Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan Volume Ii Part 21

On that and the two following evenings there was dancing in the house late into the night, and the days were spent in feasting, sword-dances, and masquerading. It is regarded as a very "good"

marriage for Sanjani. The marriage ceremony, which is private, was performed in the church at sunrise on the fourth day. There were present Mar Sergis the bridegroom's uncle, the bridegroom, "the bridegroom's friend," and Sanjani and her mother, who were preceded to the church by a fifer. The marriage service, which took half an hour, was performed at the west end of the nave. At the conclusion wine and water (but not as a Eucharistic symbol), mixed with a little earth from the church precincts, were administered to the married couple.

The ring is used as with us. The most curious part of the ceremony is that while the service or "Blessing," as it is called, is proceeding, the groomsman holds up a light wooden frame, to which fruits are attached. This is also hung over the bridegroom's head at the father-in-law's house, and is carried with him when he goes out to dance. It is broken on the last day of the feasting, and the pair and their friends eat the fruit. The festivities were prolonged for three days more, after which the bride, with music and firing of guns, was taken away in charge of the matrons to her husband's house in Jelu, where there were to be rejoicings and feastings for other seven days.

As the bride's procession pa.s.ses, the bridegroom, attended by his young men-friends, takes his place on a roof, with a store of apples beside him, which, after signing himself with the Cross, he throws among the crowd, the hitting of the bride being regarded as a sign of good luck.

Bishops are not allowed to marry, but to priests after their ordination both first and second marriages are permitted. The law of divorce is very lax, even according to the Church canons, and Canon Maclean says that the practice is very bad, and that it is a great temptation to the bishops, several of whom are very poor, to grant divorces for the sake of the fees.

Friday was a severe fast in the Patriarch's household, as in all others. The fasts of the Syrian Church, it has been said, "can only be described as prodigious." A Syrian fast means serious self-denial, for it involves not only abstinence from meat, but from fish, honey, eggs, milk, b.u.t.ter, cheese, and all animal products, and the Syrian eats nothing but rice cooked in walnut oil, raisins, walnuts, treacle, beans, plain potatoes, and bread. All Wednesdays and Fridays in the year this strict _regimen_ is adhered to, and the members of the Old Church also fast for fifty days in Lent, and twenty-five in Advent, and keep the very severe three days' fast of the Ninevites. Most adults keep also the fast of St. Mary, the first fourteen days of August. No religious observance is more rigidly adhered to by the nation than these severe and prolonged abstinences, and it is difficult for the Syrians to believe in the piety of any who do not, by the same methods, mortify the body and bring it into subjection.

Mar Auraham, son of Marta, a man of twenty-six, Patriarch-designate, and a bishop without a diocese, has returned, and spent part of yesterday evening in my room. He looks delicate, but has a bright, intelligent, charming face, and his conversation was thoughtful and interesting. He really cares about his church and its discipline, is regarded as honourable and straightforward in a marked degree, and as preferring the spiritual to the temporal interests of his nation. He is apparently a warm friend of the English Mission, and if he should succeed to the chair of Mar Shimun great progress might be expected; but intrigues are surging round him, and the patriarchal family is not without its ambitions, to which he may possibly be sacrificed.

The succession to the Patriarchate and Episcopate is the subject of a peculiar arrangement, which makes these offices practically hereditary. In the Mar Shimun family there has been provided for more than three centuries a regular succession of youths called _Nazarites_, who have never eaten meat or married, and whose mothers ate no meat for many months before they were born. One of these is chosen by the Patriarch as his successor, and then some of the disappointed youths take to eating meat like other men. At the present time, though Mar Auraham has been designated, there are one or two boy-relatives of the Patriarch who are being brought up not to eat meat. The same prohibition applies to a bishop. He also usually has one or more _Nazarites_, frequently nephews or cousins, who have been brought up by him not to eat meat, one of whom, if there be more than one, he chooses as his successor. If he neglects to make a choice, the Bishopric at his death falls like a fief to the Patriarch, who has an enormous diocese, while three of the Bishops have only a few villages to look after.

