Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan Volume I Part 6

The region is steeped in history. The wretched village of Saripul is the Calah of a.s.shur and the Halah of the Israelitish captivity,[13]

and gave to the surrounding country the name of Chalonitis, which we have on our old maps. A metropolitan See in the fifth century A.D., soon after the inst.i.tution of the Nestorian hierarchy, it was called Calah, Halah, and Holwan. If the Diyalah be the ancient Gyndes, noteworthy for the singular delay of Cyrus on his march to Babylon, and Saripul the ancient Holwan, and if in addition to the numerous Chaldaean and Sasanian remains there are relics of Semiramis and of the fire-temples of the Magi, the crowd of historic a.s.sociations is almost too much for one day, and I will return to the insignificant details of the journey.

We left at nine, crossed the Holwan by a four-arched brick bridge, and in falling snow and deep mud rode over fairly level ground till we came to an abrupt range of limestone rock, with a natural rift, across which the foundations of a wall still remain. The clouds were rolling low, and the snow was driving wildly, so as to make it impossible to see the sculptured tablet described by Rawlinson and Layard, on which a high-priest of the Magi is represented, with one hand raised in benediction, and the other grasping a scroll, the dress being the pontifical robe worn by the Zoroastrian priests, with a square cap, pointed in front, and lappets covering the mouth. Above this is a tomb with an ornamented entrance.

We were now among a very strange and mysterious people, of whose ancestry and actual beliefs very little is known. They are Ali-Ilahis, but Europeans often speak of them as "Davidites," from their special veneration for King David. This tomb in the rift is called Dukkani-Daoud, or David's shop, and the people believe that he still dwells there, and come on pilgrimages and to offer animals in sacrifice from all parts of Kurdistan. He is believed to work as a smith, and the _katirgis_ say that he makes suits of fine armour. A part of the tomb which is divided from the rest by a low part.i.tion is believed to be a reservoir containing the water which he uses to temper his metal. A great mound with some building in the centre, on the right of the road near this gorge, though properly it bears another name, is called by the people "David's Fort." Jewish traditions abound, specially concerning David, who is regarded by the tribes as their great tutelar prophet.

The Gur[=a]ns and Kalhurs, who are the nomadic inhabitants of this district, are of a very marked type of physiognomy, so Israelitish indeed that, taken along with certain traditions of their origin, their Jewish names, and their veneration for David, they have been put forward as claimants to the dignity of being the "lost tribes." The great Hebrew traveller of the twelfth century, to whom I have referred before, believed that the whole of the Ali-Ilahis were Jews, and writes of 100 synagogues in the Zagros mountains, and of 50,000 Jewish families in the neighbourhood.

As we shall be for some days among these people, I will abbreviate Sir H. Rawlinson's sketch of their tenets. He considers that Ali-Ilahism bears evident marks of Judaism, mixed up with Moslem, Christian, and Sabaean legends. The Ali-Ilahis believe in 1001 incarnations of the G.o.dhead in a series; among them Benjamin, Moses, Elias, David, Jesus Christ, Ali and Salman his tutor, the Imam Houssein and the Haft[=a]n (or seven bodies), the chief spiritual guides in the early ages of Islam, "and each, worshipped as a Deity, is an object of adoration in some locality of Kurdistan." The tomb of one of these, B[=a]b[=a]

Yadg[=a]r, is their holy place, and this was regarded as the dwelling of Elijah at the time when the Arabs invaded Persia. All these incarnations are regarded as of one and the same person. All that changes is the bodily form of the Divine manifestation. There are degrees in the perfection of the development, and the most perfect forms are Benjamin, David, and Ali.

Practically, however, the metaphysical speculations involved in this creed of successive incarnations are unknown, and the Imam Ali, the cousin of Mohammed, is the great object of worship. Though professing Mohammedanism the Ali-Ilahis are held in great horror by "believers,"

and those of this region lie under the stigma of practising unholy rites as a part of their religion, and have received the name of "Chiragh Sonderan," the putters-out of lights.[14] This accusation, Sir A. H. Layard observes, may be only a calumny invented, like many another, to justify persecution.

