Read Ebook: The Cradle of Mankind; Life in Eastern Kurdistan by Wigram Edgar Thomas Ainger Wigram W A William Ainger

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Le cheick s'arr?ta ? ces mots; mais ma curiosit? n'?tait qu'? demi satisfaite, et je lui demandai quelques d?tails sur la chasse aux lions, dans laquelle les Arabes d?ploient une grande habilet?. Il satisfit mes d?sirs avec empressement.

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J'ai rapport? textuellement le r?cit du cheick. Plusieurs passages de cette narration para?tront extraordinaires sans doute; il m'ont ?tonn? moi-m?me; mais ce que j'ai entendu raconter depuis par d'autres Arabes, au sujet de la chasse aux lions de la Matmata, les confirme enti?rement.

L'aube parut au moment o? le cheick finissait de parler; je le remerciai avec effusion de sa noble hospitalit? et je pris cong? de lui et de son douair. Nous travers?mes, moi et mes gens, un grand nombre de montagnes avant d'atteindre la vall?e du Ch?lif. Je remarquai que, contrairement ? celles que nous avions parcourues la veille, elles ?taient cultiv?es dans toute leur ?tendue; des douairs d'un aspect agr?able ?talaient sur les flancs leurs vertes cabanes. Peu d'heures apr?s avoir perdu de vue ces montagnes, nous arriv?mes ? Milianah sans avoir ?prouv? d'accidents. Le bon accueil que j'y re?us de Sidi-Mohamed-Ben-Allal me fit bient?t oublier mes fatigues et le triste s?jour de Tazza.

On me dispensera de parler de Milianah, que nos exp?ditions ont assez fait conna?tre. A cette ?poque, elle appartenait ? l'?mir, qui en avait fait un des grands centres de sa puissance. Si mes observations ne m'ont pas tromp?, les habitants de Milianah, comme ceux de la vall?e du Ch?lif, sont bien dispos?s en faveur des Fran?ais; il en est de m?me pour les tribut camp?es entre cette ville et M?d?ah; tous d?sirent un changement de domination, mais ils voudraient qu'on les d?fendit contre Abd-el-Kader. Lorsque, en juin 1838, les Fran?ais entr?rent ? M?d?ah en longeant la vall?e du Ch?lif, les indig?nes s'enfuirent dans l'int?rieur pour ne pas se battre. Les gens de l'ouest seulement firent r?sistance.

J'?tais depuis quelques jours, dans la ville, lorsque l'?mir y arriva lui-m?me ? la t?te de ses r?guliers et des dignitaires de l'arm?e. Ayant ? lui proposer un contrat de commerce, je m'empressai de demander une audience, qui me fut accord?e pour le lendemain. Sidi-al-Kraroubi, ministre de l'?mir, me pr?vint qu'elle aurait lieu dans la plaine, o? son ma?tre devait passer en revue toutes ses troupes. J'?tais invit? ? assister ? cette solennit?.

Comme on le pense bien, je ne fermai pas l'oeil de la nuit. Le jour me trouva debout et la t?te appuy?e sur l'un des poteaux de bois qui soutenaient la maison. Tout ? coup un bruit extraordinaire se fit entendre au dehors, et les accords d'une musique sauvage retentirent ? mes oreilles. C'?tait le corps de musique de l'?mir qui nous r?galait d'une aubade. Je n'ai jamais entendu de plus effrayante symphonie; n?anmoins je fis contre fortune bon coeur, et je me rendis courageusement sur la place, o? s'ex?cutaient les airs les plus grotesques qu'il soit possible d'imaginer. Les artistes qui troublaient de si grand matin les paisibles habitants des airs ?taient, au dire des Arabes, des virtuoses distingu?s. L'?mir ?tait le cr?ateur de cette soci?t? fort peu harmonique: ? mesure qu'il avait vu sa renomm?e s'accro?tre, il avait augment? sa maison.

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.

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 500 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 10,000, 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.

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 , 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 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 r?gime. 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.

There was plenty of "talk" at Diarbekr; and we frequently heard the children 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, 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 a "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 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.

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 90 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 to take his own revenge--if he can. It will only itself occasionally condescend to act as his representative, if he chances to be an influential person, or if some influential outsider 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.

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 --

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.

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.

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. 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 80,000 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 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! 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.

Syriac 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 , with the result that these "Monophysite" 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.

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 , 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 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!

THE MARCHES OF ANCIENT ROME

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 swan-song 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.

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 d?bris of the great devastated city.

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

"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 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 150 feet long and 13 to 14 feet wide, with an internal height of 40 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.

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, 60 feet long and 50 wide, divided by a massive arcade into two naves, and roofed by a double barrel vault 50 feet above the level of the floor. This is doubtless the Great Granary mentioned by Zachariah of Mitylene; but 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.

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 40,000 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!

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