Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan Volume Ii Part 19

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SYRIAN FAMILY.]

Looking round on the handsome men and comely women, who would greet the sunrise with Christian prayer and praise, and whose ancestors have worshipped Christ as G.o.d for fourteen centuries in these mountain fastnesses, I wondered much at my former apathy concerning them. It is easier to _feel_ them our fellow-Christians on the spot than to put the feeling into words, but writing here in the house of their Patriarch, the _Catholicos_ of the East, I realise that the Cross signed on their brows in baptism is to them as to us the symbol of triumph and of hope; that by them as by us the Eucharistic emblems are received for the life of the soul, "in remembrance of Christ's meritorious Cross and Pa.s.sion"; that through ages of acc.u.mulating wrongs and almost unrivalled misery, they like us have worshipped the crucified Nazarene as the crowned and risen Christ, that to Him with us they bend the adoring knee, and that like us they lay their dead in consecrated ground to await through Him a joyful resurrection.

There were five degrees of frost during the night, and as I lay awake from cold the narratives I had heard and the extraordinary state of things in which I so unexpectedly found myself made a very deep impression on me. There, for the first time in my life, I came into contact with people grossly ignorant truly, but willing to suffer "the loss of all things," and to live in "jeopardy every hour" for religious beliefs, which are not otherwise specially influential in their lives. My own circ.u.mstances, too, claimed some consideration, whether to go forward, or back to Urmi. It is obvious from what I hear that the bringing my journey to Erzerum to a successful issue will depend almost altogether on my own nerve, judgment, and power of arranging, and that at best there will be serious risks, hardships, and difficulties, which will increase as winter sets in. After nearly coming to the cowardly decision to return, I despised myself for the weakness, and having decided that some good to these people might come from farther acquaintance with their circ.u.mstances, I fell asleep, and now the die is cast.

We were ready at daybreak the next morning, but for the same reasons as those given at Merwana did not start till seven for an eleven hours' march. I took two armed hors.e.m.e.n and six armed footmen, all fine fellows used to the work of reconnoitring and protecting. Three of them scouted the whole time high up on the sides of the pa.s.s, not with the purposeless sensational scouting of Persian _sowars_, but with the earnestness of men who were pledged to take us safely through, and who live under arms to protect their property and families.

After five hours of toiling up the Drinayi Pa.s.s, taking several deep fords, and being detained by a baggage horse falling fifty feet with his load, we crossed the summit, and by a long descent through hills of rounded outlines covered with uncut sun-cured hay, reached the plain of Gawar, where the guards left us. On the way we pa.s.sed the small Christian hamlet of Eyal, which was robbed of its sheep with the sacrifice of the shepherd's life the following night. At the village of Yekmala on the plain the Kurdish _katirgis_ by a shameful exaction got us into great trouble, and there was a fight, in which Johannes's gun was wrested from him, and some of my things were taken, the Kurds meantime driving off their animals at a fast trot. The aspect of affairs was so very bad and the attack on my men so violent that I paid the value of the Kurdish depredations, and we got away. A little farther on the _katirgis_ were extremely outrageous, and began to fulfil their threat of "throwing down their loads," but I persuaded _Qasha_ ----, who was alarmed and anxious, to leave them behind, and they thought better of it.

The mountain-girdled plain of Gawar is a Paradise of fertility, with abundant water, and has a rich black soil capable of yielding twenty or thirtyfold to the cultivator. On it is the town of Diza, chiefly Armenian, which is a Turkish customs station, a military post, and the residence of a Kaimakam. There are over twenty Christian as well as some Moslem villages on Gawar, and a number of Kurdish hamlets and "castles" on the slopes and in the folds of the hills above it.

The sun was sinking as we embarked on the plain, and above the waves of sunset gold which flooded it rose the icy spires and crags of the glorious Jelu ranges and the splintered Kanisairani summits. The plain has an alt.i.tude of over 6000 feet, and there was a sharp frost as we dismounted at the village of Pirzala and put up at the house of the _Malek_ David, having been eleven and a half hours in the saddle.