Bishops, priests, and deacons are very poor. Occasionally a church has a field or two as an endowment, or the villagers contribute a small sum annually, or plough the priest's fields, or shear his sheep, but the fees given for baptisms, marriages, and other occasional offices would be his sole dependence unless he followed some secular calling.

In some places there is a plethora of supernumerary priests, and it is shrewdly said that these obtain holy orders from the Bishops for the sake of the loaves of sugar paid as fees. There are great abuses connected with ordination. One of the present bishops was consecrated when quite a young boy, and deacons are often ordained at sixteen, and even much earlier. Mar Auraham must have been consecrated before he was twenty. The only qualification for ordination is the ability to read old Syriac. The gaily-dressed and fully-armed young mountaineers whom I have seen as representing the diaconate look far more like bandits than deacons. In one large village there are at present fifty deacons and fifteen priests attached to one church!!

[Ill.u.s.tration: SYRIAN PRIEST AND WIFE.]

The _Kourbana_ cannot be celebrated without the a.s.sistance of a deacon. It is almost entirely confined to the great festivals and the feast of the patron saint of each village. After the making of the bread with the "holy leaven," and certain preliminaries by the clergy, the congregation comes into church, summoned by blows on the wooden sounding-board. The men stand in front, the women behind, all taking off their shoes and kissing the Cross. When the elements are to be received the priest advances to the door of the sanctuary, and a deacon, completely enveloped by the curtain before the entrance, holds the paten while the priest gives the bread to the men first, then to the women and to the little children, held up either by father or mother. The adults receive the cup in order from the deacon, who pa.s.ses it through a hole in a wall about six feet high, which runs parallel with the wall of the sanctuary, but at a little distance from it. On leaving the church after communion each person takes a piece of ordinary bread from a tray near the door. The priests and deacons communicate after the people when the sanctuary veil has again been drawn. The Eucharist is always celebrated at or before daybreak, except in the case of certain fast days and at funerals, when it is considered a devotional act to fast till mid-day. During parts of the communion service one deacon swings a censer and another "clangs" a cymbal.

The _Kourbana_ as celebrated in the Syrian villages reminds me both of the great communion gatherings of the Scottish Highlands and the Church service which, in my childhood, ushered in the revelry of the village wake or feast. The festivals which, as in England, fall on the feast of the patron saint of the village are the great gaieties of Syrian life, and even the Kurd cannot altogether overshadow them.

After the celebration of the _Kourbana_ at dawn, when the crowds are frequently so great that the church is filled by several successive congregations of communicants, the day is spent in visiting, and in every house fruit, sweetmeats, and tea are provided for all comers, and _arak_, if it be obtainable, forms a part of the entertainment.

Dances and games are kept up all day, and at its close many are drunk and disorderly. These are the occasions when fighting with the Moslems is apt to take place.

Men and women, of course, dance separately, and the women much in the background. The dancing, as I have seen it, is slow and stately. A number of either s.e.x join hands in a ring, and move round to slow music, at times letting go each other's hands for the purpose of gesticulation and waving of handkerchiefs. It is not unlike the national dance of the Bakhtiaris. The women not only keep in retirement on this but on all occasions. They never sit at meat with the men, but take their food afterwards in private--indeed, I strongly suspect that they eat the leavings of their superiors. It is not, however, only the women who occupy a subordinate position. Young men treat not only their fathers but their elder brothers with extreme respect; and when there are guests at table the sons do not sit down with the fathers, but wait on the guests, and take their own meals, like the women, afterwards.

The Syrians call Easter "The Great Feast" and Christmas "The Little Feast." At the former, eggs coloured red are lavishly bestowed. The festival of the Epiphany also receives great honour, but it is curious that a people who believe that they owe their Christianity to the Wise Men should not keep this feast so much in commemoration of them as of our Lord's baptism. So much does the latter view preponderate, that the Urmi Christians call it by a name which means "The New Waters."

