Turning first to the centre of ancient Kurdistan, Bitlis and the Hakkari[82] country (the upper Great Zab and the mountains south of Lake Van to the Tigris at Jazira ibn Umar), we find the tribe of Hakkari, that has sent its philosophers as far north as Bayazid, and peopled to a great extent that city, and given princes to Rawanduz and the south.
THE HAKKARI
After the conquest of Diarbekr by Timur-i-Lang (Tamerlane) in the 14th century, a governor was placed over the district of Hakkari, named Amir Qara Uthman (the Black Lord Uthman), who, finding the country impregnable and access to it impossible, took the politic line of seeking in marriage the hand of a lady of the noble Hakkari clan of feudal lords. In doing so he identified himself with the tribe, and when the hand of Timur-i-Lang grew weak in the environs of Kurdistan, this Amir Qara Uthman became to all intents and purposes a Kurd, and his descendants founded or rather exalted the old Hakkari family, adopted the title of Prince, and ruled in great state at Bitlis, where the princes of the Hakkari ruled up to the 19th century.
They became so powerful, and contracted such wise alliances with the tribes, that at Jazira ibn Umar, Amadia, Julamark, and Rawanduz, the beys and princes were of the Hakkari, ruling independently of all outside powers, and never troubling about the claims of Turkey and Persia to the possession of their land, which were inaccessible.
Under its princes Bitlis became a very important centre, and Edrisi, the brilliant minister of Sultan Selim, himself a Hakkari Kurd, was responsible for expanding the territories held by some of the tribes under Hakkari rule.
He moved the Haidaranlu and the allied tribes northward into the Armenian country to guard the Persian frontier, and there they have stayed, till now Kurds of these, the most savage of all the Kurds, are domiciled across Armenia, and as far west as Erzerum, living in such numbers as almost to warrant the application of the name Kurdistan to these provinces.
The princes of Bitlis reached their greatest power in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, when they were independent, sometimes acknowledging a kind of suzerainty of Persia or Turkey, and at others denying the right of any Power to claim them as subject rulers. The last of the line, Sharif Bey, held out against the Turks for several years during the first half of the 19th century, when Turkish effort was concentrated to bring Kurdistan to subjection. He was captured by the Turks in 1849 and taken to Constantinople, and Bitlis has since been ruled by a Turkish governor.
Though their capital has been taken from them, the Hakkari are still a very powerful and famous tribe, and remain unmolested in the highlands of their country. The Turks have also adopted a more conciliatory attitude towards them, as, being on the frontier, it is highly advisable that they should be favourably disposed to Turkey.[83]
In the neighbourhood of the Hakkari—to the west and north-east in Darsim—are the Kurds of the Zaza, a curious tribe, of the history of which nothing is known except that they have been in these mountains for ages. I regret exceedingly not having stayed among them, for their dialect is of extraordinary interest, Aryan of the Persian and Kurdish group, but differing from both. The tribe inhabit mountainous regions in most of the least-known parts of the lands about the Tigris headwaters and in Darsim. By travellers they have been described as “shy, impish little people,” and those of them I met, while shy, certainly were of a genuine and simple type, courageous and hard-working little men, with a large proportion of blue-eyed, fair-haired people among them.
THE MUKRI