Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan Volume Ii Part 25

Kurdistan is scarcely a "geographical expression," and colloquially the word is used to cover the country inhabited by the Kurds. They are a mysterious people, having maintained themselves in their original seats and in a condition of semi-independence through all the changes which have pa.s.sed over Western Asia, though they do not exceed numerically two and a quarter millions of souls. Such as they were when they opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand they seem to be still. War and robbery are the business of Kurdish life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A HAKKIARI KURD.]

One great interest of this journey is that it lies through a country in which Kurds, Turks, and Armenians live alongside each other--the Kurds being of two cla.s.ses, the tribal, who are chiefly nomads, owning no law but the right of the strongest; and the non-tribal or settled, who, having been conquered by Turkey, are fairly orderly, and are peaceable except in their relations with the Christians. The strongholds of the tribal Kurds are in the wild mountains of Kurdistan, and especially in the Hakkiari country, which is sprinkled with their rude castles and forts. An incurable love of plunder, a singular apt.i.tude for religious fanaticism, a recklessness as to the spilling of blood, a universal rapacity, and a cruel brutality when their pa.s.sions are roused, are among their chief vices. The men are bold, sober, and devoted to their kinsmen and tribe; and the women are chaste, industrious, and maternal. Under a firm and equitable Government, a.s.serting vigorously and persistently the supremacy of law and the equal rights of race and creed, they would probably develop into excellent material.

The village Turk, as he is described by Europeans well acquainted with him and speaking his language, and as I have seen him on a long journey, is a manly, hospitable, hard-working, kindly, fairly honest fellow, domestic, cheerful, patriotic, kind to animals, usually a monogamist, and usually also attentive to his religious duties.

The Christians, who, in this part of Kurdistan, are all Armenians by race, live chiefly on the plains and in the lower folds of the hills, and are engaged in pastoral and agricultural pursuits. My letters have given a faithful representation of them as dwelling with their animals in dark semi-subterranean hovels. The men are industrious, thrifty, clannish, domestic, and not given to vices, except that of intoxication, when they have the means and opportunity, and the women are hardworking and chaste. Both s.e.xes are dirty, hardy, avaricious, and superst.i.tious, and ages of wrong have developed in them some of the usual faults of oppressed Oriental peoples. They cling desperately to their historic church, which is represented among the peasants by priests scarcely less ignorant than themselves. Their bishops const.i.tute their only aristocracy.

They are grossly ignorant, and of the world which lies outside the _sandjak_ in which they live they know nothing. The Sultan is to them a splendid myth, to whom they owe and are ready to pay a loyal allegiance. Government is represented to them by the tax-gatherer and his brutalities. Of justice, the most priceless product of good government, they know nothing but that it is a marketable commodity.

With the Armenian trading communities of the cities they have slender communication, and little except nationality and religion in common.

As a rule, they live in villages by themselves, which cl.u.s.ter round churches, more or less distinguishable from the surrounding hovels, but there are also mixed villages in which Turks and Armenians live side by side, and in these cases they get on fairly well together, though they instinctively dislike each other, and the Turk despises his neighbour both for his race and creed. The Armenians have not complained of being maltreated by the Turkish peasants, and had there been any cause for complaint it would certainly have reached my ears.

On this journey hundreds of stories have been told to me by priests of both the Old and Protestant Churches, headmen, and others, of robbery by demand, outrages on women, digging into houses, killing, collectively and individually, driving off sheep and cattle, etc., etc.[58]

On the whole, the same condition of alarm prevails among the Armenians as I witnessed previously among the Syrian _rayahs_. It is more than alarm, it is _abject terror_, and not without good reason. In plain English, general lawlessness prevails over much of this region.

Caravans are stopped and robbed, travelling is, for Armenians, absolutely unsafe, sheep and cattle are being driven off, and outrages, which it would be inexpedient to narrate, are being perpetrated. Nearly all the villages have been reduced to extreme poverty by the carrying off of their domestic animals, the pillage, and in some cases the burning, of their crops, and the demands made upon them at the sword's point for every article of value which they possess, while at the same time they are squeezed for the taxes which the Kurds have left them without the means of paying.

The repressive measures which have everywhere followed "the Erzerum troubles" of last June,--the seizure of arms, the unchecked ravages of the Kurds, the threats of the Kurdish Beys, who are boldly claiming the sanction of the Government for their outrages, the insecurity of the women, and a dread of yet worse to come,--have reduced these peasants to a pitiable state.