Here in the mountains, however, it is called "The Brightness." During the night before the celebration of the _Kourbana_ on the Feast of the Epiphany it is customary to plunge into frozen pools! "One Lord, one faith, one baptism" they hold with us, and it is of great interest to recognise this fact in the midst of many superst.i.tions and even puerilities.

It is impossible by any language to convey an idea of the poverty and meanness, the blackness and acc.u.mulations of dust, the darkness and the gloom of the Syrian churches, of which this one is a favourable specimen, typifying, I fear, too truly the gross ignorance, indifference, and superst.i.tion in which bishops, priests, and people are buried. And yet they are "faithful unto death." My daily wonder is that people who know so little will for that little suffer the loss of all things. Apostasy would be immediate emanc.i.p.ation from terror and ruin, but it is nearly unknown. Their churches are like the catacombs.

Few things can be more pathetic than a congregation standing in the dark and dismal nave, kissing the common wooden cross, and pa.s.sing from hand to hand the kiss of peace, while the priest, in dress like their own, with girdle and stole of the poorest material, moves among the ancient Liturgies in front of the dusty sanctuary, leading the worshippers in prayers and chants which have come down from the earliest ages of Christianity; from the triumphant Church of the East to the persecuted remnant of to-day.

I. L. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] For the correction of my very imperfect investigations into the religious customs of the Syrians, I am indebted to a very careful and learned paper by Canon Maclean, _Some Account of the Customs of the Eastern Syrian Churches_, originally published in the _Guardian_, and now to be obtained at the office of "The Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the a.s.syrian Christians, 2 Deans Yard, Westminster."

[45] A singular legend is told regarding the origin of the sacred leaven and the sacred oil.

The Syrians say that as our Lord went up out of the Jordan after His baptism John the Baptist collected in a phial the baptismal water as it dropped from His sacred person, giving it before his death to St.

John the Evangelist. At the Last Supper (the legend runs) our Lord gave to John two loaves, putting it into his heart to preserve one. At the Cross, when this same apostle saw the "blood and water," he took the phial from his bosom and added the water from the pierced side to the water of baptism, dipping the loaf at the same time in the blood.

After the Day of Pentecost the disciples, before going forth to "disciple" the nations, ground John's blood-dyed loaf to powder, mixed it with flour and salt, divided it among themselves, and carried it forth to serve as leaven for ever for the bread of remembrance. In like manner they took of the mingled water of the phial, and mixing it with oil of unction, divided it, and preserved it for the perpetual sanctification of the waters of baptism.

[46] A portion of one of the latter follows:--

_The newly dead._--"Hail, my brethren and friends who sleep. Open the door that I may enter in and see your ranks."

_Those in Hades._--"Come, enter and see how many giants are sleeping here, and have been made dust and rust and worms in the bosom of Sheol. Come, enter and see, O child of death, the race of Adam: see and gaze where thy kind dwells. Come, enter and see the abundance of the bones and their commingling. The bone of the king and the bone of the servant are not separated. Come, enter and see the great corruption we are dwelling in."

_The mourners._--"Wait for the Lord, who will come and raise you by His right hand."

Translations of the Liturgies are to be found in Dr. Badger's valuable book, _The Nestorians and their Rituals_.

LETTER XXIX (_Continued_)

Who is or is not in this house it is hard to say. Mirza tells me that there are 115 guests to-day! Among them are a number of Tyari men, whose wild looks, combined with the splendour of their dress and arms, are a great interest. Their chief man has invited me to visit their valley, and they say if I will go to them they will give me "a fine suit of clothes." I need it much, as doubtless they have observed!

