence of a cholera scare--a flattering, hollow upper-cla.s.s Persian. He introduced politics, and talked long on the relative prospects of Russian or English ascendency in Asia. England, he argued, made a great mistake in not annexing Afghanistan, and his opinion, he said, was shared by all educated Persians. "You are a powerful nation," he said, "but very slow. The people, who know nothing, have too much share in your government. To rule in Asia, and you are one of the greatest of Asiatic powers, one must not introduce Western theories of government.

You must be despotic and prompt, and your policy must not vibrate. See here now, the Shah dies, the Zil-i-Sultan disputes the succession with the Crown Prince, and in a few days Russia occupies Azirbijan with 200,000 men, captures Tihran, and marches on Isfahan. Meanwhile your statesmen talk for weeks in Parliament, and when Russia has established her _prestige_ and has organised Persia, then your fleet with a small army will sail from India! Bah! No country ruled by a woman will rule in Asia."

In the evening the _ketchuda_ and two other Persian-speaking Kurds hovered so much about my tent that I invited them into the verandah, and had a long and pleasant talk with them, finding them _apparently_ frank and full of political ideas. They complained fiercely of grinding exactions, which, they said, "keep men poor all their lives."

"The poorest of men," they said, "have to pay three _tumans_ (1) a year in money, besides other things; and if they can't pay in money the tax-gatherer seizes their stock, puts a merely nominal value upon it, sells it at its real value, and appropriates the difference." They did not blame the Shah. "He knows nothing." They execrated the governors and the local officials.[22] If they keep fowls, they said, they have to keep them underground or they would be taken.

At the Shah's death, they said, Persia will be divided between Russia and England, and they will fall to Russia. "Then we shall get justice," they added. I remarked that the English and the Kurds like each other. They said, "Then why is England so friendly with Turkey and Persia, which oppress us, and why don't travellers like you speak to the Sultan and the Shah and get things changed." They said that at one time they expected to fall under English rule at the Shah's death, "but now we are told it will be Russia."

After a long talk on local affairs we turned to lighter subjects. They were much delighted with my folding-table, bed, and chair, but said that if they once began to use such things it would increase the cost of living too much, "for we would never go back to eating and sleeping among the spiders as Mohammedans do." They said they had heard of Europeans travelling in Persia to see mines, to dig among ruins for treasure, and to collect medicinal herbs, but they could not understand why I am travelling. I replied that I was travelling in order to learn something of the condition of the people, and was interested likewise in their religion and the prospects of Christianity. "Very good, it is well," they replied; "Islam never recedes, nor can Christianity advance."

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Apparently it was always thus, for on a tablet at Persepolis occurs a pa.s.sage in which the vice of lying is mentioned as among the external dangers which threatened the mighty empire of the Medes and Persians. "Says Darius the king: May Ormuzd bring help to me, with the deities who guard my house; and may Ormuzd protect this province from slavery, from decrepitude, _from lying_; let not war, nor slavery, nor decrepitude, _nor lies_ obtain power over this province."

[20] I have very great pleasure in acknowledging a heavy debt of grat.i.tude to Persian officials, high and low, for the courtesy with which I was uniformly treated. It is my practice in travelling to make my arrangements very carefully, to attend personally to every detail, and to give other people as little trouble as possible, but in Persia, when off the beaten track, the insecurity of some of the roads, the need of guards at night when one is living in camp, and the frequent insubordination and duplicity of _charvadars_ render a reference to the local authorities occasionally imperative; and not only has the needed help been given, but it has been given _courteously_, and I have always been treated as respectfully as an English lady would expect to be in her own country.