The invariable and reasonable complaint made by the Christians is, that though they are heavily taxed they have no protection from the Kurds, or any advantage from the law as administered in Kurdistan, and that taxes are demanded from them which the Kurds have left them without the means of paying. They complain that they are brutally beaten when they fail to produce money for the payment of the Government imposts, and they allege with great unanimity that it is common for the _zaptiehs_ to tie their hands behind them, to plaster their faces with fresh cow-dung, and throw pails of cold water at their eyes, tie them to the posts of their houses and flog them severely. In the village of ----, which has been swept bare by the Kurds, the people a.s.serted that the _zaptiehs_ had tied twenty defaulters together, and had driven them round and round barefooted over the thistles of the thres.h.i.+ng-floor, flogging them with their heavy whips. My _zaptiehs_ complain of the necessity they are under of beating the people. They say (and I think correctly) that they can never know whether a man has a h.o.a.rd of buried money or not without beating him. They tell me also that they know that half the peasants have nothing to pay their taxes with, but that unless they beat them to "get what they can out of them" they would be punished themselves for neglect of duty.

On the plains to the west and north-west of the lake of Van, where the deep, almost subsoil, ploughing and carefully-constructed irrigation channels testify to the industry of a thrifty population, great depredations are even now being committed, and though later the intense cold and tremendous depths of snow of the Armenian highlands will proclaim the "Truce of G.o.d," the Kurds are still on the alert.

Nor are their outrages confined to small localities, neither are they the result of "peculiar local circ.u.mstances," but from the Persian frontier near Urmi, along a more or less travelled road of several hundred miles, there is, generally speaking, no security for life, traffic, or property, and I hear on good authority that on the other side of Erzerum, even up to the Russian frontier, things are if possible worse.

I have myself seen enough to convince me that in the main the statements of the people represent accurately enough the present reign of terror in Armenia, and that a state of matters nearly approaching anarchy is now existing in the _vilayet_ of Erzerum. There is no security at all for the lives and property of Christians, law is being violated daily, and almost with perfect impunity, and peaceable and industrious subjects of the Porte, taxed to an extent which should secure them complete protection, are plundered without redress. Their feeble complaints are ignored, or are treated as evidence of "insurrectionary tendencies," and even their lives are at the mercy of the increased audacity and aroused fanaticism of the Kurds, and this not in nearly inaccessible and far-off mountain valleys, but on the broad plains of Armenia, with telegraph wires above and pa.s.sable roads below, and with a Governor-General and the Fourth Army Corps, numbering 20,000 seasoned troops, within easy distance!

I have every reason to believe that in the long winter evenings which I have spent in these sociable _odahs_, the peasants have talked to me freely and frankly. There are no reasons why it should be otherwise, for my _zaptiehs_ are seldom present, Moussa is looking after his horses in distant recesses, quite out of hearing, and my servants are Christians. If the people speak frankly, I am compelled to believe that the Armenian peasant is as dest.i.tute of political aspirations as he is ignorant of political grievances; that if he were secured from the ravages of Moslem marauders he would be as contented as he is loyal and industrious; and that his one desire is "protection from the Kurds" and from the rapacity of minor officials, with security for his life and property. Not on a single occasion have I heard a wish expressed for political or administrative reform, or for autonomy. The Armenian peasants are "of the earth, earthy," and the unmolested enjoyment of material good is their idea of an earthly Paradise.

With regard to the Kurds, they have been remorseless robbers for ages, and as their creed scarcely hesitates to give the appropriation of the goods of a _Kafir_ a place among the virtues, they prey upon the Syrian and Armenian peasants with clear consciences. To rob them by violence and "demand," month after month and year after year, till they have stripped them nearly bare, to cut their throats if they resist, to leave them for a while to retrieve their fortunes,--"_to let the sheep's wool grow_," as their phrase is,--and then to rob them again, is the simple story of the relations between Kurd and Christian. They are well armed with modern rifles and revolvers. I have rarely seen a Kurd with an old-fas.h.i.+oned weapon, and I have _never_ seen a Christian with a rifle, and their nearly useless long guns have lately been seized by the Government. The Kurds hate and despise the Turks, their nominal rulers; but the Islamic bond of brotherhood is stronger than the repulsion either of hatred or contempt, and the latent or undisguised sympathy of their co-religionists in official positions ensures them, for the most part, immunity for their crimes, for the new Code, under which the evidence of a Christian has become nominally admissible in a court of law, being in direct opposition to the teaching of the Koran, to the practice of centuries, to Kurdish fanaticism, and to the strong religious feelings and prejudices of those who administer justice, is practically, so far as the Christians are concerned, a dead letter.[59]