Pa.s.sing through the rift in the Dukkani-Daoud range which has led to this digression, we entered an ascending valley between the range through which we had pa.s.sed and some wild mountains covered with snow, which were then actively engaged in brewing a storm. Farther on there was irrigation and cultivation, and then the wretched village of Pai Tak, and the ruins of a bridge. There, the people told us, we must halt, as the caravanserai at the next place was already full, and we plunged about in the snow and mud looking for a hovel in which to take shelter, but decided to risk going on, and shortly began the ascent of the remarkable pa.s.s known as "The Gates of Zagros," on the ancient highway between Babylonia and Media, by which, in a few hours, the mountain barrier of Zagros is crossed, and the plain of Kirrind, a part of the great Iranian plateau, is reached.

This great road, which zigzags steeply up the pa.s.s, is partly composed of smoothed boulders and partly of natural rock, somewhat dressed, and much worn by the continual pa.s.sage of shod animals. It is said to be much like a torrent bed, but the snow was lying heavily upon it, filling up its inequalities. Dwarf oaks, hawthorn, ash, and other scrub find root-hold in every crevice. All that may be ugly was draped in pure white, and looking back from the surrounding glitter, the view of low ranges lying in indigo gloom was very striking. On the ascent there is a remarkable arch of great blocks of white marble, with a vaulted recess, called the "Tak-i-Girreh," "the arch holding the road," which gives the popular name of Gardan-i-Tak-i-Girreh (the pa.s.s of Tak-i-Girreh) to the ascent, though the geographers call it Akabah-i-Holwan (the defile of Holwan).

After the deep mud of the earlier part of the march it was a pleasure to ride through pure, deep, powdery snow, and to find the dirt of the village of Myan Tak, a Kurdish hamlet situated on a mountain torrent among steep hills and small trees, covered with this radiant mantle.

The elevation of the pa.s.s is 4630 feet, but Myan Tak is at a lower alt.i.tude an hour farther on.

The small and ruinous caravanserai was really full of caravans detained by the snowstorm, and we lodged in a Kurdish house, typical of the style of architecture common among the settled tribes. Within a wide doorway without a door, high enough for a loaded mule to enter, is a very large room, with a low, flat mud roof, supported on three rows of misshapen trunks of trees, with their branches cut off about a foot from the stem, all black and shiny with smoke. Mud and rubble platforms, two feet high, run along one side and one end, and on the end one there is a clay, beehive-shaped fireplace, but no chimney.

Under this platform the many fowls are shut in at night by a stone at the hole by which they enter. Within this room is a perfectly dark stable of great size. Certainly forty mules, besides a.s.ses and oxen, were lodged in it, and the overflow shared the living-room with a number of Kurds, _katirgis_, servants, dogs, soldiers, and Europeans.

The furniture consisted of guns and swords hanging on the walls.

The owner is an old Kurd with some handsome sons with ruddy complexions and auburn hair. The big house is the patriarchal roof, where the patriarch, his sons, their wives and children, and their animals, dwell together. The women, however, had all been got rid of somehow. The old Kurd made a great fire on the dais, wood being plentiful, and crouched over it. My bed was pitched near it, and enclosed by some reed screens. With chairs and a table, with routes, maps, writing materials, and a good lantern upon it, an excellent dinner of soup and a leg of mutton, cooked at a bonfire in the middle of the floor, and the sight of all the servants and _katirgis_ lying round it, warm and comfortable, and the knowledge that we were above the mud, the clouds of blinding smoke which were the only drawback scarcely affected the cheerfulness and comfort of the blazing, unstinted fire. The doorway gave not only ample ventilation but a brilliant view of snow, and of myriads of frosty stars.

