THE CRADLE OF MANKIND

LIFE IN EASTERN KURDISTAN

BY

THE REV. W. A. WIGRAM, D.D.

AUTHOR OF "THE HISTORY OF THE ASSYRIAN CHURCH"

AND

EDGAR T. A. WIGRAM

AUTHOR OF "NORTHERN SPAIN"

ILLUSTRATED FROM SKETCHES AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY

EDGAR T. A. WIGRAM

SECOND EDITION

LONDON

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

Published 1922 A.D.

Assyrian International News Agency
Books Online
www.aina.org

THE RIVER OF EDEN
(THE ZAB ENTERING THE TYARI GORGES).
The view downstream from the mouth of the Ori valley, a little above Tal. The distant snow peak is Ghara Dagh on the southern side of Tkhuma.

CONTENT

The truth is, that ye ken naething about our hill country, or Hielands as we ca' them. They're a kind of wild world by themselves, full of heights and howes, caverns, lochs, rivers and mountains, that it would tire the very deevil’s wings to flee to the tap of them. And the folk are clean another set frae the likes of buz , there’s nae bailie-courts among them--nae magistrate that dinna bear the sword in vain. Never another law hae they but the length of their dirks; the broad-sword’s pursuer, and the target is defender, and the stoutest head bears langest out.

SIR WALTER SCOTT (“Rob Roy”)

NOTE TO SECOND EDITION

THE first sixteen chapters of this book were given to the public in the spring_. of the year 1914. Since that date the country has acquired an additional interest for English­men, owing to the British acceptance of a” mandate” for its supervision, and also to-the- picturesque and heroic part played in the Great War by the” Assyrian” mountaineers.

While no attempt has"been made to tell the full tale of” England in lrak," it has been thought well to take the opportunity given by the appearance of a second edition, and to bring the story of the Assyrian nation up to the date of writing; and the facts which the two concluding chapters record have been collected and verified during a prolonged personal intercourse with the principal actors on the spot.

1922.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

IT requires at least four persons to compound a salad sauce, say the Spaniards. The requisite incompatibilities can never co-exist in one. A spendthrift should squander the oil, and a miser dole out the vinegar. A wise man should dispense the salt, and a madman should do the stirring.

Similarly, it has been stated that it takes two people at least to write a book of travel; a newcomer to give the first impressions and an old resident to reveal the true inwardness of things.

Though the quality of the ingredients must remain of more importance than the proportions, the authors of the present volume hope that at least the latter are correct. One of the writers has spent but three months in the country, the other has lived there for ten years. One was quite ignorant of the East; and spoke no word of any Oriental Language; the other had become so intimate with the tribesmen of his own locality; that they had even begun to tell him of their superstitions-the last secret that they ever disclose.

And the country itself possesses most intense and varied interest. It contains some of the grandest scenery; and some of the most venerable monuments in the world. It is the very fons et origo of our Indo-European ancestors. Its traditions connect it with the Garden of Eden, with Noah, and with Abraham. Its folk-lore preserves the old Nature-worship which originated in the brains of the Ape­man. Its history records the very dawn of civilization, and the rise and fall of the earliest of the great empires. The every-day life of its present inhabitants is to this hour the life of the Patriarchs, the life of Europe in the Dark Ages, the life of the Highlands of Scotland in the days of Stewart Kings.

It is not an accessible country, even when judged by half-civilized standards. It is visited on sufferance only, even by its nominal rulers themselves. Fortune has given to the authors the opportunity of travelling through it, and of residing in it, and they have ventured to set down in these chapters the impressions it has left upon their minds.

The opportunity of residence in this country, it may be stated, came to one of the authors through his membership of the "Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission." This Mission (which consists of five or six clergy of the Church of England) has been maintained in the district in question, by successive Archbishops, for a period of about twenty-five years. It exists at the request of the Patriarch and other authorities of the "Nestorian" or "Assyrian" Church, and it works with the object of educating the clergy and laity of that body, without disturbing them in their membership of their own ancient and interesting communion.

CHAPTER I

BEYOND THE PALE OF THE RAILWAY (ALEPPO AND URFA)

THE belated jinn who emerged out of Suleiman's Brass Bottle into twentieth-century London found there, amid much that was strange to him, some beings of his own kin. These were the railway locomotives, obviously Jann like himself, but yet more oppressively treated; bound by spells of appalling potency to labours more arduous and wearisome than Suleiman had ever conceived.

And truly his blunder was plausible: for if Jann be extinct nowadays (which one doubts after visiting Asia), then assuredly cylinders and boilers are charged with the might of the Jann. They are set to work regularly now, instead of rarely and spasmodically; and though they raise less dust and clamour their net output is considerably more. The slaves of the Lamp and the Ring, developed intense explosive energy, but their effective radius was limited. They could rear Aladdin's palace in a night, or transport him to Africa in a twinkling; but these more domesticated Titans are capable of transmogrifying whole communities, and advancing the clock of progress five hundred years at a span.

And now the modern Magrabis, the busy Western magicians, have let slip these formidable Efrits against the City of Al Raschid himself: and one fine morning his descendants will awake from the slumber of centuries to find themselves environed by a new heaven and a new earth.

The Baghdad railway has started. It has penetrated inland to Aleppo. “That great river, the river Euphrates," is bitted with its girders and caissons. One more stride will carry it to Mosul across a country so open and even that it needs but the bedding of the sleepers; and a journey which now takes a fortnight will be accomplished in a ten-hour run. What is now a mere stagnant backwater will thus be suddenly scoured out by one of the main channels of the world's commerce; and who can venture to calculate the changes which will follow? Western reform will not convert the East any more than Alexander's conquests converted it; but it may evolve unintentionally some new sort of Frankenstein's Man.

But meanwhile the East waits unconscious. It takes no thought for the morrow. The shadow of coming events is perceived indeed, but not understood. As it was in the days of Nod, so in most things, it still continues: and the traveller of this generation may still find east of Aleppo those manners and customs unaltered, which the next may find clean swept away. Thus it is possible that some interest may attach to a desultory description of life as it is for the moment still enjoyed, or endured, in those regions; and which better ordered communities may perhaps find rather bizarre.

Aleppo, the present railhead, is a large Oriental city, lying pooled in a shallow depression round the great castle which dominates its roofs. It is beginning to show signs of Westernization; and the quarter nearest the railway station is blossoming with boulevards and hotels. But it is the returning, and not the outgoing, traveller who will be most struck by these symptoms. The latter will only be consumed with wonder that such a crude and guileless imitation should be thought to pass muster as the real thing. Outwardly the place is being refurbished, and the new “Frank” houses flaunt themselves as bravely as their compeers around the Soko at Tangier; but within they are full of all Oriental uncleanness and discomfort, for the Turk is quite satisfied as soon as he gets veneered.

The major part of the town consists of narrow crooked and ill-paved streets, overhung on each side by toppling wooden oriels, which almost engage with each other like cogs across the road; and amid this maze of grimy alleys lurk the mosques, the only noteworthy buildings, whose minarets show up prominently from a distance, but afford little guidance near at hand.

The great castle which dominates Aleppo occupies the flat summit of an immense mound, not much smaller than that of Corfe Castle, which is piled conspicuously upon a gentle eminence just within the confines of the city. The core of this mound may be natural, but the bulk of it is artificial; for it was originally one of the great High Places of that Baal worship which flourished pre-eminently in Northern Syria, and which has left us similar monuments of its dominion in the neighbouring mounds at Homs and Baalbek. The base of this mound is encircled by a deep dry moat, and its sloping sides are revetted with masonry; while its crest is crowned by the towers and walls which form the enceinte of the citadel, and access is provided at one end only through a most magnificent gate. The citadel owes its present form to Saladin, who is said to have em­ployed as his workmen the captive Crusaders whom he had taken at the battle of Tiberias. There are some Western features in the building which give colour to this supposition; but the place was a notable stronghold long previous to Saladin's day.

Aleppo was one of the few fortresses that made a res­pectable defence against the Moslems at the time of their first irruption. None of the great frontier towns to the eastward,--Edessa, Amida and Dara--so much as stood a real siege. Such was the bitterness of party strife, both civil and religious, within the Byzantine Empire at that period, that the Arab invaders were welcomed rather than resisted in these lands.

The citadel of Aleppo, however, was defended by a certain Youkinna, till even the redoubtable Caled, "the Sword of Allah," began to despair of success. Only the direct com­mand of the Khalif Omar had induced him to persevere with the leaguer when a valiant slave named Dames volun­teered to attempt a coup de main. Caled approved his design; and to favour its execution withdrew his forces to a distance. Thus Youkinna, rather too readily, assumed that the siege was raised. The sentinels relaxed their vigilance, and the garrison had taken to carousing, when Dames with thirty companions crept up in the darkness to the walls. With the stalwart slave as their base they built up a human ladder, each man in succession clambering on to the shoulders of those below. The man on the seventh tier gripped the battlements, and scrambled over them, and then, letting down his turban, hauled up his associates one by one. Cutting down the few guards they encountered the Moslems then made for the gateway, and succeeded in gaining possession of it ere the garrison was fully aroused. Here they maintained themselves till daybreak when Caled arrived to relieve them, and Youkinna thereupon surren­dered, seeing that further resistance was vain.

Aleppo accepted its fate and has since remained Moham­medan. The Byzantines did indeed temporarily recover it little more than three hundred years later,, when the waning power of the Abbasside Khalifs enabled Nicephorus and Zimisces to push their armies almost to Baghdad. But this was a transitory conquest; a plundering raid rather than an occupation. The Greeks and Romans had always been alien intruders, and now their Asiatic provinces had reverted to Asia for good.

Another equally transitory raid left a more enduring impression-not indeed upon Aleppo in particular, but upon Mesopotamia at large. For in the year i4oo the country was visited by that most destructive of all con­querors, the terrible Timour the Tartar. He signalized his capture of Aleppo, as usual, by the erection of a gigantic pyramid of human heads; and (as was not unusual) he solaced himself while the pile was being reared by dis­cussing theological problems with the learned doctors of the town. Poor wretches 1 they must have felt rather like a regiment of philosophers paraded for an interview with the Theban Sphinx; especially when their dangerous questioner opened proceedings with the bland inquiry, “Which are the true martyrs,-those who die fighting for me, or for my foes?” But fortunately they had an Oedipus among them who parried the thrust by quoting the words of the Prophet, "All who die fighting for conscience' sake are martyrs, no matter under what ensign they fall."

The conquests of Timour may be regarded as closing the history of Mesopotamia; that first and most striking chapter in the history of the civilization of the world. Here mankind had first emerged from barbarism, and constructed the city of Babylon. Here had arisen the successive great empires that had their seats at Carchemish, at Nineveh, at Persepolis, at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and at Antioch; and here after aeons of conquest and re-conquest there could yet arise the splendours of Baghdad. Invincibly fertile and populous the land still seemed able to revive after each successive devastation; but at last its power of recuperation was exhausted; and after Timour's day there is no more left to tell. Other conquerors had destroyed and rebuilt; but the Tartars were only destroyers. They razed the cities to the dust; they massacred every living creature; they demolished even the irrigation works that gave fertility to the fields. And the desert which spreads to this day over all the plains to the eastward is, far more truly than his mausoleum at Samarcand, the monument of Timour the Lame.

Yet Aleppo itself was near: enough to the sea to recover even from this disaster; and within 150 years of Timour's conquest it was once more one of the chief marts of the East. Hither came the London Turkey merchants, among them the “Master of the Tiger." Hither, with the Venetians, came Othello, to have his memorable encounter with the “heathen Turk." John Verney was trading here in the middle of the seventeenth century, and describes it as "the most famous city in all the Grand Seignior's dominions for the confluence of merchants of all nations." Among the commodities dealt with he enumerates the "oak galls for dyers" which are still a valuable harvest in the Kurdistan mountains; but he makes no mention of the liquorice, which is now the most important of all.

Aleppo owes its prosperity chiefly to the Arabs; for though, under the name of Berea, it was well known both to the Greeks and Romans, it never appears in their days to have been a particularly important place. No doubt it profited by the decline of Antioch, which had been the second city in the Byzantine Empire. The new direct railway line to Iskanderun harbour will henceforth augment its importance; and when the completion of the Baghdad railway links it up with Constantinople and India it may even attain the position once held by Antioch itself.

Our own business at Aleppo was confined to the hire of a carriage to convey us and our baggage and our fortunes across the desert to Mosul. This was a subject which involved us in some three days' delicate diplomacy; and eventually we closed with a contractor who offered to take us through at the price of nine pounds for a nominal fort­night's journey,¹ with two mejidies (about seven shillings) extra for every day that we chose to call a halt.

The carriage in which we proposed to achieve our hegira consisted of a sort of four-wheeled coster's barrow, endowed with flea-like agility by a perfect cat's-cradle of springs. It had a seat in front for the driver, and a shelf behind on which our baggage could be corded; but three were no seats for the passengers, and accordingly we spread our sleeping bags upon a thick litter of straw. Most of the springs and many of the spokes had been broken and the fractures had been swathed in string. This required great quantities of string. Finally the tarpaulin tilt which en­closed the body of the vehicle (and which was ostensibly designed for shelter) proved useful for fielding the cargo whenever it got skied by the jolts. Such a carriage is known as “an araba," or alternatively as an yaili--a name which is probably onomatopoeic, for it is about the "slithiest" thing that runs on wheels.²

This equipage was drawn by four scraggy ponies; not that it weighed anything worth mentioning, but because the roads were bad. Two of the beasts were harnessed to the pole, and two tacked on by traces outside, like the team of a Homeric chariot. They could seldom be induced to trot, and generally our rate of progress fell even below the minimum that is ordinarily expected of "hollow jades of Asia"; for we cannot have averaged more than twenty miles a day. Our driver was a lank, dank, hook-nosed creature who reminded us irresistibly of Ikey Moses in the old Ally Sloper cartoons, and who looked as if he had been shipwrecked on a desert island a great many times and always in the same suit. He grumbled much at the amount of our baggage, and a great deal more because we insisted that he should carry a good supply of fodder; but we think that he--or at all events his horses-must eventually have felt grateful to us for not having given way.

The road, as it issues from Aleppo, rises gradually on to a heathy upland somewhat similar to Salisbury Plain. Here it soon becomes a mere wheel track-a good enough path to lead to a moorland farmstead, but a poor sort of thing to confide in for a journey of 200 miles. At every two or three leagues its stages are marked off by villages; generally forlorn little groups of one-storied fiat-roofed stone hovels, but sometimes a more pretentious affair where the houses rise to two stories and which' (on the strength of such superiority) feels justified in calling itself a town. Often even the meanest of these were formerly towns indeed, and instead of being called El Bab or Membij, were known by such high-sounding names as Bambyce and Hierapolis.³ The hummocks and hollows which mark the foundations of their ancient edifices form a wide margin all around the outskirts, and the surface is strewn for acre on acre with dislocated fragments of columns and great squared blocks of stone. At one point where we made a short halt, we were able to decipher a few tags of Latin inscriptions;--cos, divi, casar and a few other similar words. They were deeply, but rudely incised, as though cut in sheer idleness by some unoccupied soldier. A householder who saw us examining them led us to the door of his but where he showed us another inscription. In this case the lettering was Arabic, and we could read no more than the name of Allah:--a fact which caused great consternation to our householder, for he had been using it as a threshold.

We halted each night at some village khan, the Turkish synonym for the better known Persian word caravanserai, which forms the common house of entertainment both for man and beast. A typical khan consists of a great square courtyard full of foul dust in dry weather and of fouler mud in wet. Often have we felt inclined to bless the hard frost at night in winter time, which has enabled us next morning to walk to our carriage on the top of the mud instead of wading through. The courtyard is enclosed by a range of miserable hovels-the sort of shanties which might perhaps pass muster as tool sheds in allotment gardens, those "lodges in gardens of cucumbers," which Isaiah considered the nadir of dilapidation. Some of these take rank as stables and others as guest chambers. In point of comfort and cleanliness there is little to choose between them; but occasionally the guest chambers are on an upper story, and then the humans are somewhat better off than the brutes. Let us assume, not to be too sanguine, that our room will be on the ground floor; and, not to be too despondent, that we shall get a room to ourselves.

Such a room will be about 9 feet square, and will boast a ramshackle door and (perhaps) a shuttered window. Its floor will be about six inches below the level of the yard­--we mean the mud. It will be furnished, like the Prophet's chamber, with “a bed, a stool, and a candlestick;” videlicet -with a rush mat or a rough plank bedstead, a small table (this only occasionally), and a paraffin lamp upon the wall. For a small additional fee the Khanji⁴ will bring us a charcoal brazier; but (not wishing to be asphyxiated) we must leave this to burn outside until the blue flames subside. Here we are at liberty to make our own beds, and to cook and eat such provisions as we may have brought with us. The room is never swept, and prudent travellers will often take the precaution of bringing their own carpet with them. The regular charge for such an apartment is five piastres (10d.) a night.

Our fellow guests are mostly Kurds or Arabs, with Syrians and Armenians rather more sparsely intermixed. They may be told apart by their languages, or less certainly by their dress; for the Arabs are the only folk hereabouts who adhere very scrupulously to their own distinctive costume. This consists of a gown, generally of some striped or plain soft-coloured material, reaching almost to the feet, and girt about the waist with a bright coloured sash. A V-shaped opening from neck to waist shows an embroidered shirt-front under, and over all is worn an abba or Arab cloak. The abba is generally of woollen fabric, either dark brown, or boldly striped with black and white or brown and white in broad and narrow stripes arranged alternately. For winter wear it is often made of sheepskin, worn woolly side out during wet weather, and woolly side in during dry. On their heads they wear a bright coloured head cloth, either of silk or cotton, which is kept in position by a double coil of soft black rope forming a sort of wreath. They usually wear their hair long.

The Kurds also in the plain villages often wear an Arab type of costume; but the muleteers and other travellers are clad in a nondescript garb which seems based upon a Turkish original. The typical Turkish trousers are made from a piece of stuff whose width is equal to the length of the leg from waist to ankle. This is folded to form a square, sewn up the sides, and furnished with a cord run round the top to gird in at the waist. A couple of holes for the feet are cut at the two bottom corners, and the garment is then complete. This of course leaves an immense amount of slack between the legs, and superior tailors get rid of this to some extent by a certain amount of shaping; but a very sufficient surplus is always allowed to remain. Above this is worn a waistcoat, with a coloured sash and a kind of zouave jacket. The waistcoat, the lappets of the jacket, and the pockets of the trousers are often adorned with braiding; and the rough frieze of which the dress is com­posed is generally blue, black or brown. Sheepskin jackets are often worn in winter time.

On their heads they wear sometimes an Arab head cloth, sometimes a Turkish fez, sometimes the conical felt cap of the Kurds and Syrians, either with or without a turban. In cold weather they swathe the ends of their turbans about their faces, muffling themselves up to the eyes and making themselves look even more complete ruffians than they did before.

The officials and well-to-do classes wear what they con­sider to be European costume, but always top it off with a fez.

One of the first impressions which besets a traveller in these parts is the reality of the curse of Babel. For a curse it is most emphatically, though some of our home­bred cranks would appear to regard it as a blessing; and it is devoutly to be wished that all those crack-brained politicians who are seeking to promote the revival of Erse and Gaelic and Cymric might be awarded some practical experience of the realization of their dreams. The Swiss boasted that he had three native languages; but the in­habitants of Asiatic Turkey are provided with at least six. Arabic is dominant on the plains; Syriac and Kurdish in the mountains; Armenian on the plateaus to the north­ward; and Greek in western Asia Minor. Turkish, except in Anatolia, is only the official language; but we suppose it deserves recognition along with the other five. Naturally each of these main stems branches off into dialects by the score; and if these are to be reckoned separately the Turkish Empire is still as polyglot as that of Nebuchad­nezzar himself.

No one of course speaks all the languages; but no one can get on at all comfortably without speaking a minimum of two. That number will probably enable him at least to find an interpreter in most of the villages which favour the four remaining tongues.

The nationalities are as diverse as the languages, and are interwoven together in the most bewildering entanglement; not by separate districts dovetailed into one another like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, but by tiny fragmentary communities dispersed like different grains shaken up vigorously in a bag. The village is the largest unit; and where one village is Syrian, the next may be Kurdish, the next Armenian, the next Yezidi, all out of sympathy with each other and all resolutely refusing to mix. Here and there in the medley one may find occasionally a specimen which has no affinity whatever with any neighbouring nationality. Membij, for example, is a village of Circassians, fugitives from the Russian occupation who were given an asylum here by the Sultan Abdul Hamid. We have some­times wondered whether this extraordinary mixture may not be the fruit of the policy adopted by the ancient Assyrians, who were wont to disperse their captive nations through all the length and breadth of their domain; but the same thing is seen in the European provinces of Turkey where Assyrians and Persians never penetrated, and where Serbs, Bulgars, Greeks and Roumanians form an equally tangled skein.

English critics talk glibly enough of Turkey being an Asiatic Power, and being capable of regenerating herself by concentrating her energies in Asia. They seem to be under the delusion that Turkey in Asia is mainly inhabited by Turks 1 As a matter of fact (except as aforesaid, in Anatolia) one may live for years in Asiatic Turkey without so much as meeting a single Turk. Even the official classes are largely Circassians and Arnauts; and the bulk of the population are Arabs and Armenians and Syrians and Greeks and Kurds, all of whom are profoundly disaffected and only acquiesce in Turkish rule because they will on no account support each other in usurping its place.

The problem of Asiatic Turkey, like the problem of Thrace and Macedonia, is simply that none of the component races can be trusted to govern the rest, and that all are so in­extricably intermingled that it is impossible to parcel them out into distinct homogeneous States. We must own some sympathy with the Turks, the old conquering race, who once fully vindicated their hegemony. But their day is now past: their natural force abated. And though they still hold the tiller (thanks to the dissensions among their crew) they have no longer the strength to keep the ship under control. Their empire is too great for their shrunken numbers to govern, and they find themselves choked by the subject races with whom they have failed to assimilate.

On the third day after leaving Aleppo we reached the banks of the Euphrates; here a broad and rapid river, divided into three or four channels by a string of flat sandy islets. The right bank, from which we descended, is formed by a range of chalky hills breaking off into cliffs here and there; but the left bank is lower and flatter with an edging of conglomerate rock; and under each bank is a wide foreshore of greyish sand, which is of course all covered whenever the river is high. Its waters must have been singularly shrunken when Xenophon forded it at Thapsacus, a hundred miles lower down, and found it no more than breast deep; for here it is quite unfordable and can only be crossed by ferries. - The ferry boats are big spoon-shaped craft with low square bows and high pointed sterns. They are built of very rough planking, which looks as if it could not possibly be watertight, and some very vigorous caulking must have been employed to attain that end. They are steered by a huge flimsy paddle, formed of two or three poles roughly lashed together and pivoted upon the stern post; and what motive power is required is supplied by an iron-shod punt­pole. A crew of two men, one to steer and one to punt, work these unwieldy arks from a small half-deck at the stern.

Our carriage was backed into one of the boats over the bows, to the accompaniment of an infinity of yelling, and sundry mules and camels were disposed as packing round the sides. Then away we drifted, broadside on, down the rapid stream; wriggled into a back eddy under the lee of one of the islands; and eventually stranded safely about half a mile down upon the further shore. The boats had to be towed up stream a mile or more before they were able to recross; and we were lucky to have found them on the right bank, for the process of getting them over might well have meant an hour's delay.

The point where we crossed the river is unmarked by any village, but a considerable town named Birijik lies about thirty miles up stream.

A lordlier city once dominated these solitary reaches; for fifteen miles nearer lies the little village of Jerablus, and all around Jerablus lie the mighty mounds which cover the ruins of Carchemish, and among which the gangs of workmen employed by the British Museum are now en­gaged in recovering the long hidden secrets of the ancient Hittite kings. Carchemish was the capital of the Hittites, that most ancient and most mysterious of all the great nations which once held dominion over northern Syria. Their history is still a sealed book to us; for though we have recovered many of their inscriptions, we have as yet found no key to their decipherment. All that we know of them at present has been gleaned from the records of Egypt and Assyria. We are still awaiting the day when another Rosetta Stone shall unlock for us the secrets of a people, whose capital was already a dead city when Nebuchadnezzar defeated Pharaoh Necho under its walls 600 years before Christ.

But though the Hittites have vanished utterly for so many thousand years, we may still trace their influence in the handiwork of the natives to this day. The villages which border the Euphrates--and a few others nearer Aleppo--are entirely distinct in character from all those in the districts around. The houses are not square and flat-roofed like those in ordinary villages; but circular conical buildings, of a shape between a beehive and a sugar­loaf, built of sun-dried mud, and packed tightly together within a walled enclosure, looking exactly like the haycocks in a crowded rick-yard in England. Houses of precisely this shape are represented on the Egyptian bas-reliefs recording the conquest of the Khati by the Pharaoh Rameses II; and there can be little doubt that the type has persisted continuously down to the present time. It may even perhaps be argued with a certain amount of plausibility that the men who build such villages are remotely of Hittite blood!

The villages in Asiatic Turkey are ordinarily the property of some landowner; and the system of tenure is worth mentioning, for it must date from Patriarchal times. The Government claims as revenue an eighth of all the produce;⁵ and the remaining seven-eighths is divided equally between the village owner and the cultivators. The villagers have also to pay to the Government an eighth of the value of the fodder computed to have been consumed by their flocks and herds; and have further to deliver the Government eighth free of charge at the tax-farmers' storehouses. By law this obligation is restricted to one hour's journey--i.e. there is supposed to be a storehouse in every village-but in practice they have often to carry it three or four times as far. They have also to pay a land tax of about 5 per cent. They keep all the straw as their perquisite; and it is the landlord's duty to provide them with the seed grain.

This sounds as if the landlord got the lion's share of the profits. And if he be miserly he does; but most of them interpret their signoral duties in a more liberal spirit. The landlord is expected to keep a guest house in his village, and a man in charge of it. Here anyone, be he villager or traveller, can get a free meal and free lodging. One big man in this district is reputed to expend food to the value of £400 annually in such hospitality, including corn to the value of 44oo in bread alone. Moreover, the landlord acts as a sort of savings bank to his villagers. If any of them is in distress and applies to him, he will relieve him. He will never think of sparing as long as his barns hold any­thing. He lives simply, as they do; and he holds that “Allah will provide."

All payments should be considered as being made in kind, not in money; for coin is scarce in Turkey, and not very generally used.⁶ Even if it were more plentiful it is but a fluctuating security; for the coins in common use are the silver ones, and these are never current at them face value.⁷ The gold £1 Turkish, nominally worth 100 piastres, fetched at the time of our visit from 102 piastres at Mosul to 114 at Aleppo; and the value of Mejidies (nominally 20 piastres), and of 5 piastre-pieces, varied also in different degrees. This is not all the fault of the Government; for while home trade and industry must be sorely hampered by such eccentricities, the Constantinople banks (which are run by European syndicates) are not altogether displeased. They can make a profit on the deal, for they hold most of the bullion: and when any particular coin has much appreciated anywhere, they can unload their stock of it at that particular place.

Eastward from the Euphrates our track leads over rather lower country, an open undulating heathland which melts gradually into alluvial plain. Here and there, dispersed about the surface, are wide patches of stony ground; and where the track chances to skirt them it is usually found that many of the stones have been piled up into little pillars, five or six one upon the other making a column about two feet high. Each patch will contain twenty or thirty of these little pillars. They are set up by casual wayfarers as a sort of votive memorial, just as the Patriarch Jacob set up his pillar at Bethel.

A similar habit prevails in the mountain districts; but there it is more customary to insert the votive stone in the forked branch of a tree. Cairns also are frequently seen at the sides of the paths in the mountains; but these are generally erected to mark the site of some murder, and it is usual for each passer-by to add his stone to the pile. If you were a friend of the victim you deposit your offering gently; if you were his enemy you hurl it on vindictively. Thus the pile grows apace any way, and it is to be presumed that his manes are appeased.

Near the village of Seruj we reach the outskirts of the great plain of Mesopotamia. Its levels stretch away south­ward as far as the eye can see. But our track edges still to the left and presently enters the hill country, the first and lowest undulations of the great mountain range towards the north.

It must have been on some of these spurs that the wrecks of Crassus army found refuge after their great defeat by the Parthians in the year 53 B.C. Carrhae, which gave its name to the battle, lay in the midst of the plains some twenty-five miles to the southward, and the actual scene of the fighting was some distance further south still: but the beaten troops made for the mountains, their only asylum from their pursuers; and here the last cohorts were sur­rounded and forced to lay down their arms.

Carrhae was a place of ill-omen for the Romans, for only 3oo years later another similar disaster befell them upon the same ground. Here in the year 260 the Emperor Valerian was defeated and captured by Sapor I, the King of the Sassanid Persians, who had by this time inherited the Arascid Parthians' domains. Roman accounts assert that the hapless Emperor was flayed alive; but the Persians more credibly relate that he was kept a prisoner, and employed in building the great bridge across the Karun river at Shushter.⁸ Both accounts agree that after his death his skin was stuffed, and preserved as a grim trophy in the Palace at Seleucia-Ctesiphon.

A short distance within the hills our track struck the great metalled road that runs from Birijik to Urfa. It is a road which, as far as it goes, might be called good in any country: but only the Urfa half of it is completed; it comes to an untimely end not far from the point where we struck at, which was somewhere about a third of the way to Birijik. The remaining section, however, served us admirably, and we trundled along it in fine style for the last three hours of our day's journey, threading a winding rocky valley which debouched at the back of the town.

Oriental cities as a rule are rather a disappointment to sightseers. Picturesque they are indeed, but in such a squalid fashion that much of their charm is blighted. 'They are a mere agglomeration of hovels, with a few fine features here and there. We have even heard it said of Constanti­nople itself that, having seen the approach to the Golden Horn, the traveller had better take his departure; for that every nearer inspection brings a fresh disillusionment in its train. Urfa, however, may rank as one of the exceptions. It is beyond question the most picturesque city in Mesopotamia. And, being 'built chiefly of stone, it has some dignity in its dilapidation, and wears its tattered finery with an aristocratic air.

Urfa lies just at the foot of the hills,. half enclosed by two bold limestone promontories. The upper part of the town is pooled in the bay between them, and the lower and larger portion is split out into the plain. It is almost surrounded by its ancient walls, which are largely of Roman workmanship; and its mosques and minarets and all its prominent buildings are constructed almost entirely of a rich golden-brown stone. The streets are of course mere alleys, narrow and tortuous; but retain here and there many traces of architectural ornamentation; and among and around the houses grow cypresses and other trees. The principal mosque, once a Christian cathedral, is an old Byzantine basilica, and above it rises conspicuously a noble octagonal tower. The present Armenian church is also of great antiquity, though hardly of the First Century, which is what the Armenians claim.⁹

The promontory to the west of the town is crowned by the ancient citadel; now a mere shell, but imposing from its situation, and surmounted by two lofty Roman columns formerly a portion of a temple portico.¹⁰ Towards the town the hill is precipitous, but on the further side the slope is gradual; and accordingly the whole of this face, together with the two return ends, is defended by one of the most magnificent dry moats that exists anywhere in the world. It is hewn out of solid rock, with sides that are absolutely vertical; and may measure even now about thirty feet deep and not less than thirty feet wide. Formerly it could be crossed at two or three places by narrow wooden draw­bridges; and the posterns to which they gave access can still be seen in the walls. At what epoch this moat was constructed we did not feel competent to determine. The walls are partly Saracenic, partly Roman, and partly Sassanian; they are now extremely ruinous and of no very formidable height.¹¹

Urfa in classical days was known by the name of Edessa, and was the capital city of that king Abgarus of Osroene, whose Epistle to our Lord is included among the Apocryphal Gospels. This tale is something more than a legend, for it dates from the beginning of the fourth century; and is related by the historians Eusebius and Moses of Khorene, who both profess to have derived their authority from contemporary documents which they had themselves inspected among the royal archives at Edessa. They tell us how the king was afflicted with leprosy, and how he sought ilk vain to be cured by the physicians and sorcerers of his own land. How at length he heard report of the miracles that were being wrought in Judaea by Jesus the Prophet of Galilee; and how he dispatched ambassadors to Him, entreating Him to come and heal his disease and to instruct his people, offering Him at the same time a secure asylum from the hatred of the unbelieving Jews. These ambassadors were the "certain Greeks"¹² who are mentioned in St. John's Gospel as having been introduced to our Lord by Philip on the day of His triumphant entry into Jerusalem; and they brought back to Abgarus a verbal message (or some say an actual letter dictated by our Lord to Thomas) promising that one of His Apostles should be sent to Edessa in due time.

Accordingly soon after the Ascension the Apostle Thaddeus was sent by Thomas to preach the Word in Osroene. He came and healed Abgarus of his leprosy; and the king and

all his people thereupon embraced the Faith.¹³ Thaddeus himself passed onwards to Armenia and Eastern Meso­potamia, where he founded the Parthian or Assyrian, now called the "Nestorian," Church.

We may at least say of this legend that it is nearly as well authenticated as that which attributes the foundation of the Church of Rome to Peter; and far better than those which claim Spain for James the Great, or Britain for Joseph of Arimathea. The stories have this much in their favour-that at all events they are not mutually con­tradictory. Peter and James are conceded to the West; while Eastern tradition contents itself with Thomas and Thaddeus and Bartholomew. One would expect only the illustrious names in any mere fabricated tales.

At least it is historically certain that the Gospel was brought to Edessa almost within the Apostolic ages; and that Edessa formed the main distributing centre for the preachers who evangelized the East.

Osroene in Abgarus' days formed a sort of buffer state between the Parthian and Roman Empires; and a little later it experienced the usual fate of buffer states, and was absorbed by the Empire of Rome. Under its new suzerains Edessa took rank as an important frontier fortress, and stood many a siege in the long-drawn wars between the kings of the Sassanid Persians and the Emperors of Byzan­tine Rome. Moreover it was a great educational centre, the seat of a famous university, which was eventually suppressed by the Byzantine Emperor Zeno in the year 489 on the ground that it was tainted by the heresy of Nestorianism.

But Edessa has acquired one peculiar interest in the eyes of Western historians from the fact that it was the easternmost conquest that was ever achieved by the Crusades. When Godfrey de Bouillon reached Antioch in the year 1o97 his brother Baldwin was in command of one of the divisional armies that sallied forth to raid the country round about. Many of the Crusading chieftains won themselves little principalities in the course of these plundering expeditions; but Baldwin had better luck than any, though it does not appear that it was any better deserved. He penetrated eastward to Edessa; and found that city governed by a petty Christian kinglet, who welcomed the Crusaders effusively and adopted Baldwin as his successor. How far such welcome and adoption were voluntary we have no means of ascertaining. Prob­ably the poor Christian Emir felt that he could not help himself. At any rate, he was killed soon after in an in­surrection (not without suspicion of Baldwin's connivance), and the latter reigned in his room.

Upon Godfrey's death in 1100, Baldwin became King of Jerusalem, and made over his principality to his cousin Baldwin du Bourg. He, too, succeeded to Jerusalem in his turn in 1118; and the next Count of Edessa was Jocelyn, a fine old fighter, whose exploits made his name a terror to every Paynim in the land. Neither Baldwin II nor Jocelyn were altogether in luck's way. Both were taken captive near Edessa by Balak the Prince of Aleppo, and confined together in the strong castle of Khortbert. Jocelyn suc­ceeded in escaping, and presently had the satisfaction of slaying Balak in battle with his own hand: but Baldwin remained a prisoner for a period of seven years.

Jocelyn died in 1132, leaving his feeble-spirited son to succeed him,¹⁴ and thereafter the fortunes of the Crusaders began very rapidly to wane. Their fast invasion had been happily timed; for the last great Seljuk Sultan, Malek Shah, had died two or three years previously, and had left his empire to be disputed among his four sons. Thus for a time there had been no single great ruler to unite the Moslems against the Christians. But now a new power was being built up by Zanghi the Atabek at Mosul; and under him, and his successors Noureddin and Saladin, it grew more formidable every year. Zanghi-Sanguin, as the Crusaders called him--laid siege to Edessa in 1144, and Milicent the queen regent of Jerusalem found herself powerless to send aid. Zanghi breached the walls by undermining one of the towers; the stormers overtook the flying garrison before they could enter the citadel; and an indiscriminate massacre brought the Christian dominion to an end.

There are still a good number of Christians both Armenian and Syrian at Urfa, and the Syrian Monastery of Rabban Ephrem stands conspicuously at the head of the bay. Rabban Ephrem was a handsome young monk, a refugee from Nisibis when that city was ceded to Persia. He came to Urfa in search of an eligible hermitage, and encountered there (so says the legend) a damsel with roguish eyes.

"Oh damsel, why dost thou look upon me?" demanded the scandalized solitary. "Man should keep his eyes fixed on the ground; for it is written that out of it he was taken.''

"Verily it is as thou sayest;" responded the damsel demurely. "Wherefore woman may look upon man freely, for it is written that woman was taken out of man."

"Lo! here is wisdom indeed," exclaimed the anchorite in amazement. "If the women of Urfa are so wise, how wise must the men be! Of a surety I will make my abode here, and gather wisdom at the fountain head."

So Rabban Ephrem settled down at Urfa, probably in one of the rock-cut cells in the hill fronting the castle. But as he was misguided enough to exclude all the women from his monastery, we fear it is only too probable that he did not get as much wisdom as he hoped.

But the real patron saint of Urfa is no other than the Patriarch Abraham; for the Moslems all believe implicitly that Urfa is Ur of the Chaldees.¹⁵ They have here Abraham's cradle, and his tomb (which they never allow Christians to look upon); and they have the Pool of Abraham also, which is the principal sight in all their town.

Abraham's Pool is a great stone tank which is fed by a never-failing spring. Along one side rise the domes and minarets of Abraham's Mosque (which is also inviolable by Christians) and the steps by which pious Moslems descend into the Pool to bathe. In the pool live Abraham's carp. The water is positively thick with them. No one is per­mitted to catch them so long as they remain in their Sanctuary; but they venture at their own proper peril into the stream which flows out from one end. It is considered a pious act to feed them; and the great fat gluttons follow us as we walk along the margin, with their heads bobbing out of the water, begging for handfuls of boiled maize. When we throw them largesse there is such a rush for it that many of them got hoisted bodily out of their element on their fellows' backs; and it must be regretfully added that they often gorge themselves so immoderately that they float away gasping, belly uppermost, as though they were in an apoplectic fit.

Abraham's interest in the pool is explained by a delicious legend. He had refused to worship fire when ordered to do so by Nimrod; and the mighty conqueror was so ex­asperated that he hurled him with his own hands from the summit of the citadel rock into a burning fiery furnace which he had kindled for his reception at the bottom. The Patriarch dropped unhurt, though it was a long cast even for' Nimrod; and the fountain sprang up at the touch of his feet and extinguished the fiery furnace.

If this explanation should appear to be not quite suffi­ciently coherent, we can only admit that primitive Paganism tells a much more plausible tale. The pool belonged of old to Derceto (Dagon, Atergatis), the ancient Syrian fish-goddess. They are lineal descendants of her carp that inhabit its waters to this day.

CHAPTER II

A LAND OF DUST AND ASHES (DIARBEKR AND MARDIN)

DUE east and west, from the Gulf of Iskanderun almost to the heel of the Caspian, there stretches a range of lofty mountains-a sort of natural bulwark, fencing off the high rugged plateau of Asia Minor on the north from the low level plain of Mesopotamia on the south. At its western extremity this range is known as the Taurus, but further east it appears now to possess no generic name; yet it well deserves so much distinction, for it is here that the peaks attain their highest altitude, and hold in their wild recesses some of the grandest scenery in the world.

The hills which we entered near Urfa are the first out­posts of these mountains, but at this point of their line the outposts are very far advanced. We must push on for two or three days across a broad undulating upland before we find ourselves approaching the foot of the main chain itself. On the whole it is a dull enough journey; for though the snow summits rise nobly on the horizon ahead of us, the heathlands immediately round us are as barren as land can be. There are a few sordid Kurdish villages at four or five hours intervals, but apart from these there is nothing for the eye to rest on; and our own little party, crawling slowly across the landscape, seem to be the only living creatures except the ubiquitous hooded crows.

During the second day, however, we became aware of another feature, which, if it adds no beauty, at least lends interest to the scene. A layer of higher ground is thrust across the plateau. It radiates out into long flat tongues; and its steep escarpments are littered all over with the big black boulders that have fallen from the bristly fringe along the upper edge. These boulders are covered with a grey­green lichen, and mottled with patches of moss of a warmer and richer green; but no other kind of vegetation seems able to flourish among them, and the prevailing tone of the landscape is a gloomy bilious grey. To those who have seen it before such a picture needs no commentary. A vast outpouring of volcanic scoriae has covered the whole country­side.

As we pursue our way further the signs become yet more pronounced. The Acropolis of the little town of Severek is perched, like Bamborough Castle, on a platform of basalt rock. Not far off at the village of Kainak is an isolated cone-once doubtless a miniature crater: and we remember that Diarbekr is built of basalt also-Diarbekr, two days' journey away. Whence came this prodigious outflow of seventy miles in diameter, and of four thousand square miles in area-as large as the county of York?

A full day's journey ahead of us, all along the eastern horizon, lies a huge squat bun-shaped mountain, just over 6ooo feet high. This is Karaja Dagh, the great extinct volcano, the outermost of that group of volcanoes which lie to the north of Mesopotamia, in Armenia and eastern Kurdistan. This region must have been the scene, at some remote geological epoch, of some of the greatest eruptions that have ever occurred on this globe. The five huge craters which produced them (not to mention a host of smaller ones)¹⁶ are ranged diagonally athwart the country in a line some 3oo miles long. At the north-eastern end is Alageuz, 150 miles south of the Caucasus. Then come Ararat, Sipan, and Nimrud; with Karaja at the south­western end. The biggest of all perhaps was Nimrud, a mountain but little higher than Karaja, but possessing the third largest crater that is known to exist in the world. Karaja would seem to consist of a group of associated craters; something like the Puy de Dome mountains, but infinitely grander in scale.