Their jackets are one ma.s.s of gold embroidery (worked by Jews), their shirts, with hanging sleeves, are striped satin; their trousers, of sailor cut, are silk, made from the coc.o.o.ns of their own silkworms, woven with broad crimson stripes on a white ground, on which is a zigzag pattern; and their handsome jack-boots are of crimson leather.

With their white or red peaked felt hats and twisted silk _pagris_, their rich girdles, jewelled daggers, and inlaid pistols, they are very imposing. Female dress is very simple.

These Tyari men come from one of the wildest and most inaccessible valleys of Central Kurdistan, and belong to those Ashirets or tribal Syrians who, in their deep and narrow rifts, are practically unconquered by the Turks and unmolested by the Kurds, and maintain a fierce semi-independence under their _maleks_ (lit. kings) or chiefs.

They are wild and lawless mountaineers, paying taxes only when it suits them; brave, hardy, and warlike, preserving their freedom by the sword; fierce, quarrelsome among themselves, and having little in common with the _rayahs_ or subject Syrians of the plains except their tenacious clinging to their ancient Church, with its Liturgies and rites, and their homage to our Lord Jesus as divine. They and their priests, many of whom cannot even read, are sunk in the grossest ignorance. They love revenge, are careless of human life, and are wilder and more savage than their nominal masters. It is among these people, who purchase their freedom at the cost of absolute isolation, that Mr. Browne is going to spend the coming winter, in the hope of instructing their priests and deacons, to whom at present guns are more than ordinances. He has been among them already, and has won their good-will.

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

These Ashirets, of whom the Tyari guests are specimens, are quite unlike the Syrian lowlanders, not only in character but in costume and habits. As they have naturalised numbers of Kurdish words in their speech, so their dress, with its colour, rich materials and embroideries, and lavish display of decorated and costly arms, is almost altogether Kurdish. If report speaks truly their fierce tribal feuds and readiness with the dagger are Kurdish also. Their country is the country of the hunted. Its mountains rise nearly perpendicularly to alt.i.tudes of over 12,000 feet, and the valleys, such as Tyari, Tkhoma, Baz, Diz, and Jelu, are mere slits or gashes, through which furious tributaries of the greater Zab take their impetuous course.

Above these streams the tribes have built up minute fields by raising the lower sides on stone walls a few feet above the rivers, the upper being the steep hill slope. So small are these plots that it is said that the harvest of some of them would only fill a man's cap!

Occasionally heavy floods sweep away the rice and millet cultivation of a whole district, and the mountaineers are compelled to depend for their food entirely on the produce of their flocks.

If they could sustain themselves and their animals altogether within their own fastnesses, they would be secure from molestation either from Kurds or Turks, for the only possible entrances to their valleys are so narrow and ruggedly steep as scarcely to be accessible for a pack-horse, and ten men could keep any number at bay. But unfortunately the scanty herbage of their mountains is soon exhausted, and they have to feed their flocks outside their natural fortifications, where the sheep are constantly being carried off by the Kurds, who murder the shepherds and women. The mountaineers are quick to revenge themselves; they carry off Kurdish sheep, and savage warfare and a life under arms are the normal condition of the Ashirets. The worst of it is, that they are disunited among themselves, and fight and spoil each other as much as they fight the Kurds, even at times taking part with them against their Christian brethren. Travellers are scarcely safer from robbery among them than among the Kurds, but fierce, savage, and quarrelsome as they are, and independent both of Turk and Kurd, they render a sort of obedience to Mar Shimun, who rules them, through their _maleks_. There is not only enmity between tribe and tribe, but between village and village, and, as in parts of the Bakhtiari country, guides refuse to conduct travellers beyond certain spots, declaring that "blood" bars their farther progress.

Besides the Kurdish and Ashiret inhabitants of these mountains of Kurdistan there are Yezidis, usually called devil-worshippers, and a few Jews and Armenians. Probably there is not a wilder population on the face of the earth, or one of whose ideas, real beliefs, and ways Europeans are so ignorant. What, for instance, do we really know of the beliefs which underlie the religious customs of the Kizilbashes and Yezidis, and of the Christianity to which these semi-savage Ashirets are so pa.s.sionately attached?