It was infinitely picturesque, with the fitful firelight falling on the uncouth avenues of blackened tree-stumps, on big dogs, on mild-eyed ox faces and long a.s.s ears, on turbaned Indian heads, and on a confused crowd of Turks, Kurds, and Persians, some cooking, some sleeping, some smoking, while from the black depth beyond a startling bray of an a.s.s or the abortive shriek of a mule occasionally proceeded, or a stray mule created a commotion by rushing in from the snow outside.

I slept comfortably, till I was awakened early by various country sounds--the braying of an a.s.s into my ear (for I was within a few inches of the stable), the crowing of c.o.c.ks, and some hens picking up crumbs upon my bed. The mules were loaded in the living-room. The mercury was only 26 at 9 A.M., and under cloudless sunshine the powdery snow glittered and crackled. There were difficulties ahead, we heard. The road heavily blocked with snow was only just open, and the Persian post, which should have pa.s.sed forty-eight hours before, had not been heard of, showing that the snow is very deep farther on.

It was beautiful, that uplifted, silent world of snow and mountains, on whose skirts for some miles grew small apple and pear trees, oak, ash, and hawthorn, each twig a coral spray. In the deepest depression, among great rocks, now ma.s.ses of snow, tumbles a now partially arrested stream, gleaming with icicles, one of the head-waters of the Holwan. After getting through this picturesque forest of scrub, the road emerges on the plateau of the Kirrind valley, the greatest alt.i.tude of which is about 5800 feet. It is said to be irrigated and fertile. It is now, as I describe it, a wide valley, without a tree or bush, a rolling plain of snow from two to three feet deep, marked only by lines made by birds' feet and the beating of the tips of birds'

wings, the track across it a corrugated trench, wide enough for one mule, the sun brilliant, the sky blue, the surface of the snow flashing light from millions of crystals with a glitter not to be borne, all dazzling, "glistering," silent,--a white world and a blue heaven, with a sun "shining in his strength,"--light without heat.

It has been a tremendous day's march, only fourteen miles in seven and a half hours of severe toil! The _katirgis_ asked us to keep together in case of difficulties with caravans. Difficulties indeed! A mild term! I was nearly smashed. I little knew what meeting a caravan in these circ.u.mstances meant till we met the first sixty animals, each laden with two heavy packing-cases. The question arises who is to give way, and who is to drive his heavily-laden beasts off the track, to struggle, flounder, and fall in three feet of snow, not to get up again without being unloaded, and even then with difficulty.

The rub came on a bank near a stream where there was a deep drift. I decided to give way, but nothing would induce my mule to face the snow. An orderly was in front and Hadji behind. Down the track came sixty animals, loaded with their great packing-cases. They could not and would not give way, and the two caravans came into collision.

There were mules struggling and falling, loads overturned, muleteers yelling and roaring, Hadji groaning "G.o.d help us!" my mule, a new one, a big strong animal, unused to a bit, plunging and kicking, in the middle of a "free fight." I was struck hard on my ankle by a packing-case and nearly knocked off. Still, down they came, in apparently endless hordes; my mule plunged her bridle off, and kicked most violently; there were yells all round. My snow spectacles were knocked off and lost, then came another smash, in which I thought a bone was broken. Fearing that I should be laid up with a broken limb for weeks in some horrible caravanserai, and really desperate with the danger and confusion, I called over and over again to Hadji to get off and pull my mule into the snow or I should be killed! He did not stir, but sat dazed on his pack moaning "G.o.d help us!" till he, the mule, and the load were rolled over in the drift. The orderly contrived to get the bridle on my mule, and to back his own in front of me, and as each irrepressible animal rolled down the bank he gave its load a push, which, nicely balanced as these loads are, made it swerve, and saved me from further damage. Hadji had rolled off four times previously, and the last I saw of him at that time and of the caravan was a man, five mules, and their loads buried in the snow. The personal results to me of what is euphemistically called a "difficulty," are my blue gla.s.ses gone, a number of bruises, a badly-torn riding-skirt, and a bad cut, which bled profusely, and then the blood froze.