It is held by many commentators that the site of the Garden of Eden was near modern Van and Bitlis, round about the head waters of the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Araxes, and the Zab. If so, then the Garden of Eden now lies buried beneath the lava of these volcanoes; and where could we find fitter antitypes of the Cherubim with the flaming swords I

Karaja juts out towards the plains like a huge cape, isolated from the mountains; and our road slowly heaves itself upward to find a way over its tail. As a road it is incredibly villainous, for it takes the basalt boulders au naturel, and hardly an attempt has been made anywhere to form a surface at all.¹⁷ Round our left sweep the desolate fields of broken and disintegrating lava. On our right they rise, terrace on terrace, toward the mountain from which they flowed. And as we leave the mountain behind, and continue our way to the eastward, the aspect of the country changes little: it is still lava that surrounds us on every side.

At length, two full days beyond Severek, we descry a city ahead of us. A city notable for its size, and yet more for its menacing aspect:-a grim black row of massive towers and curtains, with the slender stems of a dozen minarets shooting up into the sky behind the ramparts like reeds behind a dyke of stone. The snow peaks on our left stretch beyond it, and fade off gradually into the distance; and as we draw nearer we perceive that on our right the town is guarded by the deep ravine of the Tigris. Such is Diarbekr-Black Amida; whose classical name is not yet disused entirely, and which owes its inseparable epithet to the basalt of which it is built.

The city crowns a bold rocky bluff overhanging the gorge of the Tigris, which flows some 300 feet beneath it in a broad and sandy bed. The river is here wide and deep, and its modern name--Shat, the Arrow--testifies the rapidity of its current; but a little below the city its course is checked by a bridge and a weir. In the severe winter of 1910-11 it was frozen over so hard at this point that the caravans of camels were able to cross it on the ice. The river covers the eastern face of the city; and the ground falls fairly steeply along the southern face also. But toward the remaining two faces the approaches are over level ground.

We possess many cities in Europe which are still entirely encircled by Roman or mediaeval ramparts. Such are Carcassonne, Aigues Mortes, Avila, Lugo, and Rothenburg; and we may add Constantinople, though in this case the circuit is incomplete. But, having seen all these examples, we feel bound to put it on record that the basalt walls of Diarbekr are distinctly the finest of all. The walls are some forty feet high and about five miles in circuit, and are strengthened at frequent intervals by eighty massive towers. Most of these are semicircular, but some are semioctagonal. They are spaced about three and a half diameters apart, and project boldly from the curtain walls between. The line traced by the walls is irregular, skirting the edges of the hollows; and at each salient angle is a huge circular bastion. The gateways are somewhat in­significant, being mere holes in the walls flanked by a tower on either side: and this is characteristic of most Roman fortifications, the gateways of Lugo (for instance) being very similar in design.¹⁸

The curtain walls are from ten to fifteen feet thick; thinner along the river front, where the precipitous basalt cliffs rendered assault almost impracticable; and thicker along the other three sides. These sides are further pro­tected by a moat cut in the solid rock, but neither so deep nor so wide as the giant moat at Urfa. Along the inner edge of this moat, some paces from the base of the ramparts, is a low breastwork of masonry as at Constantinople and Carcassonne. A loopholed and vaulted gallery is carried along the top of the ramparts, and above this were the battlements, so that the defenders had a double banquette.¹⁹ The towers are vaulted internally, and have double ban­quettes also; and the garrison could reach their stations by a double staircase at every tower. The citadel is at the north east corner overhanging the gorge of the river, and in the midst of it is a huge mass of masonry, once the mount of the demolished keep.

The walls are beyond all doubt, in the main, of Roman construction; though some Saracenic additions have since been incorporated in the work. They are built of squared black basalt, which has weathered externally to a dull yellow tone owing to the lichen which has overspread the surface. Possibly this process was assisted by the fact that some twenty years ago it was deemed a good idea to whitewash them, in order to give a distinguished welcome to a specially prominent Pasha 1 But fortunately the traces of this sacrilege are almost obliterated now.

The houses in the town for the most part are a set of squalid hovels, intersected in all directions by a maze of narrow crooked streets. Our carriage fairly stuck in one of these alleys as we were attempting to pass through it; and for some minutes it seemed problematical whether we should be able to wriggle free. Yet not all the houses are mean; and in the quarter near the citadel, the residence of the chief officials, a very considerable number are solidly constructed of stone. Some few of these are genuinely old, and possess a good deal of interest. They are often built in two colours, with alternate horizontal bands of black basalt and yellow marble, resembling not a little the black and white marble buildings of Pistoia. It is curious how this taste for coloured ornamentation seems inherent in the dwellers in volcanic districts, where materials of different colours are always readily available. The same trait is very conspicuous in the volcanic districts of Auvergne. The most notable example at Diarbekr is a big mansion in the main thoroughfare. A house very similar in type to the old palaces of Spain and Italy; bare, square and prison­like outside, and entered by a single great doorway; but with graceful arcaded porticoes surrounding the patio within. Once, no doubt, it was indeed a palace, the abode of some prominent magnate: but now it is only a khan; and a khan so notoriously filthy that even our Arabaji shrank from an encounter with its fleas.

The principal Mosque is also of peculiar interest, and presents an architectural problem which has never been quite fully solved. Two sides of its courtyard are formed by the facades of an ancient palace-a palace of regal dimensions, and constructed in a style that is admittedly unique. One of these facades is in two stories, with a pointed arcade below and square-headed windows over; the other has now but one story which consists of a pointed arcade.²⁰ These are not quite Romanesque in style, but more Romanesque than Oriental. They are rather like primitive versions of the Otto Heinrichs Bau at Heidelberg Schloss. But the building to which they are nearest akin is Diocletian's famous palace at Spalatro; albeit they are far less massive, and far more fantastically ornate. The theory most generally adopted concerning them is that they formed part of the palace of the Armenian king, Tiridates; and this theory is strongly supported by their resemblance to the palace at Spalatro, for Diocletian, and Tiridates were contemporaries and close allies.

Amida was one of the great fortresses that guarded the southern frontier of the Roman Empire. Northward, in Asia Minor, Pax Romana had a fairly long innings; but Parthia and Persia to the southward were at no time de­finitely subdued. The hold of the Romans on Mesopotamia was indeed in some sort analogous to the hold of the Austrians on Italy previous to 1860. They regarded it as within their "Sphere of Influence," and sometimes they judged it expedient to "assert their interests" by invading it. But generally they found that enterprise was a bit beyond their capacity; their real "Scientific Frontier" lay along the mountains in the north. And here they, too, maintained their four great fortresses; not ranged in a square like the famous Austrian Quadrilateral, but en Echelon one behind the other along the southern slopes of the hills. Nisibis and Daras were in the forefront; Amida and Edessa withheld in reserve behind them. And though thus in the second rank, Amida got its full share of fighting when the kings of resuscitated Persia began to make in­vasions in their turn.

Amida's defences were perfected, and its arsenal formed, by Constantius; and it was Constantius' great opponent Sapor II who undertook its first memorable siege. The great Sassanid Shah invaded the Roman territory with a huge army of 100,000 men in the year 36o. He had at first intended to ignore the fortresses and to scour the hinterland for plunder; but as he rode past the walls of Amida an arrow struck his helmet, and he turned upon the place like an angry bull. His summons was answered by a volley from the balisto which slew the only son of his chief auxiliary, Grumbates the king of the Chionites; and Sapor swore to the bereaved father that he would not rest till he had taken the city in revenge.

For seventy-three days he pressed his assaults with the utmost fury and persistence. He brought up battering rams and huge wooden towers constructed for him by Roman deserters; and on one occasion he succeeded in surprising one of the towers upon the river frontage, but the seventy picked archers who occupied it were over­whelmed by the garrison and slain. At last he breached the walls; and though some of the garrison (including the historian Ammianus) cut their way through his lines on the further side, and thus succeeded in escaping, the rest, with all the inhabitants, were massacred in the ensuing storm.

Yet Amida had at least performed the duty which is ordinarily expected of a fortress. It had held back the tide of invasion for the period of a whole campaign. Sapor had lost a third of his army; and the season was too far advanced for any further operations. He retreated again into Persia, and abandoned the city that he had won.

An even more notable siege occurred in the year 502. King Kobad, the father of the yet mightier Chosroes I. invested the city that autumn ; assailing it from the western side (as Sapor had done before him), and employing similar siege engines to those of his predecessor's days.²¹ The garrison caught the blows of his rams on reed mattresses lowered from the ramparts, and greased the drawbridges of his wooden towers so effectively that the stormers could not cross. Also they employed "winged words" of such singular virulence and pungency as to scandalize even their own historian.²² He felt obliged to draw the line at "Lime­house," though boiling oil and firebrands were fair. "If the bishop had still been alive he would never have permitted it;" and indeed when the women took to stripping them­selves on the ramparts, and taunting the besiegers with their inability to sack the place, we may grant that any bishop would have had good cause to protest!

Kobad next “cast a mount” against the walls in the manner of Sargon and Sennacherib; a huge incline of earth and brushwood to give his men access to the parapet, The besieged breached their own wall under it, and secretly drew away the core; propping the cavity with balks of timber, and then filling it with combustibles. When the assault began they fired their mine; and an hour or two later the mound collapsed beneath the feet of the attacking columns, precipitating the luckless stormers into the blazing furnace below.²³

Three months had passed in vain assaults, and Kobad had made no progress. His thinly clad Persians were suffering terribly from the winter cold; and the Great King swallowed his dignity and offered to raise the siege for half a crown! But success had made the defenders more insolent than ever, and they scorned even this show of homage. They retaliated by sending him a bill for the vegetables which his army had consumed out of their gardens, This was too much for Kobad, and he resolved to fight to a finish. Three days later the laugh was on his side. One night a party of Persians were pursuing a certain Kutrigo who had sallied from a privy postern to make a raid on their camp. As they neared the walls they received no challenge, and not an arrow was shot at them. That particular tower was manned by the "Sleepless" monks of Anzetene; and it chanced that "a certain man" (in the most friendly spirit) had given them a good supper and wine to drink, so that they were all in deep slumber. The Persians seized their opportunity and made themselves masters of the tower. The garrison were aroused and hurried in) to expel them, endeavouring to cut away the vaulted floor under their feet. The Persians planted their scaling ladders and swarmed to the help of their comrades; and for thirty-six hours continuously the fight raged furiously on the wall. Peter of Amkhoro, a man of gigantic stature and clad in complete armour, held the banquette on one side against the utmost efforts of the Persians: but in the opposite direction they pushed on from tower to tower till at last they gained one of the gateways. The army poured in irresistibly, and the massacre began.

Kobad allowed his army three full days to sack the city, and at the end of that time 8o,ooo corpses were carried out through the north gate that the king might enter at the south. Even so the Persians' vengeance was not sated, and they demanded leave from their king to execute one tenth of the survivors to appease the manes of their own dead comrades.²⁴ They bore these wretched victims outside the city walls, and killed them in all sorts of ways.

Kobad pillaged the city thoroughly, sending his booty away on rafts down the Tigris to Ctesiphon; and when he himself departed, he left a certain Glon to hold the fortress with a garrison of 3000 men. This seems a small enough force to man such an extent of rampart: yet at first it proved amply sufficient; and when the Roman general Patricius attempted to regain the city he was repulsed completely and ignominiously, though the Romans were much more skilled than the Persians in the conduct of a siege. But Amida was not yet at the end of its agony and what all the emperor's horses and all the emperor's men had so conspicuously failed to accomplish was reserved for the grim persistence of an irregular partisan.

MOSUL.
View from the bridge, looking upstream. The Tomb of Cassim is one of the more distant buildings near the water side.

Farzman was an active local Sheikh who had espoused the cause of the Romans, and who had made his name a terror to the Persians by a multitude of daring deeds. He was only in command of 5oo horse; and any attempt to form a regular siege of such a first-class fortress would of course have been ridiculous. But an adroitly handled cavalry force can do a good deal in the way of “containing” an Oriental city. In the winter of 1911 Shuja ed Dowleh, the Agha of Maragha, nearly reduced Tabriz, with all its 300,000 inhabitants, with an equally puny band.

Farzman knew full well that the Persians in Amida could not have had time to replenish their magazines. He quietly cut off communication with the surrounding villages, and suppressed the daily market that was held without the walls. Glon very naturally grew restive; and listened greedily to a certain Gadono, a prominent local sportsman, who told him that he had located Farzman's camp in the course of his hunting excursions, and would enable him to take it by surprise. Accordingly Glon sallied out with all his available cavalry. But the wily Gadono had been in communication with Farzman. The "surprise" had been all arranged beforehand; and Glon and his party were wiped out.

This signal miscarriage of their "aggressive defence” profoundly disconcerted the Persians. Glon's son, now in chief command, kept breathing out threatenings and slaughter; but he no longer had any cavalry, and his infantry was barely sufficient to man the ramparts and overawe the citizens within. He shut up all the able-bodied inhabitants, to the number of 1o,ooo, in the Stadium; and calculated by this measure to free his own hands for the defence. But, struggle as he might, he could not snap the line which held him:-Farzman had hooked a salmon with a trout rod, but he played it in masterly style.

Then came days of horror unutterable. The prisoners in the Stadium were left without any food whatever. They ate their boots, and their belts, and finally preyed on each other; and when the wretched survivors were let loose as no longer worth guarding, they crawled out of their prison "like men risen from the dead." By this time the city itself was almost in equal extremity. Many of the living skeletons from the Stadium were enticed into the houses by the starving women and there killed and devoured. The garrison were so reduced by hunger that they could scarcely carry their weapons; and the Persian commandant sent to Farzman to say that he was willing to capitulate.

Farzman granted easy terms. They might go off on rafts down the Tigris, taking all their property with them, as many as elected to go. And he himself, on their de­parture, took possession of that ghastly charnel house; and assisted by the new bishop, Thomas (the same who was later to build Daras), set to work to import new in­habitants, and nurse the dead city back to life.

Diarbekr in 1895 was one of the centres of the Armenian massacres, and as many as 2500 perished in this place alone. Little enough was heard about it at the time in England, where attention was almost monopolized by yet more monstrous holocausts; but what passed then as a mere local incident wears a very different aspect when we visit the actual spot where it was enacted-when we see the doors still splintered and patched in the houses which were stormed by the rioters, the photographs of the luckless victims still treasured in the albums of their surviving friends and relatives, and the ghastly bald patch in the midst of the city where the Armenian quarter was razed to the ground and has never been re-erected to this day.

The massacre was undoubtedly prompted by the Govern­ment of Constantinople; but their agents were the fanatical Kurds who swarm in the slums of Diarbekr, and who flocked in eagerly from the surrounding villages to take a hand in the work of slaughter and to share in the plunder which followed. That the massacre was political and not re­ligious was proved by the fact that the Syrian Christians (who are also numerous in Diarbekr) did not suffer to anything like the same extent as their Armenian co­religionists. The crowd of refugees who sought sanctuary in the Jacobite cathedral were not molested, and only isolated individuals fell victims to the fury of the mob. That the outbreak wore a mask of fanaticism was a thing inevitable in the Orient. The perpetrators were the Kurdish riff-raff; and on this point Mohammedan badmashes are alike all over the world. Only religious zeal can excite their passions dangerously; and when their passions are dangerously excited they always find expression in religious zeal.²⁵ But the very fact that a distinction was made between Armenians and Syrians, is alone sufficient to indicate that in this instance the mob was under some sort of control.

The hatred of the Turks for the Armenians is due to the fact that the Armenians are the only one of their subject nations of whom the Turks are afraid. The Arabs and Kurds are their co-religionists, and have no national cohesion. The Nestorian and Jacobite Syrians are either too few to be dangerous, or too thoroughly tamed by long subjection to have any desire to rebel. But the Armenians are numerous and imbued with national aspirations; and though the majority of them are inoffensive cultivators, they include a considerable number of intelligent and capable men. A small percentage too are active political propagandists, who continue to work persistently to over­throw the present regime. Under equal political con­ditions the Armenians would soon secure dominance: and this would be a subversal which the Turks could never endure. So when the Armenians grow restive the Turks resolve to “take precautions." They cannot cope with them in cleverness, but in physical force they can.

Will there be further massacres? It is an ever-present danger. The Turks do not wish it-it makes trouble with the European Embassies; and, after all, slaughtering the Armenians is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. The Kurdish chiefs do not wish it either, for they too stand to lose pecuniarily: but beneath them seethes the fanatical mob, easily roused by hot-headed agitators, a sort of open powder magazine which any stray firebrand may ignite. “I will give you full warning if I can," said a friendly Vali to a gentleman of our acquaintance; “but I can only tell you that I see no danger just now. There is talk of course there is always talk; and so long as the talk reaches our ears it is not likely to go further. When you see little groups whispering together outside the mosques, and break­ing up whenever a Christian passes within earshot-that is the real danger-signal, and you can see that as well as I."

There was plenty of “talk” at Diarbekr; and we fre­quently heard the children (no doubt in imitation of their elders) invoking curses on us as we passed along the streets. The tension must have become greater since: for the Moslems will have been touched in the raw at the result of the Balkan fighting, and are prone to avenge their dis­comfiture on any Christian who is ready to hand. More­over the Constitution had not altogether improved matters for it was inaugurated by a general amnesty whereby all exiles and prisoners had been released. Some were certainly innocent sufferers, but a large number would have been much better kept in durance; and Diarbekr was conse­quently growing anxious at the intrigues of Abdul Reshek Agha, grandson and heir to Bedr Khan Beg of Massacre memory,²⁶ who had just got reinstated in his ancestral stronghold in Bohtan. He was credited with an ambition to establish himself under the aegis of the Russians, as Shah of United Kurdistan and though “United Kurd­istan" is a sufficiently Utopian conception, such an attempt might well begin with an Armenian massacre, and bring Russian intervention in its train.

The old regime used to deal with such dangers tactfully, if not altogether discreetly, according to our insular ideas. And this may be exemplified by the case of another Bedr Khan Beg, a scion of the same family-a tale which, if not vero, is so ben trovato that we cannot refrain from quoting it; and which at least shows the sort of methods with which the Government was credited, and in which its liege subjects were quite disposed to acquiesce.

The Sultan, in an expansive mood, had recalled Bedr Khan Beg from exile, and proposed to re-invest him with part of his ancestral domain. That gratified gentleman blossomed out luxuriantly under such sympathetic usage, and began asking for all sorts of powers and privileges, and reviving a whole host of dormant claims. The Government grew rather uneasy, but showed no signs of displeasure. It granted each demand in turn; escorted him with high distinction on board a warship; and dispatched him to Trebizond en route for his satrapy.

Two days later the ship was back at its anchorage. Per­haps it had forgotten something. Perhaps it needed some repairs to its engines. But it seemed in no hurry to start again; and it presently transpired that Bedr Khan Beg was no longer on board. He had not been seen to land; and the ship could have touched at, no harbour. There is often some apparent inconsequence in the movements of Government ships. "Et quaesitum est a Toad-in-the-hole ubi est ille Bedr Khan Beg?" "Non est inventus."

The Young Turks have adopted a self-denying ordinance with regard to such expedients; but they have hardly attempted to touch that cancer of Ottoman rule--the chronic corruption of the Administration. Turkey enjoys an admirable code of laws, and a revenue system which should be the envy of our own fiscal extremists; but it has also evolved along with them that other modern panacea, a multiplicity of jobs. Every single official, be he Old Turk or Young Turk, Arnaut or Armenian, is frankly “on the make." His post entitles him nominally to a starvation salary: yet he pays for it with a bribe, and he knows it is well worth paying for, since the incidental pickings will enable him to “make his pile."

The present officials did not reprobate their predecessors' conduct in this: they only envied their opportunities. If they had been allowed a chance of getting a look in them­selves, they would have been quite content with things as they were. But the Old Gang had packed the Govern­ment so artfully that nothing but a revolution could oust them; and so in due course the inevitable revolution happened. But the methods of administration remain essentially the same.

Internal development of the empire is hardly ever at­tempted. The standing instructions appear to be “Thou shalt do nothing at all." The central Government is quite content if open revolt is avoided; and if the taxes are gathered regularly enough to pay the officials' salaries, and to maintain the standing army. Abdul Hamid even attempted to dispense with paying the army; and this ill-judged bit of economy was the primary cause of his overthrow. An army is an 'institution which cannot be prudently starved.

Of course all this systematized corruption involves huge losses to the Government. The officials, for a consideration, will always allow their friends to “make a bit;” and will often undervalue their property for assessment by as much as go per cent. The Kurds are favoured at the expense of the Christians because their support has to be courted, although in the development of the country they are much the least valuable asset. Yet even the Kurds are not reconciled by such means to the paying of their taxes. Not so much because the taxes are heavy as because they are unremunerative. They see no return for their money no roads, no education, no irrigation works. They are paying not taxes but tribute, like the old vassal kings under Assyria and consequently they are always ripe for revolt, if they see any prospect of obtaining external aid to enable them to revolt successfully; again like the vassal kings under Assyria, who knew well that they would get flayed alive if they failed.

The best one can say of the administration of justice is that it probably is not quite as corrupt as it appears to be. The judge takes bribes from both sides with a view to remaining unbiased; and, if he is scrupulous, restores his bribe to the loser. In criminal cases, however, one must make allowance for a further principle. Among ourselves criminal acts are regarded as an offence against the State, and it is the State's duty to exact the penalty. But the Turks are inclined to regard such acts merely as an offence against the individual. The State does no more than recognize the right of the injured party (or his representative) to take his own revenge-if he can.²⁷ It will only itself occasionally condescend to act as his representative, if he chances to be an influential person, or if some influential outsider (say the British Consul) may be thereby obliged. Such a point of view is very primitive, and inevitably leads to much injustice; but we cannot hope to see this remedied until the Turk has digested our own Western principles, and he has not made digestion easier by electing to swallow them whole.

With regard to the Kurds²⁸ we desire to speak as charitably as we are able; and we may find warrant for this in the words of Mar Ephrem, the Syrian Bishop of Urmi, who, writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, could say no worse of them than that they were wakshi folk. Wakshi means merely "uneducated;" but it is only fair to add that it is a term of much greater opprobrium than seems quite reasonable in a country where not one man in a hundred is able to read or write.

The lack of education which the bishop laments is akin to that “weakness in arithmetic” which caused the Irish­man to be hanged. They are apt to have more sheep in their villages than they can legitimately account for. They are a pastoral race, leaving agriculture almost exclusively to the Syrians and Yezidis; but we fear that their “pastoral” ideals are hardly those of Corydon or Meliboeus. Rather are they the modern representatives of those Elliots and Maxwells and Johnstones who used to practise “the faithful herdman's art” upon our own border; and it might well be said to them (as was said to the chief of another great family whose enormities have since culminated in the acquisition of a dukedom)­—

Had everye honeste man his awin kye,

A right puir clan thy name wad be!

Such doings are hardly criminal according to their own code of morals; and if they confined themselves to cattle raiding, or even to an occasional clean murder, we should be able to think of them more kindly. But we fear that yet darker deeds must sometimes be reckoned against them; deeds like those of Edom o' Gordon, or Black Adam of Cheviot, or like that which drew Hepburn's vengeance on Bertram of Mitford tower. It is highly interesting, no doubt, to find Donald Bean Lean in the flesh still practising his old avocations in the highlands of Asia Minor; but if we could also find there “the kindly gallows of Crieff," we do not hesitate to avow that our state would be the more gracious.

There is a British Vice-Consulate at Diarbekr, but at the date of our visit it was vacant. It is one of those posts which our Government is apt to suppress whenever re­trenchment seems advisable. Certainly the Vice-Consul must lead a dull enough life; and the British trade, which is the ostensible cause of his appointment, is a very nebulous entity. Yet the mere presence of a European constitutes a very real protection of the subject races in such an en­vironment; and we owe at least this much recognition, of our treaty obligations towards them.²⁹

Our national prestige in the East rests chiefly on our dominance in India; and this is reflected in the fact that our Indian consulates in the south are much better main­tained than those in the north, which are controlled from Europe. Our prestige too is a waning quantity. We are living, as it were, on the capital accumulated for us by such men as Stratford Canning; and it must be confessed that latterly our policy has not been that of a Great Power. We seem content to preserve barbarism in Mesopotamia in order to make our position in India easier; and to discourage the Baghdad railway because it will make our frontier harder to defend. That our military men should take this view is excusable. They know our present unpreparedness; and some day it might even be their duty to destroy that railway, because forces at their disposal will not otherwise be adequate for defence. But from a national standpoint such a dog-in-the-manger policy must eventually bring its own punishment. Our most straightforward, and in the end our wisest, course would be to promote all developments, and to shoulder manfully the obligations which they entail.

We resumed our journey from Diarbekr across a lava covered country by perhaps the bumpiest bit of road be­tween Aleppo and Mosul. We and all our possessions were kept bouncing about in our araba like so many dry peas in a pod. The springs of a second carriage that was travelling with us burst, and had to be spliced with string. Presently our own pole broke off short at the socket, and had to be lashed up with string likewise. By some miracu­lous dispensation the splice held out to Mardin.

These accidents and repairs delayed us, and nightfall caught us still on the moorland. Our driver went astray off the almost invisible pathway, and after a while was reduced to hunting for it with matches. We fished out a portable candle-lamp, which gave somewhat more illumina­tion; but which scarcely seemed adequate for the next undertaking that awaited us-the fording of a fairly wide river, running strongly, about axle deep. Good luck, however, attended us, and we at length got safely to our khan.

Next morning we were clear of the volcanic district and pursued our way up a winding and fertile valley, which was threaded (for a marvel) by a very presentable road. But over the col at the head there was no road whatever, and our horses had to scramble up a mountain side, rugged with earth-fast boulders and the roots of stunted trees. But this was the last of our obstacles. The road now revived intermittently; and though but half finished and hilly, it held on to the end of our stage. Towards evening we climbed the long zigzag ascent to the top of a 3000 feet mountain, and, crossing the ridge, wheeled immediately into the streets of the city of Mardin.

Mardin occupies a superb situation at the summit of one of the eminences which are ranged like a wall along the northern border of the Mesopotamian plain. All trace of an intervening plateau has here been completely eliminated; and from the foot of the declivity the ground stretches away to the southward in one illimitable level. The furthest identified landmark, a huge Gel rising conspicuously in the far distance, was pointed out to us as Tel Kokab nearly eighty miles away.

These mountains are the Jebel Tur, the Mount Athos of the extreme east. They are a wild and barren district, containing very few villages, but thickly studded with ancient Christian monasteries; some of which date back to the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries, and most of which are still occupied by small companies of Syrian monks.³⁰ Mardin is situated at the western extremity of this region; and the northern and eastern boundaries are formed by a loop of the Tigris, which flows behind the upland from Diarbekr to Jezire ibn Omar and issues there on to Mosul plain.

The hill on which the city stands is of a form which is not uncommon among the Kurdistan highlands. It rises from the plain in a single steep slope, unbroken almost from base to summit; but it culminates in a cresting of precipitous rock, so even and vertical that it looks like an artificial wall. Immediately behind the city this cresting forms an isolated knoll, cut off at the back and ends as abruptly as along the front, and thus forming an immense table with a perfectly level top. Many of the hills adjoining are of similar conformation; and another, almost a replica of it, may be seen in the mountains further eastward, forming the site of the town of Amadia.

Amadia is built entirely on the level top, and the encir­cling line of precipice serves it instead of a rampart: but at Mardin the space on the summit is only sufficient for the citadel, and the town lies just at the foot of the precipice, sprawling down the southern slope of the hill. The houses look forth across the plain, each over the roof of its neighbour; and as even the lowest rank must be fully 1500 feet above plain level, they form a conspicuous assemblage visible for scores of miles away.

The town is some two miles in length and perhaps half a mile in width, and is reputed to contain about 8o,ooo inhabitants. It is built of a warm-coloured stone similar to that employed at Urfa; and, like Urfa, is largely com­posed of good substantial buildings, which can sustain a certain amount of dilapidation without lapsing altogether into squalor. The streets are narrow and tortuous, and run for the most part longitudinally; thus it is evident that the cliff which overhangs them cannot (like the Amadia cliff) be in the habit of dropping fragments down the slope beneath it; otherwise the lanes would run vertically, and be a good deal wider than they are 1 Some of the principal mosques possess considerable architectural pretensions, with Arabesque stalactite corbelling inserted in the coves over the doorways, and a certain amount of good carving introduced here and there on the facades. They are generally covered with fluted domes-a rather unusual feature, but one which is very conducive to the general effectiveness of the design.

Mardin is a walled city, but its walls were never very formidable and are now mostly ruinous. They consist but of broken fragments even on the citadel rock. The place was no Roman fortalice like Urfa or Diarbekr, and the part that it played in history was not of any great note. For some time it was the capital city of a petty dynasty of little independent Sultans; and the tomb of one of the most powerful of these forms a graceful adjunct to one of the chief mosques. One unique distinction, however, belongs to its rock-perched citadel. This is said to have held out successfully against the invincible Timour himself.

Mardin is in these days best known to us as the residence of the Patriarch of the Jacobites--Mar Ignatius, the modern inheritor of the throne of Antioch, that earliest of all Metropolitan sees. He resides at Deir el Za'aferan, the “Monastery of the Yellow Rocks," which is situated about five miles eastward upon the southern slope of the mountains, in a position very similar to that of the town itself but on a separate hill. Deir el Za'aferan is a very ancient founda­tion dating from the fifth or sixth century; and certain fragments of its original structure still survive to this day, incorporated in the existing buildings. They are of pro­nouncedly classical character, and display a strong similarity to the admittedly Roman work in the Church of St. James at Nisibin: but the major part of the monastery is of much more modern construction; for it has been almost con­stantly occupied ever since the date of its erection, and subjected to many vicissitudes, being frequently ruined and rebuilt.

The Syrian "Jacobite" Christians are a poor remnant now, but they were once the dominant Church in that group of old Roman provinces that we style loosely, "Syria and Palestine," but which Romans called “The Orient," Praefactura Orientalis.

Syriac (i.e. Aramaic) was the vernacular of these lands, whose capital for both ecclesiastical and political matters was Antioch. Their use of a separate language gave a national tinge to their Christianity; and they resented the Greek uniformity which the Emperor of Constantinople for political reasons sought to impose upon them. They fought this battle on the doctrinal field, refusing to accept the “Constantinopolitan” council of Chalcedon, and finding in that refusal a rallying-point for their own desire for independence.

For some time, it seemed probable that the emperor would seek to reconcile the discontented provinces by abandoning the council to which they objected; this policy, however, was rejected by Justinian (527-565), with the result that these "Monophysite"³¹ malcontents organized themselves on a footing of separation from the Greek Church, but they remained in fellowship with the Churches of Armenia and Egypt; and the bulk of the Christian popu­lation of these provinces was in sympathy with them.

Thus, when the Mohammedan invasions of the seventh century commenced, the Arabs found that the bulk of the provincials were disposed to receive them as deliverers rather than as foes. In return, they recognized these Monophysites as the dominant Christian millet of these provinces, and so they remained for centuries.

Their nickname of “Jacobite” has nothing whatever to do with the “White Rose Society," but was given them during the sixth century. Justinian attempted to force them into “Orthodoxy” by imprisoning their bishops, so as to prevent the ordination of any clergy but those of whom he approved. While in prison, the bishops consecrated a certain monk Jacobus Baradaeus, to the episcopate, and gave him a "roving commission." For thirty-five years he wandered from place to place in a beggar's horse-cloth (bara'da), and reorganized the whole separatist hierarchy.

Their Patriarch claims to be a true representative of the original Patriarchate of Antioch. In the days of their oppression, he was naturally not permitted to reside there, and shifted his quarters from monastery to monastery, till he settled at last at Deir el Za'aferan. The Greeks have of course a Patriarch of the see, though they have to admit the existence of gaps in his line of ancestry, and a Latin claimant of the same was established in the time of the Crusades. These reside now at Damascus and Beyrout respectively.

The Jacobite Church comprises about a quarter of a million adherents in Asiatic Turkey with--we believe­--twelve bishops; and there are about the same number under British rule in Malabar.

Neither they nor their eastern neighbours the "Nestorians" hold now (if they ever did) the peculiar heresies which their names suggest, and which their enemies credited them with teaching. Each has now come to teach, and perhaps has always taught, all the doctrine that their Orthodox opponents sought to guard at the councils which these Separatists nevertheless continue to repudiate. The old division continues; but more as a matter of convenience. than of principle, and the more intelligent bishops on both sides admit that all real differences have disappeared.

Yet no fusion is likely at present, for the rank and file are unreconciled, and fortify their mutual suspicion with all sorts of groundless ideas. "Is it really true," asked an old Jebel Tur monk in all simplicity, "that the Nestorians wash their altar with asses' blood before they celebrate the Eucharist?"

The Nestorian deacon who attended us, and who heard this amazing aspersion, could hardly be restrained from falling on the inquirer there and then!

CHAPTER III

THE MARCHES OF ANCIENT ROME (DARA AND NISIBIN)

FROM the eastern gate of Mardin the road decants itself plainwards in a skein of curves and zigzags-a vertical descent of 2000 feet, spinning out its gradients to a length of five or six miles. It is not at all a bad road. One could easily bicycle down it-and perhaps even bicycle up it if in specially strenuous mood. But it is, as it were, the swan­song of the modern Ottoman Telfords, and as soon as it reaches the level it reverts into a sheaf of footpaths. Hence­forth to the end of our journey we saw no more metalled roads.

We had now, too, a further reminder of the fact that we were quitting civilization, for a couple of zaptiehs rode with us to escort us over the stage to Nisibin. Hitherto such protection had been deemed needless: but in these re­moter districts the Government prefers to have some tangible assurance of a European traveller's safety, seeing that it is liable to be held responsible if he is unfortunate enough to come to grief. Thus that modest intruder finds himself passed on from city to city with all the pomp and circumstance of an armed cavalry escort; and afflicted at every stage with the consciousness that he is passing current at a face value vastly in excess of his intrinsic worth.

SHEIKH ADI.

The upper end of the buildings showing the forecourt and entrance gateway: and (apparently) “the Proprietor,” seated on the wall above.

The zaptiehs are a sort of military police, analogous to the Spanish Civil Guard or the Royal Irish Constabulary; though we fear that these two corps d'elite would not be likely to feel gratified at a suggestion that such deplorable ragamuffins should “march through Coventry” with them. Personally, for the most part, they are good-humoured and obliging fellows; accepting rough weather and hard lodging with the utmost philosophy. Also they rather welcome the chance of a little escort duty. It is a pleasant change from the monotony of garrison life; and there is a tip to look forward to finally, though this must be “under the rose." “You have not mentioned that you've given us a present?” said one of our fellows with engaging naivety when we asked him to carry back a letter--”Because it isn't allowed! "

But though Western civilization extends thus far no longer, there is not wanting tangible evidence to prove that it was here long ago. In the midst of one of the first plain villages there rises, like a lofty aiguille, the angle of a Roman watch tower. It seems impossible that such a slender fragment should be able to withstand wind and weather much longer; but hitherto the huge square blocks have stood firm though all support has fallen away. A Roman church (or more probably a Roman house converted into a church) stands in another village; and, at the end of a short day's journey we turned aside to visit some yet more striking remains.

The mountains at this point ravel out on to the plain in a line of gently sloping spurs, and from between two of these issues a broad and shallow but never-failing stream. The spurs immediately westward of it are conspicuously gashed across with wide deep transverse trenches; and as we draw nearer we perceive that the ridge on each side of the river is crested with a ruined rampart, and that the hollow enclosed between them is a regular sugar bowl of huge disjointed stones. Here and there out of the chaos rises the fragment of a mighty tower or a massive skeleton archway, and presently we can descry a few wretched Kurdish hovels half hidden among the d6bris of the great devastated city.

Such is now the fortress of Daras, once the Metz or Belfort of its age.

In the year 503, after the disastrous campaign which witnessed the fall of Amida and the failure to recapture Nisibis, the Emperor Anastasius took his generals severely to task “for that they did not prosper nor succeed in the war according to his will under the Lord." The unfortunate generals protested that they could not reasonably expect to defeat a potentate who was manifestly commissioned by Providence to chastise the backsliding Romans-especially when he had such a large army. But they closed their jeremiads with one eminently practical suggestion viz.-that it was quite hopeless to attack Nisibis unless they had a strong base of operations close by. , This notion appealed to Anastasius--a great believer in fortification, and the builder of the famous “Long Walls," the Byzantine Lines of Tchatalja. After some consideration he fixed upon Daras as the site of his new fortress; and (as it was church property) he bought it honestly, and commissioned Thomas, the Bishop of Amida, to undertake the contem­plated work. The commander of the covering army was one Felicissimus, of whom it is significantly chronicled that he was not at all covetous; but all the engineering work seems to have been supervised by the bishop. Anastasius supplied him with money freely, and engaged that neither he nor his successors should demand any accounts of the expenditure--which seems rather an extreme test--even of, a bishop's integrity. He specially stipulated; however, that none of the workmen should be defrauded of their wages, having ascertained (no doubt by a system of trial and error) that “cities (on the frontier) got built quicker that way." It is worthy of remark that a day's wage at that time was 4 keratin (2d.)³² and that the services of an ass were rated as precisely equivalent to a man's. Upon these principles the work progressed rapidly, and the city was finished in three years; Kobad being engaged upon his eastern frontier, and quite unaware of what was going on.

"Is she not fair, my daughter of a year?” cried Coeur de Lion proudly as he gazed on Chateau Gaillard: and to build Chateau Gaillard in one year was certainly a fine achievement, yet it was as nothing in comparison to the building of Daras in three. It gives us a great idea of the resources of the Byzantine Empire that Anastasius, an undistinguished, albeit a conscientious, ruler should have been able to bequeath to us so superb a monument of his power. Dara is very similar in site, as it is accidentally similar in name, to another Roman foundation, the town of Daroca in Aragon. It lies pooled in a cup-like depression between the two rims of high ground which are crested with its formidable ramparts; and through the midst of it flows the little river, which cannot be diverted anywhere and thus ensures a constant water-supply. At either end of the depression the ramparts stoop from their opposing heights and join hands with each other across the stream. At these points the water is admitted and discharged through cun­ningly contrived water-gates consisting of several small arches, once defended by metal grilles the mortices for which may still be seen. Formerly no doubt these arches could be closed by sluices. Thus a wide and deep inun­dation could be formed without the walls at the upper gate, which would provide additional protection; and a similar reservoir could be collected within the walls at the lower gate, and discharged to overwhelm any battering engines that might be advanced against the city from the plain.

The walls which crown the flanking heights are of singu­larly massive construction, and defended by a deep wide moat cut out of the solid rock. As at Diarbekr and Urfa (and in Spain at Lugo and Astorga) they are strengthened at frequent intervals by solid projecting round towers.

Within the city itself are some even more notable monu­ments. The builders of the fortress did not rely exclusively on the river for their water-supply, but provided a huge underground cistern, fed by a rock-hewn conduit and capable of storing nearly five million gallons at need. This cistern consists of ten parallel vaulted tunnels, each about i5o feet long and 13 to 14 feet wide, with an internal height of 4o feet from the floor to the crown of the vault. The division walls of this structure are thickly encrusted with lime deposit, thus proving conclusively the purpose for which it was designed.

GREAT GRANARY OF DARAS

A little distance away is a sort of square platform of masonry, rising a few feet above the general level of the ground. We penetrated into it by a dark and narrow passage, and groping our way gingerly down a steep descent by the light of a couple of candles we found ourselves at last in a titanic cellar, 6o feet long and 50 wide, divided by a massive arcade into two naves, and roofed by a double barrel vault 5o feet above the level of the floor. This is doubtless the Great Granary mentioned by Zachariah of Mitylene; but (being underground) it is of course now deemed to have been a dungeon, and is known locally as “the Big Oubliette." The prodigious size of the stones employed in building it, and the extreme solidity of the masonry, made us think of the famous cisterns at Con­stantinople as very inferior structures indeed.³³

The use of such very large stones is a notable feature of Dara and gives a more grandiose character to ruins magnificent in themselves. Two average sized blocks on the ramparts, which still lay conveniently in situ, afforded ample area for the accommodation of a camp bed; and each of the two taken separately must have weighed not much short of a ton. Even the houses appear to have been built of stones as large as those used in the fortifications. It would seem that they were employed in sheer bravado, as was undoubtedly the case with the yet bigger stones of Baalbec. Now all lie scattered at random over the whole area of the city, and it puzzles us not a little to conceive how such singularly solid buildings can have been so utterly overthrown. Earthquakes or battering rams might have demolished them; *but then one would expect to find the debris lying in heaps as it fell. The stones might have been removed to construct new houses and enclosures; but then they would be disposed in some sort of regular lines. Did some Timour deliberately give order that no stone should be left upon another? Even he might have been daunted at such an undertaking, when the removal of each several block could employ a file of men for a day.

It is ever a futile task to prop a falling empire by the construction of prodigious defences; but at least Daras filled the gap long enough to witness the dawn of a more prosperous day. In the year 529--twenty-five years after the building of the city--Belisarius faced the Persian army on the flat ground just outside the lower water-gate. Perozes, the Persian commander, led a host of 4o,ooo soldiers; and the young Roman general had but 25,000, a motley ag­glomeration of Goths, Huns, and Heruls-for at this period it was the Romans' custom to impress their Gothic captives to fight against the Persians, and their Persian captives to fight against the Goths. Belisarius distrusted his army, and with very sufficient reason. So great had been the decay of Roman “virtue” that over a generation had elapsed since last they had won a victory in the field He drew up his troops behind a strong line of entrenchments, so close under the walls of the city that they constituted rather an outwork of the permanent fortifications than regular field works of the orthodox type. Indeed, but that he had some scope for counter attack, he seemed rather preparing for a siege than for a battle. Remarkably timid tactics for a general who was soon to prove himself the most dashing commander of his age!