[21] The general verdict of travellers in Persia is, that misrule, heavy taxation, the rapacity and villainy of local governors, and successive famines have reduced its small stationary population to a condition of pitiable poverty and misery, and this is doubtless true of much of the country, and of parts of it which I have traversed myself. But I can only write of things as I found them, and on this journey of 300 miles from Hamadan to Urmi I heard comparatively little grumbling. Many of the villages are contented with their taxation and landlords, in others there are decided evidences of prosperity, and everywhere there is abundance of material comfort, not according to our ideas, but theirs. As to _clothing and food_, the condition of the cultivators of that part of western Persia compares favourably with that of the _rayats_ in many parts of India. But just taxation and a complete reform in the administration of justice are needed equally by the prosperous and unprosperous parts of Persia.

[22] The truth is that since Persia broke the power of the Kurds ten years ago, at the time of the so-called Kurdish invasion, she has kept a somewhat tight hand over them, and her success in coercing them indicates pretty plainly what Turkey, with her fine army, could do if she were actually in earnest in repressing the disorder and chronic insecurity in Turkish Kurdistan.

LETTER XXV (_Continued_)

The following morning the _Sartip_ turned out in my honour all the road-guards then in Sain Kala to the number of twelve to escort me to the castle of Muhammad Jik, a large village, the residence and property of the _Naib Sartip_. This was the wildest escort I have had yet. These men were dressed in full Kurdish finery, and besides guns elaborately inlaid with silver and ivory, and swords in much-decorated scabbards, they carried daggers with hilts incrusted with turquoises in their girdles. They went through all the usual equestrian performances, and added another, which consists in twirling a loaded and clubbed stick in a peculiar manner, and throwing it as far ahead as possible while riding at full gallop, the one who picks it up _without dismounting_ being ent.i.tled to the next throw. Very few succeeded in securing it in the regulation manner, and the scrimmage for this purpose was often on the point of becoming a real fight. They worked themselves up to a pitch of wild excitement, screamed, yelled, shouted, covered their horses with sweat and foam, nearly unhorsed each other, and used their sharp bits so unmercifully that the mouth of every horse dripped with blood.

After they received _bakhsheesh_ they escorted me two miles farther "to honour the _Khanum_," fired their guns in the air, salaamed profoundly, and with shrieks and yells left me at a gallop.

The village of Muhammad Jik has a well-filled bazar and an aspect of mixed prosperity and ruin. The castle, a large, and, at a distance, an imposing pile, a square fort with flanking towers, is on an eminence, and has a fine view of the alluvial plain of the Jagatsu, studded with villages and cultivated throughout.

Here, for a rarity, the _Seigneur_ lives a stately life among those who are practically his serfs in good old medieval fashion. Large offices are enclosed within an outer wall, and are inhabited by retainers. Rows of stables sheltered a number of fine and well-groomed horses from the sun. Bullocks were being brought in from ploughing; there were agricultural implements of the best Persian type, fowls, ducks, turkeys, angora goats; negroes and negresses, grinning at the stranger; mounted messengers with letters arriving and departing; scribes in white turbans and black robes lounging--all the paraphernalia of position and wealth.

It was nearly nine, and the great man had not risen, but he sent me a breakfast of tea, _kabobs_, cracked wheat, curds, _sharbat_, and grapes. The courtyard is entered by a really fine gateway, and the castle is built round a quadrangle. The _andarun_ and its fretwork galleries are on one side, and on another is what may be called a hall of audience, where the _Sartip_ hears village business and decides cases.

He offered me a few days' hospitality, paid the usual compliments, said that no escort was needed from thence to Sujbul[=a]k, where my letter to the Governor would procure me one if "the roads were unsettled," hoped that I should not suffer from the hardships of the journey, and offered me a _kajaveh_ and mule for the next marches.

A level road along the same prosperous alluvial plain leads to Kashava, a village of 100 houses embosomed in fruit trees and surrounded by tobacco and cotton. It has an old fort, a very fine spring, and a "resident proprietor," who, as soon as he heard of my arrival, sent servants with melons and tea on silver trays, stabled my horse, and provided me with a strong guard, as the camping-ground was much exposed to robbers. Such attentions, though pleasant, are very expensive, as the greater the master the greater are the expectations of the servants, and the value of such a present as melons must be at least quadrupled in _bakhsheesh_.