A number of caravans snowed up for several days were _en route_, and there were many similar encounters, and donkeys and mules falling with their loads and rolling into the deep snow, and _katirgis_ coming to blows over the right-of-way. If a donkey is forced off the track it goes down at once. I unfortunately caught my foot in the pack of one and rolled it over, and as it disappeared in the snow its pack and saddle fell over its head and displayed the naked vertebrae of its poor back.

This Kirrind valley must be fully twenty miles long by from two to five broad, but there was only one village inhabited and two in ruins.

As we floundered along in the snow with our jaded animals, two well-armed men on fine horses met and joined us, sent by the _Agha_ Abdul Rahim, son of the British agent at Kirmanshah, whose guests we are to be. Following them was a _taktrawan_ or litter for me, a wooden box with two side doors, four feet high, six feet long, and three feet wide. At each end are long shafts, and between each pair of shafts a superb mule, and each mule has a man to lead him. I could never use such a thing except in case of a broken limb, but I am very grateful to Abdul Rahim for sending it fifty-six miles.

The temperature fell with the sun; the snowy hills took on every shade of rose and pink, and in a universal blush of tender colouring we reached Kirrind. All of a sudden the colour died out, the rose-flushed sky changed to blue-gray, and pallid wastes of unbroken snow stretching into the gray distance made a glorious winter landscape.

We are now fairly in for the rigours of a Persian winter.

Kirrind, the capital of the Kirrind Kurds, is either grotesquely or picturesquely situated in and around a narrow gap in a range of lofty hills, through which the Ab-i-Kirrind rushes, after rising in a spring immediately behind. The gap suggests the word jaws, and in these open jaws rise one above another flat-roofed houses straggling down upon the plain among vineyards, poplars, willows, fruit-trees, and immense walnuts and gardens. There are said to be 900 houses, but many of them are ruinous. The stream which bursts from the hills is divided into innumerable streamlets, which must clothe these gardens with beauty.

A _far[=a]sh_ riding on ahead had engaged a house, so we avoided the horrors of the immense caravanserai, crammed to-night with storm-bound caravans. The house is rough, but has three adjoining rooms, and the servants are comfortable. A fire, with its usual accompaniment of stinging smoke, fails to raise the temperature of my room to the freezing-point, yet it is quite possible to be comfortable and employ oneself.

_Mahidasht, Jan. 24._--My room at Kirrind was very cold. The ink froze. The mercury fell to 2 below zero in it, and outside in the sun was only 14 at 8.30. There was a great Babel at starting. Some men had sold four chickens for the high price of 2s. each, the current price being 6d., and had robbed the servants of two, and they took one of the mules, which was sent after us by an official. Slipping, floundering, and falling in the deep snow, and getting entangled among caravans, we rode all day over rolling levels. The distance seemed interminable over the glittering plains, and the pain and stiffness produced by the intense cold were hard to bear, and it was not possible to change the cramped position by walking. The mercury fell to 4, as with tired animals we toiled up the slope on which Harunabad stands.

A very large caravanserai and a village of sixty houses occupy the site of a town built by Harun-al-Raschid on the upper waters of the Kerkhah. It has the reputation of being one of the coldest places in Persia, so cold that its Ilyat inhabitants desert it in winter, leaving two or three men who make a business of supplying caravans.

Usually people come out of the villages in numbers as we arrive, but we pa.s.sed group after group of ruinous hovels without seeing a creature. We obtained awfully cold rooms at a great height above a bazar, now deserted. I write "awfully" advisedly, for the mercury in them at sunset was 2 below zero, the floors were plaster, slippery with frozen moisture, the walls were partly wood, with great apertures between the planks; where they were mud the blistered plaster was fringed with icicles. Later the mercury sank to 12, and before morning to 16 below zero, and the hot water froze in my basin before I could use it!