The Persians must have been pretty confident to venture upon attacking such a position. But Perozes felt no doubt of the issue, and sent in an arrogant message to the city ordering the baths to be made ready for his use that night. His troops attacked the Roman left so strongly as actually to force the trenches; but, disordered by their success, they offered an opening to the Herul cavalry, and a furious charge drove them back in complete disarray. Thus, freed from anxiety for his left, Belisarius was able to employ his whole reserve in a decisive charge on the flank of the Persian left who were endeavouring to envelop his right. This wing, the flower of the Persian army, was cut off and annihilated; but Belisarius, true to his prudent tactics, would not trust his raw troops in a prolonged pursuit. Perozes was thus enabled to carry off most of his wounded; cunningly in­viting the citizens of Nisibis to come for the plunder of Daras, and thus obtaining the use of enough wagons to convey his maimed soldiers away.

We outspanned our caravan for the night on the very site of Belisarius' entrenchments just outside the lower water-gate; for the city enclosure itself is so cumbered with its own ruins that it is actually impossible to take wheeled vehicles inside. We might have carried our baggage in; and the Armenian priest of the village (for there are about fifteen Armenian families living there) offered us the use of his house most pressingly, representing that our so honouring him would “increase his name” among the Kurds. But on this occasion we judged it better to keep all our pos­sessions together, and stay ourselves to watch over their safety; and so (as already hinted) we spread our beds on the ramparts, just high enough up to avoid the mists which might be expected to rise from the stream. It proved rather a draughty lodging, but this fact did not trouble us greatly; and we slept undisturbed until the morning star was high enough to give warning of the coming of the sun.

There is a side-show attached to Dara which is scarcely less interesting than itself; and as soon as we found our­selves in full possession of breakfast and daylight (two events which were practically contemporaneous) we decided that, before continuing our journey, we would turn back a mile or so westward to visit the tombs and caves. These make those conspicuous scars which had already attracted our attention as we approached the city-the wide deep transverse gashes which are scored across the neighbouring hill sides.

The rock-cut moat of the city could supply but a small part of the material required for all the buildings, and accordingly shoulder after shoulder of the hills to the west­ward has been pierced with quarries for more stone. When the masons had finished their job these quarries were promptly appropriated by a flourishing colony of hermits,³⁴ who honeycombed all the exposed faces with hundreds of cells and tombs. The cells are mostly cut into the vertical faces; the standard pattern having a round-arched recess for a porch, with a seat on either side of it, and a small square-headed doorway in the middle admitting to a cell about eight feet square. One of the seats in the porch is often hollowed out to form a grave for the occupant of the hermitage or sometimes this niche has been cut out in the floor or wall of his cell. Other graves are above the quarries;_. sunk vertically into the horizontal surfaces. These have an oblong opening, and widen out below beehive-wise so as to form two or more tombs. The opening was covered in with a gable-shaped sarcophagus lid, and many of these are lying about though none are actually in position. No doubt they have been removed by searchers after buried treasure. -

The biggest of all the caves must have served as the. anchorites' church. It has an elaborately carved doorway with bas-relief panels over it representing apparently the Nativity and the Descent into Hades. The interior is irregularly quadrilateral, and must measure about thirty-five feet across. It has a fiat ceiling, and is partly surrounded by a gallery, about eight feet wide and eight feet below the ceiling, supported on a range of rock-cut corbelled arches. There is nothing to indicate the position of the altar, and the eastern side is occupied by the doorway; but the altar may have stood in the centre of the floor. The level of the floor itself is also a matter. for conjecture, as at present it is deeply covered with debris. The place is now used as a sheep shelter, and is known as the khan or “Inn." It is lit by a single small window immediately over the door.

There is interest enough at Dara to occupy an archaeo­logist for weeks together-for months if he sees fit to ex­cavate-but we had to resume our journey, and we knew that if we wanted more archaeologizing we should have no difficulty whatever in finding opportunity on the road. About three hours eastward of Dara stands another Roman fortalice-a big square castle standing in lonely grandeur amid the desolate plain. The walls are now sadly shattered, excepting the great round bastion which is planted at one of the angles; and within the ruined enclosure is hutted a squalid community of miserable half-naked Kurds. This is doubtless the castle between Nisibis and Daras which Justinian ordered to be built in the first year of his reign. It was not auspiciously founded, for Kobad's army descended upon the builders before the work was completed, and the Romans were crushingly defeated, leaving most of their commanders³⁵ on the field. The future course of the war was, however, more favourably influenced by the fact that a certain junior general, of the name of Belisarius, escaped.

Another three hours of slow progress, and we find our­selves approaching another township. The first indication of its neighbourhood is the apparition of a cobble-paved causeway, which gradually consolidates itself out of the dust of the desert, and holds its course steadily onward in a straight undeviating line. Probably it too is Roman, and if so the Romans were the last people who troubled to repair it; for it is so appallingly bumpy, and so frequently intersected by irrigation ditches, that the vehicles tactfully ignore it and keep to the unpaved ground. It leads us at length to a village which is somewhat larger than Dara, but which lacks all Dara's evidences of bygone wealth and grandeur. This place boasts a khan and a market, and is the seat of a local governor. But if it has not fallen so low as its neighbour, it has fallen infinitely farther: for this wretched hamlet is Nisibis, once the impregnable fortress which marked the furthest limit of the power of Imperial Rome.

Nisibis was won for Rome by the conquering arm of Lucullus. It was known then as Antioch in Mygdonia, because its fertile fields and shady groves irresistibly re­minded the Graecian colonists of their lovely Antioch of Daphne. What a satire on Plutarch's explanation are the grim wastes which now environ it, and the barren hummocks of drift sand which have covered its ruins like a shroud! The Romans fortified the city with a triple rampart and a deep moat, and esteemed it (as it often proved itself) the principal bulwark of the east. They maintained a strong garrison in it; and the inhabitants, living in a state of constant warfare with the Parthians and Sassanid Persians, made almost as reliable soldiers as the regular legionaries themselves.

When Sapor II made war on Constantius it was Nisibis that checked his invasions. Between the years 338 and 350 it sustained no fewer than three sieges, and on each of those three occasions it repulsed the invader from its walls. The last siege was also the greatest. Sapor ad­vanced to the attack at the head of an enormous army drawn from all parts of Persia and India, and pressed his assaults most vehemently for a period of over three months, The garrison was ably commanded by Count Lucilianus, but the soul of the defence was the celebrated bishop St. James of Nisibis; and Sapor, finding that he could make no im­pression by ordinary methods, conceived the idea of raising an enormous dam to obstruct the jag-jag river (the ancient Mygdonius) and so flooding the place out. As the city lies in a slight depression this Gargantuan scheme was just feasible; and Sapor did actually contrive to create such an inundation that he could launch a fleet upon it and assail the defenders of the walls on level terms. The com­bined effect of the flood and the floating batteries opened a breach 150 feet wide, and the Great King ordered an immediate assault: but the attacking columns were bogged in the deep mud, and environed by invisible pot-holes; and to cap all, the elephants stampeded and trampled them underfoot by scores. At nightfall the Persians drew off, and the breach was repaired before morning. Sapor had lost 20,000 soldiers and broke up the siege in despair. Legend asserts that his retreat was much expedited by a prodigious plague of flies which descended on the Persian camp in response to the sainted bishop's orisons: but a sceptic might argue that when you have an Oriental army, with its usual disregard of every possible sanitary precaution, encamping in a marsh for three months during the height of a Mesopotamian summer, it needs no miraculous inter­ference to account for something phenomenal in the way of flies!

Alas! all these efforts were wasted. Thirteen years later the Emperor Julian was killed in his famous expedition against Ctesiphon. Jovian, in order to extricate the army, was compelled to sign an ignominious treaty; and one of the chief conditions that Sapor insisted upon was that Nisibis should be ceded into his hands. The inhabitants implored the emperor's pity. Let him but give them leave to defend themselves, they would ask for no external aid. But Jovian was cowed by defeat, and afraid of offending the conqueror: and the townsfolk, well aware that they could expect no mercy from a potentate whom they had thrice discomfited, withdrew with all their possessions and left an empty city in the Persians' hands.

Nisibis under its new masters proved as impregnable a fortress as ever; but it won a new title to fame while under Sassanian rule. In the year 489 the Monophysite Emperor Zeno suppressed the great College of Edessa on the ground that it was tainted with Nestorianism. The Christian bishop of Nisibis was at that time a certain Bar Soma; a prelate of the type which asserted itself more prominently in the Middle Ages, in such men as Henry Despenser. the martial bishop of Norwich, or Carillo the turbulent primate of Toledo. Bar Soma was a personage of some consequence at the Persian Court, and in fact seems to have held a position somewhat akin to Warden of the Marches. He had himself been a scholar at Edessa, and had remained on inti­mate terms with most of the professors; and he conceived the idea of re-establishing the college in his own cathedral town.

The college thus refounded prospered exceedingly, and remained for many generations the most important edu­cational centre in the East. It boasted about 1000 students (for Oriental students pack close), and though its course was primarily theological, yet it did much to keep alive profane knowledge as well. Thus it forms a not unim­portant link between ancient and modern learning. The wisdom of the Greeks, which it received from Edessa, it handed on in its turn to Baghdad and Cordova and Sala­manca; and perhaps even Oxford and Cambridge and Paris and Padua may owe to the college of Nisibis more than they are quite aware.

There may well be good booty at Nisibin for an archaeolo­gist with a turn for excavation, for the mounds and hillocks which encircle it are manifestly piled on ancient walls. But there is little enough above ground-a bridge which is so badly battered that the carts prefer fording the river a fragment or two of old walling; and a group of five monolithic columns, about two-fifths buried in debris, which are known as the columns of weighing, and which probably formed part of the peristyle of the forum. There remains, however, one special monument of even more interest to the ecclesiologist than to the antiquarian-the Church of St. James of Nisibis, one of the oldest Christian edifices in the world.

Few indeed are the Christian churches of earlier date than the fifth century. Even the famous basilicas at Ravenna and Parenzo were only erected in the sixth. With the possible exception of Sta. Pudentiana at Rome there is no fourth-century church remaining in Europe, and even in Asia and Africa the examples may be counted on the fingers of the hand. But the date of St. James' church at Nisibis cannot possibly be later than the year 363, when the city was ceded to the Persians; and as it was built to receive the tomb of the saint (who died shortly after 350), it may be not improbably regarded as the citizens' thank-offering for their deliverance from the great siege.

The church was originally triple, dedicated no doubt to the Holy Trinity, and consisting of three square cellae placed side by side. Each cella measured about twenty-five feet in width, and had a small semicircular recess in the centre of the eastern wall. A pair of arched openings, each about four feet wide, gave access from cella to cella; and a wider archway in each of the western walls opened into a triple narthex, furnished with three double doorways which opened into a courtyard.

CHURCH OF SAINT JAMES AT NISIBIS

The central cella is almost perfect as high as the cornice; but is roofed with a modern dome and pendentives, and has nothing to indicate conclusively the form of the original roof. The northern cella has been more damaged and restored; but still retains the narthex doorways (now blocked) which the central narthex has lost. The southern cells, with its narthex, has been entirely destroyed.

The side openings are spanned by heavy stone lintels, as also are the doorways in the narthex; but the western arches, and these over the apses, are open. Around them all internally runs a bold and richly carved architrave, which is also continued intermediately as a string along the walls. The foliage and mouldings throughout are thoroughly classical in feeling, and the work has all been executed in very finished style.

The tomb of St. James is in a tiny crypt under the altar in the centre of the central cella. It consists of a stone sarcophagus covered with a heavy ridged lid; and it is highly probable that his bones have never been disturbed.

The central cella is still used for Christian worship, and has probably been so used continuously ever since the church was built. The northern cells, however, is not at present used. The Christians who live at Nisibin are Jacobites, and their Qasha inhabits a sort of little prophet's chamber built up against the northern wall of the church.

A change had to be made in our personnel for the ensuing section of the journey. The zaptiehs who had accompanied us from Mardin had reached the end of their beat, and we had to apply for a fresh escort to carry us on to Mosul. One of our two new protectors had travelled with “Rabbi Mr. Wigram” before and “knew him to be virtuous and generous," so relations promised to be harmonious. They were instructed to call for us at the khan at daybreak, “as soon as there was light enough to distinguish between a black thread and a white." They turned up fairly punctu­ally; but it then transpired that two of our horses needed shoeing, and that the drivers (of course) had not considered it necessary to attend to the matter until it was time to start. Thus the day was quite two hours old when we forded the jag-jag river, and bumped off along the causeway which leads from the end of the bridge.

Eastward from Nisibin to Mosul--a distance of 120 miles as the crow flies--lies a stretch of unmitigated desert which is known by the expressive name of the Ch6l. For a journey of four or five days (according to the conditions of travel­ling) you pass no permanent human habitation, and the same monotonous level lies before you at every stage. You must carry your own provisions with you, your own shelter for your nightly bivouacs, and (if you are prudent) your own furnace for boiling the water. Even that water itself is only found at rare intervals in stagnant muddy puddles or intermittent and starveling streams.

The Chol is no sandy desert like the Obi or the Sahara. It is rather what the Spaniards would call a dehesa or despoblada--a waste which might be made fertile by the expenditure of a little pains. It is covered with sparse grass and stunted shrubs, and thistles which are by no means stunted; and a little desultory cultivation which is carried on along the outskirts proves that, with the re-establishment of irrigation, it might again be converted into one of the granaries of the world. Once it supported an immense population, for it was the home of the ancient Assyrians; and though the nucleus of that nation was con­centrated at Nineveh and the adjacent townships, yet there must have been thousands of surrounding villages to supply food for the crowded cities and recruits for the mighty armies which dominated the whole Eastern world.

They have left some trace of their handiwork, for the whole extent of the desert is studded with gigantic gels spaced six or seven miles apart-huge mounds of earth as big as Silbury Hill. What purpose these can have originally served is a matter of much conjecture. Possibly they were sepulchral tumuli, possibly the mounts of village castles, possibly high places for the performance of sacrificial rites; but in any case it is evident that they cannot have been erected without a vast amount of human labour, and that the whole of the present population would not suffice to raise one. Now they serve chiefly as landmarks by which the faintly marked road can steer its course towards the horizon; and in several instances they still form burial places, possibly from some vague feeling that they must have been sacred long ago.

The more direct southerly road from the Euphrates ferry to Mosul traverses this desolate region for a journey of fully ten days; but the three or four days extra entailed by the divergence through Diarbekr bring with them their own compensation in the shape of greater interest on the way. Moreover the Ch6l has its dangers. In summer it is a veritable furnace, and tall awe-inspiring dust devils stalk about it like wandering Jann. But the chief terror of travellers is the “Poison Wind” or Sam, a faint invisible eddy of scorching air, which will pick out a single man or beast from the midst of a caravan and strike him down instantly senseless, sometimes even killing him on the spot.

At the other end of the scale the district is not exempt from blizzards. In the extraordinarily severe winter of igio-1911 the northern part of the Ch6l was visited by a prodigious snowstorm-a most unusual phenomenon--and many parties of Arabs were positively snowed under in their encampments and perished of cold and hunger before they were able to extricate themselves.³⁶ A wandering Kurd related to us how he had stumbled on such a camp after the visitation was over. His suspicion that something was amiss was first aroused by the fact that he encountered no challenge either from man or dog. When he came to the tents he found them full of dead bodies. The only living creatures among them were one old woman and a mare. Feeling sure that the old woman must die in any case he only brought the mare away with him; “but she died too," he said plaintively, “before I could get her to my camp."

More than one carriage load of travellers perished on the road in that catastrophe; but our only discomfort on this occasion was a steady downpour of rain. We were told that we ought to feel grateful for it-that at least it would ensure us against any shortage of water. But no one can be expected to feel very grateful for five successive rainy bivouacs: and even our zaptiehs grumbled a little--three wet days they were prepared for, but no one ever expected to get more! Our horses were the principal sufferers, for the wheels bit deep into the sodden ground and picked up huge dollops of loam which festooned themselves around the felloes. We walked many miles to relieve them; but it was like walking over wet plough-land in England, and we were obliged to pause every few paces in order to dis­burden ourselves of the lumps which had balled on our feet. Stiff European boots are not nearly so good for such work as the flexible brogues of the natives; and the spongy pads of the camels are apparently the best things of all.

Some of the wild life of the desert showed itself in a herd of gazelle, which cantered across our pathway a mile or so ahead. We roused, too, a flock of herons, several sheldrake, a wild goose or two, and an occasional covey of larks. After dark we became aware of the jackals, which began whining dolefully around us; and on one occasion at nightfall, loping along the skyline just over our bivouac, we espied a solitary wolf. Human beings were a very great rarity, despite the fact that we were following a recognized highway, and for two consecutive days the only sign of their neighbourhood was a solitary black Arab tent which we spied some four miles to the right. Twice, however, we encountered a caravan of camels-about seventy strong in one instance, and about thirty in the other. Camels are preferred to mules on the plains as they carry much heavier burdens. Moreover one man (with a donkey) can look after seven or eight camels, whereas a caravan of mules requires about a man apiece.

Our choice of camping-grounds was dictated each night by the presence of water; for despite the steady downpour very little remained upon the surface, and the rain apparently soaks through immediately into the underlying strata, as on the Causses of Auvergne. The water was always muddy and sometimes bitter; but as we invariably boiled it, and kept the beasts away from it till we had filled our kettles, we believe that we swallowed nothing worse than sterilized mud. We used to spread our beds on the lee edge of our waterproof ground sheets, and draw the outer edge over us as an additional protection. But the rain sometimes penetrated everything, and in the morning we would find great pockets of water between the double thicknesses of the waterproof sheets. Decidedly camping-out is an amusement to be practised in the summer when the nights are short, for nights in the open are very tedious. You turn in about seven-thirty, and awake (thinking it nearly dawn) to find that it is eleven. You wake again about two; and then at gradually diminishing intervals, till at last you are re­joiced to find it five-thirty-breakfast time. Once in the middle of the night we were disturbed by one of the horses breaking picket; and the owner arose and gave chase, with frequent ejaculations of Mashallah! (Praise God!) ­hardly the sort of comment that one would expect from a British dragoon!

In the afternoon of the fourth day the zaptiehs began to hold out hopes to us of lodging that night under shelter; for a big semi-permanent Arab encampment was. generally to be found at this stage. And sure enough a little later we were able to make out some eight or nine big black tents, grouped around the remains of a ruined village with the wreck of a castle on its tel. Several such ruined villages are found here and there about the desert, but the in­habitants have long since been badgered out of them by Turkish tax-collectors and Arab raiders. The Arabs, though delightful hosts and most romantic features in a landscape, are not desirable neighbours. They submit to no control whatever; and, only a few months before, they had pillaged a Government caravan, which was conveying a big pumping engine to Mosul, and carried off all the gun-metal bearings under the delusion that they were gold!³⁷

We dispatched a zaptieh ahead of us to announce our approach and to bespeak hospitality; but dusk had already fallen before we ourselves arrived. The jaded horses had heavy work to drag the carriages forward; and we walking on in front of them, reached the outskirts of the camp a considerable distance ahead. Here, however, we were met by our returning zaptieh, who would not hear of our proceed­ing further. The Sheikh Birader Effendi (Milord Brother Esquire) had already caused him great scandal by walking so much and so needlessly when he had hired a carriage to ride in; and now he insisted that we should fatally compromise our dignity if we did not drive up like gentlemen to our entertainer's tent door.

We drove the last 200 yards accordingly, and dismounted at one of the largest tents; where we were courteously welcomed by Sheikh Ahmed Agha, a fine-looking elderly Arab of medium height and active build, with a , pointed grizzled beard and a nose like the beak of an eagle. He shook hands with us d la Franga, and led. us into his tent, where he made us sit down opposite to him on mattresses spread on the ground.

The tent was some forty yards long and twelve yards wide; about twelve feet high at the ridge and three to four feet at the eaves. It was supported upon a row of seven central poles, and the guy ropes were exceedingly long, the pegs being three dozen yards beyond the overhang of the eaves. The space between the eaves and the ground was filled up partly by hanging cloths, and partly by piles of dried thistles, which come in useful as fuel. The tent cloth was of black goats' hair, very loosely woven like coarse English sacking. We could see daylight through it everywhere; particularly at the (horizontal) seams, where it gaped like an old umbrella. The smoke oozed freely through it; and next morning every tent in the camp was veiled in a sort of blue nimbus, the combined effect of smoke and evaporation. Such a texture can afford but indifferent protection against rain, but is needed chiefly as a shelter from the sun.

At the further end of the tent were about a dozen shackled camels, which we could hardly see in the darkness, but heard grunting and gurgling all night. Next the camels were four or five mares tethered to a manger. White mares and flea-bitten greys are most in demand in this country, as they are considered to feel the heat less than bays or browns. Black horses are reputed unlucky, and may con­sequently often be bought cheap.

Next, in the centre of the tent, sat the Sheikh; with his back against one of the poles, and the fire burning on the ground before him: and opposite him, with our backs against the next pole, sat we. Behind us was a reed partition shutting off the women's quarters, and with them (to judge by the sounds) lived the poultry and the sheep. A sort of enclosed yard, hedged in with piles of dried thistles, had been formed for their special benefit outside their end of the tent.

There was no light except the fire and our own imported candle. When the inmates wanted a blaze they threw on an armful of thistles; but their principal fuel consisted of cakes of dried camels' dung which an old fire tender built up in the form of a hollow cone. Our zaptiehs and several of the Sheikh's tribesmen sat with us; and two small boys, his grandsons, cuddled themselves up against his knees. The Sheikh of course spoke only Arabic, and we had to converse through an interpreter; but one of the zaptiehs was a great chatterbox, so the conversation did not flag. The women naturally did not show, but (like Sarah, Abraham's wife) they were by no means inattentive listeners; and the Sheikh got frequently prompted by a shrill “Ask him so and so!" from behind the screen.

From time to time we were served with tiny cups of black coffee containing about a tablespoonful each; and our supper consisted of a dish of fried eggs and dates. We have been told by a travelled Syrian (though we will not vouch for his authority), that an uninvited guest should be cautious when he is offered coffee by an Arab chief. He may accept the first two cups--that is just conventional politeness--­but the offer of a third is a hint that he had better be going, and if he is too obtuse to take it, the next hint may be given with a gun! We, however, drank several cups and experienced no resentment; and our night in the black tents of Kedar was one of the pleasantest on the road.

We made a late start the next morning, for it would have been discourteous to hurry; and apparently Arabs, when camping, are not particularly early birds. Our host bade us farewell at his tent door, and accepted with great amiability the trifling present which we offered to him in recognition of his hospitality. Any suggestion of payment would of course have been an insult; but a present is often expected, and always well received.

It was a brighter morning; and the zaptiehs hazarded an opinion that “Allah would be merciful." Far to the north we could see once more the mountains of Kurdistan, with gleams of sun sparkling on their snow-fields; and nearer to us on the southward lay the long barren ridges of the Sinjar. But this promise of better things was of very short duration, and before mid-day the rain had re­commenced.

At nightfall we reached our last camping-ground, over­looking the river Tigris; and here we underwent our last drenching-the longest and heaviest of all. We lay dozing under our waterproofs listening to the patter of the rain­drops, and fondly hoping that the dawn might bring us just five minutes respite to enable us to pack up and stow away in the dry. But at last we started up desperately bundled our beds on to the carriages-and dashed away dripping and reckless without even waiting for food. We knew that just twelve miles ahead we should find real houses with roofs' to them-that an hour would bring us to cultivated fields again, and two hours within sight of Mosul. We passed through the city gate with as much relief as the snail and the tortoise must have felt when they entered Noah's Ark at the tail of the procession; and descended joyfully from that weary araba in which we had been cooped up like Bajazets for a journey of seventeen days.

CHAPTER IV

THE BURDEN OF NEWER NINEVEH (MOSUL)

THERE are more pleasant places in the world than the city of Mosul. Hot, white, and dusty, it lies on a rather "hummocky" site along the right (or western) bank of the Tigris, looking across to where the mounds of Nebi Yunus and Koyunjik mark the site of Nineveh.

It boasts a population of about eighty thousand souls, of whom perhaps a fourth are Christians, and five thousand Jews: and the whole is surrounded by a wall and moat which enclose rather more than a square mile of ground­--an area about equal to the city of London.

The wall may follow old lines, but is itself no more than a century old. It is rapidly splitting to pieces owing to the poorness of its construction, a process much assisted both by private citizens and by the Government, both of whom-wish to make use of its stones. Probably, the founda­tions are shaky, for the whole town suffers from that failing; and every minaret in the place has a conspicuous kink in it, except the principal one, which has two.

The town does not now fill up its walls, a large quarter at the northern end having been so devastated by plague about three hundred years ago that it was abandoned. This area now remains empty, and there is in consequence a certain amount of “overflow” beyond the walls at the southern end of the town, where stands the Government serai with the barracks of the troops in its neighbourhood.

Mosul is not a seaport, though the Government of his Britannic Majesty would seem to be invincibly ignorant on this point. When the Consulate was re-established here a few years ago, the gentleman appointed asked for a grant for the furnishing of his reception-room, but was refused, on the ground that his only guests would be “a few old sea captains "; to this day his successors are required to make an annual return of the British shipping that has discharged cargo here, though nothing except a “keleg” (the local type of raft, of which we shall hear more) ever comes within three hundred miles of the place!

Mosul boasts one vice that is at least unusual in the land, for it is a smoky town. A pall hangs over much of the city, from the kilns where the local marble is burnt into lime. Nearly the whole city is built in what is known as jess construction. This is a primitive type of building, the walls of all houses being formed with rough blocks of stone, “balled” in lime cement, and so put together. The roof is domed in the same way, but to save material the spandrils are usually filled in with large earthenware pots, which may or may not stand the weight put upon them. As a style, it is deceptive, for it looks solid, enduring, and weather­proof, and yet is none of the three: a house built in it seldom stands for eighty years, the thrust of the dome normally bringing the walls down by the end of that period.

The construction, which cracks freely, has a way of absorbing much of the rain that falls upon it, so that a house is seldom really dry in winter; and the cement has a de­lightful trick (which is appreciated during a Mosul summer) of storing up heat during the day and gradually releasing it during the night.

The town is composed, like most Oriental cities, of a maze of winding featureless lanes, all of the same white cement, and rarely of a width that forbids a cat to jump across from one roof to the opposite; they are innocent of lamps, or rather were so till the late Nazim Pasha (then Vali of Baghdad, and superintendent of this province also) visited the place; when paraffin lamps were put up in his honour, and now stand unlighted on their brackets. The pave­ment is of large cobble-stones, worn smooth by many generations of slippers and bare feet; and the whole town is, of course, innocent of drains. Hence, in the rainy season it is well to put a portable bridge across the street if you propose to visit your neighbour, or to wear wooden pattens some six inches in height.

Only the doorways break the blank walls in the street fronts of the houses, but the courtyards within are undeniably picturesque, and are of a plan that is at least 'ancient, for it is identical with that found in the cities of ancient Assyria, unearthed by the German excavator of to-day. An entry, carefully constructed so as to prevent the passer-by from seeing within even when the door is open, conducts into a courtyard, surrounded by a two-storied cloister, carried on monolithic pillars of the local grey alabaster. The court is usually paved, and the house-front often cased, with the same material. A deep open recess at one side provides a summer lounge. A water conduit usually runs through the court itself, and the central part is often used as a garden.

The house of a rich man invariably has its serdab, or underground summer-parlour, where you may get any coolness that is going in the fierce summer heats. The thermometer then goes up regularly to 120^°; and seldom sinks below 95^° by night or day-a fact attested by a certain British Consul, who tried the experiment of hatching out a sitting of eggs, left uncovered in a disused (and perhaps rather specially hot) room of his Consulate.

Resident Europeans say that the serdab may be cool, but that, unless very well seasoned, you are apt to pay for the use of it by a dose of the country fever.

Hot winds blow in from the desert which comes up to the very walls, and the dust from the kilns and pounding yards (where mules drag rude rollers over the lime to grind it to powder) flies on their wings all over the city

so that, from this cause, and from the glare of the white walls ophthalmia is even more prevalent here than in most Oriental cities, and lung disease of various kinds abounds. Another local plague is the famous “button," which is found from Aleppo to Baghdad, and is believed to go back to the days of job. This is sometimes called “the date," from its appearance, and is no more than a painless, but very unsightly, boil; which refuses to heal for twelve months and leaves a permanent scar behind. The infection is believed to be carried by flies, and the disease certainly manifests itself, as a rifle, on the face or hands, while those who shave are particularly liable to it. Local scandal tells of a certain German Consul who despised all precautions and slept on the roof of his house without curtains, and (the night being hot) without pyjamas also an imprudence for which he paid the penalty in thirty fine “buttons” scattered all over his consular person!

Thermantidotes, ice supplies, and all other luxuries of English life in India are unknown in Mosul, though an enterprising Christian resident in the town did once introduce an ice-machine. This was certainly welcomed by the Vali, as the only sign of the new regime that he had found in Mosul (it was shortly after the revolution), and as the only token of progress of any sort that he could note as a result of the fifty years that had elapsed since he had formerly been in the place as a very junior civil officer.

There was strong conservative opposition to the intro­duction even of such a mild instalment of progress; though perhaps it might have been mollified, had the pioneer been a little more liberal with his distribution of bakhshish! As it was weird accusations circulated against the new engine; it smelt so abominable that the whole neighbourhood of the factory was unhealthy (as though one stink more or less could make any difference in Mosul); it turned out its ice red-hot, and materially increased the heat that it was proposing to alleviate; and it was an impious interference with the decrees and arrangements of Allah. The ice merchant, however, had not been born in Mosul, and bred in America, without learning a thing or two; and he craftily put the general commanding the garrison on the free-list for ice. He calculated that, after the first week or so, a gentleman, who did not keep the law about total abstinence too strictly, would not tolerate any interference with the coolness of his drinks. That expedient worked admirably, and all interference was summarily squashed, for so long as the machine continued to work at all. That, however, was not many weeks, for no machinery that is not absolutely and completely “fool-proof” can stand the handling it gets from an Arab, and in Mosul the simplest repair may necessitate months of delay. There will be no market for machinery in the interior of Turkey, until good repair shops can be provided as well.

As capital of the province Mosul is the residence of a Vali, but the town is administered under him by an “adminis­trative council of reputable citizens," who are popularly believed to be the most corrupt gang of the sort in all Turkey. And we devoutly hope that the imputation is true, for any clique which is more corrupt than they are must be black indeed. Their leader is one Haji Ahmed, “son of the soap-seller," ibn Sabonji; a large landed proprietor who has accumulated his estate by the simple process of ordering any unhappy Naboth whose land bordered on his own to sell to him at any price that his big neighbour cared to name. If the small man consented, well and good; if not, then an accusation against him, accompanied with a trifle of bakhshish to the investigating judge, secured that the imprudent Naboth should live untried in the town prison till such time as he should see reason.

This worthy has had ups and downs in his life, and once fell very foul of a Vali, who was seized with natural zeal to check the plundering of the public purse when he found that Sabonji Pasha had laid hands on certain funds that he had intended to appropriate himself! Thus that distin­guished member of the town council was pilloried; i.e. was put on a donkey with his face blackened and turned to the tail, and so led round the town; being thereafter put into the cesspool of the Government “Serai” to pass the night. “Iyba” (shame) such as this would end the career of most men, but Sabonji has some unusual gifts, and intrigue and bribery soon brought him into power again.

The fact that one of the finest and largest houses in the town was built by one of the smaller legal officials, nominally out of fifteen months' saving of a salary which, when paid, amounted to sixty pounds per annum, may perhaps be evidence of what “pickings” amount to in the trade of law; and the story of a recent episode (occurring in the year of grace 1910) in the career of a prominent and highly respected citizen of the town will speak more clearly than long descriptions.

Seyyid Ullah was the principal burglar of Mosul, having inherited a practice in that profession from his father, as naturally as son may follow sire in the medical business in England. Housebreaking was what he specialized in, and the usual mode of procedure was to dig through the wall of a house with pickaxes from the street; it having been found, by experience, that this was less laborious than breaking down an iron-bound door. Of course, arrangements had to be made that the police should be well away on the other side of the town (if they were not engaged, as sometimes happened, in securing the ends of the street against any interruption), but there was seldom any difficulty about that. It was an understood thing, seemingly, that you must not interfere with the trade by which a man earned his bread; and Seyyid Ullah was only held to have over­stepped his legitimate rights once-when he cut off a woman's hands ( Even then, it was admitted in extenuation that there really was no other way of getting her gold bangles.

Having acquired a competence in his profession, Seyyid Ullah retired as he grew older; but, like other energetic gentlemen, found that he really needed something to do. For this reason, he took to smuggling tobacco, a profitable occupation, but one that brought him into collision with the Government in a way that mere burglary had never done--­for tobacco is a Government monopoly. So one night a caravan of mules on their way to his house were attacked by the guards of the “Regie," and not only were the loads lost, but there was a dead policeman to explain. He had died of a Mannlicher bullet; and there was only one rifle of that type in Mosul-the property of Seyyid Ullah; who notoriously allowed nobody else to handle it. Moreover the bullet had apparently come from a roof where that poor man was standing at the time.

Some unscrupulous enemy put all these coincidences before the Government, with the result that Seyyid Ullah was arrested, and even ordered into gaol. Not that he entered it, for gaol is not for such as he; he merely sat in the coffee-shop outside, and when that enemy who had given the information went past on his way to market, he was mobbed and hustled by the Seyyid's followers, till a formal petition had to be sent in to the Vali that he should be requested to go inside. Of course they gave him the best room, with a window looking over the street; and the governor of the prison used to give him his company to dinner and pass the time over a backgammon board; but he complained that the damp was bad for his rheu­matism.

At last the worthy man was tried; and acquitted without a stain upon his character. The court held (so far as foreign residents could understand) that the policeman had been guilty of contributory negligence, in that he got in the way of a bullet that was travelling about on its lawful occasions; and that all facts about the make of the rifle, and so on, were irrelevant details.

A free man again, Seyyid Ullah came at once to call upon the British Consul, to explain that he quite understood that his release from the machinations of his enemies was due solely to the influence of his Excellency the Bey; and that he was more than ready to undertake any job the Consul desired, in the way of removing any objectionable person, for he must own that the expenses incidental to his acquittal had made a sad hole in his savings!

Some time previous to this, there had been great com­plaining among the merchants of Mosul over the depre­dations of a certain gang of thieves, all of whom were well known to the , and who were plundering peaceful citizens apparently at their own sweet will.

Authority, though most unwilling, was prodded into some sort of activity, and that particular gang was arrested and stowed in gaol. The robberies, however, did not diminish a whit; and after a while the governor of the prison pointed out this fact to the Vali. Evidently “those poor men” had been wrongly arrested after all, and ought in fairness to be released-seeing that they had never been tried. This seemed reasonable, but there was the usual delay before doing anything, and in those few days the true explanation came to light. The honourable the governor of the prison was in the habit of letting the gang in question out of the gaol every night, “to go and sleep at their own houses." They returned again before dawn, thus getting the most satisfactory alibi any man could desire; while, in consideration of his complacency, the governor was taking half their plunder! It is true that this official was dismissed from his. post in consequence, but apparently he received no further penalty of any sort.

This may, perhaps, sound a “tough yarn "; yet we may find a fairly recent parallel for it in England. The memoirs of William Hickey record an even worse scandal of one of the London bailiffs in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Our boasted superiority to this sort of thing is of very recent date, and perhaps will not be of very long duration.

The Governor-General or Vali, who ruled this city of con­fusion and corruption, was perhaps as good a man as could have been selected for a job where his powerlessness to effect any real improvement would have broken the heart of anyone who still had any enthusiasms or delusions left.

Tahir Pasha was an Albanian by blood, though he had grown grey in the Sultan's service, and had certainly never seen his own mountains since boyhood. Still, “once an Arnaut, always an Arnaut," and, as a general rule, men of that very striking race are the best possible Ottoman officials; particularly in places where their duty is (or is supposed to be) the preservation of an even balance between the various Christian and Mussulman races.

It is impossible for an Arnaut to despise all Christians just because of their religion; for a large proportion of his own race axe of that creed, and it is an axiom that every Arnaut is congenitally superior to every other specimen of manhood. That being so, he may despise all his subjects equally (and very probably does so), but at least he does not despise any one set specially, and there is always a chance of his doing some justice among them.

And this Tahir Pasha did, to the limits of his not very extensive power. He had no great belief in Reform, or for that matter in anything else (except the straightness of certain English gentlemen whom he knew, and in the genius of his favourite hero, Admiral Nelson): and he held shrewdly that “you cannot build very high, when your bricks are made of wet mud "-and of Mosul slime at that he might have added, though he did not say so in words. Still, under his rule nobody's lot was intolerable if it was impos­sible for anybody to be really comfortable; and he had absolutely nothing to learn in the art of keeping a simmering province from boiling over, when the Government had no force to back its orders, and did not wish to have any open row. He was an elderly man, tall and portly; with a “short” face, framed in a close-cropped, white beard, and a shrewd and humorous expression. Nature had given him a most attractive manner; and by virtue of it he had survived two revolutions in the country, being the only man of his rank to do so. When things went amiss, “he sat on the stile and continued to smile," and almost always found that the method softened the heart of the most furious of cows.

Further, he was singularly clean handed, as Ottoman officials go. Even those who declared that he took bribes in his youth admitted that he refused them in his old age “unless they were very big," they added. Well, for the bribes, what is an official to do, whose salary, is in the first place, wholly inadequate; and in the second, not paid? When he did not need them, he ceased to take them. “How otherwise? I liked him, I confess," as Browning put it, of a character that much resembled the old Albanian whose name (by the way) is, being interpreted, “Innocent," and who had the reputation throughout his province of never sending a petitioner away dissatisfied, and yet of never making a promise that it was inconvenient to keep.

Moreover, there were times when Tahir Pasha could insist on justice; and the fact is rare in Turkey. In 1910 a particularly dastardly murder was committed in Mosul, the murderer being a Christian by race, a member of the “Chaldaean” or “Uniat Nestorian” Church; while the victim was of the older and independent Nestorian body.³⁸ The murderer was, most deservedly, sentenced to death; but that does not at all necessarily imply execution in Turkey. To begin with, Ottoman law lays it down that in a murder case the next of kin of the victim has the right to require the remission of the death sentence if he desires it. This is no doubt a relic of the days when every man could avenge or forgo his own quarrels as he chose; but in practice, it works out very inconveniently for the man in question, who, in addition to losing his own nearest relative, has to undergo a lot of “peaceable persuasion” from the mur­derer's relations, till he chooses to exercise the right. In this case, however, the next of kin, also a Nestorian, stood firm, and claimed his legal revenge.

On this the murderer showed the real depth of his Chris­tianity by sending word to Tahir Pasha that if his life were spared he would turn Moslem. Whether the Mollahs were desirous of obtaining so doubtful a convert does not appear, but at least the Pasha was not eager.

“Of course, I am bound to be glad that he proposes to turn Moslem," he said grimly. “It may even be better for him in the next world. Still, his head has got to come off in this."

But now a third difficulty arose, from the fact that the lawful executioner refused to act. Like Koko in” The Mikado,”this Monsieur de Strasbourg declared that he” had never cut off a gentleman's head in his life, and did not know how it was done." Under these circumstances, there was nothing for it but to call for a volunteer; and another relative of the murdered man generously offered to do his best, if they would lend him a sabre. “You had better do your best," said some official, “for if you fetch the head off with one chop you shall have thirty pounds, but if it takes a second blow you go to prison for five years!” Under this stimulus the amateur executioner did his part to admiration, and took the head off finely.

Even so there was an afterpiece to the play, for many folk made the conduct of this murderer a ground for a most unfair attack on the Patriarch of the Chaldaean Church, saying, “Now we see what sort of Christian Mar Immanuel trains." The retort that his Grace made, if not exactly scrupulous, was at least effective. Ignoring the offer to turn Moslem altogether, he declared, "Pupil of mine? He certainly was, and I am proud of him. He is a Christian martyr, for he would not have been executed if it had not been for that wicked Nestorian heretic!" And he cited in proof of his saintliness the “miraculous” light above the grave.

The light was there certainly, a form of phosphorescence that is seen at times above a fresh grave in that dry air, and which is usually taken as a proof of the sanctity of the occupant. We suppose that we may be thankful that this rather doubtful character was not enrolled among the saints.

It will be inferred from the foregoing incident that religion in Mosul is of a somewhat militant type. It is in fact one of the most fanatical towns in the empire; and was surely the only place where men wept openly in the streets on hearing of the deposition of Abdul Hamid, and exclaimed, “Now is the pillar of Islam fallen."

The establishment of a British Consulate there, after a long interregnum, was either the cause or excuse for an outbreak. Certain Dervishes fastened on the fact that the flagstaff on the Consulate was higher than the crescent on the dome of a certain tomb, called the tomb of Cassim, where a descendant of the Prophet was interred. It was, of course, intolerable that the accursed red-cross flag should flaunt itself above the crescent, and a mob assembled at the Consul's gates, shouting under the leadership of a Dervish of some fame, “O Fatima, Fatima, daughter of the Prophet, will you not avenge the shame of your descendant? "

Rather, strangely it had never occurred to them to resent the fact that a Christian Church had been standing higher than the tomb for centuries; yet the Consulate was in, fact an empty monastery, rented from the authorities of the “Jacobite” Church by its present occupier.

Of course, the British official respects the monastic churches, which number two; and they are used for service on certain festal days.

As for the tomb which caused the emeute; if Fatima, or somebody else, does not see to it soon, it will disappear into the Tigris, on the bank of which river it stands. The current is eating into the bank under its foundations, and the whole fabric is leaning over dangerously. Its fall would be a loss, for it is a fine specimen of Arab architecture; and besides, the British Consul would be blamed. Obviously, the cause of the disaster will be Cassim's desire to be rid of such bad company.

THE “PICTURE ROCKS” OF BAVIAN.

As a city Mosul is singularly well be-bishoped. No fewer than three Roman Catholic prelates exercise jurisdiction in it over their various flocks; and there is, in addition, at least one “Jacobite” bishop; one Nestorian (who is at present in exile on the charge that his presence is a cause of disturbance to other people), and sundry Armenian, Greek, and Anglican Christians who render obedience to none of the resident bishops at all. The facts will bear a word of explanation; particularly as the existence of more than one Roman Catholic bishop in one diocese seems strangely contradictory to the discipline of that Church elsewhere.