After consulting with him and other village worthies I dismissed the _katirgis_ and paid them more than their contract price. The next morning they swore by the Prophet's beard, and every other sacred thing, that they had not been paid, and when payment was proved by two respectable witnesses, they were not the least abashed. Poor fellows!

They know no better and are doubtless very poor. I was glad to get rid of their sinister faces and outbreaks of violence, but for some days it was impossible, being harvest-time, to obtain transport to Kochanes, though I was able to leave Pirzala for other villages.

The next day mists rolled down the mountains, and a good cold English rain set in, in which I had a most pleasant ride to Diza, which was repeated the following day in glorious weather, the new-fallen snow coming half-way down the mountain sides. I was surrept.i.tiously on Turkish soil, and it was necessary to show my pa.s.sport to the Diza officials, get a permit to travel, and have my baggage examined. Ishu, the present _Malek_ of the plain, through whom all business between the Christians and the Government is transacted, accompanied us to the Mutessarif of Julamerik.

Diza is an unwalled town on an eminence crowned by barracks. The garrison of 200 men was reduced to six during the summer. The Kurds evidently took the reduction as a hint to them to do what they liked, and they have mercilessly ravaged and harried the plain for months past.[42] An official a.s.sured me that 15,000 sheep have been driven off from the Gawar Christian villages between the middle of June and the 17th of October, partly by the nomad Herkis. There are now sixty soldiers at Diza, and the Mutessarif of Julamerik is there, having come down to capture Abdurrahman Bey, one of the great oppressors of the Christians,--an attempt rendered abortive (it is said) by a bribe given by the Bey to the commanding officer of the troops.

I was interested in my first visit to a Turkish official. His room was above a stable, with a dark and difficult access, and the pa.s.sages above were crowded with soldiers. The Mutessarif sat on a divan at the upper end of a shabby room, an elderly man much like Mr. Gladstone, very courteous and gentlemanly, with plenty of conversation and _savoir-faire_. He said that the letter I carry is "a very powerful doc.u.ment," that it supersedes all the usual formalities, that my baggage would not even be looked at, and that I should not require a _teskareh_ or permit. By his advice I called on the Kaimakam, and in each room a soldier brought in delicious coffee. The Kaimakam was also very courteous, and talked agreeably and intelligently, both taking the initiative, as etiquette demands.

In this and in the general tone there was a marked difference between Persian and Turkish officialdom. The Persian Governor is surrounded by civilians, the Turkish by soldiers, and in the latter case the manner a.s.sumed by subordinates is one of the most profound respect. The sealing of my pa.s.sport took a considerable time, during which, with _Qasha_ ----, I paid several visits, was regaled with Armenian cookery, tried to change a _mejidieh_ at the Treasury, but found it absolutely empty, and went to see a miracle-working New Testament, said to be of great antiquity, in an Armenian house. It was hanging on the wall in a leather bag, from which depended strings of blue and onyx beads. Sick people come to it even from great distances, as well as the friends of those who are themselves too ill to travel. The bag can only be opened by a priest. The power of healing depends on a sum of money being paid to the priest and the owners. The sick person receives a gla.s.s bead, and is forthwith cured.

On Gawar Plain I lodged in the village houses, either in semi-subterranean hovels, in which the families live with their horses and buffaloes, or in rooms over stables. Very many sick people came to me for medicines, and others with tales of wrong for conveyance to "the Consul" at Erzerum. No one seemed to trust any one. These conversations were always held at night in whispers, with the candle hidden "under a bushel," the light-holes filled up with straw, the door barred or a heavy stone laid against it, and a watch outside.

The Gawar Christians are industrious and inoffensive, and have no higher aspiration than to be let alone, but they are the victims of a Kurdish rapacity which leaves them little more than necessary food.