We were to have started at eight, as there was no possible way of dividing the nine hours' march, but when the time came the _katirgis_ said it was too cold to rope the loads, a little later that we could only get half-way, and later that there was no accommodation for mules half-way and that we must go the whole way! At nine the mercury was at 4 below zero, and the slipperiness was fearful. The poor animals could scarcely keep on their feet. We have crossed two high pa.s.ses, Nal Shikan (the Horse-Shoe breaking pa.s.s) and the Charzabar Pa.s.s, in tremendous snow, riding nine hours, only dismounting to walk down one hill. At the half-way hamlet I decided to go on, having still a lingering prejudice against sharing a den with a quant.i.ty of human beings, mules, a.s.ses, poultry, and dogs.

On one long ascent we encountered a "blizzard," when the mercury was only 3 above zero. It was awful. The men covered their heads with their _abbas_ and turned their backs to the wind. I got my heavy mackintosh over everything, but in taking off three pairs of gloves for one minute to b.u.t.ton it the pain of my hand was literally excruciating. At the summit the snow was four feet deep, and a number of mules were down, but after getting over the crest of the Nal Shikan Pa.s.s and into the Zobeideh valley it became better. But after every descent there was another ascent to face till we reached the pa.s.s above the Cheshmeh-i-Charzabar torrent, in a picturesque glen, with a village and some primitive flour mills.

Below this height lies the vast and fertile plain of Mahidasht, one expanse of snow, broken by mud villages looking like brown islands, and the truncated cone of Goree, a seat of the ancient fire-worship.

In the centre of the plain is an immense caravanserai with some houses about it. When this came into sight it was only five miles off, but we were nearly three hours in reaching it! The view was wonderful. Every speck on the vast plain was seen distinctly; then came a heavy snow blink, above which hovered ghosts of snow mountains rising into a pale green sky, a dead and lonely wilderness, looking as if all things which lived and moved had long ago vanished from it. Those hours after first sighting the village were very severe. It seemed to grow no nearer. I was half-dead with the journey of twenty-two miles at a slow foot's pace, and was aching and cramped from the intense cold, for as twilight fell the mercury sank to 3 below zero. The Indian servants, I believe, suffered more than I did, and some of the _katirgis_ even more than they.

At last by a pointed brick bridge we crossed the little river of Mahidasht, and rode into the house of the headman, who is a sort of steward of Abdul Rahim, our future host, the owner of many villages on this plain. The house is of the better cla.s.s of Kurdish houses, with a broad pa.s.sage, and a room on each side, at the end a great, low, dark room, half living-room, half stable, which accommodates to-night some of the mules, the muleteers, the servants, and the men of the family.

Beyond this again is a large stable, and below-ground, reached by a sloping tunnel, is the sheep-fold. One room has neither door nor window, mine has an outer and inner door, and a fire of live embers in a hole in the floor.

The family in vacating the room have left their goods behind,--two plank beds at one end heaped with carpets and felts, a sacking cradle hanging from the roof, two clay jars five feet high for storing grain, and in the _takchahs_, or recesses of the walls, _samovars_ or tea-urns, pots, metal vases, cartridge belts, and odds and ends. Two old guns, an old sword, and a coa.r.s.e coloured print of the Russian Imperial family are on the wall.

I was lifted from the mule to my bed, covered with all available wraps, a pot of hot embers put by the bed, my hands and feet rubbed, hot syrup coloured with tea produced in Russian gla.s.ses, and in two hours I was able to move. The caravan, which we thought could not get through the snow, came in three hours later, men and mules thoroughly knocked up, and not till nine could we get a scanty dinner. It has been a hard day all round. The _far[=a]shes_ in the kitchen are cursing the English sahibs, who will travel in the winter, wishing our fathers may be burned, etc., two of the muleteers have been howling with pain for the last two hours, and I went into the kitchen to see the poor fellows.

In a corner of the big room, among the rough trunks of trees which support the sooty roof, the muleteers were lying in a heap in their big-sleeved felt coats round a big fire, about another the servants were cooking their food, the _far[=a]shes_ were lying round another, and some of the house people about a fourth, and through smoke and flame a background of mules and wolf-like dogs was dimly seen, a gleam now and then falling into the dark stable beyond, where the jaded baggage animals were lying in heaps.