In the days of the Byzantine Empire the attempt to enforce Greek uniformity on all nations resulted in various national stocks (Syrian, Armenian, and Egyptian, for instance) adopting any “heresy” that chanced to be on the tapis, as a protest against what they regarded as “Greek dictation." While the dispute, both doctrinal and national, was still being fought out, the great Mussulman invasions began; and the nationalities in question cheerfully accepted the Mohammedan rule, which gave to them a religious freedom which the Greek Christian Empire had denied. The Arab, and the Turk who followed him, were perfectly willing to see their Christian subjects divided as much as they liked; and recognized the Armenian, Syrian, Chaldaean, and Coptic nations as “millets” in their empire; a “millet” being the technical term for a subject nation of Christians, organized (as they always were) in a church, under their own hierarchy of Patriarch, bishops, and clergy. Thus these various national churches, all called heretical by both Greeks and Latins, continued to exist under Turkish rule.

In the later days of the Turkish Empire Roman Catholic missions brought education to these Christians; and the Roman Church allowed such portions of these old national churches as could be brought to submit to papal supremacy, to retain their own hierarchy, and their ancient services, expurgated to some extent. All these “Uniat” or “recon­ciled” bodies are, of course; subject to the Pope, but their members do not, normally, communicate with one another. Historically, one rejoices at the preservation of so many ancient rites and bodies, and the method was sound policy also from the point of view of the proselytizing agents of the Roman Church; for both Nestorian and Jacobite might both be brought to acknowledge the supremacy of a distant Pope, if that Pope's agents had somewhat to give in the way of protection or education, but neither could ever be brought to associate with “that other” whose tenets his church existed to repudiate.

Thus, with sound prudence, rules about diocesan juris­diction that hold elsewhere are dropped in the Middle East; and Mosul boasts at least three Roman Catholic bishops, namely, a Chaldaean or “Nestorian Uniat” Patriarch, with several bishops under him; a Syrian Catholic or Jacobite Uniat "³⁹ bishop, subordinate to the Patriarch of that church at Beyrout; and an “Apostolic Delegate," or Papal Legate, who exercises a general superintendence over all Roman Catholic bishops in Mesopotamia, but has direct spiritual jurisdiction over only the handful of Frenchmen who reside actually in Mosul, and any other “Christian of the Latin rite” who may chance to come that way.

There is also a strong colony of Jews in the city, still living in their ancient quarter; where they have lived; they say (with every appearance of -truth), since Sargon of Assyria brought their ancestors from captured Samaria in the eighth century B.C. Like all of their kind they are traders, for the place is a centre of local trade. Still, most of the wares in the market, other than raw material like wool and oak-galls, come originally from Manchester or Reading; and one doubts if it would still be possible to find in Mosul any of that fine “muslin” which has carried the name of the city over all the world.

One branch of the local export trade to which we may refer is that in liquorice, a plant that grows wild freely on the plain. The fact that European merchants were anxious to buy it caused much wonderment; but presently the real explanation got known and was accepted by every­body. “King George of England likes nothing so much as sucking liquorice; and he has sent twenty-five millions of English sovereigns to secure a supply that shall last him all his life."

On the left bank of the Tigris, opposite to Mosul, lies Nineveh, and the one place is approached from the other by a bridge that is thoroughly characteristic of Turkey; it goes, that is to say, some two-thirds of the way over the river, crossing just that part of the bed which is dry for most of the year. As the real channel is approached, the bridge stops abruptly, and a series of pontoon-like barges takes the place of it. This bridge of boats is itself removed in flood-time, and the traveller may then, given good luck, get over in the course of an hour, with the help of a very clumsy ferry-boat. Bridges, it may be said, are regarded in Turkey rather as natural impediments to travel than as assistants to it; and the fact that “there are bridges on that road” is always made an excuse for asking twice the usual fare for a carriage.

The bridge of boats at Mosul is civic property; and is hired out annually to anyone who will farm it, for a very substantial sum. The lessee is expected to keep the whole bridge in order, and charges a toll on every man or animal that crosses the bridge.

Nominally the rent of the bridge is spent, of course, upon the needs of the city, and is handed over to the adminis­trative council for that end. Still, when a city has no pavements or lamps or drainage, or any of the numerous unnecessary things that the West indulges in because it has more money than it knows what to do with, after all it has no needs.

A city, too, is composed of citizens, argue the councillors; and what is spent for the needs of worthy citizens is, in a sense, spent for the benefit of the city; and what citizens can be worthier than those who toil daily at the adminis­trative council for the benefit of their fellows? So the bridge rent is spent on those worthy objects; and as yet nobody has raised any other objection than that he was himself left out of the sharing of the plunder. What the narrow-minded Western calls corruption will not cease till public opinion condemns it; and what passes for public opinion in Turkish provinces now can imagine no other way of getting anything done.

Musing thus on problems of municipal reform we cross the bridge and ride over the mile or so of flat foreshore, that now separates the river from the walls of Nineveh. Once the Tigris washed the base of Koyunjik, the site of Senna­cherib's palace, and formed an impregnable barrier against all assaults from that side, but the day dawned at last of which an old prophecy had spoken, when the river joined the besiegers, and betrayed the city to its foes. A great flood swept away the walls, leaving wide breaches all along the frontage; and as the waters subsided, to the river had cut a new channel, and the whole of the side which it had guarded lay completely open to attack.

Wherefore King Sardanapalus (who was not AssurbanipaI, but a successor of his named Sinsariskun) gathered together all his treasure and his wives and his children, and died as a king should die, in the flames of his own palace.

Nineveh fell in the year 608 B.C., overthrown by Cyaxares, the king of the Medes, and his better known ally, Nabo­polassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, king of -Babylon. She had been hard pressed more than once before, but had triumphed eventually over each successive peril. The ultimate explanation of this final overthrow was indeed nothing more or less than the exhaustion caused by genera­tions of conquest. There were no true Assyrians left--only a half-bred race, the fruit of incessant inter-marriages; and when they succumbed, they had no power of recupera­tion. "Nineveh is laid waste, who shall bemoan her? Her people is scattered upon the mountains, and no man gathereth them."

There is but little above ground at Nineveh now. The long walls remain, looking much like derelict railway embankments; and the great moat, fifty yards in width, and twenty feet deep, into which the waters of the river Khozr could be turned at will, still girdles the city round. Sunk as it is in conglomerate rock, this moat is a monu­ment of patient labour. Of the two great mounds where the King's palaces stood, Koyunjik and Nebi Yunus, the former and larger has probably yielded the last of its important secrets to the British Museum. It is well, however, to remember that the same was said of Karnak, in Egypt, and the richest of all finds have come to light there since then. You can never be sure that you have got all that is in a mound, till, more fossorum Germanicorum, you have passed the whole of it through a fine sieve.

Still, the search has been fairly thorough. The excavators, however, left one of the great human-headed bulls above ground; and it may be of interest to record that this monument (which was presumably the property of the British Museum) first generously parted with its head to mend a mill; and was subsequently sold for the sum of three shillings and six pence by the Vali of Mosul (not worthy old Tahir Pasha, but his predecessor), and burnt into lime by its purchaser.

The second mound, Nebi Yunus-alas, one can but gnash one's teeth in envy and anger when one knows that the favourite palace of Esarhaddon lies beneath it-that king whose smaller house elsewhere has yielded the forest specimens of Assyrian art yet known. And this, his chef d'oeuvre, cannot be examined, because of the mosque of Nebi Yunus (Jonah the Prophet) that stands in the midst of the Turkoman village that crowns it. The Prophet will be very angry if you disturb him, say the Mussulmans, and will take vengeance dire!⁴⁰ If it were indeed Jonah that lies there, there might be something in the argument; for the Prophet is known to have had a temper. But it is not he. After all, seeing that his prophecy of the destruction of Nineveh was not fulfilled, the top of the mound that covers the ruins of the city is perhaps the one spot of earth where it is quite impossible for him to be buried! As a matter of fact, the mosque is an old Nestorian church, once the cathedral of that body in the days when their inde­pendent patriarchate was in Mosul; and the occupant of the tomb is John the Lame, a worthy Patriarch of the thirteenth century, who now gets compensation for a life of hardship in his posthumous honours as Jewish Prophet and Mussulman Saint.

Mar John the Lame was a friend to knowledge and learning in his life; and it must be a real annoyance to the good old mart to think that his corpse has been made into an obstacle to both of them now that he has done with it 1

Only one of the treasures of the palace has ever come to light, viz. a pair of bronze oxen, found in the process of cleaning out the well in the court of the mosque. These “idols" were promptly melted down; and they now, in the form of a window grating, keep thieves from a gentleman's house in Mosul.

The old order is changing in Mosul as elsewhere; or will change when the Baghdad Railway comes and brings light and sanitation into its picturesque corruption. The domi­nation of the present governing clique will go, and one hopes that something better will take its place. Will whatever happens to come be a real improvement on the open bribery of Sabonji, and the humorous tolerance of Tahir Pasha? Some things will mend. The small merchant, for instance, will no longer be made to buy his stock from the local member of the administrative council; and warned that if he dares to import for himself from Aleppo, that caravan, at any rate, will not pass the Shammar Arabs. The youthful heroes of that tribe will no longer be told by the old men “in the good old days of our fathers, a young fellow had to kill his lion before he thought himself man enough to take a wife. Now you must, at any rate, rob a caravan." All that will be to the good. Still, the experience of towns like Beyrout and Smyrna suggests that, after all, the known evils of the East may be preferable to the unknown crop that will spring from a confusion of East and West.

CHAPTER V

THE TEMPLE OF THE DEVIL (SHEIKH ADI)

WE have long been partial to pilgrimage. Partly because we love all old habits. Because “it was so our fathers did in the days of old;” and because, quite apart from that intrinsically “excellent reason," we have yet another reason which may well be thought “good enough." We have found that the original promoters of that pastime were people of singular discrimination, and endowed with a positive genius for exploiting attractive resorts. The shrines to which they sent their penitents are so many realms of delight to the vagrant pleasure-seeker; and who could pick out for himself a more ideal holiday paradise than Lourdes or Monserrat or Covadonga or Rocamadour?

We have ranged in quest of palms and scallop shells through the length and breadth of Christendom, from the Holy Sepulchre in the east to Santiago de Compostela in the west; and nowhere have we been disappointed of receiving our temporal reward. Yet we feel it is rather hard measure to be grudged all ulterior benefits-to be told that, having roamed “without intention," our spiritual profits are nil.

However, such disqualification affords us some compensa­ting latitude. If our gain be exclusively temporal we can run but little spiritual risk. The less respectable shrines may prove just as eligible as the orthodox, and we can visit Mecca and Benares with as much immunity as Rome. Flectere si nequeo Superos, Acheronta movebo; and a call on the witch of Endor will at least assure us a thrill. In which dangerous frame of mind it becomes an overwhelming attraction to a professed patron of pilgrimages, to find him­self within easy visiting distance of the only temple extant which is specifically and avowedly dedicated to the Author of Evil Himself.

Nearly every form of religion which has yet been known to man seems at some time or other to have struck root in the soil of Mesopotamia; and there are but few of the number that have left no stumps or fossils to remind us of the days when they were yet flourishing in their pride. Some have bequeathed us the ruins of their temples, their sacrificial ash heaps, their votive tablets, or the images of their gods. Some survive but in fragments of fantastic folk-lore, still lingering on ineradicably as the parasites of more modern creeds. But one of the oldest and weirdest of all is still a living reality-the religion of the Yezidis or “Devil-worshippers” who congregate principally in the vilayet of Mosul.

“Devil-worshippers” they are indeed; for they them­selves do not scruple to admit that the Being whom they seek to propitiate is actually identical with the Sheitan of the Christians and Moslems and Jews. But, fortunately for the morals of the neighbourhood, their homage stops short of imitation. Theirs is a religion of Faith, and not of Works. They are under no obligation to make evil their good according to the boast of Milton's Satan; but only to “respect the great place” of their Divinity, and see to it that he is “sometime honoured for his burning throne."

Thus, though they are accused of many enormities,⁴¹ it does not appear that they are actually worse in theory, or half so vicious in practice, as many of the most blameless of their” true-believing “neighbours: and” good Christian men who are stable in the faith “may adventure themselves into their Vale of Devils with no more material misgivings than worthy Sir John Mandeville of old.

The Yezidis form one of the recognized millets, or subject religious sects, existing in the Turkish Empire. But re­cognition in their case by no. means implies toleration. They are universally abhorred as outcasts-almost as

untouchables "-like the cagots of the Pyrenees, or the lowest pariahs of Hindustan. A Christian is a “dog” to a Moslem, and a Jew ranks many octaves lower; but there is no room on the chromatic scale to show the position of a Yezidi: he is the sort of human being that is less regarded than a beast.

A Yezidi crossed our path some five or six miles from Mosul. He gave us a very wide berth, keeping quite a hundred yards away. But it chanced that his line lay to windward; and our escort rode at him furiously, fairly bellowing with indignation. How dared he have the effrontery to intrude his unclean carcass “betwixt the wind and our nobility? "

And presently another Yezidi actually tacked himself on to our party, following us (at a very humble distance) for two or three hours along the road. “It would be a good deed to kill the dog," was our zaptieh's muttered comment; “but while he is under the Effendi's shadow, I suppose I must let him alone! "

Yet withal there is a spice of fear in the contempt which is felt for the Yezidis. They are “ower sibb” to the Devil to be quite safe subjects for abuse. They seem to be re­garded in much the same light as witches used to be by our own seventeenth-century ancestors. It is virtue to revile and maltreat them: and by daylight, with a sufficient mob to back you, you may feel secure from their resent­ment. But it is another matter altogether to pass their door alone after dark 1

The Yezidis form a considerable community numbering in all some 150,000; for about 500 villages own allegiance to their Mira,⁴² and there are many detached colonies residing in alien towns. These villages are widely dis­tributed-isolated for the most part singly among the surrounding Kurds and Christians. Some are as far west as Aleppo; some as far north as Tiflis (where all the town scavengers are Yezidis); some as far east as Teheran. Their nucleus is in the Sinjar mountains, in the desert south­west of Mosul; where they are secured from invasion by the barricades of rock, and the waterless wastes which environ them. But the central shrine of their faith, the Jerusalem of their vows and offerings, is the cryptic Temple of Sheikh Adi, hidden just within the fringe of the northern mountains which overlook the great Mosul plain.

It was late on an autumn evening that we neared the last stage of our journey thither. We had quitted the plains about mid-day; and our course had lain for some miles along a sparsely cultivated valley, tucked in behind the outermost ripple which the mountains fling down upon the wold. On our right lay this barbican ridge, from the crest of which one might look forth across all the plain of Tigris; while on our left the hills rose higher, more rugged and more precipitous-a second, but still a subordinate, breastwork of the lordly Oberland behind.

Here and there the solitude was punctuated by a squalid Kurdish village whose inhabitants were thriftily using the tents which had served for their camps all the summer, to hood in their stacks of fodder against the expected winter snows. And one of these-Ain Sufni “Shipwell, "-perched on a traverse of high ground which is piled right across the valley is pointed out by Yezidi tradition as being the building place of the Ark. Here the main valley still trends forward; but, as we descended from the village, our guides doubled back to the left and dived into a masked ravine which had hitherto lurked invisible behind a shoulder of the heights.

Wide should be the gate and, broad the way which leadeth to-the shrine of MELEK TAUS; but the glen in question is shaggy and narrow and tortuous, tangled with clumps of tamarisk, and cumbered with water-worn boulders the jetsam of the winter floods. Since noon the sky had been overcast, and now a dreary drizzle had smudged all the landscape into a grey monochrome. Our jaded beasts sprawled and stumbled disheartedly over the wet and slippery stones.

Soon our path began edging up towards a cod in the ridge to the right of us, where a little Kurdish village hung limply over the saddle, and a curtain of lowering clouds trailed its ragged fringe across the gap. But just as we started the ascent, we perceived that the true end of the valley lay round an elbow in the opposite direction; and at its head, conspicuous against the dark hillside above the trees which lay matted in the hollow, rose the tall pale cone of a remote and isolated building the “Great Mascot” of the Yezidis.⁴³

How effectively the stage was set for that last mile of our Black pilgrimage! Not the least detail seemed lacking to enhance the eeriness of the scene. The dusk was rapidly lowering, the gorge grew narrower and deeper; and the gnarled boughs which overhung the pathway turned the twilight almost into night. A sodden carpet of fallen leaves muffled the clatter of the horse-hoofs; and no sound was heard but the bubbling of the rivulet, and the steady plash of the bloated raindrops that had gathered on the twigs of the trees. High overhead on our right towered the wan gaunt walls of the Satanic monastery: but not a voice nor a glimmer of light bespoke the presence of any inmates; and as we stumbled up the broken stairs, between crumbling walls and under ruinous arches, we felt like Sintram in his goblin valley or Childe Roland approaching the Dark Tower.

By the time we had reached the further angle of the building we had risen to the level of its terraces; and as we wheeled into the little fore-court, the general uncan­niness of our surroundings received its finishing touch. The gates stood closed before us, and nowhere was there a sign of any living creature-but in every niche and crevice there flickered a tiny fairy lamp 1 The wandering tourist in County Wicklow who was taken to task by an infuriated landlord for trespassing in the “Devil's Glen," pleaded in extenuation that he “had never expected to meet the pro­prietor;” but to us at this particular juncture, the apparition of “The Proprietor” would have seemed the most natural event in the world!

Our retinue appeared less affected. Perhaps they were not so impressionable; or more probably they confided in our superior magic, and argued a La Espanola that we “knew a point more than the Fiend." Our henchman strode boldly to the gates and hammered upon them lustily. For some time he woke only the echoes: and when at length a voice answered, the owner thereof was evidently none too anxious to open. In this land it is rarely an angel that one enter­tains unaware after dark!⁴⁴ The magic word Ingiliz, however, proved a veritable “Open Sesame." “Ingiliz!” repeated the unseen janitor in a tone of delighted amaze­ment. In a minute the gates creaked open; and a couple of priests in dirty white gaberdines with scarlet turbans and sashes, grinning all over their bearded faces; were amiably beckoning us in.

There is indeed good sound policy in the readiness with which the subject races of Turkey are disposed to welcome a European visitor. His presence under their roof will certainly secure them from raiding for that one night at any rate; and the suspicion that they have influential foreign friends will “increase their name” permanently among their truculent neighbours, and serve as a sort of protection for several weeks to come.

A steep and crazy stone staircase turned down just inside the gateway; but our long-suffering mountain-bred beasts tripped down it as neatly as rope-dancers. Through a door on our right, as we passed, we caught a glimpse of the interior of a big vaulted guard room, where a party of Yezidi men and women were grouped around a blazing bonfire. The ruddy glare of the flames and the murky smoke-wreaths eddying overhead, suggested forcibly that these minions of Lucifer were sampling a model Inferno; but we slipped past their Malebolge unobserved. Our conductors led us along the lower terrace, and assigned us lodgings in a tower abutting on the wall of the temple-the chamber (as they informed us) which was always reserved for the use of the High Priest of their sect, Ali Beg himself, whenever he paid one of his periodical visits to his tribal shrine.

It was a good-sized lofty room, roofed with a pointed stone vault: but it boasted no window; and apparently no chimney, for the fire that was lit for our benefit soon filled all the space above the level of the door lintel with a dense and suffocating smoke. To us as we squatted on the floor this was no particular hardship; but a hand raised overhead reached into a warm smoky stratum, and if we rose to cross the room we had to bend double under pain of asphyxiation. The Yezidis seem more callous to smoke even than the Kurds and Syrians. The latter do generally provide a hole in the roof above the fire.

The young prior of the monastery, a nephew of Ali Beg, played the part of host. He had been preferred to his post by his uncle, to whom he pays a fixed composition (equivalent £120 per annum) for the privilege of receiving the offerings of the faithful whom he entertains at the shrine. The entertainment which he provided for us consisted of the local pancake bread and a big dish of lentils; on which we supped very composedly, albeit we had no "long spoons." Then followed coffee served in a brazen jug with a gigantic spout like the beak of a toucan: and, after a cigarette or two, our host took leave of us; while we and our posse comitatus disposed ourselves to sleep on the floor.

Our earliest thought the next morning was to inspect the Diabolical Temple; for the Yezidis, unlike their Moham­medan neighbours, are quite willing to exhibit their shrine. The sun was rising brightly as we emerged into the daylight; and the wakening glen in its rich autumn colouring looked a very different place from the gloomy gully up which we had crept the night before.

There is no village at Sheikh Adi. The place consists simply of the temple and its appurtenances, forming, in fact, a monastery, though it is not actually so called. The buildings hang along the steep brae-side which forms the left bank of the river; the uppermost tier being notched deeply into the slope, and the lower terraced out boldly above the margin of the burn. The temple rises in the centre of the upper tier, conspicuous for the fluted spires which form the roofs of the sanctuaries. These fluted conical spires are a distinguishing characteristic of Yezidi architecture, and their appearance on any building is strong Prima facie evidence of Yezidi origin.

All above and around the monastery the hillside is spangled with scores of rude little oratories, mostly in a ruinous condition. These were erected sometimes by individual worshippers and sometimes by communities. The founder of such a chapel is thought to acquire singular merit; and it is held that, at his death, his chantry will be transported with him to paradise and serve as his heavenly mansion in the life to come. A lamp is lit in each of them by the temple priests at sundown, and at the same time other lamps are lit all over the temple, thus forming the necro­mantic illumination which so startled us the previous night. They only continue burning for about half an hour; but we chanced to arrive just in time to get the full effect.

THE YEZIDI TEMPLE AT SHEIKH ADI

Within the main gateway of the monastery a flight of eight or ten steps leads down into a little sunken quadrangle; and the opposite side of this is occupied by the facade of the temple-a plain square wall of ashlar, unpierced by any window, but having a small arched doorway placed near the corner on the left. Many of the stones in this facade have queer cabalistic patterns, rudely incised in the surface so as to leave the device in low relief. The priests insist that these are all meaningless-mere bits of fanciful ornament introduced by the Christian builders:⁴⁵ but though it is likely enough that the original meaning of them is forgotten, it is manifestly absurd to pretend either that they never had any, or that none is attributed to them now. There are no Christian symbols among them; and the devices which recur most frequently represent a hatchet and a comb:⁴⁶ but the most ominous and the most prominent of all is the famous Snake, which is carved in relief on the door jamb, and which receives the peculiar attention of being kept carefully blacked.

Three or four Yezidi worshippers were making their round of the quadrangle, prostrating themselves before certain niches and at several other recognized points. They de­voutly kissed the threshold of the door, and several of the stones in the walls (by no means always the carved ones), but we did not see any of them pay particular homage to the snake.

The priests were prepared for our visit, and were waiting at the door to receive us. They at once admitted us to the temple, first begging us to remove our shoes. This action is to be regarded as mere politeness, not as “bowing down in the house of Rimmon;” for it is customary to remove the shoes in Turkey, even when only entering a room.⁴⁷

The body of the temple consists of twin naves, divided longitudinally by a pointed arcade, and roofed with two pointed barrel vaults. The general effect of the architecture is very similar to that of a rude early thirteenth-century church in the mountain districts of England. The naves lie due east and west; and possibly this Orientation was intentional, for certain traces of sun worship do survive in the Yezidi creed. But more probably the lines of the building were dictated by the nature of the site, for the longer axis would naturally run parallel with stream and hill. Moreover any significance that might be attached to the arrangement is altogether discounted by the fact that the sanctuary is placed, not at the eastern end, but in the centre of the northern side. This is a plan which is frequently followed in the more easterly Christian churches; and which indicates that the builders adopted as their model, not the Roman basilica, but the Persian Audience Hall.

AKRA.
From the south-west. The figures are those of Rabban Werda and others of our suite.

The floor of the southern nave is three steps lower than that of the northern; and at its western end is a square tank of running water, sunk below the level of the floor. Cere­monial ablutions have a prominent place in the ritual of Yezidi worship. There -is a second tiny tank in the quad­rangle: and a third (evidently fed by the overflow of the tank in the nave) just under the south-western angle of the temple, on the level of the lower terrace. A dwarf wall between the arcade pillars fences off the central bays of the upper nave,. thus enclosing a sort of presbytery in front of the opening to the sanctuary.

At the eastern end we turned to the left through a door in the northern wall, and entered the square chamber under the smaller and more easterly of the two conical spires. From this we passed back into the sanctuary itself; a larger square chamber, situated under the larger spire, and thus, placed practically in the centre of the northern nave wall.⁴⁸ A low doorway, closed with an iron grille, opens from the nave into this sanctuary; and immediately behind the opening stands a sort of ark, rather smaller than the shrine of St. Alban, and completely shrouded in red drapery. We were led up to it, but bidden not to touch it: so we stood round solemnly, and gazed.

“What is in it?” we asked our interpreter, the Syrian Deacon, Werda--a man of some education, who is generally superior to the superstitions of his race. But in this Domdaniel of Sorcery even his assurance was wavering­--“I will tell you later," he replied nervously. “I cannot say it in this place." It was not till we were safe again in the quadrangle that he approached us with much circumspection, and confided to us in an awestruck whisper, “the King of the Peacocks is in that big chest !"

Melek Taus, “the King of the Peacocks," is the Yezidi euphemism for Sheitan; who of course must never be referred to by the latter disparaging name.⁴⁹ His image in the form of a peacock is regarded as the Yezidi Palladium; and it was his principal image which was kept in that red­draped shrine.

There are seven images or sanjaks⁵⁰ in the charge of the Yezidi priesthood. One is always kept at Sheikh Adi; and the rest go on circuit in the villages, to be exhibited to the faithful, and to receive the temple tithes.⁵¹ Their progress is somewhat precarious; for the Kurds (when they can) like to capture them, thus combining pleasure and profit with a parade of religious zeal. It is probably one of these sanjaks which is now in the British Museum; and, “if he had guessed that King George would like it,” Mar Shimun "would have been delighted to make him a present of another," which was known to have been straying about Tyari a year or two before. The Kurds themselves roundly assert that they carried off the actual headquarters image when they looted the temple in 11892; but the priests contend that it had been already placed in hiding, and that the plunderers found only a dummy. The Kurds would of course say they took it, even if they did not; and the priests would equally of course deny it, even if they did. Both alternatives are equally probable; and the image has always been secreted so jealously that any identification is impossible.⁵² There is therefore nothing to prevent us from believing whichever we choose.

But although Melek Taus no doubt is the dominant guardian of Sheikh Adi, we feel that behind his presentment there broods an older tutelary shade. For when we quitted the larger sanctuary, and passed back again into the more eastern one, “Rabbi Mr. Wigram” headed at once for a small door in a corner, from whence a steep stone staircase plunged down into the bowels of the rock. A priest had planted himself in front of that door, making himself as broad as possible, and valiantly trying to mask it; and when he found concealment impossible, he pointedly bowed us away. They had shown us the shrine of Melek Taus; but here was something which they could not show us. Here was one secret of Sheikh Adi which must be kept inviolate still.

What would they have said, we wonder, had they been told that one of their visitors had already actually pene­trated into that Holy of Holies? Would they have hailed him as a prophet? Would they have murdered him for sacrilege? Or would they have compromised matters by flatly refusing to believe? We discreetly kept our own counsel; but the thing had been done notwithstanding. And the story of how it happened needs a few explanatory remarks.

In the year 1892 there came a new Vali to Mosul--a sanguine and active “Reformer” whose name was Osman Bey. He had set out from Constantinople equipped with a Radical “Program” and his programme (as is usual with programmes) was planned on an extensive scale. He had to do just three things--to cure the Arabs of Nomadism; to make the Kurds pay their taxes; and finally to induce the Yezidis to discard their heathenish superstition. The first problem floored him promptly, for the Arabs decamped to the desert; and the Kurdish chiefs eyed him pretty blankly when he proceeded to propound Problem II. But when he got to “thirdly and lastly," and invited their co-operation, the worthy fellows cheered up amazingly and. found things looked feasible after all. Taxation was much less intolerable when viewed in relation to its context, for the “Peaceable Persuasion” of the Yezidis would leave them a profit on the deal.

Accordingly all through the vilayet the unhappy Yezidis were attacked and plundered; their women were carried into captivity, their men were tortured and slain. And while the Government troops were ravaging the plain villages, Sheikh Adi itself (hitherto immune from such visitations) was completely ransacked by the Kurds. It was not till after sixteen years that the poor proscribed Yezidis were reinstated. Until the general amnesty at the revolution they remained in exile from their shrine. Con­sequently when “Rabbi Mr. Wigram” visited the place in 1907 he found it only tenanted by the Moslem Mollah in charge.

The Mollah allowed him to go anywhere, scoffing valiantly at Yezidi superstitions; and through that gloomy doorway the investigator accordingly went. But afterwards the sceptic admittted that down there he had never ventured; and had never in the least expected to see his visitor come up again alive!

Unfortunately at the time the searcher failed to realize the unique nature of his opportunity and consequently did not push his explorations as thoroughly as he otherwise would. It was very dark down the staircase, and he was only provided with matches. But it seemed to him that he had penetrated into a vast natural cavern, teeming with rills of trickling water-the birthplace of the sacred spring, which feeds the temple tanks, and forms the main source of the rivulet which flows down the glen below.

And here, perhaps, we have the key to the time-honoured sanctity of Sheikh Adi. It was primarily a seat of that fountain worship which is one of the earliest of all known cults. Melek Tails himself was but a later accretion, though now he has usurped pre-eminence; and even yet his wor­shippers are half-conscious of a god behind their god. Sacred fountains by the dozen, and sacred trees by the score, may still be met with in these outlandish regions. But in Christian and Moslem villages they are reverenced somewhat shamefacedly. Among the followers of a lower religion the old superstition has retained a firmer hold.

The Yezidis possess no systematized religion woven by some great teacher into one harmonious whole. They make shift instead with a bewildering agglomeration of superstitions pieced together into an amazing patchwork. The central article of their creed is that propitiation of the Evil Principle which was originally the conception of the Persian dualists but with this is incorporated the world-old Nature worship of trees and fountains and fire and of all the host of heaven upon it are grafted innumerable later doctrines derived from the Jews the Christians and the Moslems; and ap­parently it was by the Gnostics that the whole medley was finally moulded into something approaching its present form.

Their reverence for Sheikh Shams-ed-din, the sun, is evinced by the fact that they daily kiss the ground at the spot where his rays first rest; that they adore him at rising and setting, and sacrifice white oxen at his shrine. A somewhat similar homage is also paid to the moon; and they always bury their dead facing towards the north star. Their reverence for fountains of water appears in their ceremonial lustrations, including the baptism of their children in the temple tank at Sheikh Adi. Fire they so far honour that they deem it impiety to spit into it; and perhaps a survival of serpent worship may be traced in the famous black snake.

From the Persians they borrowed the conception of a good and an evil principle; and probably also their belief in the transmigration of souls. From the Jews they learned to identify Ahriman, the evil principle, with Satan; to practise circumcision, and blood offerings, and other points of the Mosaic ritual;⁵³ and to reverence the writings of the Old Testament, which they consider equally authoritative with the New Testament and the Koran. They share our Christian belief in the divinity of the Founder of our religion, albeit they consider Melek Tails a greater divinity than Him. They respect the Sign of the Cross; but perhaps not ex­clusively as a Christian symbol, for the use of that sign was established even in pre-Christian days. Other tenets they have borrowed from Islam; for they regard Mohammed as a prophet, and Mecca as a holy place; and texts from the Koran are engraved on the walls of their temple. Moreover they hold that their sacred spring is derived from the well Zemzem, whose waters Sheikh Adi miraculously conducted to their present fount.

Many points of this weird belief have no doubt been adopted piecemeal, in the hope of obtaining toleration from their Mohammedan lords. But if such was their hope it was futile. Their admitted reverence for Sheitan constitutes an abomination which neither Moslem nor Christian can condone. Thus their lot has been always oppression and often the bitterest persecution. How can such a strange compound superstition have inspired them with their heroic fortitude?

If the truth of a creed can be gauged by the number and constancy of its martyrs, then the place we should yield to the Yezidis must be one of the highest of all. Small as their sect has always been, they can count their martyrs by hundreds of thousands. And seldom indeed has any Yezidi of full age been known to abjure his religion, either under stress of torment or through fear of death. The massacre of 1892 was but the latest (and one of the mildest) of a long list of similar inflictions. Less than fifty years pre­viously all the Yezidis of the Sheikhan were driven from their villages by a great irruption of Kurds under the Beg of Rowandiz, and fled for refuge to Mosul. The flooded Tigris cut them off; and so many thousands were massacred by their pursuers upon the site of Nineveh that the principal mound over Sennacherib's palace acquired the ominous name of Kouyunjik--”the shambles of the sheep." The tale of earlier massacres runs back to the very dawn of their history. Even Sinjar has not always proved a sanc­tuary, though there they have been less hard pressed.

But still the sect lives on; and (what is stranger yet) it occasionally attracts proselytes! Why a Christian should turn Moslem, we can understand--at least he ensures worldly advancement. But what conceivable benefit can he look to acquire by turning Yezidi? Unless indeed he is tired of life, and has a conscientious objection to suicide.

One peculiar privilege, however, has recently been con­ceded to the Yezidis. They have gained that exemption from military service which Kurds and Christians earnestly desire. This was done not exactly in kindness to them, but more for the comfort of the army. For, about a dozen times a day, every Moslem is accustomed to “take refuge with Allah from Sheitan the stoned:” and a Yezidi who hears such blasphemy has a choice of just two alternatives; either he may kill the blasphemer, or he may commit suicide himself!

Mohammed in the Koran draws a very emphatic dis­tinction between those unbelievers who are “men of a book," and those who are not; between the Christians and Jews, who follow a written revelation; and the idolaters, who follow tradition alone. The former may be ad­mitted to tribute; but the latter are expressly condemned to extermination.

Now the Yezidis also are in fact "men of a book;" though this would not probably be considered much ex­tenuation for “worshipping Sheitan." But for a very long period they guarded their book so jealously as actually to invite the pains and penalties of being supposed to have none. Two sacred books, however, they have; the Kitab el Aswad, or Black Book,⁵⁴ dating from about the tenth century; and the Kitab el Jilwa, or Book of Enlightenment, which dates from about the thirteenth; and from these the are able to gather some of the principal articles of their creed.

The Yezidis believe in a Supreme Being--Yazdan, “the Most High." But to Him they pay no worship. He is the Lord of Heaven, and takes no account of earth. From His name in all probability they derive their own appella­tion of Yezidis; though the Moslems (or at least the Shiites) declare that they inherit it from Yezid ibn Mo'awiya, the murderer of Hosein, and see in it an additional argument for persecuting them.⁵⁵

From Yazdan emanated seven Great Spirits, of whom Melek Taus was the first and most powerful. To him was committed the creation of the world; and the governance of it for 10,000 years, of which 4000 still remain to run. Melek Taus is an evil and a fallen spirit; but not fallen beyond redemption. He is a sort of celestial Absalom­--vicious, tyrannical, rebellious; but secure of ultimate pardon and rehabilitation. “Shall there not at length come a time when the Chief of the Archangels shall be restored to his first pre-eminence? And will he not then be mindful of the poor Yezidis, who alone of all mankind never cursed him in his disgrace? "

There is something distinctly quaint in this picture of a reclaimed Satan, still cherishing a faint grudge against those who denounced him in his unregenerate days.

Melek Isa (Jesus) is the second of the Great Spirits; and He too shall reign for 10,000 years when Melek Taus' reign is done. The story of His incarnation and passion is accepted as told in the Christian scriptures; but it is held that this, His first, coming was premature and that so He failed to break the power of evil. He did not, however, die upon the Cross, Melek Taus snatched Him away, leaving only a phantom in His room.⁵⁶

The Yezidis render to Melek Isa a sort of secondary worship. His reign is not yet; and being good He is not so formidable as evil. Thus at their great feast they sacrifice one sheep to Him, while to Melek Taus they sacrifice seven. Melek Isa is merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, but Melek Taus is a jealous and exacting god.

Sheikh Adi is a semi-mythical personage who may be described as the Yezidi Prophet. He is sometimes identified with Mar Adai (St. Thaddeus) the Apostle of the Christians; but there seems some historical evidence that he lived in the tenth century, and that he was originally a Magian who had fled from Aleppo when the Magian cult was sup­pressed. He was probably the author or compiler of the sacred books; and is said to have been the first who taught disciples. According to some traditions he is considered almost divine; and at the Last Day he will carry all the Yezidis to heaven in a tray on his head, and pass them through unquestioned. But according to another legend he was a mere mortal, who had in life bitter experience of the devilment of his peculiar deity. For while he was gone on pilgrimage to Mecca, Melek Taus personated him among his disciples; dwelling with them, instructing them, and at last ascending visibly to Heaven. Thus when poor Sheikh Adi returned he was promptly slain as an impostor; and then Melek Taus, reappearing, confessed the trick that he had played, and gave orders that the ill-used devotee was henceforth to be honoured as a saint.

The Yezidis have a regular hierarchy of seven orders of priesthood. They hold a great annual feast at Sheikh Adi in October; which is continued for eight days, and is attended by all the faithful who can come. Layard was present on two such occasions, and shared in the feasting and merry­making; but no unbeliever has ever been permitted to witness the rites and ceremonies enacted within the temple itself. Pilgrimage to Sheikh Adi is incumbent on every Yezidi; but he is not commanded to pray; and he leaves that duty to his priests. Fasting can also be performed by deputy; and a group of Yezidis will select one of their number to do all their fasting for them, confessing to him the acts which need expiation, and paying him a capitation fee for carrying out the corresponding penances.

The Yezidis understand the nature of an oath, but the oath must be properly administered; and, lest any of the sect should appear as witnesses in our own courts of justice, it may be convenient to state exactly how the thing is done. A circle is drawn round the man to whom the oath is pro­pounded, and he is told “All within that circle is the pro­perty of Melek Taus. Now answer falsely if you dare!" One would have thought that to the Father of Lies falsehood would be the one thing most pleasing. But apparently when you are put to your purgation it is most emphatically otherwise. So we may conclude that the Prince of Darkness is really a gentleman after all.

The distinctive costume of the men consists of white tunic, trousers and jacket, with a scarlet turban and sash. The women wear the same costume, except that the tunic is longer and reaches nearly to the ankle; and they also have an oblong red mantle, draped from the left shoulder under the right arm.

We quitted Sheikh Adi in the course of the forenoon, the young prior accompanying us to the monastery gate in order to bid us farewell. He would accept no payment for our entertainment, representing that it was the custom of the monastery to keep open house for its visitors;⁵⁷ but “out of love for us he could not refuse” the gift that we proffered instead. We followed a very steep and rugged pathway, clambering out of the glen up the hillside immediately opposite; and from the notch at the summit we got our last view of that unhallowed Hoodoo House, and saw once more to the southward the ocean-like levels of Mosul.

Being now so deeply entered in devilry we had resolved to top off our orgy by paying our respects to the Satanic Pontiff, Ali Beg the Mira of the Yezidis, whose home lay close to our road. A descent even rougher than the ascent led us down to the terrace of heath land from which the mountains arise; and here, on a sort of cape jutting out over the lower plain country, we came upon the Mira's castle-a large defensible house with a walled courtyard. A beautifully clear little river issues from a spring just above it, and girdles the base of the hill on which the “castle” stands; and along the banks of the stream lies the Yezidi village of Baadri, one of their principal settlements in the district of Sheikhan.

The castle seemed pretty well garrisoned; for plenty of men were in evidence when we dismounted in the courtyard. But it is only constructed of jess work; and the cracks which showed conspicuously in the walls of the Mira's reception room suggested that repairs were getting a bit overdue.

This diwan khana is a good-sized vaulted chamber; and its whitewashed walls were scrawled all over with rough pencil drawings of steam-boats and locomotives; as though the Mira's visitors had been trying to explain to him the nature of these monstrosities, neither of which can be seen within a journey of ten days. The room was empty when we entered, but the Mira appeared almost immediately, and seated us beside him on the dais at the end.

The High Priest of the Devil is a pronounced Anglophil,⁵⁸ a fact which will doubtless be deemed significant by our country's continental friends. He is also on terms of traditional amity with Mar Shimun, the Catholicos of the “Nestorian” Christians; for though the Christians abhor the “Devil Worshippers” most piously, both millets are driven into sympathy by the common oppression of the Kurds.

Ali Beg was rather a big man, as men go in the mountain districts; probably about six feet high, and about forty-five years of age. He wore a dark brown abba with gold embroidery round the collar; but we could make out but little of his features, as he kept his face closely muffled in the folds of his red Yezidi turban. This, however, was not to be attributed to any desire to imitate the veiled prophet of Khorassan, but only to the fact that he had a bad cold; an indisposition which had prevented his intended journey to Mosul. His manner was melancholy and depressed, as befitted the chieftain of a persecuted people; but perhaps this also, more prosaically, may be partly attributed to the cold.

He was attended by a Yezidi Sheikh, a very handsome man with a long black beard, wearing a white turban, and a gown and abba of soft dove-coloured brown. The Sheikhs are the second order of the Yezidi hierarchy; the Cawwals or priests forming the third order, and Pirs, Kuchaks, Fakirs and Mollas being entrusted with various minor rites.