Their villages usually belong to Kurdish Aghas who take from them double the lawful taxes and t.i.thes. The Herkis sweep over the plain in their autumn migration "like a locust cloud," carrying off the possessions of the miserable people, spoiling their granaries and driving off their flocks. The Kurds of the neighbouring slopes and mountains rob them by violence at night, and in the day by exactions made under threat of death. The latter mode of robbery is called "demand." The servants of a Kurdish Bey enter and ask for some jars of oil or _roghan_, a Kashmir shawl, women's ornaments, a jewelled dagger, or a good foal, under certain threats, or they show the owner a bullet in the palm of the hand, intimating that a bullet through his head will be his fate if he refuses to give up his property or informs any one of the demand.

In this way (among innumerable other instances) my host at ----,[43] a much-respected man, had been robbed of five valuable shawls, such as descend from mother to daughter, four handsome coats, and 300 _krans_ in silver. In the last two years ten and fifteen loads of wheat have been taken from him, and four four-feet jars filled with oil and _roghan_. Four hundred and fifty sheep have likewise been seized by violence, leaving him _with only fifteen_; and one night while I was at his house fifty-three of the remaining village sheep, some of which were his, were driven off in spite of the guards, who _dare not fire_. I was awakened by the disturbance, and as it was a light night I saw that the Kurds who attacked the sheepfold were armed with modern guns. The _reis_ of that village and this man's brother have both been shot by the Kurds.

Testimony concurred in stating that the insecurity of life and property has enormously increased this summer, especially since the reduction of the Diza garrison; that "things have grown very much worse since the Erzerum troubles;" that the Kurds have been more audacious in their demands and more reckless of human life; and that of late they have threatened the Christians _as such_, saying that the Government would approve of "their getting rid of them." Very little of any value, the people said, was left to them, and the extreme bareness of their dwellings, and the emptiness of their stables and sheepfolds, while surrounded with possibilities of pastoral and agricultural wealth, tend to sustain their statements. "The men of Government," they all said, "are in partnership with the Kurds, and receive of their gains. This is our curse."

Many women and girls, especially at Charviva and Vasivawa, have been maltreated by the Kurds. A fortnight ago a girl, ten years old, going out from ----, to carry bread to the reapers, was abducted. It became known that two girls in ---- were to be carried off, and they were hidden at first in a hole near ----. Their hiding-place last week was known only to their father, who carried them food and water every second night. He came to me in the dark secretly, and asked me to bring them up here, where they might find a temporary asylum. Daily and nightly during the week of my visit Gawar was harried by the Kurds, who in two instances burned what they could not carry away, the glare of the blazing sheaves lighting up the plain.

The people of Gawar express great anxiety for teachers. The priests and deacons must work like labourers, and cannot, they say, go down to Urmi for instruction. A priest, speaking for two others, and for several deacons who were present, said, "Beseech for a teacher to come and sit among us and lighten our darkness before we pa.s.s away as the morning shadows. We are blind guides, we know nothing, and our people are as sheep lost upon the mountains. When they go down into the darkness of their graves we know not how to give them any light, and so we all perish."

This request was made in one of the large semi-subterranean dwellings, which serve for both men and beasts in Kurdistan. The firelight flickered on horses and buffaloes, receding into the darkness, and the square mud-platform on which we sat was framed by the long horns and curly heads of mild-eyed oxen.

I answered that it would be very difficult to raise money for such an object in England. "But England is very rich," the priest replied. I looked round, and the thought pa.s.sed across my mind of Him "who though He was rich yet for our sakes became poor," whose life of self-denial from the stable at Bethlehem to the cross on Calvary is the example for our own, and whose voice, ringing down through ages of luxury and selfishness, still declares that discipleship involves a love for our brethren equal to His own. Yes, "England is very rich," and these Syrians are very poor, and have kept the faith through ages of darkness and persecution.

This plain, the richest in Kurdistan, is also most beautiful. In winter a frozen mora.s.s, it is not dry enough for sowing till May, and even June. This accounts for the lateness of the harvest. The Jelu mountains, the highest in Central Kurdistan,--a ma.s.s of crags, spires, and fantastic parapets of rock, with rifts and abysses of extraordinary depth,--come down almost directly upon it. There is no wood. The villages are all alike, surrounded just now by piles of wheat and straw on their threshing-floors, with truncated cones of fodder, and high smooth black cones of animal fuel. These are often the only signs of habitations. One may ride over the roofs without knowing that houses are below.

