[74] Bustan us Siaha, p. 303.
CHAPTER XVI
OF KURDS AND THEIR COUNTRY
“Shedders of blood, raisers of strife, seekers after turmoil and uproar, robbers and brigands; a people all malignant, and evil-doers of depraved habits, ignorant of all mercy, devoid of all humanity, scorning the garment of wisdom; but a brave race and fearless, of a hospitality grateful to the soul, in truth and in honour unequalled, of pleasing countenance and fair cheek, boasting all the goods of beauty and grace.”—Bustan us Siaha, p. 459.
The race of Kurds is so little known, and so maligned when mentioned, that some idea of their origin and history, as well as an attempt at a vindication of their character, is not out of place here. Within recent years they have probably never come before the eye of the British public except in their traditional character of rapacious and furious fiends, fantastic figures of savagery pouring out from impregnable mountains and carrying desolation before them, slaying Christian and Musulman alike, resisting all efforts by princes and powers to subdue or even coerce them.
Of what they may be, their origins and history, I suppose less is known than of any other race in the East, so numerous and powerful, and it may come as a surprise to many that Kurdistan has a history, and an ancient one, noble families, and a fine—if somewhat limited—literature. So well have the secrets of the race been guarded, that one at least of the many travellers who have remained among them for some time goes so far as to state definitely that “they are as destitute of annals as the wolves and jackals among whom they have lived in the high mountains from immemorial time,”[75] a statement which reflects more upon the ignorance of the writer than upon the Kurds, whom he would thus brand as being but little removed from the denizens of the hill-sides.
The Persian legend has it that Kurds are descendants of those young men who were saved from the voracity of the serpents of the monster Zohak of the Persian mythology, which were fed upon human brains at the devil’s suggestion, and which were deceived by having the brains of goats substituted for those of the two youths who were to become the progenitors of the Kurdish race.
Another and less known legend is that Solomon, having sent for four hundred virgins from the East, and they having arrived in the country now called Kurdistan, were deflowered by the devils therein, whereupon Solomon resigned them to those devils, and their offspring were called Kurds.[76]
It is a long retrospect back to 1200 to 1500 years B.C., for it is there we are to see the kings of Nairi, who appear to be the forbears of those Medes who later gained renown, and again later, under the name of Kurd, remained a word of terror in the ears of the neighbours.
In those days the Assyrians reigned in the lands about Mosul and between the rivers Zab. Following the course of the Greater Zab, from its middle to its source, was an obscure, little-known land, and here was the heart of the Nairi land. Here, too, later, were the Medes established, and here is still the heart and centre of Kurdistan.
Armenia, or Urartu, was tucked away north of all this, behind the mountains and Lake Van, upon its plateau, and the kings of Urartu are not to be confounded with the men of Nairi. Nor were the Nairi lands confined to the upper waters of the Great Zab, for the people between the Tigris headwaters and the Euphrates north of Mount Niphates, that is, in modern times, Kharput and Darsim, in Bitlis and the Taurus range, were mentioned by Tiglath-Pileser and his successors (1100 to 600 B.C.), as the Nairi; that same land that later harboured the Invincible Gordyene, whose name appeared immediately after the disappearance of the name Mede at the middle of the Achæmenian dynasty of Persia (about 400 B.C.), and in reference to races inhabiting the lands of modern Kurdistan—which was Media.[77]