The Mira is virtually the Khalif of his millet; absolute both temporally and spiritually-a sort of combination of emperor and pope. No one dreams of questioning any order of his, or of breathing any complaint of him to the Government. The Mira can do no wrong. All his followers' goods are at his disposal. If he claims a woman, she is yielded to him; if he kills a man, nobody objects. Nay, the very fact of the Mira having killed him confers on the victim such holiness that he becomes automatically secure of immediate admission to paradise; and under such desirable conditions who has any cause to object? The office of Mira is hereditary, as such offices are in this country; for the idea of sanctity running in families is common both among Christians and Kurds. Mar Shimun among the former, and the Sheikhs of Barzan and Neri among the latter, may be quoted as parallel cases; and the practice has at least a respectable precedent in the house of Aaron among the Jews.⁵⁹

Ali Beg is dead since our visit. Dead, by what (for a Mira of the Yezidis) may be fairly described as “natural death;” for he was just “murdered by his successor” like any old Irish king. That the succession should be allowed to go out of the family would be a thing blasphemous to hint at; but that the rightful heir should seek to accelerate his accession is only a part of the game. It is a sporting game too; for if the adventurer fails, he dies himself by torture for sacrilege the most monstrous. But if he succeeds he is Mira, with all the Mira's immunities. His predecessor is promoted to paradise, and he reigns absolute in his room. Wherefore, as might well be expected, the Mira is wont to take precautions; and keeps his potential successors rather studiously at arm's length. But the heir (in this case his nephew)⁶⁰ had this time taken precautions also; and had escaped across the Russian frontier, there to watch and bide his time. In the summer which followed our visit he stole back again from his exile; and fortune favoured his enterprise, for the Mira fell by his hand. So now there is another Mira, the legitimate ruler of all the Yezidis and no one will question his authority-until the end of his reign.

All unsuspicious of the coming tragedy we bade farewell to Ali Beg at the door of his diwan khana; having duly tasted of his hospitality, and assured each other of our mutual good will: One of his Leicktach escorted us to a point about a mile from the castle, and thence we soon gained the pathway by which, we were to return to Mosul.

We finished this nefarious excursion by lodging in a Yezidi village; for the whole stage was rather too far to be accomplished in a single day. And the normal state of relations between “True Believers” and “Devil Wor­shippers” was disclosed to us rather instructively when we began inquiring for bread. Our host denied categorically that there was so much as a crumb in the village-until (with a good deal of trouble) we convinced him that we proposed to pay! Apparently it is quite unusual for anyone to pay anything to a Yezidi. It is a “work of supereroga­tion” and consequently of the nature of sin. The sight of our money produced lots of things; but our sulky host was quite spoiled by it. He proceeded to take offence with us because we did not invite him to dine!⁶¹ Thus Yezidis would seem by nature to be as wicked as workhouse orphans, and no doubt a little barbarity is essential to keep them in hand.

The fruit of our three days' transgression was revealed to us a little later, when we found that two of our followers (Moslems too, to make the crime more heinous) had been obviously indulging in raki⁶² to celebrate their return to Mosul. “It is all your fault Effendim," they pleaded when we began to scold them. “It was you who betrayed our innocence into the abode of Sheitan. And lo, this thing has befallen us. We have touched pitch and are defiled."

CHAPTER VI

THE SKIRTS OF THE MOUNTAINS (RABBAN HORMIZD, BAVIAN, AND AKRA)

ONE may go to Aleppo by train, and by carriage one may get on to Mosul; but he who would penetrate further must adopt more primitive means. Nothing that runs upon wheels can enter the Kurdistan highlands. And the “heir of all the ages," travelling there in A.D. 1900, finds himself no better off than his forerunners of B.C. 1100, whose Great King recorded amazedly on slabs of imperishable granite the fact that “I, Tiglath-Pileser, was obliged to go on foot!"

Accordingly our Dramatis Personae had to be radically recast at Mosul. We were escorted by two fresh zaptiehs; our baggage was corded on pack mules; and for our own riding we had saddle horses-or perhaps more accurately ponies, for they stood about fourteen hands high.

Our attendants deserve a paragraph to themselves; for they are representatives of a nation which we have hitherto scarcely mentioned, but of whom in the remaining chapters we shall have a great deal to tell. Aziz and Yukhanan were Syrians who had come down from their mountain villages to await our arrival at Mosul. They were about twenty-five years of age, attired in the costume of the highlands, and imbued with true highland contempt for the dwellers in cities and plains. Outwardly there is little to distinguish them from the Kurds among whom they are domiciled; but the fact of their speaking a different language proves that they must ultimately be derived from a totally different stock; for Kurdish is akin to Persian, and is consequently an Aryan language; but Syriac is Semitic, and is the nearest modern equivalent of that Aramaic which was spoken in Palestine during the lifetime of our Lord. Their own tradi­tions aver (and in many cases their physiognomy affords strong support to the contention)⁶³ that they are the lineal descendants of the ancient Assyrians. Some will quite glibly assert that their family ancestor was Nebuchadnezzar; and if it be true (as the Welsh maintain) that blood feuds are a most valuable factor in ensuring the preservation of genealogies, then certainly these fellows have had every reason for keeping their pedigrees up to date.

In religion both men were Christians, and, what is more, Shamashas (Deacons): members of the ancient East Syrian, often called the Nestorian Church. But Syrian Deacons (though properly ordained) are not necessarily engaged exclusively in the performance of clerical duties; albeit they will always have received some sort of educational training, and (as in the present instances) will probably be able to read and write.

The regular mountain costume consists of a sort of zouave jacket, worn open over a loose shirt; and very wide trousers, girt tightly around a rather slim waist. The point of junction between these two garments is masked by a broad sash. The material of which they are composed is generally a coarse Isabella-.coloured fabric, striped at rather wide intervals with a narrow red or blue line. Green is less frequently seen, because it is the colour of the false prophet, but when the grounding is purple it is sometimes trimmed with green. The stripes are disposed vertically on the jacket and trousers, and horizontally on the sleeves; but the suit is often such a mass of patches that but little of the original survives. The head-dress is a conical felt cap,⁶⁴ which is often bound round with a turban. The front half of the head is shaved; and Tyari men wear their back hair plaited into two small pigtails, one on either side. The sash is generally garnished with a knife or pistol when the men are at home in the mountains; and often, slung across the shoulder, they carry an antiquated gun.

The Kurds wear a similar costume, but a much more extensive arsenal; and the weapons with which they are furnished are usually of more modern type. This forms the main tangible distinction by which it is possible to tell a Kurd from a Syrian: but somehow a certain ruffianly swagger is the truest hall-mark of a Kurd.

The third man who had joined our party was a certain Rabban Werda (Friar Rose) who acted as our chief lieutenant. He too, like the others, was a deacon, but he was more usually addressed as Rabban; for he was one of a queer religious order which still survives in eastern Christendom, and which corresponds to one of the aspects assumed by monasticism in the west. Rabbans--and Rabbantas--(for there are a few women also in the order)­have bound themselves not to marry, not to use a razor,⁶⁵ and not to eat flesh meat. But they do not live in com­munities, nor obey any definite rule; and, except in the three particulars mentioned, they lead much the same life as other men. It is from the ranks of the Rabbans that the Syrian episcopate is recruited; for, by old tradition; Abunas or bishops must be celibate, though the Qashas or priests are always married men.

Rabban Werda in personal appearance was the image of the immortal Sancho Panza; and he wore, with his gorgeous purple trousers, a European frock-coat and a fez. But his worth is not to be gauged by his rather uninspiring exterior. Though his views of our twentieth century may have sometimes a tinge of artlessness, in his own mediaeval environment he is as intelligent and reliable a henchman as anyone need desire.

For the journey into the mountains does indeed carry us back to mediaevalism; or at least to the Highlands of Scotland as they existed two hundred years ago. And the sensations of Bailie Nicol Jarvie on his trip to the glens of the Lennox may be easily recaptured by a modern tourist in the Highlands of Hakkiari to-day.

We crossed the pontoon bridge at Mosul, and the broad alluvial levels which have silted up the ancient channel of the Tigris; and had soon ascended once more on to that wide rolling wold which stretches to the snow-capped mountains that lie along the horizon to the north. On our right we left the vast enclosure which marks the site of the city of Semiramis; and the mounds which cover those mighty ramparts which the old Assyrian conquerors once kept festooned with the skins of captive kings. But we have many a mile to travel before we are really clear of the site of ancient Nineveh, for the space comprised within the walls was only its inner nucleus; and without was a great Garden City of mansions and parks and orchards, analogous to the present garden city which environs the town of Van. Greater Nineveh may well have embraced the outlying palaces of Khorsabad, and the temples of Nimrud; and this would easily account for the “great city of three days' journey," (i.e. of about sixty miles in cir­cumference) of which the Prophet speaks.⁶⁶

The annihilation of this huge metropolis is one of the most astounding cataclysms in all the world's history. We possess its most intimate records almost up to the hour of its agony: and those records tell only of continual con­quests, and of the building of palaces by its kings. Then falls a sudden great silence. For fifty years we hear nothing. And when fresh records take up the story, these are written in another language, and in another character, and tell of cities and peoples which have hardly been even named before. Nineveh had vanished utterly; and within two hundred years of its fall Xenophon's army marched across the very site of it without so much as dreaming of giving its ruins a name.

Other armies than Xenophon's have marched and fought over its ruins. Here, in B.C. 331, Alexander the Great encountered the great army of Darius at the little village of Gaugamela in the angle between the Tigris and the Zab. This was that great “decisive battle of the world” which was to decide the Empire of Asia, and Alexander's signal victory laid the whole of Persia at his feet. Gaugamela is about equidistant between Nineveh and Arbela, which lies about twenty miles from the battlefield on the further side of the Zab river. But all Darius' baggage and treasure were parked around Arbela; and as the pursuers poured headlong towards the place where they would find the plunder, it is Arbela and not Nineveh which has given its name to that day.

Here too in A. D. 627, upon the very site of Nineveh, was fought the last battle in the long duel between the Sassanid Persians and the Byzantine Romans. Five years pre­viously the Emperor Heraclius, driven within the very walls of Constantinople, had sallied from his last refuge, and had created in northern Syria the army with which he made his last throw. For five years he had marched and fought among the mountains of Armenia, striking right and left with unerring judgment and with unvarying success, at the armies which hemmed him round. At last Chosrods, brought to bay in his turn, mustered his troops for the final struggle, and met him on the site of Nineveh with an army of (it is said) 500,000 men. The Persians fought with desperation, and “it was easier to kill than to break them," but once more the skill and good fortune of the warrior­-emperor triumphed; and he himself with his own hand slew Rhazates the Persian Commander,⁶⁷ in single combat between the armies before the battle was joined. The power of Chosroes was crushed: but the Romans were as much exhausted by the long-drawn struggle as the Persians; and, within a few years, both empires alike succumbed to the onslaught of the Mohammedans.⁶⁸

In a bird's-eye view from the mountains this country seems all one dead level, with the solitary height of Jebel Maklub rising like an island in the midst. But, to the wayfarer actually traversing it, it is a range of hills and hollows, with marshy valleys⁶⁹ intervening between sparsely cultivated downs. A few good-sized villages are passed, the largest being Tel Keif and Tel Uskof-each, as their names imply, grouped round the base of an ancient tel: and after a long day's journey (performed at the pace of the mules, which is rather slower than walking) we reach the township of Alkosh, placed just at the foot of the hills.

A glance at the map would suggest that it is by no means easy to determine the precise point where the plains end and where the mountains begin. But actually there is no such uncertainty. The breastwork range of the mountains rears itself up like a wall above the minor inequalities of the plateau, and the heights stretch away right and left con­tinuously as though they were toeing a line. Of all the countries of Europe, Spain is the land which is nearest in sympathy with the Orient; and the sudden uplift of the Cantabrian mountains above the basin of the Duero is an excellent reproduction of the rise of the Kurdistan ranges above the plain of Mosul.

Alkosh, at the foot of the steeps, is just an unmitigated sun trap; and the town seems positively sizzling under the blaze that is poured on it from the south. It is a mean little hole; but its synagogue boasts a notable shrine in the tomb of the prophet Nahum, who of course also holds local brevet rank (like Jonah) as a Mussulman saint. Com­mentators generally assert that the Elkosh of Nahum was in Palestine; but local tradition adheres unshakenly to the claims of the Assyrian Alkosh, and the Jews make an annual pilgrimage in order to visit this shrine. After all there is much to be urged for it. Nahum was “of the children of the captivity," and he certainly knew his Nineveh better than most dwellers in Palestine can have done.

It was a weird and striking effect that we witnessed from it next morning. The clouds lay low and horizontal above the plain beneath us; and many of them seemed to have sunk on to the ground, and looked exactly like lakes under the level rays of the rising sun. As his orb rose higher they lifted, and dispersed into wreaths of vapour. How well might such an effect have inspired the words of the Prophet, “Nineveh is of old as a pool of water: yet they shall flee away!"

Some three miles east of Alkosh lies a great recess in the mountains-hardly so much a valley as a deep pocket among the cliffs. And at the end of this pocket is en­sconced one of the most interesting Christian relics in these regions-the ancient monastery of Rabban Hormizd, the Scetis of the uttermost east. Rabban Hormizd is no western monastery; it is a typical Oriental Laura: a rookery of independent hermits rather than a community of monks. And to speak of it as a “rookery” is hardly so descriptive as to call it a warren of sand-martins; for the anchorites' cells are all caves, some natural and some artificial, burrowed into the escarpments of a great natural cirque.

Rabban Hormizd, the original and eponymous hermit, established himself here in the eighth century; and the fame of his singular sanctity soon "drew hundreds of other eremites to the neighbourhood of his lonely retreat. Here he lived praying, fasting, and macerating himself after the manner of the Great St. Anthony; and wrestling mightily with the devils who notoriously frequent such desert spots. He was evidently a believer in “close action," for the adjoining pocket is known as the Vale of Devils; and, appropriately enough, a little village of “Devil-Worshippers” is situated at the mouth of it to this day.

But perhaps in the eyes of Rabban Hormizd even the "very devils themselves were not so foul an abomination as the great rival monastery on Jebel Maklub,⁷⁰ which rises conspicuous in the midst of Mosul plain in full sight of his cell. For Rabban Hormizd was a “Nestorian," while the monks of Sheikh Mattai were “Jacobites;” their monastery being still the abode of their Maphrian, the second dignitary in their church. Both sects are equally obnoxious to the intermediate orthodox; but they are even more obnoxious to each other, for they draw towards opposite poles.

His zeal against the monks of Sheikh Mattai roused Rabban Hornuzd to the great deed of his lifetime. He actually quitted his cell (for the only occasion on record) and started on a lone-hand raid against his adversaries' stronghold. The monks of Sheikh Mattai received him hospitably, and gave him lodging in their monastery. But at dead of night he arose and groped his way to their library, where the works of “the accursed Cyril” stood stored like cordite shells. By virtue of his prayers he summoned up a miraculous spring in the centre of the floor, and carefully washed every line of writing off every page of their books! Then leaving them a collection of nice clean leaves free from every taint of heresy, he departed joyfully to his hermitage and thereafter stirred from it no more.

This scandalous transaction was of course accounted to him for righteousness; and indeed Oriental religious con­troversies continue to be conducted on very similar lines to this day!

The monastery of Rabban Hormizd has always been kept going ever since the date of its foundation; but now it is only the Succursale of the big modern monastery established on the plains below it, and there are but some four or five monks still left in the old mother house. They are Uniat Nestorians who have submitted themselves to the Papacy, and are consequently not at all in charity with the inde­pendent Nestorian church from which they have seceded. Hearing that we were going to Tyari, the home of the independent Nestorians, they inquired artlessly “Pray, do you know anything of a deacon there? one Werda, a very wicked person-a tall man with a red beard?” (Our deacon is short and rotund, and his beard is black).

“I am Shamasha Werda," replied that worthy with a twinkle.

“Oh! but we don't think you can be the man we mean!" protested our hosts in some consternation.

“Oh, yes! I am," persisted the delighted deacon.⁷¹ Despite this contretemps, however, we got on with our hosts very amicably. They fed us with tea and cake, and wine from their own vineyard; and finished by conducting us over their monastery and showing us all the sights.

The place must be a furnace in summer time, for the cirque faces due southward; the tawny precipices are completely destitute of vegetation, and must radiate the heat mercilessly all round that breathless pit. In the caves would lurk such coolness as was going; but the lack of water must have been a sore trial in summer. Hermits, however, are generally credited with requiring a very moderate supply.

The cells lie some way up the ramp, and are reached by a steep zigzag pathway. How many of them there may be we do not pretend to guess; but we think we may safely say hundreds; for they extend laterally for several hundred yards along the concave sweep of the corrie, and (like the port-holes of an old line-of-battle ship) they are ranged up in tier above tier. They are not of any uniform pattern, like the older hermitages at Dara; and some few (probably those which have been most recently occupied) are furnished with windows and doors. A series of narrow pathways and rude rock staircases strings the whole assortment together, and by these the solitaries were enabled to assemble at their church.

Here and there the main pathway is barred by the erection of a rude arched gateway: but the only real building is the church, which is terraced out on a buttress of rock. This church is comparatively modern, dating from about 1500; but behind it, jammed against the face of the cliff, is another and much older church erected in the ninth or tenth century, and adorned with some nice bits of carving somewhat similar to the Runic work of our own land. Behind this again, excavated in the rock itself, is the veritable cell of Rabban Hormizd-a chamber some eight feet square, and approached by a sort of winding rabbit burrow. The original door and window of this cell are now closed, the church having been built up against it; and the grave of the hermit is placed in one of the walls, at a spot which is situated immediately behind the altar.

The church of Rabban Hormizd is very much “Lord of Name," that is it enjoys great repute as a place of pilgrimage; and the virtue for which it is chiefly celebrated is the healing of the insane, or (as they are more commonly called in this country) the “possessed." The lunatic (often quite willing) is, solemnly conducted to the church, and is tethered up in it for the night with a ponderous iron chain and collar affixed to a staple in the wall.⁷² By morning (unless he is very mad indeed) he will usually profess himself cured. Quite a number of other mountain churches can boast a similar reputation, but their methods of treat­ment (as will be hereafter related) are often more drastic still.

We rejoined our caravan at the mouth of the gorge, and pursued our way steadily eastward along the foot of the mountains; passing first the village of Baadri, dominated by Ali Beg's castle, and then rejoining the road which we had followed previously on our visit to the Yezidi shrine. Some two hours beyond Ain Sufni, we reached the river Gomel, a fairly large mountain stream; and here we swung round to the left, perhaps half a mile up the river, in order to get a passing glimpse of the famous “Picture Rocks” of Bavian.⁷³

The Gomel emerges from the mountains by a flat-bottomed winding valley shut in on either hand by vertical walls of rock; and along the cliffs on the right bank a little above the point of exit, hangs that marvellous gallery of “pic­tures” so well known to Assyriologists. The principal bas-relief is a huge square panel, graven on the face of a rock bastion which immediately overhangs the stream. It comprises four gigantic figures; now wofully battered and weather-beaten, but awesome beyond all telling in the loneliness of that desolate glen. Some dozen smaller panels are ranged above it, along an upper story of the cliff; and at its foot two great detached stone tables lie half sub­merged in the waters of the stream. The design of the big panel is self-repeating, each half being mirrored by the other; and this circumstance is of great assistance in deciphering the details of the work. For, some thousand years after the carvings were executed, a party of mis-begotten hermits came to settle down in the valley, and burrowed a set of cells for themselves along the face of the cliff. Two or three of these vandals chose to excavate immediately behind the great panel, and cut out their windows in the middle of it, quite regardless of the “idols” outside. With fortunate carelessness, however, they did not do their damage sym_, metrically, and the portions destroyed upon one side remain on the other intact. The subject is King Sennacherib making an offering to the goddess Ishtar; and the inscription records the destruction of Babylon, which had rebelled against him at the commencement of his reign, and which he took and razed to the ground.

The panels on the cliff above are all identical with each other. They have semi-circular heads, and are carved with the figure of the king. Of the two great slabs in the water, one bears on its face three figures-apparently the god Bel and two worshippers-and is carved on one of the angles into a small human-headed bull. The second is so much eroded that it is impossible to distinguish the design. It seems that the cliffs of the Gomel were one of the principal quarries which supplied the materials for con­structing the ancient palaces of Nineveh. Most of the great slabs were quarried from the upper beds of the lime­stone, and were brought down to the river bank, at the foot of the principal bas-relief, by a broad inclined way which can still be distinctly traced. Down this they could be lowered on rollers, and would then be safely deposited upon the spit of sand and shingle piled up under the bank by the river; for this work would be done in summer, at a time when the waters were low. The gravel beneath the slab would then be dug away in sections; and, bit by bit, there would be inserted under it a wicker-framed raft or keleg supported on inflated skins. Given a sufficiency of skins such a raft can be made to float anything, and in autumn, when the river rose again, the slab would be floated down to the Tigris, and landed under the walls of Nineveh near the palace for which it was destined. The two slabs now lying in the water were evidently intended to be transported in this manner, but for some cause (which we can now only guess at) they were eventually abandoned unshipped. Possibly they were mis-handled and damaged. Possibly the building of the palace was interrupted by the assassination of Sennacherib, and was never resumed sub­sequently when Esarhaddon had quelled Sharezer's revolt.

It is conceivable that the great panel also would eventually have been cut from the rock behind it, lowered on to the spit beneath, and dispatched in similar fashion; but it is perhaps more likely that this was always intended to remain as a permanent monument in its present site. The smaller panels along the crest of the cliff do not look as if they had been destined for removal. They were probably carved for mere “swank," to give dignity to the royal quarries; or to keep the carvers' hands in, at a time when contract work was slack.

The handling and moving of the ponderous blocks habi­tually employed by the ancients would tax even modem constructors, with all the resources of machinery and steam power which nowadays they have at command. But the Assyrians (like the Romans after them) could avail them­selves of a limitless amount of dirt-cheap labour. The hordes of captives taken in their wars had to be used some­how; and no one raised any objection if they were rather rapidly used up. Men cost less than oxen or asses, and their strength could be applied more effectively. They could be drilled to keep step, and to give their tugs in unison. Moreover the old Oriental task-masters possessed an asset which we have lost-a supreme scorn for being unduly hurried. They could well afford to spend a generation or so on buildings which were designed to endure for centuries, and which might have endured for millennia if only they had been left alone.

But even their works of utility have been no more spared by posterity than the tablets which recorded their learn­ing, or the palaces which were the trophies of their pride. And such a work also had its source at the quarries in the Gomel valley; one of those splendid irrigating channels which used to feed the desert with the waters of life.⁷⁴ Its course can be traced for some distance alongside the banks of the river; where for yards upon yards the ample conduit is hewn through spurs of solid rock. Werda had seen further remains of it far away on the plains to the southward; “and the villagers were carrying off the stone facing of the embankments to use in building their huts." It was “only the work of infidels," and consequently fair loot for anyone. Now European engineers are labouring to re-establish what might have been so easily preserved.

The “Pictures of Bavian” are at least exempt from the fate. which has befallen most pictures. They are fixed for ever immovably in the position for which they were de­signed. They are like some forgotten “Old Master” which still hangs tarnished and ill-lit above the altar where it was dedicated; and which shows there far more nobly than when restored and exhibited in a brand-new gilded frame on a glaring gallery wall. There are far finer Assyrian sculptures in the Louvre and the British Museum than the grim, gaunt, battered sentinels that keep watch over the Gomel vale. But ranged along a Bloomsbury corridor they are obviously mere graven images; while enthroned amid the solitudes of their own eerie mountains they seem to be the very gods themselves.

There are several similar bas-reliefs scattered here and there about the mountains-some fairly well preserved like those at Malthaiyah between Dohuk and Alkosh, some now almost obliterated like that by the gate of Amadia. The great king seems to have delighted in setting his seal upon any conspicuous point that was reached by his conquering armies: and to this day that instinct re-asserts itself in the behaviour of Private Atkins, who delights to carve the badge of his regiment upon any conspicuous precipice in Afghanistan.

A caravan moves but slowly, but it generally wants to keep moving, and the novice who is travelling with it finds that he is allowed few lengthy halts. The old stagers always seem thinking of some point a little, way ahead which they would much prefer to have behind them. Sometimes it is a bad bit of road which can only be traversed in broad daylight; sometimes a river which may suddenly be rendered unfordable by the intervention of an unforeseen spate. On this stage the unknown factor was the conduct of the Khozr river, a much more considerable stream than the Gomel, which lay some four hours further east; and whose be­haviour on the present occasion was more problematical than usual because the dark clouds to the northward might imply heavy rain in the hills.

“Rabbi Mr. Wigram” had lively recollections of his last experiences with the Khozr. He had been kept for three days on the banks of it, waiting for the floods to subside. And he had forded it at last "in his birthday suit," with the water over his horse's withers, and his clothes slung over his shoulders to keep them out of the wet. We are wont to deride the rustic who expectat dum defluat amnis; but our derision only shows our own ignorance as much as his expectancy showed his. The rustic was quite well acquainted with the behaviour of his own mountain rivers, and knew that when they were in spate there was simply nothing else to be done.

And our chances of passing the Khozr were rendered additionally dubious by the fact that none of our party knew the right road to take for the fords. The zaptiehs had never been in this district and could offer us no assistance. The Rabbi Effendi had approached the river from a different direction, and that some years before. We caught a guide in one of the villages; but as his first step was to ask the way himself at the very next village that we came to, we grew distrustful of his capacity and dismissed him again to his home. Few of the inhabitants ever stray beyond the bounds of their own village, and on a more extended excursion they are often hopelessly at sea.

Thus thrown on our own resources we took a bee-line across the moorland, steering our course by the light of nature and by a very small scale map. And fortune so far favoured us that we found the river in its very mildest mood; and though we had struck it at none of the recog­nized fording-places, there was no difficulty in getting across.

But safe on the further bank our perplexities recommenced again. The dusk was falling rapidly, and we needed a lodging for the night. By now we should have been at Khalilka, a prosperous and desirable village, which is part of the private estate of the ex-Sultan Abdul Hamid, and which on that account enjoys immunity from taxes and conscription and raids.⁷⁵ But of course in missing the fords we had also missed Khalilka, and not knowing whether it were above or below us, were uncertain which way to turn. However, it was tolerably obvious that if we followed the river either way we should presently find a village of some sort; and a little distance down the left bank we alighted upon a straggling hamlet of miserable Kurdish hovels, which we unanimously accepted as being “Hobson's choice."

Of course no khan is to be looked for in any of these outlying villages, and it is customary for the traveller to quarter himself upon the yais or head man. He will obtain fire and shelter, and liberty to eat his own provisions, and possibly (if he is fortunate) will be able to purchase bread. Such entertainment should be requited, if mine host is poor, in money; if he is a person of importance, by some kind of trifling gift. Hospitality is hardly ever refused even to the humblest wayfarer, and public opinion quite backs a man who enforces it if it is denied.

In the present case the only shelter available was the veranda of the yais' house; which afforded us a roof certainly, but no outer wall-only a wattle hurdle about five feet high. Here, however, we kindled a fire, and packed ourselves in pretty comfortably; though the night was made constantly hideous by the howling of the village dogs. Their uproar was not unjustified, for (as we were informed next morning) a scavenging pack of “you-ee-yahs” had been prowling round the hamlet all night. A “you-ee-yah” is a sort of hyaena which haunts the neighbourhood of villages, and gives intimation of its presence by incessantly howling out its own name. It is known alternatively as a Ghul or Sheitan because it is addicted to digging up and devouring the corpses buried in the graveyards; a foul and stealthy brute, but not dangerous to man. We had heard the howls all night intermittently between the volleys of barking, but had thought it was only the village cats taking their share in the row.

Next day the road was easier to follow; not because it was marked more clearly, but because its direction was defined by a string of Mohammedan cemeteries which were dotted across the moorland at intervals of three or four miles. These are small square walled enclosures, generally with a santon's tomb in the middle, and with tall slender Moslem head-stones marking some of the principal graves. The country was open and undulating, but everywhere barren and pebbly; one can hardly as yet call it stony, as that more emphatic word will be urgently needed later on. Here and there were traces of villages; but these were all abandoned and ruined, with nothing left but foundations, or a fragment or two of broken wall. The only inhabited villages stood high on the hills overlooking us, generally with an Agha's castle planted somewhat aggressively in the midst.

There is something unnatural in this desertion, for the land might obviously be cultivated, and within the walls of the cemeteries there stand many well-grown trees.⁷⁶ But the key to the flight of the inhabitants is not the parsimony of nature

Rookhope stands in a pleasant place

If the false thieves wad let it be.

And this essential condition is very conspicuously lacking in the country between Bavian and Akra, not to mention several districts further north; for across this ground twice a year pass that horde of human locusts, the wandering Heriki tribesmen; and one skinning every six months is more than any village can survive.

The Heriki are a large tribe of Kurdish nomads who possess no permanent domicile. They encamp in winter on the plain of Mosul, and in summer on the loftier and cooler plateau of Urmi; and with all their flocks and herds and their other possessions, they migrate every spring from Mosul to Urmi, and every autumn from Urmi to Mosul. It is not a good thing for a village to lie in the track of the Heriki, for everything that is not too hot or too heavy they annex and carry away. They “lift” the sheep and cattle first; then the rugs and kettles and pitchers and the scanty household plenishing; and they leave their hapless enter­tainers with nothing but bare walls and rags.

We had learned something of their thoroughness at our last night's lodgings on the Khozr; for in the veranda of the rais' house we had found three or four large bales, securely corded up in pieces of carpet, and had casually asked what they were. Our poor host replied despondently that he was “warehousing” them for the Heriki. They would call upon him and claim them when next they passed that way. No; they paid him nothing for “warehousing," but he had to be responsible for them; and he had to restore four-fold if any of the contents were lost.

“And what is in them?” we asked. The poor wretch grew even more dejected. “Oh, it is all my own property; my own rugs and cooking pots," he replied. “That is to say part of it mine, and part the property of the other villagers, which the Heriki took from us when they plundered the village last time! "

So complete was the reign of terror which the impudent scoundrels had established, and so powerless was the Government to keep their depredations in check, that they could actually dragoon their victims into keeping their own plunder till they called for it, and go off for six months quite confident that their orders would be implicitly obeyed!

Our day's stage ended at Akra; a considerable mountain township and the seat of a Turkish kaimakam, a depart­mental governor, subordinate in the present instance to the Vali of the province of Mosul. Akra displays itself most imposingly to a traveller approaching from the westward, and indeed forms a striking spectacle from whatever point it is viewed. Behind it a group of steep-pitched ridges are gabled out from the main mountain chain like a range of gigantic dormers, and drop down in rugged hipped ends to the level plain far below. Their crests are hacked and indented like the “dissipated saw” of the Bab Ballads, and the intervening gorges are half choked with the avalanches of boulders which have cascaded down their flanks. The lower portions of these gorges are filled with trees which grow in the terraced garden plots alongside the little rivulets, but the upper slopes are all bare and tawny like broken craters of half-baked clinker brick.

One of the most prominent of these ridges breaks down into a sort of saddle, and surges up again into a rocky knoll before its final descent to the plain; and across this saddle are hung the houses of Akra, with the ruined fragments of its ancient citadel crowning the highest point of the rocky ridge above. The bulk of the town overflows into the ravine on the western side, where the houses are ranged round the sweep of the hollow like the stepped seats of an amphitheatre. So steep are the slopes on which they lie that the roof of each house serves as a front yard to its next door neighbour, or perhaps one should say to its neighbour on the next story; and the streets are all so narrow that they are quite undiscernible from a distance, though one of them is in fact wide enough to accommodate a rudimentary bazaar.

Akra does not boast a khan, but our zapliehs had already decided for us at what house we were to spend the evening. We were to put up with the malmudir, the departmental treasurer;⁷⁷ and one of our escort had already spurred ahead to inform that worthy functionary of the treat that was in store for him. This seemed rather an arbitrary proceeding, but the malmudir quite acquiesced in it. We met him at the entrance to the town, walking out to make us welcome; a young and pleasant looking man, who greeted us in French very hospitably, and guided us up the steep stepped streets to his house on the saddle above.

None of the houses in Akra can be called in any way palatial, and probably the malmudir's lodging was a typical residence of the better class. He occupied a single apart­ment on the first floor, the big landing outside serving as his kitchen and servant's room, and the ground floor con­sisting only of an entrance hall and lumber room. The furniture of his living room (as usual) consisted only of carpets and cushions. The windows were set very low down, so that one could see out of them comfortably when squatting on the floor; and above them were square recesses which served as receptacles for books.

He gave us a capital supper, consisting of fried eggs, rissoles wrapped in cabbage, and a curry of meat and fruit, This was served in several dishes on one large tray, round which we all sat cross-legged straying from dish to dish with our wooden spoons. We had only one tumbler be­tween the three of us, which we all used in turn; and the meal was concluded with the usual tiny cups of coffee.⁷⁸

Meanwhile he poured out his woes to us: woes with which we could heartily sympathize, and which afforded an instructive commentary upon the progress of Turkish “Reform." He himself was a native of Aleppo, a Syrian Catholic Christian. He had been duly trained for his post in the Government offices at Constantinople; and had received his present appointment in pursuance of that great Principle which was first enunciated at the Revolution, recognizing that Christians and Moslems should possess equal standing in the State. This admirable theory worked fairly in Constantinople itself; and even at the more accessible provincial capitals such as Smyrna and Aleppo; but alas for its practical efficacy in such out-of-the-way districts as Mosul! It would take at least a generation for reform to filter through here 1 Here all the administrative offices had been long since cornered by the invincibly corrupt “Old Gang;” a set of pig-headed reactionaries whose dead weight nothing could shift. What use was it to tell them that Christians and Moslems were equal, when the Koran expressly stated that they were emphatically not? Why should they use the powers that were their inalienable birthright to make true believers obey a Christian dog?

Accordingly the poor malmudir found himself cold­-shouldered and thwarted at every turn by the officials who were nominally his colleagues; by the cadi, or judge of the district; by the binbaski who controlled the police. They persistently refused to support him in carrying out his own duties, particularly if the defaulters whom he wished to bring to book chanced to be their own private friends; and their continual snubbing of him had infected even his own subordinates who obeyed him grudgingly and reluctantly. The kaimakam, his immediate chief, had indeed always shown himself friendly; but even with his support he felt he could make no headway; - and, though still but new to his office, he was already sick of the job. Indeed he had already written twice to the Yali begging to be transferred to Beirut or Aleppo, but as yet he had received no answer. This however, we privately thought, was not surprising; for Tahir Pasha never answers anybody; and every official in his vilayet would like to be transferred to Beirut or Aleppo if he could!

Of course it is not at all improbable that centuries of subjection have left the Christians in Turkey constitutionally unfit for positions of authority: that, for all their superior intelligence, they are at present as incapable of governing Turks and Kurds and Arabs as the Bengali Babus are of governing Pathans and Sikhs. But even if the power' is latent in them, it is bound at first to be exercised in the face of intense resentment; and this fact will long constitute a formidable obstacle to any constitutional reform.

It seemed that the malmudir's welcome to us was to some extent accounted for by the distinction which European visitors would confer upon him in the eyes of his carping colleagues. He was earnest with us to remain as his guests for a second day in order that he might exhibit us; but from this we begged to excuse ourselves as we could not spare the time. However, faute de mieux, we might at least call on the kaimakam, and thither our host conducted us as soon as we had finished our coffee.

The kaimakam resided in the Government House, a dilapidated two-story building disposed around a forlorn courtyard and generally resembling a khan. It was picturesque enough in a slummy way, and the groups of soldiers snoozing under the lanterns in the deep entrance archway would merit yet higher commendation. But there was little enough of traditional “Oriental glamour” about the dirty white-washed walls; and the governor's official 6~pdience hall resembled an ill-kept village school-room. Conversation turned on the Italian war; a subject on which , all parties were profoundly ignorant; for we had heard nothing since leaving Europe, and the, kaimakam nothing but what Government channels allowed to filter through. The Government does not encourage the dissemination of inauspicious news; and herein no doubt they act prudently, for such news might easily excite the Kurds to break out in reprisals against the nearest Christians. But it is cer­tainly somewhat amazing to discover how thoroughly authentic intelligence can be stifled. They had heard of nothing but Turkish victories: have very likely heard nothing else to this day.⁷⁹

Two or three of the prominent residents dropped in to chat while we were sitting there; but the resident whom we would most have wished to see was unfortunately not among them. For among the inhabitants of Akra is an old gentleman of the bluest blood in Asia-the last living descendant of the Khalif Harun al Raschid the hero of the Arabian Nights. Akra formed a part of the Abbassides' ancestral principality before they attained to the Khalifate; and when their dynasty was overthrown by the Seljuk Sultans in 1050, it was to their ancient patrimony that they retired again. Now even this last possession has also slipped through their fingers; and the poor old survivor, though his social status is impregnable, lives on, as a private citizen of Akra, in very reduced circumstances indeed.

Our final impressions of Akra were gleaned in the bazaar, and induce us to rank it more highly as a centre of sport than of business. “Rabbi Mr. Wigram” had needed some trifling repair to his boots, and had accordingly sent them overnight to a cobbler. But when the boots were returned next morning, the part that needed repair had been ignored completely, and the repairer had only dis­played his forethought by appropriating the English nails. Akra, however, in this respect had certainly shown more enterprize than Mosul; for the Sheikh Birader Efendi had previously tried his fortune there. He had the prescience to allow three days for the job; but when the boots were demanded on the morning of the fourth day they had not even lost their nails. Friday (it was explained) had been the Mohammedan Sabbath, and Saturday the Jewish, and Sunday the Christian; and no doubt a Bank Holiday on Monday was only averted by the fact of the boots being prematurely reclaimed.⁸⁰

The second incident at Akra was of a still more farcical character. A Kurd had come in from the mountains in order to purchase a mule, and after a good deal of chaffering had traded off a pistol in exchange. The seller had promptly proceeded to test the purchase money by the rather drastic method of firing a bullet through his leg; and, on the accident being reported to us, we had deemed it our duty to go and volunteer “first aid." The patient, however, was quite content with his own remedies, and not at all anxious to experiment in new-fangled treatment a la Franga. He was plugging the hole himself with a mixture of butter and cow dung which he was poking in with a stick t Probably this dressing possesses some kind of antiseptic qualities; for it is much favoured in the mountains, and somehow does not seem to prevent the wounds healing. But perhaps the cure results not by virtue, but in spite, of the remedy, for with these tough-fibred mountaineers “first intention will hardly be denied.

CHAPTER VII

AN ORIENTAL VICH IAN VOHR (THE SHEIKH OF BARZAN)

“IT is real rough travelling in the mountains," says the Mosul resident casually; and the traveller just arrived from Europe hears that innocent observation with dismay. He has undergone a fortnight of arabas and khans and chols and zaptiehs, and to! that purgatorial experience is dis­missed as a holiday jaunt. It is therefore with some misgiving that he enters those formidable mountains where he has been promised enlightenment as to what “real rough travelling” means.

Let it be recorded for his consolation that he will learn the worst at the outset. If he is not daunted at Akra he may quite fairly count on winning through. The ascent from that town to the top of the pass behind it is as nasty a bit of climbing as any in all Hakkiari, and he who achieves it with credit may pass as a graduated moun­taineer. The path is not so nerve-shaking in appearance as some of the dizzy goat-tracks that have to be encountered beyond it; but it is an epitome of every trial which can be ordinarily presented in concrete form. It is steep and rugged and rotten. It traverses slabs of sloping rock, and sheets of slippery scree. Its surface is pitted like honeycomb with holes about twelve inches deep and six or eight inches in diameter; and if any better traps could be devised for tripping unwary pedestrians, or breaking the legs of horses, no doubt they would be provided to make the entanglement complete. Our katarjis admit that it is bad, but regard the badness as incorrigible. “Her nainsell didna mak to road” (a fact that is quite self-evident), and “if shentlemans are seeking to Red Gregarach” what better going can they expect?

From the summit of the pass (full three thousand feet above the plain) we descend into a fertile valley, well watered by a mountain rivulet, and feathery with lofty pampas reed; and an equal ascent on the further side brings us to the top of a second range of mountains, from which we can take our first survey of the wild land whither we are bound.

Beneath us lies the Zab valley, a chaos of hummocks and hollows all flung together confusedly like the waves of a choppy sea; and the broad bright ribbon of the river, almost equal in volume to the Tigris, picks out a devious passage through a maze of interlacing bluffs. The opposite side of the chasm is defined by a bold escarpment, scarred by the tracks of winter torrents and buttressed by jagged limestone fins. And above this, along the horizon, tower the great snow peaks of the Hakkiari Oberland-the rigidus Niphates of Horace; the spot where (according to Milton) Satan first planted his feet when he alighted on the new-made world.

An iron-bound untamable fastness-a regular Brigands' Paradise-it is known as the Ashiret country, that is to say, "the Country of the Clans.”And the inhabitants (to do them justice) are quite ready to exploit its capabilities. Though nominally Turkish subjects they are actually semi-independent; half borderers of the type of Johnny Arm­strong, half highlanders of the type of Rob Roy. Here the Sultan's decrees are worth little without a visible backing of bayonets; and every individual filibuster does that which is right-or more accurately that which is expedient-in his own eyes. Such authority as exists anywhere is for the most part in the hands of the tribal chieftains: and the suzerainty of the Stamboul Government is just about as effective as the suzerainty of the old kings of Scotland on the north side of Stirling Bridge.

There are three degrees of security for a traveller in Asiatic Turkey. There are districts where he is safe: there are districts where a zaptieh can keep him safe,: and there are districts where a zaptieh can't. Our knights-errant brought us down loyally to the village of Biri Kupra, a ramshackle Kurdish hamlet which stands at the foot of the pass. They escorted us on the next morning as far as the banks of the river-but when we reached the ferry their responsibility came to an end. Across they could not follow us. It was the Sheikh of Barzan's country. And the Hukumet felt some delicacy about parading their officials in his domain. No doubt he would receive them graciously--under favour and without prejudice; but there was no earthly use in pretending that zaptiehs could protect us there.

It is rather an adventure for a native to travel in the Ashiret country. Supposing that he is at all worth robbing, he should sound his way carefully as he goes. But Euro­peans enjoy more security. The tribesmen have made the discovery that if a European is molested there is almost inevitably a row. His ambassador prods up the Hukumet, and the Hukumet sends an expedition; and 11 a mort o' troops” march through the country, and live at free quarters in the villages, and imprison a number of people who are probably not at all to blame. Thus, though the original aggressor is generally the last person to be directly incom­moded, he incurs quite a lot of unpopularity for “breeding such a function” in the land. Even the most reckless marauder will think twice before pulling his trigger upon a convoy that is travelling under the protection of a European hat: and thus the wearer of the hat aforesaid finds that every native who is travelling in his direction will tack himself on to his party and “walk under his shadow” as far as their ways coincide.