Being entirely baffled by the difficulty of obtaining transport, I went on to Gahgoran, and put up at the house of the parish priest, where the subterranean granary allotted to me was so completely dark that I sat all day in the sheepfold in order to be able to write and work, shifting my position as the sun shifted his. A _zaptieh_ had been sent from Diza, who guarded me so sedulously that _Qasha_ ---- dared not speak to me, lest the man should think he was giving me information.

Gahgoran was full of strangers. The Patriarch had come down from Kochanes, and occupied the only room in the village, whither I went to pay my respects to him. The room was nearly dark, and foggy with tobacco smoke, but a ray of light fell on Mar Gauriel, Bishop of Urmi, a handsome full-bearded man in a Nestorian turban, full trousers, a madder-red frock with a bright girdle in which a _khanjar_ glittered, and a robe over all, a leader of armed men in appearance. I had met him in Urmi, and he shook hands and presented me to Mar Shimun, a swarthy gloomy-looking man. In his turn he presented me to Mar Sergis, Bishop of Jelu, a magnificent-looking man with a superb gray beard, the _beau-ideal_ of an Oriental ecclesiastic. _Maleks_ and headmen of villages sat round the room against the wall, not met for any spiritual conclave but for stern business regarding the taxes, for the Patriarch is a salaried official of the Turkish Government. All rose when I entered, and according to a polite custom stood till I sat down. They held out no hope of getting baggage animals, and I returned to the sheepfold.

It was a long day. The servants did not arrive till night, and Kochanes receded hourly! Many people came for medicine, and among them a very handsome man whose house was entered by Kurds a month ago, who threatened him with death unless he surrendered his possessions. After this he and his brothers fled and hid among the wheat, but fearing to be found and killed, they concealed themselves for a fortnight in the tall reeds of a marsh. He is now subject to violent fits of trembling.

"My illness is fear," the poor fellow said. Three hundred sheep had been taken from him and twenty-five gold _liras_; his gra.s.s had been burned, "and now," he said, "the oppressor Hazela Bey says, 'give me the deeds of your lands, if not I will kill you.'" He had been a _Malek_, and was so rich that he entertained travellers and their horses at all times. Now his friends have to give him wheat wherewith to make bread.

The house of _Qasha_ Jammo has granaries at each side of the low door, a long dark pa.s.sage leading into a subterranean stable with a platform for guests, and a living-room, on a small scale, like the one at Marbishu. A s.p.a.ce was cleared in the granary for my bed among wheat, straw, ploughs, beetles, starved cats, osier graintubs coated with clay, six feet high, and agricultural gear of all sorts. It was a horrid place, and the door would not bolt. After midnight I was awakened by a sound as if big rats were gnawing the beams. I got up and groping my way to the door heard it more loudly, went into the pa.s.sage, looked through the c.h.i.n.ks in the outer door, and saw a number of Kurds armed with guns. I retreated and fired my revolver in the granary, which roused the dogs, and the dogs roused the twenty strangers who were receiving the priest's hospitality. In the stable were fourteen horses, including my own two, and several buffaloes. The Kurds had dug through the roof of the granary opposite mine, and through its wall into the stable, and were on the point of driving out the horses through the common pa.s.sage when the hardy mountaineers rushed upon them. The same night, though it was light and clear, another house in Gahgoran was dug into, and a valuable horse belonging to a man in the Patriarch's train was abstracted. A descent was also made on the neighbouring village of Vasivawa, which has suffered severely. Eight _zaptiehs_ employed by the villagers at a high price to watch the threshing-floor, and my own _zaptieh_ escort, were close at hand.

Horses having at last been obtained from a Kurdish Bey, I left on Tuesday, the Gahgoran people being stupefied with dismay at the growing audacity of the Kurds. The mountain road was very dangerous, but I travelled with Mar Gauriel and his train, thirteen well armed and mounted men, besides armed servants on foot. The ice was half an inch thick, but the sun was very hot. The mountain views were superb, and the scenery altogether glorious, but the pa.s.ses and hillsides are not inhabited. We were ten hours on the journey, owing to the custom of frequent halts for smoking and talking.