I am writing in an _odah_ in the village of Harta, after a wild mountain ride in wind, sleet, and snow. The very long marches on this journey have been too much for me, and I made a first and last attempt to travel in a _maffir_ or covered wooden pannier, but the suffering was so great that I was glad to remount my faithful woolly _Boy_. We had a regular snowstorm, in which nothing could be seen but the baggage horses struggling and falling, and occasional glimpses of caverned limestone cliffs and precipitous slopes, with a foamy torrent at a tremendous depth below. On emerging from the pa.s.s, Moussa, Suleiman, and I came at a good pace through the slush to this _odah_, and I arrived so cold that I was glad to have to rub my horse dry, and attend to him. Murphy describes him thus: "That's a strange horse of yours, ma'am; if one were to lie down among his legs he'd take no notice to hurt one. When he comes in he just fills hisself, then he lies down in the wettest place he can find, and goes to sleep. Then he wakes and shakes hisself, and hollers, he does, till he gets his grub"--an inelegant but forcible description of the excellences of a travelling horse. _Boy_ is truly a gentle pet; it afflicts me sorely to part with him. A few nights ago as I took some raisins to him in a dark recess of the stable, my light went out, and I slipped and fell among the legs of some animal. Not knowing whether it was a buffalo or a strange horse I did not dare to move, and said, "Is this you, my sweet _Boy_?" A low pleasant snuffle answered "yes," and I pulled myself up by the strong woolly legs, which have carried me so st.u.r.dily and bravely for several hundred miles.

The Christians appear not to have anything a.n.a.logous to our "family wors.h.i.+p," but are careful in their attendance at the daily prayers in church, to which they are summoned before dawn, either by loud rappings on their doors or the striking of a wooden gong or sounding-board. The churches differ very little. They usually have an attempt at an outer courtyard, the interior of the edifice is generally square, the roof is supported by two rows of poplar pillars, and the rough walls are concealed by coa.r.s.e pictures and dirty torn strips of printed cotton. Dirty mats or bits of carpets cover the floor, racks are provided for the shoes of the wors.h.i.+ppers, and if there is not a gallery a s.p.a.ce is railed off for the women. The prayers are mumbled by priests in dirty vestments, while the women knit and chatter. Candle-grease, dust, and dirt abound. There is such an air of indifference about priests and people that one asks what motive it is which impels them to leave their warm stable dwellings on these winter mornings to s.h.i.+ver in a dark and chilly church. They say, "We will tread the paths our fathers trod; they are quite good enough for us." Two nights ago, in an _odah_ full of men, the Kurdish _khanji_, at the canonical hour, fell down on his forehead at prayer in the midst of us, all daggers, pistols, and finery as he was. In which case is the wors.h.i.+p most ignorant, I wonder?

I. L. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[56] Akhlat was a place of immense importance in ancient days, and its history epitomises the vicissitudes of Armenia; Abulfeda, Bakani, Deguignes, Ritter, and Finlay in his _History of Greece_ are among the best-known authorities on its history, and Mr. Tozer in his work on _Turkish Armenia_, p. 318, etc., gives an interesting popular sketch of the way in which it was conquered and reconquered by Saracens, Greeks, Kurds, Turks, Kh.o.a.rasmians and Georgians, till eventually the Turks reconquered it from the Kurds. Its ancient Armenian name of Khelat is altogether unknown to its present inhabitants.

[57] Xenophon in his _Anabasis_ describes the Armenian dwellings of his day thus:--

"Their houses were underground, the entrance like the mouth of a well, but s.p.a.cious below; there were pa.s.sages dug into them for the cattle, but the people descended by ladders. In the houses were goats, sheep, cows, and fowls, with their young. All the cattle were kept in fodder within the walls." I have not seen the entrance by a well, but have understood that it still exists in certain exposed situations.

Xenophon mentions buried wine, and it is not unlikely that the deep clay-lined holes in which grain is stored in some of the villages are ancient cellars, anterior to the date when the Karduchi became Moslems and teetotallers.