We ourselves in the present instance had no cause for any disquietude; for the Sheikh of Barzan is not only one of the most powerful but one of the most respectable of the mountain chieftains, and is pleased to regard all Englishmen as his particular friends.

The Zab, at the point where we struck it, is a broad, deep; rapid, river; and fording is out of the question either for man or beast. The Sheikh usually maintains a horse ferry, of the type we used on the Euphrates; but this was temporaily hors de combat, being reported to have sprung a leak. We found it beached on the further shore, and it certainly seemed to us that a little human ingenuity and two or three gallons of tar were all that it needed to make it seaworthy; but all parties seemed quite content to put up for a time with the keleg-a little wattle hurdle buoyed up on four inflated skins.

The keleg could only carry two passengers at a time, or alternatively a very small cargo; and the beasts had all to be unloaded, and induced (most reluctantly) to swim. Thus it took a long time to transport us; but presently we were all loaded up again and proceeded about an hour's march up a little lateral valley, till we reached the village of Barzan at the foot of the great flanking hill.

Barzan is rather larger than an average Kurdish village, but boasts no distinguishing feature to suggest its importance in the land. Most of even the less powerful chiefs are housed in defensible “castles "; but the Sheikh of Barzan “dwells among his own people," and his palace is just an agglomera­tion of several ordinary houses joined in one. It possesses no outer door at all (or none that we have ever discovered), and we entered it by the simple process of stepping on to the roof, and walking across to the summer reception room, a rude belvedere on the farther side. The Sheikh, it appeared, was absent. He had gone on a visit to Amadia, and was expected back the day after to-morrow; but as we were journeying westward we should certainly meet him next day. Meanwhile we were made warmly welcome by his old major-domo the Imaum⁸¹ (an old friend of some of our party), by his young mollah or domestic chaplain, and by several truculent-looking duinhewassels who formed part of his regular following.

We could not, of course, be allowed to pass by the house without eating; but we specially begged of our hosts that (as we were anxious to push forward) they would only give us such food as they could quickly and easily prepare. And we hold it a genuine proof of their friendliness that they actually did as we asked them, bringing eggs, bread, honey, and tea. A big man, who wishes to do you honour formally, would consent to no such curtailment. He would probably keep you waiting for hours while he killed and dressed a sheep.

When we arose to depart the imaum and mollah went with us to a certain tree beyond the village in order to “pour us on our road." All important houses in these parts have some recognized point on the approach to them, whither the owner proceeds to welcome and dismiss his guests. It is recorded that on one occasion only (in order to meet the British Consul) the Sheikh rode out in person as far as this statutory tree.

Our hosts had provided us with an armed escort-a "Boy of the Belt "'in a red turban, indicating that he belonged to the Sheikh's personal body-guard. And under his guidance we proceeded for a day and a half up the valley, a journey somewhat comparable to the progress of a beetle across the ridges and furrows of a ploughed field. The hills are too stony for cultivation; but here and there a fan of good soil has spread itself out from the mouth of one of the gullies, and has been terraced into grain plots by the inhabi­tants of the village hard by. These villages (judged by local standards) may be called fairly, prosperous-looking, for the Sheikh is a merciful over-lord: but the “roads” are consistently villainous; the “Far Cry” was an asset at Lochow!

In our eyes the first of these symptoms is the one to determine our sympathies. We can forgive much in this country to a chieftain who does (as a rule) honestly exert himself to keep order; who has realized that it pays him better to protect his vassals than to oppress them; and who can be trusted to administer some sort of “Jeddart justice” in fairly equable fashion to Kurd and Christian alike. But by Turkish officials generally we fear he is less appreciated. The Old Turks hate him with an A because he is Able, and the Young because he is Autocratic: and we cannot pretend to deny that he is sometimes “a bit of a handful," and that his methods of administration are rather ingenuously Draconian.

As recently as in 1909 he was at open war with the Government, and in this particular quarrel he was not very greatly to blame. The chief sinners were Sabonji Pasha and some of the corrupt gang who were running the adminis­tration at Mosul. They coveted some of the Sheikh's villages, and the Sheikh refused to part.⁸² Accordingly they trumped up a charge that he was conspiring against the Hakumet; a charge which could readily be made plausible, for there is not a chief in the province but lets his tongue loose against the Government at times. The true test of serious disaffection, however, is the courting_. of Russian assistance; and the prominent Russophiles hereabouts are the Sheikh's particular bites noirs.

At any rate the charge won credence. The. Sheikh's friends were arrested and imprisoned. An army was marched into his territory; his villages were seized and occupied, and his wives carried off to Mosul. The Sheikh himself for some months was a homeless fugitive in the mountains; and it was then that he reaped the fruit of his good treatment of his villagers, for not a man, Christian or Moslem, ever dreamt of betraying him to his foes. Then, too, we fast made his acquaintance, disguised in mean raiment and attended by a single follower, lurking in some of the Christian villages just beyond the limits of his domain.

But the scoring was not all on one side. Vich Ian Vohr boasted that the race of Ivor would seldom take the field with fewer than five hundred claymores; and the Sheikh of Barzan can muster certainly five thousand, and possibly twice that force. These levies were no more discommoded by the destruction of their “base of operations” than a swarm of the local red hornets whose nest has been demolished by a stone. Three of the seven regiments mobi­lized against them were captured en bloc among the crags, with arms, ammunition, and artillery; and no commen­surate losses were ever inflicted on the mountaineers.⁸³ Mosul was denuded of troops in order to maintain the struggle and the inhabitants were in a frenzy of terror lest the ubi­quitous highlanders should swoop on the defenceless town. But that the Sheikh shrank from a step which would be bound to make the breach irreparable, it is indeed highly probable that these would have proved no empty fears. He is said to have declared roundly that if matters went much farther he intended to capture the place and make it over to the British Vice-Consul! That gentleman was by no means desirous of receiving so inconvenient a gift!

A peace was concluded at last; and the Sheikh was pleased to attribute it very largely to the friendly offices of the British; though really the principal factor was the intervention of a level-headed Vali at Mosul.⁸⁴ We did little more than insist that the Sheikh's wives ought to be set at liberty and treated with fitting distinction; and that, when the “conspiracy” of which he was accused had been officially admitted to be non-existent, there was no longer any valid reason for keeping the “conspirators” in jail. But the Sheikh is “easy with them that have shown them­selves easy with him," and those who take the trouble to “'gree wi' Rob” are usually gainers on the deal.

We traversed one of the battlefields in the course of our journey westward: a crater-like hollow in the wilderness, environed by steep stony hills. Here one of the Government regiments encountered the Sheikh and his army; for the Sheikh was present in person, though he left the actual conduct of operations to a certain Abd-'1-Kadr who acted as his “chief of the host." It was the first regular pitched battle, and the tribesmen were somewhat awed at the prospect of engaging the Hukamet; for which cause, in order to inspirit them, the Sheikh himself fired the first shot. In Kurdistan the firing of a gun constitutes an appeal for assistance; and the Sheikh, with fine dramatic instinct, fired his gun straight towards heaven, appealing to Allah Himself. The event of the day-the capture of the entire regiment, with three pieces of mountain artillery-was thus a prodigious enhancement of his Holiness's⁸⁵ personal prestige. Not only had he scored a valuable point in his secular and temporal capacity, but he was held to have signally vindicated his spiritual pre-eminence as well.

The Sheikh, in the eyes of his followers, is not merely a great tribal chieftain. They believe in his hereditary sanctity: and his clansmen are also his devotees. This fact is strikingly exemplified by an incident which had occurred a little earlier, and which was related to us by Mar Shimun, the Patriarch of the Assyrian Christians, who himself inspires equal veneration among his own adherents.⁸⁶ A column in pursuit of the Sheikh caught a small boy who had dropped behind the party, and demanded of him with menaces which way the fugitives had gone. But the child was as staunch as steel. “By the Holy Name of the Sheikh I will not tell!" he answered. And that was all they could get out of him either by coaxing or threats. The Turkish Captain was fortunately a kind-hearted fellow, and did not ill-use his small captive; but he did not omit, in releasing him, to draw a moral from his pluck. “We shall not make much of this war," he observed, with a smile to his officers. “You can judge from this example with what sort of folk we have to deal. This child is in my power utterly. None would call me to account if I killed him. And yet, knowing this, he defies me; and swears by his Sheikh as by a god! "

It was on the evening of the second day after we had quitted Barzan that we drew near to the hamlet of Suryi, planted in the re-entering angle formed by the confluence of the Oramar river with the Zab. It is a mean little place, consisting of some twenty cabins which spill themselves down the face of a steep brae a little way back from the river; and at the top of the bank stands the castle of the village Agha-a rudely built fortified residence like a second­rate border peel tower. It was here that we looked to meet the Sheikh, for it is a recognized halting-point between Amadia and Barzan; and, crossing the Oramar river, we bent our way towards the tower.

It was about five o'clock in the evening that we reached the first house in the village, and the crowd of men and horses which was grouped around the castle was a proof that the Sheikh, "with his tail on," had already arrived from Amadia. News of our approach had preceded us; and we were met by an embassage from his Holiness bearing an invitation (or should we say “command” under the circumstances?) to partake of his hospitality for the night. We dismounted at the castle door amid a throng of wild retainers, and at the top of the rude stone staircase we were greeted by the Sheikh in person; who led us into the “belai "⁸⁷ (or belvedere), which served him as his temporary audience hall, and motioned us to seats on a mattress spread immediately opposite his own.

It was a prodigious condescension from so great a man that he should have come to the stair head to meet us. Most great chiefs will contrive to be absent from the room when European guests are admitted, that they may not have to

rise to receive them, and so seem to admit inferiority. But presently the Sheikh vouchsafed us a still greater honour­one that perfectly staggered his followers-by even con­descending to sup with us. To think that a man of his holiness should actually eat with two giaours l

Abdul Selim, Sheikh of Barzan, is quite a young man of about twenty-eight years of age. Like most mountaineers he is of medium height, with a slight and active figure and a grave but pleasant face. He was dressed in a white fez and turban, white shirt and trousers, a black gown trimmed with red, and a green cloak over all. His retinue consisted of between thirty and forty retainers--”Boys of the Belt," distinguished by their red turbans, and positively festooned with bandoliers. Many of these fellows must have been carrying quite two hundred rounds of ball cartridge, and their rifles-Sniders and Martinis-were piled around the walls of the belai. All showed most obsequious deference towards their young chieftain; and it may give some adequate conception of the reverence which they entertain for him to record the fact that he himself, in his own proper person, is a ziarel or place of pilgrimage “within the meaning of the Act." By his own immediate followers his commands are obeyed instantly and without question; and we have not the least doubt that had he ordered us to be shot, instead of entertaining us graciously, the sentence would have been executed unhesitatingly, Europeans though we were.

An instructive example of their diligence occurred shortly after our visit. A long-standing feud between the Christians of Tkhuma and some of their Kurdish neighbours had recently blazed into activity; and the latter, rather unsportingly, were endeavouring to persuade their co-religionists to join them in a jehad or "holy war. A jehad is an ugly business and we were much relieved when the Sheikh of Barzan interfered strongly to quash it; refusing himself to sanction it, and prohibiting his vassals from joining in. He was moved to this action, we verily believe, partly by a wish to oblige us, and partly by his own prejudices in favour of law and order; for he had no particular cause to show favour to the Tkhuma maliks, since they had refused to shelter him when he was a fugitive in the war.

Deprived of the Sheikh's countenance the jehad proved a rather damp squib. But for a moment it seemed just possible that some of his vassals would break out in spite of him. And scenting insubordination in a certain Tettu Agha, who was about the biggest recalcitrant, the Sheikh dispatched one of his henchmen in order to emphasize his commands. The envoy entered the Agha's castle and was duly received in audience. He delivered his chieftain's message, but the Agha proved sullen and obstinate. He reiterated his remonstrances, but the Agha refused to give way.

“The Sheikh's word must not be broken," concluded the plenipotentiary. “The Sheikh has sent me to you to tell you to stop at home."

“And what do I care if he has?” retorted the Agha mutinously. “Let the Sheikh send his orders to others. I don't intend to obey."

The Sheikh's man sprang to his feet, and flung himself upon the rebel. A minute later he burst from the room, brandishing a dripping dagger, and leaving Tettu Agha dead on his own dais.

“The Sheikh's word shall not be broken," he proclaimed. This incident was generally regarded as going a little far perhaps; but no one thought of protesting. The lamented Tettu had never been exactly popular; and what else could he expect, anyway, if he "wadna do what M'Callum More bade "?

The very rooms in which we were sitting, sipping tea and smoking cigarettes with his Holiness, had been the scene of what Major Dugald Dalgetty would call “a very pretty little camisado” during the progress of the late campaign. The castle, as a frontier post, was a position of some impor­tance; and it was a shrewd loss to the Sheikh when the Agha whom he had placed in charge of it betrayed his trust to his foes. The Agha was fully aware that his seigneur might feel sore about it. He kept the place strongly garrisoned, and posted around it a double line of sentries and watch­dogs. The approaches on two sides are barred by the rivers, unfordable and icy cold in winter; and on the third side rise precipitous mountains, barely climbable even by day. But one night in a winter blizzard, when the very dogs had crept away to seek shelter, the Sheikh's men seized their opportunity and wormed their way up to the fort. The howling of the tempest drowned the noise of their picks as they cautiously loosened stone after stone from the walling; and at length they formed an opening large enough for one man to creep through at a time. When the next morning broke the treacherous Agha lay dead, with every man of his garrison around him: and the gentleman who was acting as host to the Sheikh and ourselves this evening had been there and then appointed successor. Presumably he was a “sure man."

Our supper consisted of bowls of whey, and of rice with pieces of chicken. The Sheikh and eight or ten of his principal henchmen ate with us, all helping themselves out of the common dishes with wooden ladles and spoons. They all ate extremely sparingly; but this was probably out of etiquette, the Sheikh himself setting the example because he was feeling indisposed. Upon another occasion, when the Sheikh came to call upon us, his four attendants were credited with having consumed a whole sheep!⁸⁸

THE HERIKI VALLEY.
The mountain at the head of the valley is a shoulder of Sat Dagh. The terrace fields of a mountain village appear in the lower corner.

To his own men the Sheikh spoke but rarely, though pleasantly and often smilingly; and they never seemed to speak to him unless they had been first addressed. With us (as he spoke only Kurdish) he had to converse through an interpreter; and the matters debated for the most part concerned the petty politics of the countryside. He bewailed the universal lawlessness, which, he said (we fear rather inaccurately), was as bad for Kurds as for Christians; and observed that it was strange that neither England nor Russia seemed capable of bringing in reform. “You have gone to India," he protested, “and you stay there, though you are not wanted. Why cannot you come to us who do want you? You would be welcomed everywhere here."

Such feelings are well-nigh universal among all the more reputable chieftains. They would appreciate any strong Government, no matter of what nation or creed. The only folk really content with the present condition of Asiatic Turkey are those who have merited hanging: and we grant that this class would poll strong.

Hearing that we were returning to England within a few months at the latest, the Sheikh volunteered to accom­pany us-of course with an adequate “tail." He would call on the Archbishop of Canterbury and get him to establish schools in his villages; and then he would go on to see King George at Windsor, with whose aid he made no question he could arrange for the settlement of Kurdistan. Alas 1 We could hold out no hopes. But the suggestion was made in dead earnest; and we fear that when we did start home­wards we were careful not to let the Sheikh know.

Finally he desired to consult us medicinally. He was troubled with an affection of the eyes⁸⁹--in point of fact trachoma--and begged us to give him some medicine which was capable of affording relief. We could do nothing for him at the time; but shortly afterwards we were able to bring up an English doctor from the C.M.S. hospital at Mosul and let the Sheikh have the benefit of his professional skill.

It then transpired that in the interval he had consulted a native practitioner; a wandering Yezidi medicine-man who had recently drifted to Barzan. The Yezidi had diag­nosed the watering of the eyes as due to an excess of moisture behind the eye-balls, and had proposed running a red-hot skewer through the Sheikh's head from temple to temple, in order to dry up the “superfluous moisture” at the fountain head 1 This horrifying suggestion was both made and received quite seriously. But the Sheikh, very reasonably, had elected to consult the English doctor first. We did not feel much surprised at his Holiness's reluctance to submit to this treatment: but we did feel some admiration for the heroic assurance of the Yezidi doctor in proposing it. Being pierced through the temples with a red-hot skewer would not be a pleasant way of dying; but it would be luxury compared with the sort of devices which the Sheikh's fol­lowers might be expected to practise on the operator, by way of obtaining consolation for the patient's untimely decease.

The Sheikh was, we fear, rather crestfallen to find that the English doctor also wished to operate; and stipulated that he should first see the operation practised on one of his train (who had nothing the matter with him at all). The vile corpus was quite willing; but unfortunately the doctor jibbed at it, and eventually decided to prescribe a slower and less certain treatment. We hope that this will prove adequate: but we should have felt sorely tempted to perform a sham operation on the volunteer, in order to overcome the Sheikh's reluctance to submit himself to the real one.

There was no room for us to lodge that night in the Agha's castle. The. place was already more than full with the Sheikh's train and the Agha's household. Accordingly his Holiness presently dismissed us, coming again to the stair­head to do so, and sending a gentleman cateran to guide us to a house in the village which he had ordered to be reserved for our use. Here he came next morning to see us a little before daybreak, to make his adieux on departure, and to return (as he phrased it) the call which we had made on him the night before. This was, however, only a formal call, and lasted a very few minutes. He was anxious to start his day's journey, and soon rode off towards the Oramar ferry with his picturesque ruffians in his train.

We did not start for another hour. We had first to consume the breakfast which our host the Agha had brought down for us; and, moreover, as all the Sheikh's train had got to be transported across the river, it would obviously be at least an hour before the ferry was available for our use. Furthermore the Agha could urge that we had no cause whatever to hurry. We were bound for the little village of Erdil, reported only a three hours' journey; and we had much better wait “till the sun had got into the valley” and had warmed up the frosty air a little so as to make riding more pleasant. In the alternative he suggested that we had better not go at all, because the road was infamous, and riding absolutely impossible. “Horses couldn't go, and mules couldn't go, and Englishmen couldn't walk." But we were pledged to visit Erdil, so we over-ruled this objection. Moreover, we felt it highly impolitic to admit that there was any place in existence where “Englishmen couldn't walk."

Erdil is a tiny derelict Christian village situated in the Oramar valley a little above its confluence with the Zab. All the surrounding villages are inhabited by Kurds and Moslems; and as from year's end to year's end it is hardly ever visited by any outside Christian, Rabban Werda had begged us earnestly at least to give it a call. Moreover we might make discoveries. Erdil was reputed to possess some “old books” which it was willing to show to Rabbi Dr. Wigram, and had sent us one Ibrahim, an Erdilite, who promised to lead us to the cache. “Old books," in ninety­nine cases out of one hundred, are apt to prove not worth the seeking. But a scholar would never forgive himself for missing the hundredth chance.

The Oramar river is a noble stream, not inferior to the Zab in volume, gushing forth from a grim rocky portal which notches the Zab's mountain wall. We were assured that no European had ever yet traversed its gorges; and the assertion is certainly corroborated by the fact that the best map of these regions leaves this corner perfectly blank. In view of the repute of the road we felt half inclined for an instant to leave our animals at Suryi, and call again for them on returning. But we thought this would be too great a temptation for even a friendly Agha, and finally resolved to take them along.

Crossing the Oramar by the ferry, and keeping up the left bank of the river, we entered almost immediately a magnificent rocky ravine. On either hand rose gaunt and tawny precipices fully two thousand feet in altitude, scored all over their upper faces with the lines of the con­torted strata, and thinly clothed near the bases with gnarled and stunted oak scrub. A deep, green, rapid river filled the whole of the narrow invert, and this channel was thickly cumbered by a selection of some of the very largest boulders that we have ever seen. Apparently there are many deep pockets just behind the faces of the precipices; and the water collecting in these, splits away the outer wall when it freezes, and sheds the gigantic fragments into the chasm, Not a few of these fallen masses must have been as big as the Marble Arch.

The pathway did not belie the report we had heard of it at Suryi. It scrambled along the steep bank above the river; narrow, broken, and half strangled among blocks of fallen stone. Three times that morning we had to unload the mules, hand the packs across the obstructions, and load again on the further side. Our red-turbanned cateran, who still led us, would pause now and then in the, pathway, indicating the landscape at large with a flourish of his arm like a showman, and regarding us with a triumphant grin. But whether he wished to express his admiration of the romantic scenery, or his appreciation of its defensive capabilities, or merely to apprise us that Erdil lay absolutely on the summit of everything-as in fact it did-we were not quite able to decide.

This gorge was a few months later the scene of a notable exploit, achieved by the Sheikh of Barzan at the expense of those hostes humans generis the Heriki Kurds. This horde of wandering robbers, the bane of all settled communities, are wont (as already related) to migrate each spring and autumn to and fro between Mosul and Urmi. They can travel by several routes; but all routes converge upon one point-the “Bridge of Rocks” over the Zab a little above Suryi. Here the Zab, as it issues from the mountains, is throttled (like the Wharfe at Bolton) into a narrow crack between shelving slabs of rock. The slabs are deeply undercut, and the depth of the crack must be considerable; for at one point, where a big rock table rises in mid current, the great river can be crossed in two strides 1

Here the Heriki always pass over, at a point where the width of the river is about twenty-five feet. They build a bridge for themselves every spring, and it lasts till the next winter floods. This is the sole piece of honest and useful work which is ever achieved by those incorrigible plunderers; and out of it accordingly a remorseless Nemesis has fashioned “a whip to scourge them." Here the Government posts its troops when it wishes to collect their taxes; and if they have injured any of the Sheikh of Barzan's villages, he exacts compensation here.

Now the previous autumn, on their downward journey, the Heriki had lifted two or three thousand sheep belonging to some Christian villages. The villagers appealed to the English, and the English to the Government; but of course there was not the least chance of obtaining any redress, The following spring, however, when the Heriki were nearly due again, we received a visit from the Sheikh of Barzan, who himself (though he did not say so) seemed to have a crow to pick with the tribe. “See here, Effendim," he argued; “the Hukumet can never get those sheep for you. We know they haven't got troops enough to get their own taxes this year. Now supposing it were suggested to the Vali that I should be appointed to collect those taxes. Perhaps it is even possible I might get back some of the sheep."

The Effendi shrugged his shoulders, and did not think much would come of it; but the astute old Vali of Mosul saw the humour of the notion at once. It was quite true he had given up hope of getting the Heriki's taxes. He even anticipated difficulty in getting the Sheikh of Barzan's. This scheme would lubricate the bearings most admirably in both directions: and the Sheikh was appointed tax­collector pro hac vice by return of post.

The Heriki came down to their bridge, rejoicing to find it unoccupied. They crossed, and pushed on to Suryi, and the Sheikh broke down the bridge behind. They entered the Oramar valley; and a few miles up they found the Boys of the Belt barring it, with the Sheikh's Ban and arriere Ban posted on the crags around them; and received a polite demand-note from his Holiness the Fermier General requesting immediate payment of taxes, sheep, and costs.

Even a Government regiment could hardly have got 'so much without fighting; but the Sheikh had thrown his net so deftly that his captives could not even kick. There was nothing for it but to pay, and look pleasant, and this the Heriki chiefs did with what grace they could. We confess that we doubt grievously whether any large per­centage of sheep got back to their original owners; but all the country was jubilant to see the original biters so badly bit.

We held our course up the valley for about three hours and a bittock; and at this point Ibrahim the Erdilite cheerfully observed that we were just half way. As he had previously assured us that the total distance was three hours we were provoked to “pour cold words on him." All sorts of things get “poured” in Syriac: you “pour” your guest into bed; you “pour” your enemy into prison;⁹⁰ you “pour a howl” at a man when you shout at him from a distance; and to "pour cold words" upon him is to “give him a bit of your mind." However, we could not blame poor Ibrahim very severely for a fault which he shares with all his nation-a total inability to conceive any measure­ment of time.

Soon after we bore to the right and entered a tributary valley; a narrower gorge, dark and chilly, where the pools still lay hard frozen all along the shadier side. The path rose more steeply now with a spiral twist to the right like the final turn of a corkscrew. We were rising on to the top of the precipice which had' overshadowed our morning's march. The last pitch was the steepest of any; but here the ground was less rugged, and a few sketchy outlines of terraces tried to pose as cultivated fields. At last we emerged on a tiny plateau, a sprocket on the slope of the mountain, and beheld the dozen rough stone cabins which compose the village of Erdil.

Erdil is not the remotest spot on earth; for beyond it we could descry another and yet remoter Kurdish village some five hours further up the vale. But it is at least theremotest spot we are ever likely to get to. A site for an eagle's eyrie rather than for an abode of man. Thrust out on a little green tongue between two abysmal valleys it commands a superb panorama of the mountains which lie to the northward; range succeeding to range in seven successive sierras till they culminate in the snowy crests of Sat and Jilu, no less than fourteen thousand feet high. And in all that craggy wilderness there was scarcely a vestige of habitation. No wonder the villagers were excited by the advent of visitors from the world beyond.

The populace poured out to greet us. They conducted us to the house of the village rais or head man. They installed us in his one room in the seat of honour by the fireplace and thronged in eagerly after us, men, women, and children to kiss our hands. They were by no means an ill-looking crowd, and many of the girls were quite well favoured; dark haired, but fair complexioned; sturdy and deeply bronzed. The men wore the usual mountain dress;⁹¹ and the women were clad in figured blue smocks and turbans, girt at the waist with blue sashes, and wearing their long open sleeves knotted together behind them in order to keep the ends out of the way. The usual full dress of the mountain women consists of a smock reaching from the neck to about midway between knee and ankle; and a jacket of the same length worn over it, folded across in front, and slit up as high as the waist on either side. The whole is girt round with a sash; and on their heads they wear kerchiefs, or (in the Tkhuma district) little round caps edged with silver coins. Their hair is worn down their backs, plaited in three, four, or five long pigtails, with a six-inch horse-hair tassel worked in at the end of each plait. The smocks are usually of some figured material, but striped stuff is commoner for the jackets; and the colours which they chiefly favour are Indian red or indigo blue. Usually they go barefoot in their villages, but when they are on a journey they wear a sort of brogue like the men.⁹²

The rais' house was a typical sample of the ordinary mountain cabin; walled with rough stone rubble, and floored with beaten earth. The low, flat, smoke-blackened ceiling was formed with unsquared poplar stems, upon which was spread a bed of brushwood⁹³ roofed over with a thick layer of mud. The mud of course cracks in dry weather and the roof becomes very leaky; but it can be quickly consolidated with the little stone roller which is kept on the roof for the purpose, and thus be made once more water­tight as soon as the rains return. The tanura, or fireplace, is a beehive-shaped hole dug out in the centre of the floor,⁹⁴ and the smoke finds an exit (eventually) through a hole in the roof above. There are no windows what­ever, and the doorway is a very low one; and thus in most cases the smoke-hole serves the inmates for skylight as well.

Poor Erdil! Forgotten and isolated, and steeped in poverty and ignorance, it supplies an apt illustration of the conditions of life which prevail among the Kurdish-owned Christian villages in the mountains. Conditions which were commoner still before the advent of the Archbishop's Mission, and which are still all too common in certain out­lying districts like Bohtan. Indeed, in many respects Erdil deserves to be congratulated. Politically, as the inhabitants themselves admitted, they have no great, cause to complain. Their owner is the Agha of Suryi; and con­sequently their over-lord is the Sheikh of Barzan, who is nicknamed “the Sheikh of the Christians," because he treats his Christian vassals so well. His tolerance secures them from persecution, and his vigorous rule from raiding; and they gave him the same testimonial that was given in old days to King Brian Boru in Ireland, that you “might safely leave a gold bracelet on a bush by the road in his domain."

But religiously they were left destitute. Their Patriarch seemed to have forgotten them. All the surrounding villages were Moslem, and their nearest co-religionists were a long day's journey away. They had their church and their service books, and a parson's glebe and cottage; but thirty years had elapsed since last they had a priest of their own in the village, and it was but seldom that even a wandering deacon had visited them during all that time. For thirty years they had no one to celebrate their services, no one to marry them, no one to baptize their children, no one to bury their dead; and one of the first requests that they proffered to “Rabbi Mr. Wigram” was that he would at least recite the Church of England burial service over the graves of those who had died within the last few years. Surely it is no small credit to them that under such circumstances they remained even nominally Christian; and we feel some satisfaction in recording that a little time after our visit their Patriarch found himself able to send them the priest whom they desired.

The “old books” which they had promised to show us proved (as we had more than half expected) to be only the usual Church Service books.⁹⁵ They had kept them jealously hidden in an underground cave in a vineyard; knowing vaguely that they were somehow sacred, but otherwise quite ignorant of their contents, for, of course, not a man in the village could read. The cave must have been quite a dry one, for the books had not suffered in any way; and we cannot doubt that on our departure they were again committed to the cache.

The church was a well-built stone edifice, dating possibly from the sixteenth century; and though disused for so long a period, it was kept clean and in good repair. Within it that Sunday evening we recited our English Evensong; the villagers standing round reverently and joining in the Amens, the only word they could understand. The “Sheikh Birader Efendi” must confess that this strange little service was to him one of the most impressive in which he has ever shared.

The wild rough life of the villagers was reflected in the supper that they provided for us. Where else might one dine on ibex collops and bread made of acorn meal? The latter sounds somewhat unpalatable, but was in fact not at all bad eating. The queer little oaks which grow in Kurdistan bear very large acorns almost as big as small walnuts; and these are not nearly so bitter as English acorns but rather like chestnuts in taste. Often they are roasted and eaten as we eat chestnuts in England; but generally they are ground to meal for breadmaking, and mixed with an equal proportion of barley meal. The natives grow a little wheat likewise, so wheaten bread is not quite unknown to them; but of this, as is to be expected, they get only a very small supply.

It was while we were breakfasting next morning that Erdil produced its final originality in the way of diet. Some hunters had come in overnight, and had brought with them the carcass of a boar. They had cut him up for convenience of transport; but his huge hoofs (as big as a cow's) and his bristly iron-grey hide proved that he must have been a truly formidable monster: and for five piastres (ten pence) they sold us a big chunk of the meat. His hide was the most valuable part of him, and for this they hoped to obtain as much as two mejidies (eight shillings), since it made such excellent shoes. It seemed little short of a crime to allow so magnificent a pelt to be so ignominiously disposed of; but we did not see, if we purchased it, how we were to carry it away.

Mindful of the difficulties we had found in bringing our beasts up to Erdil, we determined in taking them down again to try and lighten their loads. Our own personal belongings were consigned to two stalwart porters, who undertook to guide us by a short cut, practicable only for pedestrians; while our beasts were to make the long circuit and meet us at the mouth of the gorge.

A few weeks later, on the Flushing packet, the steward eyed that baggage dubiously, and opined we should need “two strong porters” to carry it up to the train. At his words there arose in our minds a vision of two grizzled Syrians carrying all that baggage on their shoulders, for three hours, with scarcely a breather, across the face of a precipice which would have made the steward's hair stand on end! As a matter of fact each load (though it certainly looked overwhelming) totalled up to about sixty pounds, which is the load of a porter on the Alps.

Half an hour we ascended gradually and slantingly along the face of the mountain; and then the ground vanished from under us with a suddenness which took away our breath. The cliff broke away from our toes sheer down to the river beneath us, a drop (to compute it by guesswork) of something like two thousand feet. It was a grand, if somewhat a dizzy, spectacle; but our guides never checked for an instant. They skipped over the lip of the precipice, and went tripping along a ledge on the face of it, as if they considered such travelling the most ordinary thing in the world. This then was the real “three hours' route” which led from Erdil to Suryi, the path where “horses couldn't go, and mules couldn't go, and Englishmen couldn't walk."

With regard to the horses and mules we endorse the description most cordially; but for ordinary capable pedestrians it was not so very terrible after all. True, it looked rather a fly-on-the-wall business when seen from a little distance; but the ledges, if narrow, were firm, and there was generally plenty of hand hold. Moreover the rocks themselves, though they had looked absolutely vertical when seen from below the previous morning, all proved to be more or less sloping and not quite destitute of brushwood; so it is possible one might have recovered oneself even had one slipped from the path. The worst bits were at the beginning and end of our traverse, where the track led over steeply tilted slabs. Here our European nailed boots refused to bite on the surface, and the porters in their hempen brogues got across much more happily than we. These hempen brogues are almost universally worn by the hillmen, and are admirable footwear for rock work; but they need patching every evening to be ready for the journey next day. Even English boots, however; cannot long stand this sort of travelling. Let them be made ever so strongly they are cut to pieces in three months. Half way across the face of the precipice, while pausing to rest a few minutes, we were able by means of our glasses to see our horses coming on behind. They were then just turning into the main valley, having accomplished about half their journey; and though we had given them an hour's start at Erdil, we had fully two hours to wait for them at the mouth of the Oramar gorge.

CHAPTER VIII

A MASTER OF MISRULE (NERI AND JILU)

THE valley in which Barzan lies is a great fold in the earth's surface, running due east and west from Jezireh on the Tigris past Amadia to the mountains on the Persian frontier; a distance of about 120 miles. It forms a sort of huge natural moat to the mountain citadel of Hakkiari; and the counterscarp is represented by the series of lower parallel ridges which rise behind Akra, Sheikh Adi and Rabban Hormizd, overlooking Mosul plain.

This great trench appears continuous, but is, in fact, occupied successively by four distinct rivers which break into it from the northern mountains, run for some little distance along it, and then break out again towards the south. The Zab takes possession at about mid-distance and runs eastward for thirty-five miles or so, its section thus roughly coinciding with the jurisdiction of his Holiness of Barzan: and the extreme eastern section is occupied by the Neri river, which descends from the Persian mountains to unite its waters with the Zab.

Our road does not get any easier as we enter the Neri valley. All travel in fact is impossible anywhere in the neighbourhood of the stream. The track keeps high up on the slope of the Sat range, crossing one tributary gorge after another, and the incessant ascents and descents are formidably rugged and steep. The path is exceedingly narrow, and the slope not far short of precipitous: and the traveller feels rather as if he were riding along the gutter of a steer-hitched roof.

We had companions on the way; for the Heriki Kurds were in the act of conducting their 4sual migration from Mosul plain to the upland pasture of Tergawar.⁹⁶ Thus we were constantly passing their large flocks of sheep, and parties of their well-armed men-folk; a feat that was some­times made ticklish by the exceeding narrowness of the road. As far as we were concerned, they were harmless companions enough. The “Boy of the Belt” whom the Sheikh of Barzan had sent with us was ample security against any attempt being made on our mightinesses; and they seemed as pleasant and jolly a set of brigands as a man need wish to meet. It is true that we had a slight mis­understanding with one particular shepherd; but that was misapprehension pure and simple, and brought about no evil results. The lad was so picturesque an object as he strode up the pass in front of his sheep, clad in his rough cloak with long gun, shepherd's crook, and pipe all com­plete, that we begged him to do us the favour of standing still for a moment, in order that we might secure his portrait. Our friend, however, was new to the camera, and (very pardonably) thought that it was a lethal weapon. He fled like a hare to the cover of the nearest rocks, and prepared to shoot us thence; nor could any blandishments make him relax his attitude of suspicion. Recent events had made him distrustful of anything that looked Govern­mental.

If, however, the Heriki were just friendly travelling com­panions for us, they were regarded much in the light of an annual migration of wolves by all the villages on the road. These were all standing to arms till the danger should have passed-the sheep penned in folds close to the houses, the women all within doors, and ^-the men with guns in hand, much inclined to shoot at the stranger first and ask whether he did not mean mischief after. A little yourt⁹⁷ that we purchased at one place was only handed out to us through one loop-hole while the master of the house kept us covered with a gun from another. Albeit when we had duly handed over coin of the realm in payment, that gentleman became effusively friendly and apologetic-through his closed and barred door.

Really, these precautions were not uncalled for. The Heriki carry off everything that happens to fall in their way, as incidents already recorded to testify, and “stealis and reifis” with as much impunity as the “common thiefis of Liddisdail” in old Sir R. Maitland's day.

They plainly throw the country rydis,

I trove the mekil deil thame gydis!

Quhair thay onset,

Ay in thair gait,

Thair is na yet nor dor thame bydis.

Poor fellows, they were rather out of humour too, because things had not been going quite well with them. Hitherto, it had been easy to avoid all the attentions of the tax-collector by a proper timing of their migrations, coupled with a little bakhshish to officials; and at the worst they could always go over the border to Persia out of the jurisdiction. Now, however, their condition had greatly deteriorated. Persia had gone so much farther off owing to recent changes, and Ottoman officials were to be found even in the summer pastures which had been free of them before. Thus does a "rectification of frontier," such as Turkey was then carrying out at the expense of Persia,⁹⁸ bring unmerited trouble upon quiet folk.

We stayed for one night in the village of Sat, which gives its name to the whole range. The place is Christian (Nestorian), but its inhabitants have a name for quarrel­someness and love of intrigue that makes them a proverb among their not very peaceful nation. Such at least is the description given of their character by their own Patriarch, who is, we suppose, the highest authority possible on such a matter; and we give the legend illustrative of the fact, as current among the nation and recounted to us by his Grace himself.

A woman of Sat was once on a journey, near to a Nestorian village unnamed, when she met an old acquaintance on the road outside. This was no less a person than Satana himself, who was sitting on a stone, weeping bitterly.

“O Brother, what is your trouble?” said the sympathizing lady.

“I am broken-hearted" sobbed the poor fiend; "I have been trying to sow strife in this village for seven years and have not raised a single quarrel in that time; I must give it up."

“Cheer up! let me try my hand;” said the lady; and the couple went together to the village, where they found a bridal party just leaving the church. What measures were taken by the woman history (prudently) sayeth not; but within half an hour bride and bridgroom were pulling one another's hair, and the friends of each were taking part in a very pretty fight.

“Now you can stay here and be happy," said the woman of Sat to her friend.

“Thank you," said Satana,” But while you are here, I really think my presence would be superfluous."

One is completely outside the power of the Government in the Barzan-Neri district, but not quite out of touch with its officials notwithstanding. In one of the remotest of villages, in a deep gorge running up into the Sat range, and called Bi-Kar, we actually found a Government mudir. It is true that he had no power; and any collecting of taxes that took place in the neighbourhood was done by wholly unauthorized agencies; but there he was, presumably as a testimony to the existence of the Hukumet.

Like most Ottoman officials, he was delightfully courteous to the chance visitor; and in this case perhaps the welcome was not mere politeness, but real joy in speaking to an educated man once more. For years in that remote glen, he had enjoyed no conversation with any but policemen and Kurds. His story was typical of those of a good many of the young Ottoman official class. Educated at Stamboul, in the college for Government servants, he had (like most of the younger men of his day) been attracted by the “Young Turk” propaganda, and its hopes for a reformed and revived Ottoman Empire. Something brought his reforming sym­pathies to light; and a prompt order from Abdul Hamid dispatched him to this corner of the earth, with a black mark against his name, and no chance of promotion, or any sort of career.

Three years passed in that exile, and then the revolution gave him some hope of a change. But the years that had elapsed since then had only been evidence that he was forgotten by the new r6gime as thoroughly as the old one could have wished; and here was he, an educated and capable man, settling down while still under thirty as a soured, disappointed minor official. He was one of the many tragedies of Ottoman rule.

Laboriously enough, we pushed on for three days' travel, a daily ascent and descent of 3000 feet marking our pro­gress. The tracks were always feasible enough for mules, though as viewed from a distance they had a painfully dizzy aspect; and the deep gorges between each pair of ridges were places of marvellous beauty. The valley of Heriki lives in our memory as perhaps the most exquisite of all. We descended the crags and steep slopes of the mountain side-coming down 2ooo feet in half an hour on foot, though of course the animals might take four times as long-to a glen that was one garden, thick with walnut and poplar trees, interspersed with figs and with vines trained from tree to tree, all in the glory of their best foliage. Trees flourished here luxuriantly from the soil and climate, and were respected for the one reason that makes a Kurd respect anything; for the whole glen is one great cemetery. As its name implies, it is the original home of the nomad tribe with whom we had just been journeying. From this spot there set out the five eponymous ancestors of the five septs that make the tribe to-day; and hither every man of name and fame is borne for burial among the great ones of his house. There is much romance about this most turbulent of nomad tribes; and it is not diminished by the fact that (if legend tells true) they were Christians once; in the days when Nestorian bishops, nomad like their flocks, had for diocese “the tents of the Kurds." One relic of their ancient Christianity they are said to bear with them still (we follow the account given by old Nestorian priests), namely, the head of a Christian martyr, one of the several saints George of Eastern legend. This is the palladium of their tribe, and is borne about in a chest either by the principal chief among them, or by some holy mollah in the clan.

A three days journey from Barzan takes the traveller to the domain of the great rival of the chief of that ilk, viz. the Sheikh of Shamsdin, who has his palace at Neri. This man is at least as powerful as his neighbour; and indeed Obeid-Allah of Shamsdin, grandfather of the present Sheikh; had thoughts of carving out for himself a separate principality; a buffer between Turkey and Persia. He was able to invade the latter country in force, and to besiege the city of Urmi for some weeks in the early “seventies." He failed, how­ever (though the success of the Sheikh of Koweit in an analogous scheme shows that it was not impossible under favourable circumstances); and he and his son Abd-l-Kadr were removed to Constantinople as state prisoners, while his second son, Saddik or Zadok, was left as head of the tribe. Shrewder than his father, Saddik was content with the reality of power, and accumulated wealth by tobacco smuggling on the most magnificent scale. His caravans went down to Persia, often 100 mules strong, in open defiance of the “Regie” officials; and a large portion of the proceeds was invested in rifles, smuggled from Russia to Urmi. If the troops in Trans-Caucasia were not much libelled, many of them came from their barracks, in exchange for vodka

A kaimakam, and an inspector of the “Regie” (the Governmentally recognized tobacco monopoly) both reside at Neri; and are generously provided with apartments in the fine house built by the Sheikh out of the profits of the industry which their official duty is to stop. But both. of these domestic animals are most gratifyingly tame.