Mahidasht is said to be one of the finest and most fertile plains in Persia, seventy-two miles long by fifteen broad, and is irrigated throughout by a small stream swarming with turtles. Its population, scattered over it in small villages, is estimated--over-estimated probably--at 4000. At a height of 5050 feet the winters are severe.

The snow is nearly three feet deep already, and more is impending.

The mercury in my room fell to 5 below zero before midnight, but rose for a gray cloudy day. The men and animals were so done up that we could not start till nearly eleven. The march, though not more than sixteen miles, was severe, owing to the deep snow and cold wind. Five miles over the snowy billows of the Mahidasht plain, a long ascent, on which the strong north wind was scarcely bearable, a succession of steep and tiresome ridges, many "difficulties" in pa.s.sing caravans, and then a gradual descent down a long wide valley, opened upon the high plateau, on which Kirmanshah, one of the most important cities in Persia, is situated.

Trees, bare and gaunt, chiefly poplars, rising out of unsullied snow, for two hours before we reached it, denoted the whereabouts of the city, which after many disappointments bursts upon one suddenly. The view from the hill above the town was the most glorious snow view I ever saw. All around, rolled to a great height, smooth as the icing of a cake, hills, billowy like the swell of the Pacific after a storm--an ocean of snow; below them a plateau equally unsullied, on the east side of which rises the magnificently precipitous Besitun range, sublime in its wintry grandeur, while on the distant side of the plateau pink peaks raised by an atmospheric illusion to a colossal height hovered above the snow blink, and walled in the picture. Snow was in the air, snow clouds were darkening over the Besitun range; except for those pink peaks there were no atmospheric effects; the white was very pallid, and the gray was very black; no illusions were possible, the aspect was grim, desolate, and ominous, and even before we reached the foot of the descent the huge peaks and rock ma.s.ses of Besitun were blotted out by swirls of snow.

Kirmanshah, approached from the south-west, added no elements of picturesqueness to the effect. A ruinous wall much too large for the shrunken city it encloses, parts of it lying in the moat, some ruinous loopholed towers, lines of small domes denoting bazars below, a few good-looking houses rising above the insignificant ma.s.s, gardens, orchards, vineyards, and poplars stretching up the southerly hollow behind, and gardens, now under frozen water, to the north, made up a not very interesting contrast with the magnificence of nature.

We circled much of the ruinous wall on thin ice, turned in between high walls and up an alley c.u.mbered with snow, dismounted at a low door, were received by a number of servants, and were conducted through a frozen courtyard into a handsomely-carpeted room with divans beside a blazing fire, a table in the centre covered with apples, oranges, and sweetmeats, and the large Jubilee photograph of Queen Victoria hanging over the fireplace.

I. L. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Another interest, however, is its connection with many of the romantic legends still told of Khosroe Parviz and his beautiful queen, complicated with love stories concerning the sculptor Farhad, to whom the Persians attribute some of their most famous rock sculptures. One of the most romantic of these legends is that Farhad loved Shirin, and that Khosroe was aware of it, and promised to give her to him if he could execute the impossible task of bringing to the city the abundant waters of the mountains. Farhad set himself to the Herculean labour, and to the horror of the king nearly accomplished it, when Khosroe, dreading the advancing necessity of losing Shirin or being dishonoured, sent to inform him of her death. Being at the time on the top of a precipice, urging on the work of the aqueduct, the news filled him with such ungovernable despair that he threw himself down and was killed.

[12] The Pashalik of Zohab, now Persian territory, is fully described by Major Rawlinson in a most interesting paper in _The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_, vol. ix. part 1, p. 26.

[13] Gen. x. 11; 2 Kings xviii. 11; 1 Chron. v. 26.

[14] See Sir A. H. Layard's _Early Adventures_, vol. i. p. 217.