While halting the next day the horses eagerly ate the stalks and roots of a strongly-scented bulb which lay almost on the surface of the ground, and were simultaneously seized with a peculiar affection.

Their hair stood out from their bodies like bristles, and they threw their heads up and down with a regular, convulsive, and apparently perfectly involuntary motion, while their eyes were fixed and staring.

This went on for two hours, _Boy_ following me as usual; but owing to this most distressing jerk, over which he had no control, he was unable to eat the dainties which his soul loves, and which I hoped would break up the affection--a very painful one to witness. After the attack both animals perspired profusely. The water literally ran off their bodies. The jerks gradually moderated and ceased, and there were no after effects but very puffy swellings about the throat. Both had barley in their nose-bags, but pawed and wriggled them off in order to get at this plant, a species of _allium_.

When _Boy_ was well enough to be mounted we descended into an immense plain, on which were many villages and tracks. This plain of Hadji Hussein is in fact only another part of the alluvial level of the Jagatsu, which, with a breadth of from four to ten miles, extends for nearly forty miles, and is fertile and populous for most of its length. At the nearest village all the men were busy at the threshing-floor, and they would not give me a guide; at the next the _ketchuda_ sent a young man, but required payment in advance.

After crossing the plain, on which villages occur at frequent intervals on gravelly islands surrounded by rich, stiff, black soil, we forded the broad Jagatsu and got into the environs of, not an insignificant village, as I expected, but an important town of 5000 people. A wide road, planted and ditched on both sides, with well-kept irrigated gardens, shaded by poplars, willows, and fruit trees, runs for a mile from the river into the town, which is surrounded by similar gardens on every side, giving it the appearance of being densely wooded. The vineyards are magnificent, and the size and flavour of the grapes quite unusual. Melons, opium, tobacco, cotton, castor oil, sesamum, and _bringals_ all flourish.

Miandab is partly in ruins, but covers a great extent of ground with its 1000 houses, 100 of which are inhabited by Jews and twenty by Armenians. People of five tribes are found there, but unlike Sain Kala, where Sunnis and Shiahs live peaceably, the Mussulmans are all Shiahs, no Sunni having been allowed to become a permanent inhabitant since the Kurdish attack ten years ago, when Sunnis within the city betrayed it into the hands of their co-religionists.

It has several mosques, a good bazar with a domed roof, a part of which displays very fine copper-work done in the town, and a garrison of 100 men. I saw the whole of Miandab, for my caravan was lost, and an hour was spent in hunting for it, inquiring of every one if he had seen a caravan of four _yabus_, but vainly, till we reached the other side, where I found it only just arrived, and the men busy tent-pitching in a lonely place among prolific vineyards. Sharban had lost the way, and after much marching and counter-marching had reached the ford of the Jagatsu, which I had been told to avoid, where the caravan got into deep strong water which carried the _yabus_ off their feet, and he says that they and the servant were nearly drowned. Mirza had to go back into the town to obtain a guard from an official, as the camping-ground was very unsafe, and it was 11 P.M. before dinner was ready.

The next day I was ill, and rode only twelve miles, for the most part traversing the n.o.ble plain of Hadji Hussein, till the road ascends by tawny slopes to the wretched village of Amirabad--seventeen hovels on a windy hill, badly supplied with water. Partly sunk below ground, this village, at a short distance off, is only indicated by huge stacks of the _Centaurea alata_ and tall cones of _kiziks_, which, being neatly plastered, are very superior in appearance to the houses which they are intended to warm.

The western side of the great plain was studded with Ilyat camps of octagonal and umbrella-shaped tents with the sides kept out by stout ribs. Great herds of camels, and flocks of big fat-tailed sheep, varying in colour from Vand.y.k.e brown to golden auburn, camels carrying fodder, and tribesmen building it into great stacks, round which, but seven feet off, they place fences of a reed which is abundant in swampy places, gave life and animation. Ilyat women brought bowls of milk and curds, and offered me the hospitality of their tents.