Not all of the Sheikh's income went in rifles, or even in bakhshish. He once wrote politely to the author, asking for a recommendation to an English bank, as he had some savings to deposit with them. The writer named a bank or two; and knowing that his Holiness expected ten to fifteen per cent. on money ready at call, did not think much would follow. But eventually some thousands of pounds did actually find their way to Lombard Street ; for this prince of tobacco smugglers was in very solvent circumstances indeed! A Kurdish brigand chief with a large banking account in England sounds a wildly impossible conception. Yet William Hickey records how another wholesale smuggler hailed a homeward-bound China clipper in mid channel, and purchased all her skipper's private stock of tea with a cheque for £800, which was accepted without the least demur. So such things were certainly done in the England of 1770!

Saddik was a terrible oppressor of Christians in his early days, and his deliberate murder of one particular bishop, whom he had invited to his house as a guest, shocked even the robust Kurdish conscience.⁹⁹ Years brought wisdom, however; and he realized that to massacre or dispossess good cultivators was bad economy. So such as remain are allowed to live, though it must be owned that their condition is but very little removed from serfdom. Among these properties of his is an Archbishop. The second dignitary of the Nestorian Church, the Metropolitan Mar Khanan-­Ishu, resides in the Sheikh's country. He lives of course in his own monastic house, and is allowed the use of his own property ; but he is practically a prisoner in the hands of "that Great One," maintained much as the Norman ad­venturers in Italy maintained certain Popes, as the readiest instrument for governing their own subjects.

Both officially and personally, as hereditary Sheikh of Shamsdin, and as an Imaum of eminence, Sheikh Saddik had a great reputation among Moslems, and knotty problems came to him for solution. Thus it was at his “diwan” that a perplexed tribesman presented himself one day with a fine cock under his arm, and the query, “What ought to be done with this fowl ? It has taken to preaching Christianity!” He was asked for an explanation, and- told how three times in his hearing the bird had proclaimed, "The religion is the religion of Jesus." And sure enough when the cock was produced in evidence it immediately repeated at the top of its voice “Din Din el Seyidna Isa "; or at least what all present unanimously interpreted as being those words. That it was a miracle none doubted: but was it of Allah, or of Sheitan? If the latter, of course the owner could wring the cock's neck and the incident would be closed. If the former, ought he, a good Mussulman, to obey it and turn Christian?

The Sheikh considered the matter; and gave an answer that at once showed some skill in casuistry, and was as bitter and well merited a gibe at Christian divisions as one could wish. The miracle was declared to be from Allah; and the cock must in no wise be slain, but preserved as an honoured and sacred fowl. However, there were many sects of Christians, and each one claimed that its particular version of Christianity was “the religion of Seyidna Isa." The cock had given no evidence as to which was the right one; so, until all Christians should agree together, or till the bird should give another and more explicit oracle, no true believer need do anything. It is an episode that shows many aspects of the Oriental mind.

Sheikh Saddik was a ruffian, but a fine and strong character withal. His son and successor, Taha, has inherited all his ruffianism without the stronger qualities. At the age of nineteen years he weighed precisely that number of stone; and when a day's journey was unavoidable, it took two sturdy mules, with specially padded saddles, to bear his gross carcass along the way. He has the bad taste to wear European clothes (or what he takes to be such, corduroy trousers and butcher boots), and presents a strong family resemblance to the “Claimant." His younger brother, Sheikh Musa, once fell foul of the British military Consul from Van, in a way that has since been vigorously impressed on his memory. The officer in question, accompanied by the writer, arrived at this place in the spring of agog; and the party was of course entertained as guests of the house in the absence of the master. We had arrived at noon, and had sent the horses out to pasture and rest, when one of the katarjis came running up with tidings much resembling those of the servants of job, and in much the same state of mind as that of those unfortunates. The Sabaeans, represented by the personal servants of the Sheikh, had come down on the animals as they were feeding, and disregarding all protests had carried off every one!

There was of course a tremendous storm, for a deadlier insult to guest and British Consul could hardly be imagined; and the tame kaimakam was required to procure the instant return of the stolen property. He, poor man, was grievously perplexed between his fear of the Consul on the one hand, and his fear of his proprietor on the other. Between the two, he collapsed in something very like tears, ejaculating

“What can I do? They were the Sheikh's men who took them." He did send out his two zaptiehs, with a consular kavass, to bring back the beasts; but as soon as they were outside the village, those two worthies sat themselves on the ground and informed the kavass that, kaimakam or no kaimakam, they were not going to do anything against the Sheikh's followers if they knew it!

The animals were returned that evening; and it came out that Sheikh Musa had suddenly conceived the idea that he would give a picnic to his womenkind; wherefore the order “bring horses” had been issued, and obedience to it was expected.

“There are no horses, your Greatness," the servants had said.

“No horses? There are horses!” pointing to the meadow' where the Consul's animals were at grass.

“But those are the Consul's, your Greatness." “The Consul's! Am I Sheikh, or am I not? "

So the horses were brought; and it is to be hoped that the trouble that followed, and the fine that had to be paid, was a salutary lesson to everybody.

Of late years, a family quarrel has rather diminished the power of Sheikh Taha. His uncle Abd-l-Kadr, son of Obeid-­Ullah, returned from Constantinople with the claim to be (what he is by all laws of primogeniture) the Head of the House. Fighting followed between the two; a proceeding which would not have done much harm to anyone had the Kurds only fought among themselves. Naturally, however, the poor serfs of Christians (whose allegiance both parties claimed) suffered as those do suffer who have the misfortune to find themselves between the upper and nether millstones.

Both Sheikhs were arrested, but a compromise was arranged. Abd-l-Kadr agreed to accept a liberal allowance from the family funds; and to live in Stamboul, the city he knew, rather than set up as a savage chief in Kurdistan.

A day's journey from the Sheikh's house at Neri brings the traveller to the land of the Christian “ashirets” of Jilu and Baz.

Ashiret is a word that strictly means “tribe” or clan; but as descriptive of status it is contrasted with “rayat” or subject; and means that the bearers of the name pay tribute (when it can be got out of them) and not taxes. The Ottoman Government is only now extending its power, as a practical thing, into Kurdistan at all. All the Mussul­man dwellers in the land were unto lately “ashiret," and much in the same position as the Highlanders “beyond the line" in days previous to the "forty-five." A fair proportion of the Christian dwellers there, happening to have arms, are “ashiret” as well.

Those who are unarmed are in the unpleasant position of having to serve two masters (both of them abominably bad ones), and are "rayat" both to the Government, as far as its power goes; and to the Kurdish chiefs, as far as they can enforce theirs. The whole position is comprehensible to those who live among the people; but to the foreigner, it appears to be (and is) the negation of law, order, and all that we mean by good government. It is the old life of the highlands of Scotland, complicated and worsened immensely by the division between Christianity and Islam.

Still, among the ashirets who carried arms, whether Christian or Moslem, the position was by no means intolerable a generation ago. Besides it was extremely picturesque. The various tribes fought one another freely; and of course the feuds usually, though not always, followed the religious and racial line of division.

Still, arms were approximately equal; and the Christians, though outnumbered, had strong positions to defend, and were of good fighting stock, as men of Assyrian blood should be. So, until Abdul Hamid's day, the parties were fairly matched on the whole; and generations of “cross-raiding” had evolved an understanding in the matter, capable of summary statement as "Take all you like, but do not damage what you leave; and do not touch the women." Thus, live-stock were fair loot, and so were carpets and other house-furniture, and arms of course. But the house must not be burnt, and standing crops and irrigating channels not touched, while a gentlemanly brigand would leave the corn-store; alone. Women were never molested when a village of ashirets was raided, until a few years ago. And this was so thoroughly understood that it was not necessary even to guard them; a custom which by an interesting parallel prevailed on our own Scotch border in the fourteenth century.¹⁰⁰ When, however (as sometimes happened), a party of Kurds at feud with other Kurds, plundered a Christian village that was “rayat” to the chief of the other party, girls might be carried off, with the other live stock. Even so, however, wives were sacrosanct.

Of late years things have changed for the worse in this respect. Women are not always respected now; and the free distribution of rifles among the Kurds has done away with all the old equality. This was done, when the late Sultan raised the “Hamidie” battalions; partly for the defence of his throne, partly perhaps with the idea of keeping the Christians in subjection. Now when to odds in numbers you add the additional handicap implied in the difference between Mauser and flint-lock, the position becomes im­possible; and the balance has since inclined steadily against the Christian tribes.

The fights of old were not usually very deadly, for though a good deal of home-made powder was burned, these moun­taineers are tough, and hard to kill. The writer has known an instance of a Kurd who was shot through the body in a tribal skirmish; after which he walked home, and ob­served to his wife, “Beastly nuisance this: here is a brand-new shirt, and two holes in it; and it will want washing tool"

Jilu is a curious little mountain canton--a fan of narrow gorges descending from the rugged Galiashin range, the highest peak of which, Supa Durig, approaches 14,000 feet. Their union forms the Oramar River, that considerable tributary of the Zab mentioned in the previous chapter. Nothing but “terrace cultivation” is possible on the bare rocky slopes; and the earth that composes the fields has usually to be carried to the. spot where the terrace wall has been built to retain it, in baskets on men's backs. A spot has to be chosen which is reasonably safe from avalanches; else the poor farmer may find, some spring morning, that not only his crop, but his whole field, has been swept away in the night.

Men of Jilu have a harder life than even the average mountaineer of Kurdistan; and hence it is, no doubt, that they have developed the wanderlust, which is far more strongly marked in them than in most of their fellow countrymen. They wander everywhere in search of work; though they always drift back to this strange little canton at the end. Starting with nothing but the clothes they stand up in, and very ragged clothes too, they apparently never starve, and occasionally bring back a fortune. Men are to be found in Jilu who helped to build the forts of Port Arthur; and who corrected the writer on certain points connected with that fortress when the siege was being discussed in the patriarch's diwan. Who served guns on board the American battleships off Cuba; or have (goodness alone knows how) found some charitable person to give them a university education in America. One of these wanderers brought back £3000; or, to be accurate, brought it to within a few days' journey of his home, when his luck deserted him at last, for he met a party of Kurds, and the robbers made the haul of their wicked lives. It was the cruellest trick of fortune; but he owned to have made the money in one very doubtful trade that these fellows practise; and we could not avoid the feeling that the thief by violence had as good a right to the spoil as had the thief by fraud.

The trade in question is this. Jilu men have made the discovery that folk in Europe and America have much sympathy with an ancient and struggling church, and are willing to give considerable sums to assist it. So they collect for “schools and orphanages." Men go by the dozen to gather in money, nominally for these objects; but actually spend it on their own needs alone. American police know the trick well, and indeed have invented the term “fake-priest” as descriptive of this branch of the great profession of roguery.

One can feel some sympathy with the rascals who thus answer the old question “why did Allah create fools, if not for the profit of wise men?” They are in absolute and utter poverty; and they know that by going to foreign parts, and there “slinging a yarn” that they would not expect their own people to take seriously, they can gather sums that mean wealth to them. It is a great temptation; and it will continue till such time as charity and common sense begin to run in double harness, and charitable folk at home refuse to extend to these Orientals the trust they would never repose in one of their own countrymen.

Further, tried by their own standards, these Orientals are not cheating. An Eastern does not understand the ad­ministration of a Trust. What you give, you give; and may Allah reward you for your charity. But, when you have given it, it is yours no longer; and why should you complain if its owner finds that he needs it for something different to his original intent. You gave it for a school? Well, he really meant to use it for a school then; but afterwards he found that he needed it for his own family. It is his; why not? Narrow-minded man, why use the ugly word thief?

So, while sympathizing with these rascals, we advise no man to give them money; or even to trust the interesting documents they produce, sealed with the patriarchal seal. Forgery is singularly easy in a land where the seal is the sole signature, and any seal-cutter can copy it from an impression.

So the “Jiluayi” wander; reproducing to-day in all details the seller of relics who rode to Canterbury with Chaucer. One enterprising member of the fraternity made a con­siderable sum by selling in four Russian villages the four feet of the ass on which our Lord rode into Jerusalem; and only got into trouble when the temptation to supply the demand of a fifth village for another foot overpowered his prudence. Another, in India, suffered even worse things. He had gathered about £300 from various places; mainly by his absolute refusal to go away from anywhere till something was given him. But in Malabar he was arrested as a Russian spy, and dragged before a zealous native magistrate. Knowing, by experience at home, the danger of telling the truth to any official, and particularly of owning to the possession of money, he declared that he was a very poor man and had not a penny in the world; thus sticking to the lie, when the truth would probably have secured his safety. The magistrate handed him over to the police to be searched, and they of course found the gold upon him, and appropriated the whole. Then they re­produced their victim in court, saying that as far as they could ascertain he had spoken the truth, and that he really had no money. On this, he was discharged.

The central shrine and cathedral of the district of Jilu is the ancient church of Mar Zeia, a building remarkable enough to merit a word of description to itself. In structure it is not very different from any other mountain church; being a mere rectangular box of stone, with a roof vaulted within and flat without, and arranged according to the usual type of Nestorian building, which we must describe later. It is its contents that are unique.

For centuries, Jilu men who have gone “to countries” (or foreign parts generally) have made a practice of giving gifts to this shrine on their return; and it, unlike other churches, has never been plundered by any foe, for a reason that will presently appear.

The consequence is that the building contains such a collection of ex voto offerings as can hardly be matched in the world, reaching back for one is afraid to say how long. The most modern feature is a grand collection of American clocks, alarm and otherwise, that hang on a cord, touching one another, all across the church. Bells, usually of small size (for half a mule load or 125 lbs. is the strict limit of weight that can be transported in one mass), are hung everywhere; long strings of them decorating the curtain that veils the sanctuary. Vestments for the priests, of Russian cut and make, hang all along the walls; while ostrich eggs and coral speak of the connexion with Malabar. Finally, away at the back, and covered thick with dust, stand rows of “China jars," said to have been brought back thence when this Nestorian church had its bishops at Pekin and Singan in the eighth century, and which connoisseurs would probably think cheap at their weight in gold.

Strangest perhaps of all, if genuine, is the charm that has preserved all these treasures from the spoiler. A zaptieh had accompanied us from the seat of government at Neri, and had entered the church with us, reverently removing hat and shoes at the door. He now approached the young bishop who was showing us his treasures, and said “My Lord, you will allow me to see the handkerchief of Mohammed the Prophet?” “By all means," said the bishop; and going to a recess in the wall, he produced thence a bundle of silk wrappings, which were removed one after the other, revealing a piece of plain linen, inscribed with Arabic characters. This either is, or is supposed to be, a firman of protection for this church, issued by the Prophet himself, and written on his own napkin. Whether it is, whether it can be, genuine is not for us to say.¹⁰¹ This is certain at least; that every Kurd believes in its genuineness: and the zaptieh bowed before it with the utmost reverence, placed it on his forehead and eyes for a moment, and finally re­turned it, with an offering to the shrine which represented about a week's pay. Genuine or not, the fact of its existence has saved this church and its contents from plunder many a time and oft, and will probably continue to do so; though it must be owned that at one terrible outbreak of Moslem fanaticism in the year 1847, not even reverence for the name of the Prophet saved a similar document in the hands of the Patriarchial family from destruction, the members of the family from slaughter, or an even wealthier church from plunder.

We were the guests of the Bishop of Jilu, Mar Sergius, in his very primitive palace; and as we had arrived at noon, spent a good deal of the afternoon “holding Diwan” in his reception room-sitting that is in the seat of honour on a low diwan, while all the village came to us, and talked of anything and everything that occurred to them. Many of course desired medicine, for any Englishman is a doctor by hereditary right; and always carries with him good “English salt," which is quinine, as well as other drugs.

So, “distribute medicines manfully" is the rule for the traveller here, whether you chance to know anything about the trade or not. Fever you can recognize at any rate; or the patient will recognize it for you; and if you have not the ghost of a notion what the disease is, look doubly wise and administer something harmless and bitter. The nastier the drug, the more it will stimulate the faith of the sufferer, and that, after all, is the essential thing. Speaking generally, you will, cure more efficiently when you do not know what the trouble is, than when you do. Only re­member certain rules. First, that to give mild aperients to an Oriental is a sinful waste of good drugs; and diminishes faith in foreign medicines, which is worse. Second, if you go by book at all, give three times the “book dose” to an Assyrian, and five times the amount to a Kurd; for then you may produce some sort of effect. This instruction was given to the writer by men of experience when he was new to the country, and it staggered him for the moment, but he was reassured. “Yes," said a worthy member of the Syrian nation, “it is very difficult to poison a Kurd at all; and if you succeed, it does not much matter."

Still, we own that we have once known an Oriental suffer from an overdose. He had applied to a Syrian friend for an aperient; and the friend (who called himself hakim on the strength of three months spent as bottle-washer in an American Mission dispensary) had given him “a strong medicine." Both parties were startled at the result; and as the writer turned up opportunely next day, he was called in as a consultant, and found the victim in a very reduced state indeed after a night spent upon the rack!

“What did you give him?” he asked the hakim.

“Croton oil," said he.

“And how much? "

“Oh, not much; only a teaspoonful."

(N.B. half a minim is the maximum allowed by the British Pharmacopoeia!)

Persian tea-spoons are not as big as English, so perhaps he had not given much more than thirty times the full dose. The consultant gave it as his opinion that as the patient had survived twenty-four hours, he would recover; and the event justified his wisdom.

There was one case brought to us that afternoon, however, that was quite beyond our skill. A man came with a tale of woe expressed in a mountain dialect that we could not follow; and the bishop had to be impressed as interpreter. He heard, and collapsed in a fit of laughter, gasping out, “He wants a medicine to quiet his wife's tongue, Rabbi."

"Tell him I am not a worker of miracles, my lord," said we.

The most important subject of local politics that came up for discussion was an attempt recently made by a reforming local governor to take a census of the men of Jilu. A Government official had come among them with papers and ink, and proceeded to write down all their names. When they asked what it was all about, he explained that it was the elections to the Mejlis-i-Mebussan, the Turkish Parliament; and that if their names were written down properly they should have a member all to themselves, who should be a man of Jilu, and should live in Constanti­nople and draw a fine salary, just for sitting in the capital and representing their grievances to the Sultan.

The idea seemed a good one, and folk gave in their names freely, till the census was nearly finished. But then it occurred to them that perhaps they had been hasty, and that these lists might be used for other things than the election of an M.P. What if they were a basis for taxation? or even worse, for the drafting of their young men to the army? The result was that a “strong deputation” went after the Government mudir (who, by the way, was an Armenian), confiscated all his papers and burnt them. He was disposed to think that he was fortunate in that he had not been himself thrown on to the pile.

A casually minded Government took no notice of the little incident, which after all only concerned an Armenian underling.¹⁰² Had it been a real Turkish official, there would probably have been trouble for every one concerned; and a good many more besides.

CHAPTER IX

THE DEBATABLE LAND (GAWAR, TERGAWAR, MERGAWAR)

JILU, take it all round, is the most savage bit of primaeval chaos in all the “ashiret” districts of Kurdistan; yet a short journey beyond it brings us to a district which is in a much more advanced stage of geological development, the strange plain of Gawar. Starting in the morning from one of the glens which lie absolutely under the peaks and crags of Galiashin, our caravan has to traverse one of the grandest, narrowest, and rockiest gorges even in this land of wild ravines-the magnificent gorge of Ishtazin. And yet by the evening, after crossing a range that much resembles our own Sussex downs on a large scale, we are camping on an absolutely level plain of great extent-the “Gawar."

This word, presumably Kurdish, appears to mean a level plain surrounded by mountains; and it is used, singly and in combination, more than once in the neighbourhood. But our new camping-place is “the Gawar” par excellence, “The Level." It is the bed of an ancient lake, and so has a general family resemblance to the “morfa” of Tremadoc in North Wales, though the hills surrounding it are considerably higher than Snowdon; and the change from mountain to plain is so abrupt and obvious that one can say definitely to a few yards where one leaves the one and enters on the other. The point is further emphasized, by an old pebble beach.

THE MOUNTAINS OF TKHUMA AND JILU.
From the top of the ”staircase” pass immediately above Amadia. The mountain in the center is Ghara Dagh on the southern side of Tkhuma. To the left is Galiashin,
the dominant peak of Jilu: and Sat Dagh further off upon the right. The crags in the middle distance rise up out of the Zab Gorge.

The plain measures about sixteen miles by ten, and is in form an oval with pointed ends, the long axis running nearly north and south. It is absolutely treeless, save for a few poplars round the villages that are scattered over its face. Though but little of the plain is cultivated it is all magnificently fertile; for the black alluvial soil grows anything that will endure the long winter and deep snow natural at an elevation of six thousand feet; and the corn and melons of Gawar are famous throughout the land.

A considerable river, the Nihila or Nile, wanders down the centre and is joined by several others from the high mountains at the sides. This river on leaving the plain flows northward through a deep and fine gorge to join the Albak; and their united streams constitute the Zab.

Being thus a dead level, Gawar looks as easy a place to cross as well can be. We see our destination before us per­haps twelve miles away, and nothing seems to be necessary but to make a bee-line for it. In reality few things are more difficult than crossing this or a similar plain, unless you know the way or have a guide who knows it. The river is bordered with wide swamps; and such fords as exist upon it (and they are not many) can only be approached from certain directions: while the stranger is constantly liable to stumble (like the luckless Duke of Monmouth) on “rhines” or irrigating channels; the muddy bottoms of which are unfordable for animals, except at certain points known only to the villagers around.

A fertile level like this should swarm with villages and carry a large population; but of the villages that once were here (almost all of which were Nestorian Christian) many are now absolutely deserted, and others have become Kurdish and so do little work in the world. This has been brought to pass, not by the villagers abandoning their Christianity-for that is so rare a thing as to be almost unknown-but by what foreign residents characterize as “the hermit crab Act."

This process is as follows. Given a village of Christians; with Kurds in the neighbourhood: a party of Kurds (men who have probably made their own village too hot to hold these, or who have quarrelled with their chief) come and settle at free quarters in the place as "guests." The villagers cannot turn them out; for the intruders are armed, and they are not; and stingless worker bees can hardly expel sting-bearing drones. If they appeal to the Govern­ment for redress, the official is bribed by the intruders to do nothing (the bakhshish being extorted from the villagers); and the answer is made “have not these Mussulmans the right to reside where they like?” If any man does head an attempt to evict them, a “dead set” is made at him till he is worried into leaving the village and his land; and this the Kurds immediately appropriate, forcing the other villagers to work it for them without pay. The village mill is usually one of the first places taken, and a liberal percentage of the corn goes as a fee for the grinding of it. Meantime, what the presence of these fellows means for the “rayats” in the way of petty oppression, and what the consequences are to the girls of the village, anyone who has some knowledge of human nature can be left to guess for himself.

If the plan prospers other Kurds join; and the leader of the gang presently builds him a small hold, or kala (again with the forced labour of the villagers), and at length the bulk of the Christians are worried out of the country. Only a few are kept, as serfs, to till for their new masters the land that they and their fathers once owned; and what was a Christian village has become Kurd.

If ever one sees a Kurdish village which has good fields, and signs of good cultivation, one can be sure that it was originally Christian, and that it has gone through this process.

Apart from the brutality of the proceeding, the matter illustrates the impossibility of the Turk as a modern governor, unless he is most radically reformed and supervised. One presumes that what the Government wants is a set of peace­able, tax-paying subjects. Yet here, not one village, but scores of villages, inhabited by peaceable rayats who do pay their taxes and ask for nothing better than to be left a one under Ottoman rule; are allowed to be emptied, and filled up by Kurds who let the land go to waste, who never pay taxes at all, and can be trusted not to fight for the Turk in any real emergency.

However, the officials of the day benefit by the bahkshish that the Kurds pay them. And here we touch the real root of the matter. The Turk is not deliberately aiming at the extirpation of his Christian subjects. He has no deeper policy in his mind than just to go on eskissi gibi, “in the same old way," and let the officials fill their pockets in peace. As a man he has many virtues; and there never was an Englishman yet who dealt with him, and did not come to like him: but as a governor he is execrable; in that he is too lazy to see that things go well, and allows an unspeak­ably corrupt Civil Service to ruin the land as it likes. Will he ever do the one thing that can save him, and allow himself to be administered by some European Power, as Egypt has been? Perhaps a quotation from “Odysseus," shrewdest of European observers of Turkey, can give the answer. "’This country is just one big dish of soup,' said the Vali, 'and nobody has any real use for soup except to eat it. We eat in the old-fashioned way, with big spoons; you want to come along with gimlets and bore holes in the bottom of it, and suck. Then you propose that eating with spoons shall be abolished as old fashioned, because you know that we have no gimlets, and don't understand sucking.’”¹⁰³

A level plain like Gawar, with a Government headquarters and garrison at its town of Diza, ought to be as easily controlled a kaimakamlik as one could wish. And so it is normally; though, an Albanian kaimakam, Haidar Beg, did rouse rather a storm when he put a recalcitrant Kurdish chief on a donkey, face to the tail, and rode him in that fashion all round Diza town. Still he had the place in order; “Not a dog barked without leave when Haidar ruled," is the local saying to this day.

Some time after his departure, however, the district was the scene of one of the very few attacks on a British Consul that have taken place in the land. Lawless as the country is, the foreign resident is generally safe; because such trouble follows for everybody if he is interfered with. In twelve years, the writer has only known five deliberate attacks on Europeans (though plenty were planned and did not come off); and only one of the five had fatal conse­quences,--at least to the European. Three of these attacks were on British Consuls--”for the fellows will go wandering into such dangerous places, just to make maps," as a harassed Ottoman official explained.

In this case the British Consul, accompanied by the writer, had reached the plain of Gawar from Neri. They were “escorted” by a zaptieh provided by the Sheikh of that place and belonging to his tribe; and as it was just subsequent to the incident of the stolen horses, escort and travellers were not on the very best of terms. Zaptieh and muleteers declared that they would stop, early in the afternoon, at a Kurdish village called Alikhan, at the entry into Gawar plain; while the Englishmen had ordered that a push should be made for Diza. The zaptieh waxed so insolent in the dispute that he was summarily dismissed. He dashed off in a fury to the village, and called on the men of the place to come out and plunder the Franks as they passed. These poured out like bees at the call, and a scuffle resulted in which the baggage mule of the party was captured with the bulk of its load. Only the maps and photographic negatives were salved: and the two Englishmen and their kavass were pursued by the crowd for about half an hour, deep into the swamps towards Diza; while the zaptieh (apparently the only man who had a gun) kept firing steadily on them till his cartridges gave out. Perhaps the most discreditable side to the whole affair was that he failed to hit even one of the party in that period; but it was a Turkish Government rifle that he was using; so that probably, under the circumstances, the target was the safest place. The Consul's Serbian kavass begged most earnestly for permission to try “just one shot” in answer; but the Consul knew too well what the result of that one shot might be, and did not wish to kill.

We must add that prompt redress was given on this occasion. Soldiers were dispatched to the guilty village from Diza without delay. The stolen goods were restored; and the two muleteers brought in as prisoners. But the zaptieh, the principal culprit, had escaped.

The kaimakam had a taste for melodrama, and had the prisoners brought before him immediately. He called upon the Consul for his statement, and then demanded of the prisoners what they had got to say.

These worthies at once paraded an arm (said to be broken) and a black eye (the genuineness of which was past question), and poured out a flood of eloquence. They had marched all day, and were very weary; and had begged of the Consul to let the exhausted beasts feed for one little half-hour before pushing further on. This he had refused, with oaths and vile abuse; beating deponent the while till his arm was broken, and he lay helpless on the grass. Assault on the Consul? Before Allah there had been no such thing.

How could they lift a hand against his greatness? Had not the zaptieh fired shots? Nay, he had but interceded with the Bey in all humility; and the Bey had turned on him and deponent (raising his head painfully from the grass) saw the zaptieh flying for dear life, while the Consul pursued him, firing shots at him from a revolver!

It was a fine coherent tale, and well told; but the witness's dramatic instinct carried him away in the course of it, and he gesticulated freely with the “broken” arm.

The kaimakam rose with the majesty natural to one who combines the offices of judge and jury, and delivered the judgment of the court. “The English do not tell lies; but ye are liars and the sons of liars. Bring fetters, and hale these scoundrels to the dungeon forthwith." Fetters of pantomimic magnitude were brought accordingly; but while they were being put on, the kaimakam marred the grandeur of the proceedings by suggesting to the Consul that as he had now two captives on whom he could wreak his vengeance, perhaps he might be disposed to pardon the third, who would be hard to catch!

He was somewhat disappointed on finding that the im­practicable Englishman was willing to pardon the two who had been caught; but disposed to insist that the worst criminal must be punished! However, the fugitive was caught and imprisoned later.

As for the two muleteers, they were released in an hour or so at our request; and came to express their hope that the little unpleasantness would not cause any diminution of the customary bahkshish! It was not their fault, really; they had been possessed of the Devil at the time, and that was surely excuse enough for poor simple men!

The seat of a governorship of low grade, like a kaima­kamlik, is always a home of oppression in Turkey. “Jack in office” is not an unknown thing elsewhere; but he is usually not worse than annoying, and is sometimes amusing. In Turkey, however (particularly in the out-of-the-way districts), there is nobody to exercise a wholesome discipline on Jack, or to care much what he does in small matters.

Further, all the officials at such posts are low down in the scale, whether they have been long in the service or not; and so they have either no character to lose, or else a fortune to make. An elderly man, who has made his money and his name, is sometimes as good a governor as the people are in a condition to appreciate; but not so the junior. Thus it comes to pass that British Consuls of experience say that they have known good Valis fairly often, and even decent mutaserifs occasionally; but a good kaimakam is a rara avis indeed. We have known two in ten years; both of them being Albanians, and both gentlemen. But in each case the barbarian was not very far below the surface-any more than he is in an Englishman sometimes.

Thus in a small centre like Diza of Gawar, even the Euro­pean traveller may occasionally meet with discourtesy; particularly since the Revolution has given the petty official an excuse for saying: “We are civilized and constitutional now, therefore we need not treat these beastly Franks with any more consideration than our own people."

We have even heard of such things as the commandeering of the beasts of an English traveller “for Government service." The act implies that the beasts and their owner are marched off with military baggage or something equi­valent, for an unknown distance and time. The horses (which are the owner's livelihood) are usually not released till they are broken down with overwork, and are never paid for. “Government does not pay."

In the case referred to, the English traveller appealed; of course, to the kaimakam; and received a courteous apology, and an assurance that the soldiers should be ordered to return the animals. But the sergeant in charge of the party, while admitting that he had received the order, declared that he would see the kaimakam hanged before obeying it; so matters did not seem to be appreciably advanced. On the following morning, however, the tra­veller's servant turned up, with the horses, and a broad grin.

“Well done, Yukhanan! How did you get them?” said the traveller.

“Why, Rabbi, I found that my enemy Ratu the Kurd was in the town with three mules. So I just said to the soldiers, ‘there are much better beasts down there; and no one will mind if you take them, while there's bound to be a row if you take these.'"

So all ended well; though the Englishman, who thought he had carried matters with quite a properly high hand, was humiliated on hearing his servant observe to the universe at large, “Nevertheless, had Rabbi Mr. X. been here, he would have thrashed those soldiers as they deserved long before this."¹⁰⁴

The plain of Gawar is apparently rather a favourite haunt of those whom the Oriental will speak of (very rarely, and nervously) as “the Good People"--the Jann of the “Arabian Nights." One cave, in particular, in the hills that border the plain, is notoriously teeming with them; and any man who enters there usually comes out mad, if he ever emerges at all. Once, a few years ago, a party of thirty Kurds undertook its exploration, and went in well armed. They did not penetrate far, however, for presently one of the leaders saw, or thought he saw, something; and superstitious panic being one of the most infectious things under the sun, the whole party bolted instantly. Being rather ashamed of themselves when they reached the open air, they impressed an unfortunate Christian to go and see what it was that they had run away from; and when he (not unnaturally) demurred at going alone to investigate that which had just put thirty armed men to flight, they simply gave him the choice between doing that and being shot incontinent.

Under this pressure he entered, and vanished for some hours; at the end of which time he crawled out-mad as his predecessors had been. In time, however, he recovered more or less, and told a marvellous tale; though how far the poor fellow really believed it, and how far he was giving his tyrants their money's worth, so to speak, is a problem past our solving.

He told how he had followed the cave till it widened out into a spacious meadow, down the middle of which meandered the stream that flowed from its mouth. On either side of the river stood stately palaces of marble (? stalactite formation), and in front of these, on thrones of gold set with jewels, sat all the kings of the Jann, attended by their houris and their vassals. They summoned the intruder before their diwan, and sentenced him to in­stant death for having violated their privacy: but on his plea of strong compulsion, he was reprieved and released; though awful warnings were uttered against any other profane person who should presume to enter this their sanctuary.

Such is the story told to us by the Patriarch of the Nestorian Church; a gentleman who is sufficiently educated to smile at the superstitions of his fathers-at least during the day, and in European company. And anyone who will take magnesium wire and penetrate into the cavern, will certainly gain much local kudos, and may possibly have an interesting experience.

“Will you come with us, your Grace, and see what is really in the cave?” we asked of the Patriarch when he had finished his story.

“I will Rabbi--that is if you will go in first;” replied his Beatitude.¹⁰⁵

Two roads lead from Diza of Gawar (the name Diza is a common one) down to the plain of Urmi; but we took the more difficult and picturesque, leading down the valley of Mar B'Ishu. This is one of the most famous of the shrines of the Nestorian Church, commemorating a hermit round whose cell a monastery subsequently gathered. The monastery has passed away, but a group of three Christian villages fill the valley (a small side gorge just off the main road); and here the church still stands, an unusually elaborate specimen of Nestorian architecture.

CHURCH OF MAR BISHU

Externally it is like all the mountain churches, a mere cube of masonry; though rather larger than usual, for in this case the external dimensions are an approximate square of eighty feet. The building has a stone vault, the flat mud roof of the country being superimposed as an outer covering. It was, however, too great a feat for the mountain builders to throw an arch of eighty feet span, twenty feet being as much as they could compass; and hence the interior of the building is divided into the multitude of separate chapels and vestibules, sacristies and baptisteries, as shown on the plan-a plan which may give some idea of the building, but can make no claim to accuracy.

Windows are almost unknown in the mountain churches, the sanctuary in particular being almost pitch dark at all times; and the door, to avoid risk of desecration,¹⁰⁶ is seldom more than three feet in height. Close by the_. church is the cell in the cliff (a small natural cavern) that was the hermitage of Mar B'Ishu, the Rabban. And here a freak­ish water-drip has formed a stalactite which has a rude resemblance to the human figure; and which is accordingly reverenced as a statue of the saint formed by angel's hands.

Considered as a work of art, the statue does not do any great credit to its supernatural artists; but it is a most exceptional thing to find an image of any sort, or of any origin, reverenced by any member of the Nestorian Church. No Evangelical has a greater dislike for anything that savours of “idolatry." Even pictures are rigorously forbidden in their churches; though curtains and the like are employed to as great an extent as their means allow. As an “ornament," only the plain cross (in wood or metal), with no figure upon it, is permitted; and this, lying on a table at the entry of the sanctuary, is kissed by every worshipper as he enters the church. No other sacred symbol is ever introduced.

If the Nestorians, however, are “Protestant” enough in some ways to satisfy the most rigid of English Evangelicalsi they have some other customs that would considerably startle those good people; and conspicuous among these is their rite of animal sacrifice. This church of Mar B'Ishu is one of many in the land which are “Lord of Name "; and whither folk bring regularly goats and sheep, and sometimes even oxen, that they may be solemnly sacrificed at the church door.

The rite is practically the same as described in Leviticus, except that there is no burning of any part of the offering. The animal is brought, and its throat cut by the man who brings it; after which the priest takes of the blood and “strikes in on the lintel of the door” of the church. A solemn feast then takes place on the flesh of the sacrifice, , the priest having his regular perquisites of hide and shoulder. The custom has the look of an Old Testament survival; but as a matter of fact, we suspect that it is far older than Moses. We may have here essentially the same sacrifices as those which were old in this land in the days when Abraham went forth from it; and which Moses merely codified in the wilderness some centuries after Abraham had taught them to his sons.

Sacrifice, it must be remembered, is not peculiar to these Nestorians. Yezidis, as already mentioned, practise similar rites. And every Mussulman will do the same at least once in the year; for on the Korban Bairam he always sacri­fices an animal of some sort, in remembrance of Father Abraham's sacrifice, not of Isaac (as Jews and Christians erroneously say), but of Ishmael.

At first it seems strange, and contrary to the whole tenor of the New Testament, to find Christians still persisting in the sacrifices of the old dispensation. But an Oriental has usually a good reason at the back of his mind for every­thing that he does; if only the Western can have the patience to find it, and to remember that European lines are not the only ones on which the human intellect can work.

In this case, if you ask him why he sacrifices, he is apt to reply, “Why not? It was the custom of my fathers of old, and can you show me any text that forbids it? "

If you produce texts about “one offering," or any others of the sort, he has still a thrust to deliver that it is hard to parry. “Excuse me, but is not Saint Paul's example as good as Saint Paul's precept,¹⁰⁷ which our fathers do not interpret in the same way as you do. He took the four young men, and saw to it that an offering was made for himself and every one of them. May we not do what Saint Paul did?” So the sacrifices continue: openly in this out-of-the-way corner of the world; and under the rose in better known parts, like Palestine, more frequently than many people believe. Nothing that ever was well established in the East has altogether ceased to exist in the hearts of men.

The gorge narrows below Mar B'Ishu, passing the only fresh-water lake in Kurdistan, which was brought into being a few years ago by a great landslip. In the ravine is a curious series of springs charged so heavily with iron that the water looks almost blood colour as it wells out of the rock, and leaves deep crimson stains on the cliffs. Its taste is curiously acrid; and (as might be expected) it is freely used as a tonic, and is very good for the purpose.

Local legend declares that it was by this road that the victorious Persians brought away the True Cross from Jerusalem, when Chosroes, after his capture of that city, sent the relic as a gift to his Christian queen, Shirin; and that healing waters sprang up wherever the bearers put down their sacred load.

The gorge dies out in the curious fold of the hills that is called Mergawar at one point of its length, Tergawar at another, and other names at other places. It is not a true valley, for the rivers run across it and break through its boundary hills by deep gorges; but it forms, on the eastern side of the Hakkiari Mountains, much the same sort of moat as is formed on the southern side by the similar valley of Amadia.

It provides an easy passage practicable in the depth of winter, from Armenia to Kirkuk and Baghdad. And it was probably for this reason that the Ottoman Government so coveted the possession of this district; for it afforded them the means of moving_. the Baghdad army corps to the Russian frontier, without making the long detour to the west that would otherwise be necessitated by the mountains of Kurdistan.

Tergawar has always been a land of war, even when it was not a debatable land between Turkey and Persia. Here are several villages of Nestorians-as ever a good fighting stock; and these being tolerably well armed are chroni­cally at feud with their Kurdish neighbours, a small broken clan recognizing no one head, and known as the “Begzadi." The principal Christian chief, a man of the name of Bajan, had a reputation as a warrior even among those who were men of war from their youth. His absolute fearlessness had brought him triumph repeatedly against the longest odds, and his enemies even esteemed him invulnerable. One day, in the heat of a fight, he forced his way single-handed into a house where five Kurds had gathered; and they surrendered to him in a body. When their friends chaffed them afterwards, saying, “Bajan is a good fighter, no doubt; but still he was but one, and you were five "; they simply replied,” Well, what could we do? We fired at him, and the bullets flattened on his coat."

Even to this day old men who have served under John Jacob in India will say that they have seen him shake the bullets out of his tunic after a skirmish.

Tough old Bajan is dead now, we regret to say; but dead in a way befitting. He went to help a Kurdish friend in battle, just from sheer love of a fight; and a bullet that took him behind the ear and came out at his forehead was too much even for his invulnerability.

The Christians of the Tergawar villages (Marwana, Kurana, Balulan, and others) were good fighters, as has been said, but fairly good average Christians withal; though one owns sorrowfully that fiery old Bajan was “not so good a Christian as so good a knight should be." They were' undeniably rowdy and turbulent, however; quarrelling among themselves almost as much as they did with the Kurds! Grazing rights and boundaries were usually the casus belli; a fruitful cause of bad blood, whether among the Dandie Dinmonts of Liddesdale or the borderers of Persia and Turkey.

As Christians, they have, of course, their clergy; but these are peasants like themselves, living as they do, and hardly better taught. The qashi or priests may indeed be able to read the services, and it is not the thing for them to take part actually in the tribal battles. But this dis­ability does not apply to the deacons (shamashi), who in the Nestorian Church form a regular grade in the ministry, with regular duties of their own, and are not merely candidates for the priesthood. These may go out to fight if the case requires it; and more than one reverend deacon among them leads the fighting as efficiently as he leads the prayers.

One prominent Kurdish Agha, a certain Bedr Khan Beg, takes out his Christian village to battle, as readily as his Kurdish one: and the village deacon is his second in command.

This Bedr Khan Beg is no relation whatever to his famous (or infamous) namesake of Bohtan, of whom we make mention elsewhere. He is a chief of the Begzadi Kurds whose prowess and activity have won him much local reputation, but who can boast no such formidable following as the Sheikhs of Neri or Barzan. For ourselves, we feel bound to speak well of him; for did he not once offer, out of pure goodwill, to make proclamation in the district that if we or any of our servants had to complain of any molestation, “I, Bedr Khan Beg, will hang at least two Kurds every time!" It is true that we scrupled to lay ourselves under^, such an obligation to him; but Bedr Khan Beg (like General Robert Craufurd) had a reputation of being uncommonly likely to carry out his threats.

He adopted a similar expedient with conspicuous success a little later. Some citizen of Urmi owed him money, and refused to discharge his just debt. Accordingly he published his intention of killing one Seyyid a month until such time as he received payment. Urmi Seyyids are mostly Shiahs, whereas Bedr Khan Beg is a Sunni; though it may be doubted whether this was a point to which he attached much weight.