In the afternoon a party of Syrians with some unladen baggage mules came over the crest of a hill, preceded by a figure certainly not Syrian. This was a fair-complexioned, bearded man, with hair falling over his shoulders, dressed in a girdled ca.s.sock which had once been black, tucked up so as to reveal some curious nether garments, Syrian socks, and a pair of rope and worsted shoes, such as the mountaineers wear in scaling heights. On his head, where one would have expected to see a college "trencher," was a high conical cap of white felt with a _pagri_ of black silk twisted into a rope, the true Tyari turban.

This was Mr. Browne, one of the English Mission clergy, who, from living for nearly four years among the Syrians of the mountains, helping them and loving them, has almost become one of them. He was going to Diza to get winter supplies before his departure for one of the most inaccessible of the mountain valleys, but with considerate kindness turned back to Kochanes with me, and remains here until I leave. This fortunate _rencontre_ adds the finishing touch to the interest of this most fascinating Kurdistan journey.

Crossing the Kandal Pa.s.s, we descended on the hamlet of Shawutha, superbly situated on a steep declivity at the head of a tremendous ravine leading to the Zab, blocked apparently by mountains violet-purple against a crimson sky, with an isolated precipitous rock in the foreground, crowned by an ancient church difficult of access.

Below the village are fair shelving lawns, with groups of great walnut trees, hawthorn, and ash, yellow, tawny, and crimson--a scene of perfect beauty in the sunset, while the fallen leaves touched the soft green turf with ruddy gold. The camping-grounds were very fair, but the villagers dared not let me camp. The Kurds were about, and had exacted a ewe and lamb from every house. Owing to the influx of strangers, it was difficult to get any shelter, and I slept in a horse and ox stable, burrowed in the hillside, the pa.s.sage to the family living-room, without any air holes, hot and stifling, and used my woollen sheets for curtains. The village is grievously smitten by the "cattle plague." In telling me of the loss of "four bulls" within three days, my host used an expression which is not uncommon here, "By the wealth of G.o.d, and the head of Mar Shimun."

Yesterday we descended 1500 feet, alongside of a torrent fringed with scarlet woods, and halted where the Shawutha, Kochanes, and Diz valleys meet at the fords of the Zab, here known as "the Pison, the river of Eden." The Zab, only fordable at certain seasons, is there a fast-flowing dark green river, fully sixty yards wide, deep enough to take the footmen up to their waists, and strong enough to make them stagger, with a lawn bright with autumnal foliage below the savage and lofty mountains on its right bank.

From the Zab we ascended the gorge of the Kochanes water by a wild mountain path, at times cut into steps or scaffolded, and at other times merely a glistening track over shelving rock, terminating in a steep and difficult ascent to the fair green alp on which Kochanes stands at the feet of three imposing peaks of naked rock--Quhaibalak, Qwarah, and Barchallah.

Thus I beheld at last the goal of my journey from Luristan, and was not disappointed. Glorious indeed is this Kurdistan world of mountains, piled up in ma.s.ses of peaks and precipices, cleft by ravines in which the Ashirets and Yezidis find shelter, every peak snow-crested, every ravine flaming with autumn tints; and here, where the ridges are the sharpest, and the rock spires are the most imposing, on a spur between the full-watered torrents of the Terpai and the Yezidi, surrounded on three sides by gorges and precipices, is this little mountain village, the latest refuge of the Head of a Church once the most powerful in the East.

Kochanes consists of a church built on the verge of a precipice, many tombs, a grove of poplars, a sloping lawn, scattered village houses and barley-fields extending up the alp, and nearly on the edge of a precipitous cliff the Patriarch's residence, a plain low collection of stone buildings, having an arched entrance and a tower for refuge or defence. The houses of his numerous relations are grouped near it.

Everything is singularly picturesque. The people, being afraid of an attack from the Kurds, would not suffer me to pitch my tent on their fair meadow, and Sulti, the Patriarch's sister, has installed me in a good room in the house, looking across the tremendous ravine of the Terpai upon savage mountains, the lower skirts of which are clothed with the tawny foliage of the scrub oak, and their upper heights with snow.