[58] It was not possible to ascertain the accuracy of these narratives, and though many of them appeared to be established by a ma.s.s of concurrent and respectable testimony, I forbear presenting any of them to my readers, especially as the report presented to Parliament in January 1891 (_Turkey_, No. 1) not only gives, on British official authority, a ma.s.s of investigated facts, but states the case of the Armenian peasantry in language far stronger than any that I should have ventured to use.

[59] In a Minute by the late Mr. Clifford Lloyd (_Turkey_, No. 1, 1890-91, p. 80) the condition of the Christian peasant population of Kurdistan is summarised thus:--

"Their sufferings at present proceed from three distinct causes--

"1. The insecurity of their lives and properties, owing to the habitual ravages of the Kurds.

"2. The insecurity of their persons and the absence of all liberty of thought and action (except the exercise of public wors.h.i.+p).

"3. The unequal status held by the Christian as compared with the Mussulman in the eyes of the Government."

LETTER x.x.xIV

ERZERUM, _Dec. 1_.

I left Harta in a snowstorm without the caravan, and wherever the snow was well beaten got along at a good pace, pa.s.sing on the right the fortress of Ha.s.san-Kaleh, with several lines of fortifications and a town at its base, which, with the surrounding district, consumes, it is said, an amount of strong drink equal in value to its taxation. The adjacent Pasin Plain, watered by the Araxes, has suffered severely from the Kurds. A short time ago all its Christian villages were plundered, and _at least_ 20 horses, 31 a.s.ses, 2282 sheep, and 750 head of cattle, nearly the whole pastoral wealth of the people, were carried off by these marauders, while the Moslem villages were exempt from their attacks. After winding among uninteresting hills crowned with forts, along valleys in which military posts occur at frequent intervals, and making a long ascent, the minarets and grim fortifications of the unhappy town of Erzerum loomed through the snow-mist; the city itself lying on a hill slope above a very extensive plain at a height of over 6000 feet. It was a solemn scene.

The snow was deep and was still falling, the heavens were black, and swirls of mist driven by a strong wind blotted out at times the surrounding mountains. A dead calm followed, and snow clouds hung suspended over the city.

My first impression of Erzerum was of earthworks of immense size extending for miles, with dismounted guns upon them looking very black in the snow; of a deep ditch, and a lofty rampart pierced by a fine granite tunnel; of more earthworks, and of forts crowning all the heights directly above the city, and of many flags drooping on their staffs. Between the fortifications and the town there is a great deal of open ground sprinkled with rifle pits, powder magazines, and artillery, cavalry, and infantry barracks, very solidly built and neatly kept up. After pa.s.sing through cemeteries containing thousands of gravestones, we abruptly entered the princ.i.p.al street, wide and somewhat European-looking, in which are some of the Consulates and the Protestant Armenian church and schools. The houses in this street are very irregular, and most of them have projecting upper fronts.

I was received with the utmost kindness at the American Mission House, where it has seemed likely that I might be detained for the winter! I understood that when I reached Erzerum I should be able to drive to Trebizond in a _fourgon_, so I sent Murphy to Van on _Boy_, and thought with much satisfaction of the ease of the coming journey. Then I was ill, and afterwards found that the _fourgons_ were long rough waggons without springs, in which one must lie or sit on the top of the baggage, and that I should never be able to bear the jolting.

There was another heavy snowstorm, and winter set in so rigorously that it was decided that driving was out of the question, and that I must hire a horse. After the matter had been settled thus, Murphy and _Boy_, both in very bad case, were found in a low part of the town, and though Murphy a.s.serts that he encountered Kurds near Ha.s.san-Kaleh who robbed him of everything, it is not believed that he ever pa.s.sed through the city gate. He looks a pitiable object, and his much-frogged uniform, and the blanket, revolver, and other things that I had given him are all gone. In spite of his fatal failing, I have re-engaged him, and shall again ride my trusty pet. The Vali, ignoring my official letter, has insisted on a number of formalities being complied with, and though the acting-Consul has undertaken all the formal arrangements, the delays have been many and tiresome. There are two bugbears on the Trebizond road,--the Kop and Zigana mountains, which are liable to be blocked by snow.

