Among the hill villages, high up in the ravines of the frowning walls of Aoraman, religious shaikhs lived and died, and there are to-day several holy individuals living in little villages perched thousands of feet up under the mighty and frowning wall of the great mountain. In the plain, Kurd and Christian lived in peace, till the ascent to power of a certain Abdul Qadir, a fanatic, and slaughterer of all who displeased him. Shahr-i-Zur possessed in his time (about two hundred years ago) a mixed population, and its Kurdish people still spoke the ancient dialect known as Shahr-i-Zuri, a tongue of old Persia, rejoicing in grace of form and sound, now only to be heard in Aoraman, much corrupted.
This fanatic was the cause of a massacre of Christians, and the Chaldeans inhabiting the plain fled to the mountains, to Kirkuk, and to Bagdad. The Shahr-i-Zuri, who were upon bad terms with some of the local ruffians employed in the massacre, dispersed and disappeared, and left Shahr-i-Zur a waste. Gulanbar, a small town, was deserted and laid bare, with its villages along the mountain foot. These have become partially reoccupied, and are now shadows of what they formerly were.
In 1821 or thereabouts a Persian prince, Muhammad Ali Mirza, invaded and took it, but in a subsequent battle fought near Halabja he was mortally wounded, and retiring across the river, left it in the hands of a Turkish pasha of Bagdad.
Nevertheless the Persians claim Shahr-i-Zur, for it was once theirs, and they conquered it again and again, and to-day it stands upon the strip of land, a debated territory within the borders of which, an international commission has sagely remarked, “the frontier may be assumed to exist.”
When Sulaimania was yet under the rule of the descendants of Sulaiman Pasha, Gulanbar was made the seat of a Qaim Maqam, and the necessary three “mudirliqs” were instituted in the plain. So matters went until Uthman Pasha, who is chief of the section of the Pushtamala Jafs, settled in Halabja, and as has been shown, proceeded to make it important. Gulanbar never recovered its ancient importance and prestige, and Halabja began to outstrip its neighbours across the plain, until the Qaim Maqam, now Uthman Pasha, was transferred to Halabja, and Gulanbar was made the residence of a subsidiary “mudir.”
At the time of my visit, there were settled in Halabja, besides Uthman Pasha and his wife, Majid Beg and Tahir Beg, sons of the pasha’s former wife. Majid Beg has now succeeded to the chieftainship of the Pushtamala, for the old man died in October 1909 and was buried in Biara, a mountain village reckoned very holy in these parts.[66]
HISTORY OF THE JAF
It is not more than about a hundred and twenty years since Uthman Pasha’s section of the tribe has been settled in Halabja. Originally the Jaf tribe lived in a country to the south-east of Halabja, in Persian territory, called Juanrud. Here they were independent, until the Vali of Ardalan succeeded in capturing the chief, his son, and brother, and executing them. Fighting ensued, and the Jafs, who had made themselves very unpopular with the Ardalan princes, first by the fact of their independence, and second by their arrogance and hostility, were expelled. The nomad section, called the Muradi, fled, some 50,000 people in all, to the pasha of the newly rising Sulaimania, and he conferred upon them the land they now occupy, which extends from Qizil Rubat, in the south, to Panjwin, upon the Persian frontier, in the north. A certain number of sedentary Jafs remained upon the ancestral lands, but suffering under the rule of the son of the Ardalan prince, deserted to the Guran tribe, and became part of them, submitting to their sultans.
Certain others remained, undismayed by the defection of their fellows, and still live in Juanrud—Persian subjects who have forgotten that they were ever Jaf Kurds.
Meanwhile the Muradi section, of which the chief sub-tribe was the Pushtamala, flourished and increased. The Pushtamala, the aristocratic section, continued to be that from which the chief was drawn until after the time of Muhammad Pasha, who, when he died, left three sons—Uthman, Mahmud, and Muhammad Ali. These separated the territories, while keeping close touch and living in harmony. Mahmud Pasha took charge of all the tribe, with whom he travels while it is upon its spring and autumn migrations between the mountains and the lowlands. Uthman Pasha took Gulanbar and Halabja and the Shahr-i-Zur lands, and, increasing in power and wealth, eventually gained the government of the district. Muhammad Ali Beg, the third son, remained at Qizil Rubat, where he owns many lands and gardens, and lives a life of ease and content.[67] Under these three sections of the Pushtamala there are the sub-tribes of ’Amala, Jaf-i-Sartik, Jaf-i-Tilan, Mikaili, Akhasuri, Changani, Rughzadi, Terkhani, Bashaki, Kilali, Shatiri, Haruni, Nurwali, Kukui, Zardawi, Yazdan Bakhshi, Shaikh Isma’ili, Sadani, Badakhi, Musai, and the Tailaku.