The unfortunate Seyyids, of course, had no concern in the debt whatever; but they are the most influential caste in Urmi. And now, to save their own skins, they began to apply pressure to the debtor: which was exactly what Bedr Khan Beg had calculated upon all along!¹⁰⁸

Of the two bishops who control the church in this land, one (now dead) was a feeble old man, noted only for possessing in his house the fiercest fleas in all Mergawar. The other, however, is of a different stamp. Not that one counts him as precisely an ideal Prelate, seeing that he occasionally has to stop to spell a word in the service, and would be put to it to write his own name. However, in Kurdistan you are not in the twentieth century, but in the fourteenth or perhaps the dark ages outright-and in those times Mar Dinkha of Tergawar might readily be paralleled in England: There was a Bishop Beaumont of Durham who made five or six shots at the word episcopalis in the reading of a formal document; and finally swore a round oath-said soit pour dit--and went on. Now we have often heard Mar Dinkha stumble, but we have never heard him swear!

There are better precedents for his lack of learning, too; than mediaeval England can furnish. The “Apostolical Constitutions” (a fourth century composition) distinctly contemplate the existence of illiterate bishops as a very possible phenomenon. “If the bishop cannot write, he should be at least possessed of native shrewdness," says the author of the compilation. Is not the age of Nicaea a good time for precedents, O purist in matters ecclesiastical? Mar Dinkha would pass the test proposed there; and his discipline, if of the roughest, is perhaps for that reason the better suited for his flock. Once he came to his friends of the Archbishop's Mission with a request for a new pastoral staff. The old one (a stout stick of oak) had “become broken” over the back of a village qasha (rector) whom he found ploughing on Sunday!

In the year 1903 the chronic trouble among these disor­derly elements blazed up in a notable conflagration. Grazing quarrels started it, as usual; but it must be owned that the hotheads among the Christians did their best to aggravate matters. They had a trick of ridiculing the differences be­tween Shiah and Sunni among the Mussulmans, by labelling one dog “Ali” and another “Mohammed," dressing them up as soldier and mollah, and then setting them to fight; and this might well have angered more peaceable people than their Begzadi neighbours. It was not surprising that a confederacy was formed to attack the guilty village of Mawana, which was then at open feud with its Christian ally of Balulan, and so appeared an easy prey.

If the men of Mawana had gone out of their way to provoke the quarrel, at least they fought it out stoutly. Finding how formidable was the confederacy against them, they gathered together-some fifty fighters in all-and went up in a body to the church of the village. There each and all kissed the cross, as a solemn committal of their cause to God, and then commenced the fighting. Though outnumbered seven to one they beat back four assaults in the course of seven days. “And in that time," as they told proudly after, “not any of the houses of our village were burnt, save one; and that belonged to a man of the Protestants, who had refused to come and kiss the cross with the rest of us." Still, as their cartridges ran low, the matter began to look ugly; for if the Kurds should ever be able to close, numbers must tell their tale.

On the seventh night of the siege help came unexpectedly. Over the hill lay the other Christian village of Balulan, just then at open feud with Mawana, and so without imme­diate concern in this quarrel. Still, as they heard of the siege, they began to grow more and more restive. Ablahad, the village deacon, at last gathered all the men together, told them that now they must forget the feud, and called for volunteers to go down with him and help their brethren. Soon he had as many as he wanted, a picked band, with all the cartridges they could carry. Old Bajan could not give them leave to go, but he carefully and ostentatiously looked the other way; and the little party stole out that night to put their lives in hazard for their enemies.

The deacon knew his ground; and (strictly enjoining his men to hold their fire) he led them straight down upon one of the strongest Kurdish pickets. There was a challenge­--and no reply. The sentry fired--and the startled picket sprang to their feet. It was the chance for which Ablahad was waiting! One shattering volley at close quarters disabled eight and twenty of the enemy. The Christians were through the leaguer, and entered Mawana without losing a man, and with their supply of cartridges intact.

Nor was this all their success; for so badly were the besiegers' nerves shaken that (thinking the relieving force to be far larger than it really was) they raised the siege that night, and departed to their homes. “And when men arose in the morning and looked out, thanks be to God, the enemy had departed."

Gallant shamasha Ablahad did not live long after his brilliant success. About a fortnight later he, with a party of Mawana men, was caught in a little isolated village by overwhelming numbers of Kurds. The Kurds, to their credit be it said (though fully aware of his recent exploit), offered him leave to depart in safety and honour as soon as they learned of his presence among their foes. Bedr Khan Beg himself, the leader of their party, came forward in person to bring the message before the firing began.

“We have no quarrel with you, shamasha, nor with Bajan your Lord. And we seek for none. Do you go your way," he cried. “But for these men of Mawana there is blood between us and them and we must settle it here."

“I thank you for your offer," replied the deacon firmly. “But I am here with my friends, and I will see it out with them."

The fight was desperate; but it could have but one ending. The houses were fired; and though the defenders cut their way through the walls from room to room hoping to escape under cover of the smoke, they had finally to choose between suffocation and coming out into the open. And there the little band were shot down to the last man.

And so died Ablahad the deacon, surely by as good a death as a man need wish to die.

Bedr Khan Beg reported the facts himself to the English in Urmi; pointing out that really under the circumstances he could do no otherwise than stand by the faith of Islam in the fight; “but you will understand that my heart is the same as ever, and there is no breach of friendship between me and you."

Picturesque and grand as the fighting days were, they came to an end shortly after this episode. In 1906 the Persian Government determined to make an effort to reduce the Kurds to order; and some sort of force was sent up to the mountains for the purpose, the Christians being called on to assist the Persian Government in the work. Unfor­tunately the Turkish authority took this opportunity to intervene, and to secure (as they hoped) a border province which they coveted. A small Turkish force was sent for the purpose, probably in response to some appeal of the Kurds for help; and at its appearance the Persian army fled to Urmi in the most absurd panic. As for their allies, the Assyrians of the Tergawar villages, whom they had called to arms on their side (and who alone had behaved decently on that day of shame), nobody gave a second thought to them. So the villages they had defended so long and so gallantly were plundered by the Kurds at last, the Turks making no effort to prevent so ordinary an incident of war. After the Persian army had fled, it was the men of the villages who, under their own leaders and against heavy odds, covered the retreat of their women and children.

For some time the Tergawar men were refugees in Urmi plain; and some of them were accommodated there in villages built by local notables, who were glad of the opportunity of securing that valuable economic factor, a good head of labour for their estates. When the Ottoman occupation of the border province seemed to be assured, many of them ventured back to their homes, and reoccupied some at least of their villages. But with the evacuation of the disputed territory by the Ottomans, as a consequence of the need of all possible troops in the Balkans, the face of events was altered once again. However, in the interval, Urmi had become to all intents and purposes Russian territory; and if the pro­vince is nominally Persian, it is practically under Russian rule. The rule of the Muscovite may not be all that one would wish, but at least he is not likely to sanction open war between the tribes; and if only order is guaranteed, the Christians may hope to be able to live in the future more tranquilly, if less picturesquely, than they have done in the past.

CHAPTER X

TWIGS OF A WITHERED EMPIRE (URMI)

ON their eastern side the Hakkiari Mountains subside into the plain of Urmi, and the journey down to that town from Tergawar is quite a tame affair after such wild experiences as are furnished by Jilu and Baz. We have merely to cross the last two down-like ridges of mountain, and then the country changes, with the startling suddenness induced by irrigation, to a fertile crop-covered plain, plentifully chequered with trees.

Ten years ago Urmi town was but an overgrown village, crowded with mean houses of sun-dried mud brick, and girdled with crumbling mud walls. Only occasionally did a gateway of burnt brick, with some pretensions to archi­tecture, usher one into the courtyard of some notable; into a garden constructed exactly on the lines depicted in the Assyrian sculptures, and a house in a state of more or less disrepair. Within the walls the city remains thus to this day; though recent changes have promoted the growth of a suburb with an air of “underdone Tiflis," where Persians have produced a bad imitation of the Russian imitation of European style.

By far its most picturesque feature (not excepting even the mosque courtyards) is its great Bazaar. This is a good specimen of the usual Persian type, which is far more ambi­tious than the Turkish. It is a maze of ill-lit corridors, roofed with domical brick vaults, and lined on either side with the booths of the merchants and artificers. It will be long ere a visitor's eyesight can accustom itself to the darkness, and longer still ere his “bump of locality” can master the intricate windings of the passages. He will enter in to explore them joyfully, for they are a perfect feast of Oriental genre subjects depicted in the richest of subdued harmonious colouring; but if he wishes to emerge again, he had better charter a guide l

The alleys are lit only by small holes pierced in the crowns of the vaulting; and so solid seem the beams of light that fall athwart the dustladen gloom, that the passenger instinctively checks his pace before he ventures to breast them.

The townsfolk are mostly Persians; and the typical costume of the lower classes consists of rather loose trousers, with a wide-skirted tunic coming down as low as the knee and girt at the waist with a sash. Over this they usually wear a sleeveless jacket of brown frieze, and the cap is of light brown felt, shaped like half a gourd. It is practically the same dress that we see represented as Persian on the old Greek sculptures. Richer men wear a full-skirted coat of dark blue, with a cap of black astrachan.

The working women wear much the same costume as the men, except that the tunic is rather longer, and the trousers rather tighter. Also, the colour of their garments is usually dull red, while that of the men is blue or grey; and they muffle the upper part of the body in a voluminous wrapper of indigo blue. The country women, when they have finished their marketing, are accustomed to discard their trousers directly they get outside the city gate. They then pack their purchases in the legs, and march off with them on their necks like a yoke, quite unconscious of the least impropriety 1

Urmi plain is a proverb for richness 'in Persia, and its cultivators (Christian for the most part) have an hereditary skill in their art. They grow some seven and twenty varieties of grape, and the export of raisins to Russia is a very large one. The grapes when gathered are dipped in a strong solution of lye to keep off wasps, and so exposed to dry for a fortnight on earthen floors sloping to the sun. Few things in the country are more striking than the mass of purple and golden grapes on such a floor, resembling, but far surpassing in richness, one of the famous carpets of the land.

The Persian summer is reliable, or such a method would be impossible; for anything like a sprinkle of rain during the drying time is ruin for the crop of the year.

The frontier line between Persia and Turkey may be uncertain, but at least the customs go on; and we found the authorities in that department waiting for us where we en­tered the plain. Our managing servant, however, is a master of strategy in these matters; and all the loads chanced to be lagging some distance behind, save one that carried the indispensable food-box. This was removed at the order of the Government, and opened; on which the first things to appear were the tea apparatus and the medicine chest. The sight of this last reminded the official that he had fever lately; “Could the Englishman spare him a little quinine?” Of course we could; and perhaps (as our servant suggested) he might like some tea also;¹⁰⁹ the English sahib was sure to want some while waiting for the loads to come up. There was a stream handy, and the invaluable “primus” stove in the box; so that the customs officer and the writer were amicably having tea together under a tree when the mules arrived:

“Shall I take down the boxes?” said the wily Dinkha, smoothly.

“Wallah Effendim, this English sahib is not a merchant 1 Pass upon your way, and may Allah go with you."

And so, the customs barrier was passed; for politeness seldom fails in the East.

On occasions, of course, things do not go so well. We remember the despair of an unfortunate American bride who had come out fresh to the country, with her husband, as missionaries. A dinner-set of rather good china (a wedding present) had preceded her by some weeks, and was waiting for her in her new home, where she eagerly unpacked it.

It had been sent out to Trebizond, properly packed in hay and straw; but the officials there, being suspicious for some reason, had searched it to the very bottom-though of course without finding anything contraband. Then, to save themselves trouble, they had just stuffed the goods into the case again, without the hay packing; and as there was naturally some room to spare at the end, had thrown in some saucepans, fiat-irons, and the iron weights of a lever weighing-machine, and so sent the whole on a three weeks' journey across country. Its condition at the end of that experience may be imagined. We believe that one plate had survived; and it now adorns, in the character of a monument, the lady's drawing-room wall 1

Urmi city and plain was the Mecca of one of the noblest of the religious faiths and philosophies that man has evolved for himself; for it was the birthplace of Zoroaster, and was for centuries a stronghold of the fire-worshippers' cult. Their most sacred shrine, Sirsh (now Takht-i-Sulieman), is a little to the south; and ruins of the greatest of the fire temples still stand there, beside the weird crater-lake of Zindan. Not a Zoroastrian, however (as far as we know), is found in this district now; though a few still cluster round the Towers of Silence at Resht, and there is, of course, an important community of them in Bombay. Even there, however; their numbers are disproportionate to their influence, and even those small numbers are diminishing.

Once Urmi plain was their principal Holy Place; and even now, every village of importance stands on or near one of the great ash heaps (often covering acres of ground) that mark the sites where the sacred fires were kept per­petually burning. These memorials have fallen on very evil days lately; for the present owners of the land have found that good wood ash is one of the best of manures for their fields, and the heaps are steadily diminishing in con­sequence. Strange relics are uncovered in them at times, and are sold to the foreigner as antikas; though usually it is impossible to be certain where, or under what circumstances, they were found, and they lose much of their historical value in consequence. One such discovery suggested grim rites at one period, as a part of the Zoroas­trian ritual; for several skulls were unearthed, the owners of which had been killed by copper nails hammered into the brains, and still resting embedded in the bone.

Zoroaster was a reformer rather than a founder of a religion; and the sites that became fire-temples after his date (the seventh century before Christ) were probably shrines of some kind of worship for ages before that period. Thus the explorer can still find near them (and often buried under their advancing flanks as they grew in size) the tombs of chiefs of the Bronze Age, with spear-heads and sword­blades of that metal, and finely worked golden ornaments of a distinctive shell-like pattern. These were the tribes, one may suppose, that the Assyrians encountered, when (some­where about 1000 B.C.) they tried to extend their empire into this fertile country, and fought a battle on the waters of the lake of which a picture still remains among their carvings. Their warriors were supported on inflated sheep-skins; a precaution that seems hardly necessary in such water, for Lake Urmi is a good second in the matter of buoyancy to the Dead Sea itself.

The lake is of a good size, perhaps forty miles by twenty, though at no place is it more than about thirty feet in depth. Its saltness is remarkable, for the bather sits in deep water much as in an armchair, with his head and shoulders emerging. Swimming is difficult, for the legs are so apt to kick clean out above the surface; and on landing, any scratch or cut on the person makes its presence very notice­ able. The rash British Consul who once took a header in, as he was accustomed to do in ordinary salt water, is not likely soon to forget his experience.

It is, of course, a "dead sea," for there is absolutely nothing living in it save a variety of shrimp of low organization. All fish carried down into it by the rivers die at once. Still it is an exhilarating place for a swim, provided that a bucket of fresh water is available for a wash down before attempting to dry. There re rocky promontories on the shore at intervals, but, as a rule, the water is very shallow near the bank; a fact borne impressively into the consciousness of a member of the Royal Geographical Society who was making investigations in this land. His boat grounded hopelessly three-quarters of a mile from shore, and he had to wade that distance in waist-deep water with a muddy bottom; while every time he lifted a foot, a large bubble of sulphuretted hydrogen rose to the surface, and burst under his nose!

St. Thomas the Apostle once crossed the lake-on his way to India as local tradition has it-but in a fashion less laborious and odoriferous than did the scientist. He walked on the water's surface; a smaller miracle in this case than some parallels in the lives of the saints, yet no small portent all the same. In memory of it all Urmi comes down for a solemn and ceremonial bathe in the waters on the anniversary of the passage, the fifteenth day of August. Other folk have to cross in boats, usually the very clumsiest craft that swim on any sheet of water in the world, with masts built after the style of an old-fashioned bear's pole. With a strong wind dead astern, they move perhaps two miles an hour, and may get over in a day and a night. In any other case the sail is hauled down, and they wait for better times; so that the voyage of forty miles may last for a week or even more. Latterly, enterprise has risen to a steamer, plying between the ports of Urmi and Tabriz, and passing through the winding channel that divides the two principal islands of the lake, “Sheep Island” and “Donkey Island." With luck, this craft may manage the passage (on the rare occa­sions when the engine does not break down and have to be repaired en route) in six hours. The regular programme, however, is a doleful remark from the engine-room “Machina qizdi," “The machine has lost its temper "; and a halt that may last some hours, or may endure for a day. As for the islands, they are uninhabited by man. How the second got its name we know not; but “Sheep Island” has some herds of wild sheep, which have been long enough isolated to develop some characteristic peculiarities in their very fine horns.

Urmi is one of the most ancient, centres of Christianity in the land; for if local tradition is to be trusted, the Faith was brought here by no less a person than one of the “Wise Men," who came from the East to the manger at Bethlehem. Oriental story, naturally, has nothing to say to their tradi­tional migration to the city of Cologne; though it does include the three traditional names, Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar, as those of three of the band of twelve “Magi” who journeyed together to Palestine, looking for the fulfil­ment of the prophecy of that ancient initiate of their religion, Balaam the son of Beor. As for the identity of the Magian who came back to his home at Urmi, and brought the “Good News” with him; do not his revered bones rest to this day in the church of St. Mary in the city, and is not that proof enough? Like many another Oriental legend, it is at least more ancient, and less improbable, than is the story of the “Three Kings” of the city on the Rhine.

Many beautiful traditions or parables gather round the visit of the Magi in the East, as in the West; and one of them may be recounted here. “Our fathers say” that when Adam went forth from the garden, he took with him two things as memorials of his lost Paradise. These were some of the spices that grew upon the Tree of Knowledge, and one branch gathered from the Tree of Life. They were pre­served by his descendants in the East; as tokens that the lost inheritance would be given back again some day; and when at last the Wise Men knew that He had come, who was to restore it, and went forth to do Him homage, those spices were the frankincense that they offered at Bethlehem. The branch of the Tree of Life they took with them also, and left in Jerusalem; and there those who knew not what they did, took it, and used it for the cross­beam of the Tree on Calvary.

Originally the church in Urmi, like that in the mountains, was of that “East Syrian” communion which its enemies called Nestorian. It is very certain, however, that the body did not teach what Nestorius of Constantinople was condemned for teaching, in the year 431; and indeed it is very doubtful whether either he or anybody else ever did so.

It has since become the prey of foreign missions of various complexions, such as Russian Orthodox, French Roman Catholic, and American Presbyterian; each of which has been anxious to win the body over to what they are con­vinced is a much better form of Christianity, and could not conscientiously be content to leave it in its old inde­pendence, while recalling it to its own ancient rule. All three have achieved a good deal of success, and the “Old Church” is now a small minority; but to a member of the Church of England it appears doubtful whether the success was worth winning. Do you improve the Oriental Christian by taking him out of the Church of his fathers and inducing him to join any other body? He has his faults in the Old Church, and plenty of them; and there is an element of truth in the accusation so often thrown at him, that he is an invertebrate, backboneless creature-Christian, only because his fathers were Christian before him. There is no doubt that his religion is an external armour of inherited habit and belief; and that he is, so to speak, crustaceous rather than vertebrate in his spiritual construction. We will assume it as certain that all those who make this fact a reproach to him would themselves have become Christians, had they been born heathens or Mussulmans. Still, if a zealous reformer extracts the lobster from his shell (a feat which can be performed, if you disregard the lobster's feelings), even that drastic operation_ does not enable him to develop a backbone. He merely develops a fresh armour of habit; that may or may not be superior to the old. Further, invertebrate though the Oriental Christian may be (and, therefore, of course, of a far lower type than the vertebrate European Protestant), he has the peculiar powers of his species; and can endure an amount of cutting and hacking, without losing his faith, which would altogether destroy the spiritual life of a higher type of Christian. The gift of passive endurance may appear small to those who have it not; but at least it can claim Gospel approval.

Even those who do not sympathize with “Mission Effort” usually admit readily that it has called out a wonderful devotion in those who give themselves to it, no matter what the particular form of their Christianity may be. It is true, however, in this as in other things, that “corruptio optimi, pessima "; and there is in Urmi and its neighbourhood a good deal of mission work gone bad.

The various European missions (the word includes American in this case) are above reproach; none of their members taking more than a sufficient maintenance. But there are various small missions (usually managed entirely by natives but financed from Europe) which simply exist to provide a comfortable living for the native “pastor” who manages them. These profess usually to evangelize the Mussulmans, but as a matter of fact simply gather small congregations of men already Christian from among the relations of the “Missionary."

It would be very much better if the good people who support these would put their work under the super­intendence of some one of the larger missions in the place; and not install the Oriental in a position where oppor­tunities for fraud are so easy that even a European might easily succumb to them.

As for mission work among Moslems, there is practically none, in this province at any rate. Nothing but philanthropic and educational efforts are possible at present, so long as the sheriat or “sacred law” is recognized by every Moslem as immeasurably superior to any civil enact­ments, and death consequently remains the legal penalty for every apostate from Islam.¹¹⁰ How can the European missionary (himself necessarily protected) expect success, when he has to call his converts to face daily peril of death which his own European status forbids him to share?

There is another point to be remembered. There is no doubt that Christianity if preached as the Asiatic faith which it really is, and not as the European religion which we have (inevitably and properly) made it for ourselves, can do much for the Islamic races. It is equally certain that those Islamic races can do much for Christianity. But, with all their reverence for Seyidna Isa (our Lord Jesus) Mussulmans will never accept Him, even as a superior prophet to their Hazrat-i-Mohammed, till they learn to respect the native Christians whom they see among them. So it would seem that all mission work must necessarily apply itself first to the uplifting of the native Christians, and leave the conversion of Islam to the future. Islam mean­while has to face a great problem of its own; viz. will faith in their Prophet's teaching survive the impact of modern science, coupled with the political subjugation of the last great Moslem Powers? If not, what will take its place? For who dare contemplate such a phenomenon as a religion­less East?

Urmi considers itself a civilized and educated town, and all its prominent citizens wear the most correct of alafranga clothes. Even the mysteries of the right relation of collar and tie have been mastered now, perplexing though the problem is. But behind all this aping of moder­nity one rejoices unfeignedly (if perhaps unrighteously) to find a good deal of primitive paganism. That oldest faith of the land, the aboriginal tree-worship, still lingers in the villages; and indeed is only despised by the townsfolk when the foreigner is within hearing. Does not the Sacred Tree of the village of Kerdami--a noble ilex of most unusual size--still command more than reverence? A rag from the garments of any sufferer from any disease has only to be tied on to one of its branches to secure relief infallibly. Once only has any man been known to treat it with any disrespect, when a profane villager of Protestant sympathies dared to' abstract a fallen bough that was still sound enough to make a bridge for a wide irrigation cut in his field. Soon, however, he had reason to repent his temerity; for first the roof of his outhouse fell, and then his buffalo died; then his wife died, and finally his son fell ill. In terror at the series of calamities, he restored the bough and made a propitiatory offering at one of the neighbouring churches; on which the lad recovered. And none has dared to speak against the tree since!

Churches at which offerings are made are numerous in the neighbourhood, and one of these, Mar Sergius,¹¹¹ is parti­cularly famous in the land. This saint protects travellers provided that they offer a black lamb to him before setting out; but his special metier is the curing of the “possessed," or shidani--a name used both of lunatics and epilepts. The treatment in this case is that, after solemn prayer and benediction, the patient is consigned to a certain cell in the foundations of the church, which was once no doubt the abode of an ascetic. It is of “beehive” structure, and a regular “little ease” in pattern; for the inmate can neither sit, stand, nor lie in any comfort. There the sick person remains for a full night, or sometimes for twenty­four hours; and the fact is at all events past question, that a very fair proportion of those who submit to the discipline come out cured. It is of course a case of faith-healing, natural enough in people who have never been taught the modern heresy that the age of “miracles” is past; though we own that profane Europeans have suggested that as a solitary night in that vermin-swarming den might well drive a sane man mad, it is therefore conceivable that it might drive a mad person sane!

Inscriptions in the church, by the way, indicate that under certain circumstances it is allowable to sleep in the bait shidani by proxy. We have read there the statement that “I, John, the son of Jacob, have slept here in the cell, on behalf of my sister Khua, who was unable to come. Grant, O Lord Almighty, that by the power of the prayers of Thy servant Mar Sergius, it may be profitable to her." Mussulmans are as ready to avail themselves of the curative powers of the shrine as are Christians; and we have known a party of Heriki make liberal offerings to the church, and attend a Christian service in the same, to testify their gratitude for the recovery of an epileptic girl.

Many Mussulmans seem to hold that Christianity, whether of an ancient or modern type, has marvellous power against disease; and their belief received what they regarded as a signal confirmation when the cholera visited Urmi in 1905. Mussulmans took, of course, no precautions against it; for how could merely boiling the water frustrate the Will of Allah? The marvel is that the whole of their quarters of the town were not depopulated, when one considers the conditions under which they live. It was not unusual, for instance, to see dead bodies washed before burial in the conduit of drinking water! One can only assume a relative immunity, acquired originally, but transmitted by inheri­tance, to this and similar filth diseases; and the point may be worth study, as throwing light on the question whether acquired characteristics can pass by inheritance.

Christians, as a general rule, took the precautions that the European missionaries advised: with the result that while four thousand Mussulmans died in the city alone (the numbers in the villages were unknown), only five individual Christians perished; and one of these was a Christian scientist who refused to boil his water. Mussulmans held that Azrael was showing undue partiality to infidels, and many of them even put the Cross over their doors to deceive him! One would like to investigate the state of mind that dictated that act! Fancy trying to fool the Angel of Death!

There was, of course, a good deal of panic, and every stomach-ache was put down as cholera at first. One man even declared that he had seen the fatal microbes following the American doctor about, “like little dogs "; but the general belief was that he had been indulging in strong prophylactics!

Almost all the Mussulmans in Urmi itself, and the plain around it, are of the Shiah persuasion, as good Persians should be. In consequence the celebrations of Mohurram are particularly striking. Long processions of mourners parade through the streets, beating their breasts, and mourn­ing for the martyrs Hassan and Hosein; while occasional bands of devotees rush by in white garments striking at their shaven heads with the heavy “Mohurram knives” (which are really short broadswords of old Roman pattern), till the blood gushes out upon them. As the heads are shaven it is true that a light blow will draw blood, and that therefore the ceremony can be made a matter of display and little more. As a fact, however, there is no sham about it, for the feast scarcely ever passes without one man at any rate actually dying from his self-inflicted wounds; at least this was certainly the case before the Russian occupation.

THE CITADEL ROCK, VAN.

Practically Urmi is a Russian town now; and every good Shiah must feel that Mohurram, with infidel bayonets to keep the streets clean and orderly, has been robbed of its soul if not of its outward pomp. The processions still take place of course, and are even more magnificent with increas­ing wealth; but “Ichabod"--where is the old glory? The occupation crept in gradually, and came unperceived; but it is there, and will continue. First came the purely religious mission, for the protection and education of those Christians who wished to become members of the Orthodox Church. Then a Consul had to be sent, to protect the resident Russian priests and monks. Next, to avert any possible peril for the Consul, there must be an escort of Cossacks for him; and when the Persian Government is manifestly so feeble that the road cannot be kept open even for the Royal Mail, what can Consul and Consul-General do but patrol the roads for the public good? And then behold the occupation as complete and permanent as that of the English in Egypt. In both cases, the result looks as if there had been a deep-laid and unscrupulous plan all along. In both cases there has been no such thing; but circumstances have pushed the men on the spot into action; and authority at home (with more or less of unwillingness) has had to acquiesce. Neither Power has been able to avoid the feeling, “mea res agitur, paries cum Proximus ardet." It is all for the best for those most concerned, for now there is safety, comfort, wealth, and an even law for all; but all the same one's memory turns lovingly to the picturesque, dirty, disreputable days of a few years ago!

In those days, a real Seyyid (or even a sham one) had the rights that a Descendant of the Prophet ought to have. He lived at free quarters where he chose (on Christian villagers mostly) and paraded the streets in a flowing purple robe with a green turban, which indicated by its folds and pattern whether the wearer was descended from the Prophet by the male or female line.

He was hated by all creeds maybe, but he was feared by all notwithstanding; by Moslems for his supposed spiritual rank, by Christians for his undoubted worldly power. Woe to the Christian dog who presumed to shirk getting off his horse and standing at the salute when the Seyyid rode by; it was an unmerited favour that he should be allowed to ride a horse at all!

Of course, there are gibes against the clan in plenty: for the more grossly superstitious a man is, the more impossible he finds it to keep his tongue off the Church which never­theless he dares not disobey. When all else is bound, it is hard if speech is not free!

Thus we are told how Khoja Nazr-ed-din was sent out by his wife one day to buy egg-plants for dinner.

“Don't know what they are like," said the Khoja.

“Mudhead," said his wife, “there are lots in the market-­fat purple things with green heads."

"Oh, I know then," said the khoja; and he came back with a Seyyid in full robes.

“Here's the egg-plant, wife. What shall I do with it?” he demanded.

“Rip it open and cut off its head," came the voice from the kitchen, “and then put it in the pot."

The khoja, obedient man, did his best to follow instructions, and a very dishevelled Seyyid succeeded in escaping into the street.

Khoja¹¹² Nazr-ed-din is a sort of Oriental Joe Miller, upon whom any story can be fathered, from Stamboul to Kandahar. But how completely the “Arabian Nights” atmosphere survives in Urmi to this day may be judged from the following story, which was told to us as a true one, and which the narrator at any rate believed implicitly. Let us call it,

THE STORY OF HAJI KAS, AND HOW HIS OWN SON BOUGHT HIM

There lived of late in the city of Urmi a Seyyid of the Seyyids, whose name was Haji Kas. And he was a rich man and a powerful, who had thrice performed the Pil­grimage to Mecca; and who was a friend to the governor and the kadi, and had in repute among the mollahs and imaums.

Now it is said by the Poet (upon whom be peace), “if thy neighbour hath made the Pilgrimage once, beware of him; if twice remove into the next street." And Haji Kas had three times made the Pilgrimage. Wherefore all men feared him greatly, for he regarded neither God nor man.

Now there was a certain householder in the city who had a garden which Haji Kas coveted; and forasmuch _as he would not sell, Haji Kas reviled him and persecuted him, and brought false accusation against him before the kadi in the courts of law. So that householder went to his house sorrowful and sore vexed; and sat him down in an inner chamber, and ate not, and covered his face.

Howbeit that householder had a wife, and she was a fair woman and a wise; and when she saw her husband sorrowing, she said unto him, “What aileth thee, O my lord, that thou eatest nothing and art sad?” And he answered, “Because of Haji Kas the Seyyid; for he seeketh to take from me my garden, and hath brought false accu­sation against me; and moreover the kadi hath eaten bribes at his hand." And the woman laughed, and said, “Truly, thou doest ill to fret thyself for such a matter. Leave Haji Kas to me. I will give thee vengeance on Haji Kas."

So the woman arose in the morning, and donned her fairest raiment, and perfumed herself with musk, and painted her eyes with kohl; and she took her veil, and went forth, and came to the street where Haji Kas dwelt. And as the Seyyid passed by, she drew aside her veil and ogled him, and said, “O Moslem, canst thou tell me the dwelling-place of Haji Kas?” And Haji Kas answered, “I am he. What wouldst thou with me?” And she drew aside her veil further, and smiled, and said, “Thy servant is a woman of Teheran,¹¹³ and married to a man of Urmi. And my husband hath gone on a journey, and hath sent me a writing of divorcement. And behold my neighbours said unto me, 'Seek not advice of any in this matter, save only of the upright Haji Kas.' "

(The narrator dwelt on the flirtation lovingly, and at great length, but here we are obliged to curtail it.)

Then Haji Kas lighted down from his horse, and took her by the hand and said, “O my lady of beauty, verily in this matter thy neighbours counselled thee well." But the woman drew away from him, and veiled herself, and answered, “It is not meet that we talk together in the street at this time. Come to my house at sundown, and I will give thee welcome; and there shalt thou instruct me in all that it behoves me to do."

So Haji Kas arose after nightfall; and went secretly to the house that the woman had appointed to him; and she opened to him, and set meat and drink before him; and while they made merry together, behold, there was a knocking at the door. And the woman went softly to hearken; and she said, “It is my husband. Lo! he is returned from his journey, and I wist not aught of his coming; and I fear that he will do us a mischief, if he find us together in. the house."

Then said Haji Kas, “I conjure thee, O my lady, that thou show me a way of escape." But she answered, “There is no other door. Hide thee in this great chest; I only have the key thereof, and when my husband is departed then straightway I will set thee free."

So Haji Kas entered the chest, and the woman turned the key upon him. And she opened the door to her husband, and said, “A greeting to thee! Behold, I have taken Haji Kas in the snare that I have laid." And the man said, “Where is he?” And she answered, “He is in that chest. Cord it tightly, and we will eat and be merry, and thereafter we will take counsel what we shall do with Haji Kas." And when the morning morrowed, the man arose, and said, “What shall we now do with Haji Kas? Come let us open the chest, and I will beat him and let him go." But the woman said, “Not so. Call thou hither a porter, and lay the chest upon his shoulders, and bid him bear it to the bazaar; and let Achmet the salesman cry it for sale to the highest bidder; but charge him to sell it unopened; no man shall know what is in it, until that it is sold." Then the man did as the woman had bidden him, and the porter departed to the bazaar.

And as he was going down he met a water-seller; and the water-seller said, “A greeting to thee. Whither goest thou?” And he answered, “I bear this chest to the bazaar." Then said the water-seller, “What is in it?” And the porter said, “Nay that I know not, for no man may know what is in it till it is sold."

Then the water-seller went near and hearkened; and he said, “There is some living thing within it. Beware lest it be a jinn. Peradventure it will do thee hurt." And the porter dropped the chest, and sprang away from it, and cried, “I take refuge with Allah from Satan the stoned."

Then the water-seller answered, “See now this pool of water. It is my counsel that thou sink the chest awhile therein."

Now when Haji Kas heard that saying he cried aloud out of the chest, saying “See thou do it not, for I am the Seyyid, Haji Kas." And the porter answered, "Nay, but this is a cunning jinn." And Haji Kas cried, “By Allah, I am indeed- the Seyyid, and if thou let me go I will give thee a great reward."

But the porter said, “Not so; for I have been paid my hire and my charge is laid upon me. If then I deliver not the chest to Achmet, who will henceforth employ me in the bazaar? "

Then Haji Kas spake to the water-seller saying, “I pray thee then, friend, that thou will hie thee to the house of my son; and bid him haste to the bazaar, and buy the chest of Achmet, how great soever may be the price thereof. And let him bear it away unopened, that I be not discovered therein."

So the water-seller ran to bear the message, and-the porter took the chest and bore it to the bazaar.

And Achmet the salesman took the chest and set it on the bench before him, and he cried aloud, “O Moslems, I have for sale a chest--a chest and all that is in it. What will ye give me for the chest, and for the contents of the chest? "

And the merchants said, “What is in the chest?” And Achmet answered, “Nay that I know not, for none may know what is in it until that it is sold." Then the merchants came together; and one said, “It is a good chest. I will give a toman¹¹⁴ for it." And another said, “I will give two tomans." Then came to them the son of Haji Kas, breathless with much running, and he cried aloud unto the salesman, saying, “Oh, Achmet, sell me the chest for five tomans." And a Jew merchant answered, “I will give six tomans "; and the Haji's son said, “I will give thee twelve I "

Then the merchants spake one to another, saying, "Verily we know not what is in the chest; but behold the Haji's son knoweth, and it seemeth that it is a thing of price. Of a surety it is smuggled tobacco from the warehouse of the Sheikh; or maybe hashish, and worth much gold." And they that were aforetime backward were now eager to buy.

But, though many bid for the chest, yet the Haji's son bid higher, and Achmet the salesman sold him the chest for sixty tomans; and he wiped his brow, and paid the money and called a porter to bear the chest away.

But the porter who had brought the chest had stood by, listening to the bidding; and he laughed till his legs gave way beneath him, and he rolled on the ground in his mirth. And while the merchants wondered at him, he gat his breath; and sat up, and cried aloud, and said, “By Allah, O Moslems, was there ever seen the like? This man hath bought his own father for the price of sixty tomans. Haji Kas the Seyyid is in that great chest!"

And when the merchants heard that saying, they ran upon the chest and brake it open; and Haji Kas sat up, and blinked at them therein. And all the merchants laughed till the bazaar rang with their laughter; and they held their sides, and the tears ran down their faces, and they rolled on the ground whooping, even as the porter had done.

Then Haji Kas arose, and gat him out of the chest; and he and his son slank away in shame together. And it came to pass after a few days, that he sold his house, and all that appertained to him in that city, and departed into another country, and returned to Urmi no more.

Governors in the old days did not often lift their hands against the Seyyids; the experience of those who tried to do so, teaching them wisdom. Twice the effort was made but in each instance the privileged corporation that had religious sentiment behind it was able to win. Once the Vali-Ahd¹¹⁵ had tried to meet the undoubted difficulty caused by the fact that no governor could keep the Kurdish raiders in order, by making the biggest brigand of the countryside Governor of Urmi province; on the same principle as a certain King of England once made The O'Neill Viceroy of Ireland. The Governor, Hassan Beg of the Marku Kurds, was at least commendably energetic; and being, like all Kurds, a Sunni, he despised all Shiahs equally, whether they were Seyyids or not. He began operations by blowing a batch of them from guns-a fate which they probably richly deserved, but which roused much scandal, for no amount of hereditary sanctity will get you to Heaven in little bits! But presently one such victim escaped. He bribed the artillery-men; and they put him with his arm round the gun's muzzle, instead of with his back to it. (The execution took place in the midst of a big parade-ground, so that the fraud was not too con­spicuous.) Bang went the gun: but the holy man stood unharmed. Up went the cry, “A miracle! a miracle I” and the mob immediately assaulted the governor's house. He had taken the precaution of bringing a garrison of his own tribesmen with him to his new post, so the attack failed; but he thought it more prudent to leave the city that night and go home. His tenure of the governorship of Urmi had been brief; but like the kingship of Roumania was “always a pleasant reminiscence."

In the year 1902 another governor, one Mejid-es-Sultaneh; also attempted reform. He proposed to clean the streets and have a pure water-supply; a scheme which was admir­able as far as it went, though an American missionary in the town did suggest that “his Excellency had better make the streets before he scrapes them." Another aspiration of his, expressed in the words that there would never be any real reform in Persia, “till one can see a Seyyid hanging on every tree round Urmi," was also a perfectly sound one but unfortunately he lacked the power to execute his admirable ideas. Thus, when Mohurram came round, friction began. By immemorial custom a deputation of. Seyyids waits on the governor at that feast; for then (like the Jews of old) they have the right to demand that he "release unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they will." Mejid-es-Sultaneh was willing enough to honour custom,, but had let the college of Seyyids know, unofficially, that there was one man whom they were not to ask for. It had cost some trouble to get him into the jail, and he was to hang. They accepted at once this challenge to a trial of strength, and demanded that man and no other. The governor had the whole deputation thrashed and turned out of his house sending orders to the prison to hang the man without more ado.

The Seyyids were naturally furious; and they were able to pull strings at Teheran till Mejid-es-Sultaneh was exiled. He only escaped confiscation of his property by executing a hurried deed of gift of the whole of it, in legally binding form, to an English merchant at Tabriz. He trusted absolutely, and justifiably, to that man's verbal promise that the income should be paid over to him, and the capital restored if ever the original owner were in a position to claim it again.

As for trial, or any pretence of justice, even for a man in this position, there was none. Such things are mere empty words to a ruler who on another occasion invited a prominent Kurdish chief to a conference, swearing on the Koran that, if he came, he should leave Tabriz in safety and honour. The Kurd (Jaffar Agha by name) came on that assurance. He had his conference and started home, loaded with honours and decorations. One hundred yards from the gate of Tabriz he was called back for a last word. He returned fearlessly; entered the reception room-and was shot dead from behind a grating. So the Shah kept faith with a man who trusted to his honour.

Under such rule, government broke down utterly and absolutely in Persia; and the Turks took the opportunity of carrying out the aggression mentioned in the previous chapter, and occupying the strip of frontier they had long coveted. Not content with this, they encouraged a system of open raids over the whole district of Urmi, with the avowed intention of showing the Persians “you cannot control or bridle these Kurds, and so you had better let us do it, for we can." The writer was in Urmi at the time; living, as an Englishman does in these lands, in personal sanctuary. To shoot an Englishman is too dangerous an amusement (fascinating though it admittedly is) for any gentleman to indulge in-unless the temptation is very great indeed. The experience was interesting; for what one saw was anarchy, apparently with no power of redemption. Vis consili expers the Government of Persia had always been; and when at last it fell under the weight of its own corruption, there was no force left to set up any fresh rule at all. Folk had been accustomed to look to the Hukumet for everything; and when it was gone they lacked the political instinct to set up anything to take its place.

The strangest rumours circulated: such as the statement that a caravan of five hundred camels had arrived in Tabriz from Russia, loaded with nothing but tanzimat (reform); or that “Enjuman Effendi” (Monsieur Parliament) had been appointed governor of the land by the Shah, and that he was a very great man and had very many wives. The collapse of the central Government did not, however, affect daily life in the villages; except that the raiding bands of Kurds walked about the countryside rather more at their ease than was the case normally.

In one instance a party of twelve robbers marked down a village some thirty miles from the frontier; looted it, and insolently drove their plunder along the high roads to their own home again. They made no attempt at concealment or even hurry; and ten miles per diem being about the limit that a sheep can be taken comfortably, the process must have occupied three days at the least. It is true that the Turkish Governor, on hearing of the exploit, did insist on the return of the animals, greatly to the disgust of the raiders. However, they did not go quite without profit; for finding that the beasts had got to go back, they took the precaution of shearing them first l

At the time, we were endeavouring to give the local “Nestorian” clergy a week's instruction in matters pastoral and devotional. As part of the course, we ordered the whole gathering to write a sermon on the text, “As lambs in the midst of wolves." We could not help feeling a profane sympathy with the teaching propounded in one of the discourses ,--that undoubtedly Christians were lambs, as Scripture said; but that what was most needfu