As compared with Persian towns, Erzerum looks solid and handsome, and its uncovered bazars seem fairly busy. The through traffic between Trebizond and Tabriz, chiefly in British goods, is very heavy. The Custom House is in sight from my windows, and in one day I have counted as many as 700 laden camels pa.s.sing through it, besides horse and mule caravans. There are about 2000 Persians in the city, and the carrying trade is mainly in their hands. The present population is estimated at from 20,000 to 24,000. The Armenians are not very numerous, but their enterprise as traders gives them an importance out of proportion to their numbers. The Armenian cathedral, the "Pair of Minarets," the "Single Minaret," and the castle, which stands on a height in the middle of the city, and contains a small Saracenic chapel, are the chief "sights."

Nothing is talked about but "the troubles,"[60] and the European Consuls, who possess trustworthy information, confirm my impressions of the seriousness of the present lat.i.tude allowed to the Kurds. The Turkish Government has just taken a step which is regarded as full of hazard. Certain Kurdish Beys were summoned to Erzerum, nominally for the purpose of being reprimanded for their misdeeds; but they were allowed to enter the gates with a number of armed followers, and afterwards went to Erzingian, where, from the hands of Zeki Pacha, the Commander of the Fourth Army Corps, they received commissions as officers of irregulars. The Christians (but I hope erroneously) regard this step as a menace, and the Kurds appear to think that it gives them license to maraud.

These Beys, after receiving their commissions, went through the Christian quarter of the Erzingian bazars, making gestures as of cutting throats, and saying to the Christian merchants, "Your time has come now; hitherto we have not had the co-operation of the Government, but we have it now." It remains to be seen whether the Porte will succeed in bringing these men and their wild followers under the conditions of military discipline.

The excitement following upon the "troubles" last June has only partially subsided, and I learn from the Europeans that the state of suspicion, fear, distrust, and repression within the city has undergone little diminution. Every day brings fresh reports of robbery and outrage, and for murders of well-known Christians no arrests are being made.[61] Trade among the Armenians is suffering, for those merchants whose transactions are with Kurdish districts dare not collect their debts for fear of losing their lives. Arrests of Christians on frivolous and worthless pretexts are being made daily, Armenian houses are being searched continually, and individuals are being imprisoned for long terms of years for having books in their possession containing references to the past history of Armenia, and the Government is, or affects to be, in constant dread of an insurrectionary rising among the Christians. The accounts from the country districts are so very bad that one of the ablest and best-informed of the European Consuls, a very old resident in Asia Minor, remarked indignantly, "It's no longer a question of politics but of humanity."

One of the most interesting sights in Erzerum is the Sana.s.sarian College, founded and handsomely endowed by the liberality of an Armenian merchant. The fine buildings are of the best construction, and are admirably suited for educational purposes, and the equipments are of the latest and most complete description. The education and the moral and intellectual training are of a very high type, and the personal influence of the three directors, who were educated in Germany and England, altogether "makes for righteousness." The graduation course is nine years. The students, numbering 120, wear a uniform, and there is no distinction of cla.s.s among them. They are, almost without exception, manly, earnest, and studious, and are full of enthusiasm and _esprit de corps_. Much may be hoped for in the future from the admirable moral training and thorough education given in this college, which is one of the few bright spots in Armenia.

I have seen Erzerum under very favourable circ.u.mstances, for, since the last snowstorm, the weather has been magnificent, and everything that is untidy or unsightly has an unsullied covering. The winter sunsets reddening the white summits of the Deveh Boyun and other lofty ranges, and the absolute purity of the whiteness of the plain, between thirty and forty miles long and from ten to twenty broad, which lies below the city, exercise a witchery which the scorching heats of summer must utterly destroy.

I. L. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] The reader will recollect that the "Erzerum troubles" so frequently referred to consisted of riot and bloodshed following upon a search for arms which was made under the floors of the Armenian Cathedral and the Sana.s.sarian College, on the strength (it is said) of an anonymous telegram in June 1890. The lucid account given of this deplorable affair and of the subsequent inaction of the local Government by Her Britannic Majesty's Consul-General for Kurdistan, in the "White Book," to which allusion has been made, should be studied by all who are interested in the so-called "Armenian Question."

[61] In a despatch in the "White Book" (_Turkey_, No. 1, 1890-91) Mr.

Clifford Lloyd sums up the condition of things in Kurdistan thus: "In a country such as this is, lawlessness is to be expected; _but unfortunately in nearly every instance armed and ungoverned Kurds are the aggressors, and unarmed and unprotected Armenian Christians the victims_."