I. L. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[39] I have since heard that these Kurds, a short time afterwards, betrayed some Christian travellers into the hands of some of their own people, by whom they were robbed and brutally maltreated.

[40] I give the story as it was repeatedly told to me. It was a very shady and complicated transaction throughout.

[41] Dr. Cutts, in his interesting volume, _Christians Under the Crescent in Asia_, gives the following translation of one of the morning praises, which forms part of the daily prayer. The earlier portion is chanted antiphonally in semi-choirs--

"_Semi-choir--1st._ At the dawn of day we praise Thee, O Lord: Thou art the Redeemer of all creatures, give us by Thy mercy a peaceful day, and give us remission of our sins.

"_2d._ Cut not off our hope, shut not Thy door against our faces, and cease not Thy care over us. O G.o.d, according to our worthiness reward us not. Thou alone knowest our weakness.

"_1st._ Scatter, O Lord, in the world love, peace, and unity. Raise up righteous kings, priests, and judges. Give peace to the nations, heal the sick, keep the whole, and forgive the sins of all men.

"_2d._ In the way that we are going may Thy Grace keep us, O Lord, as it kept the child David from Saul. Give us Thy mercy as we are pressing on, that we may attain to peace according to Thy will. The Grace which kept the prophet Moses in the sea, and Daniel in the pit, and by which the companions of Ananias were kept in the fire, by that Grace deliver us from evil.

"_Whole choir._--In the morning we all arise, we all worship the Father, we praise the Son, we acknowledge the Holy Spirit. The grace of the Father, the mercy of the Son, and the hovering of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person, be our help every day. Our help is in Thee.

In Thee, our true Physician, is our hope. Put the medicine of Thy mercy on our wounds, and bind up our bruises that we be not lost.

Without Thy help we are powerless to keep Thy commandments. O Christ, who helpest those who fulfil Thy will, keep Thy worshippers. We ask with sighing, we beseech Thy mercy, we ask forgiveness from that merciful One who opens His door to all who turn unto Him. Every day I promise Thee that to-morrow I will repent: all my days are past and gone, my faults still remain. O Christ, have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me."

[42] About Christmas 1890 in Constantinople I had an opportunity of laying the state of the Gawar Christians and the reduction of the garrison of Diza before His Highness Kiamil Pasha, then Grand Vizier.

He appeared deeply interested, and said that it was the purpose of his Government to send troops up to the region as soon as the roads were open. Since then I have heard nothing of these people, but to-day, as this sheet is going to press, I have received the following news from Dr. Shedd of Urmi: "You will be glad to know that Gawar is very much changed for the better. The Turkish Governor has been removed, and another of far better character and ability has the post. The Kurdish robbers have been arrested, and their leader, Abdurrahman Bey, killed."--_November 2_, 1890.

[43] The complaints to which I became a listener were made by _maleks_, bishops, priests, headmen, and others. Exaggerations prevail, and the same story is often told with as many variations as there are narrators. I cannot vouch for anything which did not come under my own observation. Some narratives dissolved under investigation, leaving a mere nucleus of fact. Those which I thought worthy of being noted down--some of which were published in the _Contemporary Review_ in May and June in two papers called _The Shadow of the Kurd_--were either fortified by corroborative circ.u.mstances, or rest on the concurrent testimony as to the main facts of three independent narrators.

In some cases I was asked to lay the statements before the British Consul at Erzerum, with the names of the narrators as the authority on which they rested, but in the greater number I was implored not to give names or places, or any means of identification. "We are in fear of our lives if we tell the truth," they urged. Sometimes I asked them if they would abide by what they told me in the event of an investigation by the British Vice-Consul at Van. "No, no, no, we dare not!" was the usual reply. Under these circ.u.mstances, the only course open to me is to withhold the names of persons and places wherever I was pledged to do so, but as a guarantee of good faith I have placed the statements, confidentially, with the names, in the hands of Her Majesty's Princ.i.p.al Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.