If I were to leave Mr. Browne unnoticed I should ignore the most remarkable character in Kochanes. Clothed partly as a Syrian and living altogether like one,--at this time speaking Syriac more readily than English; limited to this narrow alp and to the narrower exile of the Tyari valley; self-exiled from civilised society; snowed up for many months of the year; his communications even with Van and Urmi irregular and precarious; a priest without an altar; a teacher without pupils; a hermit without privacy; his time at the disposal of every one who cares to waste it; hara.s.sed by Turkish officialism and obstruction, and prohibited by the Porte from any active "mission work," it yet would be hard to find a sunnier, more loving, and more buoyant spirit. He has lived among these people for nearly four years as one of themselves, making their interests completely his own, suffering keenly in their persecutions and losses, and entering warmly even into their most trivial concerns, till he has become in fact a Syrian among Syrians. He sits on the floor in native fashion; his primitive and unpalatable food, served in copper bowls from the Patriarch's kitchen, is eaten with his fingers; he is nearly without possessions, he sleeps on the floor "among the spiders" without a mattress, he lives in a hovel up a steep ladder in a sort of tower out of repair--Syrian customs and etiquette have become second nature to him.

He has no "mission work" to report. He is himself the mission and the work. The hostility of the Turkish Government and the insecurity of the country prevent him from opening schools, he cannot even a.s.semble a few boys and teach them their letters; he got a bit of land and the stones for erecting a cottage, but is not allowed to build; his plans are all frustrated by bigotry on one side and timidity on the other, and he is even prevented from preaching by the blind conservatism of the patriarchal court. It has not been the custom to have preaching at Kochanes. "Sermons were dangerous things that promoted heresy," the Patriarch said. But Mr. Browne is far from being idle. People come to him from the villages and surrounding country for advice, and often take it. They confide all their concerns to him, he acts effectively the part of a peacemaker in their quarrels, he is trusted even by the semi-savage chiefs and priests of the mountain tribes, and his medical skill, which is at the service of all, is largely resorted to at all hours of the day. Silenced from preaching and prohibited from teaching, far better than a sermon is his own cheery life of unconscious self-sacrifice, truth, purity, and devotion. This example the people can understand, though they cannot see why an Englishman should voluntarily take to such a life as he leads. His power lies in his singular love for them, and in his almost complete absorption in their lives and interests.

His room is most amusing. It is little better than a Kerry hovel. He uses neither chair, table, nor bed; the uneven earthen floor is covered with such a litter of rubbish as is to be seen at the back of a "rag and bone" shop, dusty medicine bottles predominating. There is a general dismemberment of everything that once was serviceable. The occupant of the room is absolutely unconscious of its demerits, and my e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of dismay are received with hearty laughter.[47]

Humbly following his example, I have become absorbed in the interests of the inhabitants of Kochanes, and would willingly stay here for some weeks longer if it were not for the risk of being blocked in by snow on the Armenian highlands. The cattle plague is very severe, in addition to other misfortunes. The village has already lost 135 of its herd, and I seldom go out without seeing men dragging carca.s.ses to be thrown over the cliff. The people believe that the men will die next year.

My future journey and its safety are much discussed. If I had had any idea of the "disturbed" state of the region that I have yet to pa.s.s through I should never have entered Turkey, but now I have resolved to go _via_ Bitlis to Erzerum. If the road is as dangerous as it is said to be, and if the rumours regarding the state of the Christians turn out to have much truth in them, the testimony of a neutral observer may be useful and helpful. At all events the risk is worth running. My great difficulty is that _Qasha_ ---- must leave me here to return to Urmi with Mar Gauriel's escort, and that I have no competent man with me in case of difficulty. Mirza not only does not speak Turkish, but has no "backbone," and Johannes, besides having the disadvantage of being an Armenian, is really half a savage, as well as disobedient, bad-tempered, reckless, and quarrelsome. He fought with a Turk at Yekmala, and got me into trouble, and one of his first misdemeanours here was to shoot the church doves, which are regarded as sacred, thereby giving great offence to the Patriarch.

It is most difficult to get away. The Julamerik muleteers are afraid of being robbed on the route I wish to take, and none of them but a young Kurd will undertake my loads, and though he arrived last night the _zaptiehs_ I applied for have failed me. They were to have been here by daylight this morning, and the loads were ready, but nine o'clock came without their appearance. I wanted to take armed men from Kochanes, but Mar Shimun said that twelve Christians would be no protection against the Kurds, and that I must not go without a Government escort, so things were unpacked. Late this evening, and after another messenger had been sent to Julamerik, one _zaptieh_ arrived with a message that they could not spare more, and the people protest against my leaving with such insufficient protection.

Another difficulty is the want of money. Owing to the "boom" in silver in Persia, and the semi-panic which prevailed, the utmost efforts of my friends in Urmi could only obtain 10 for a 20 note, and this only in silver _mejidiehs_, a Turkish coin worth about 4s. As no money is current in the villages change cannot be procured, and on sending to Julamerik for small coins, only a very limited quant.i.ty could be obtained--Russian _kopecks_ locally current at half their value, Turkish coins the size of a crown piece, but so debased that they are only worth 1s., a number of pieces of base metal the size of sixpences, and "groats" and copper coins, miserably thin. It took me an hour, even with Mr. Browne's help, to count 8s. in this truly execrable money. The Julamerik _shroff_ sent word that the English sovereign is selling at 16s. only.

So, owing to these delays, I have had another day here, with its usual routine of drinking coffee in houses, inviting women to tea in my room, receiving mountaineers and others who come in at all hours and kiss my hand, and smoke their long pipes on my floor, and another opportunity of walking in the glory of the sunset, when the mountain barriers of beautiful Kochanes glow with a colouring which suggests thoughts of "the land which is very far off." Good Mr. Browne makes himself one with the people, and is most anxious for me to identify everybody, and say the right thing to everybody--no easy task, and as I hope and fear that this is my last evening, I have tried to "leave a pleasant impression" by spending it in the great gathering-place, called pre-eminently the "house"! Mirza says that the people talk of nothing but "guns, Kurds, the harvest, and the local news," but the conversation to-night had a wider range, and was often very amusing, taking a sombre turn only when the risks of my journey were discussed, and the possible misconduct of my Kurdish _katirgi_. Ishai, who describes him as "a very tame man" (not at all my impression of him), has told him that "if he gives any trouble the House of Mar Shimun will never forget it."

Nothing could exceed the picturesqueness of the "house" to-night.

There were doubtless fifty people there, but the lamps, which look as old as the relentless sweep of Taimurlane, hanging high on the blackened pillars, only lighted up the central group, consisting of Sulti and Marta in the highest place, the English priest in his turban and ca.s.sock, the grotesque visage of Shlimon the Jester, and the beautiful face and figure and splendid dress of Ishai the Patriarch's brother, as proud as proud can be, but sitting among the retainers of his ancient house playing on a musical instrument, the hereditary familiarity of serf and lord blending with such expressions of respect as "your foot is on my eyes," and the favourite a.s.severation, "by the Head of Mar Shimun." The blackness in which the lofty roof was lost, the big ovens with their busy groups, the rows of men, half-seen in the dimness, lounging on natural ledges of rock, and the uphill floor with its uncouth plenishings, made up such a picture as the feudalism of our own middle ages might have presented.

My letter[48] from the Turkish Amba.s.sador at Tihran was sent to Julamerik this afternoon, and has produced another _zaptieh_, and an apology!

I. L. B.