The body of ruffians and thieves that joined him were of every class—Turk, Armenian, Kurd, and Arab. All served under his standard, and by his disregard for the property of any tribe or people he drew upon himself the enmity of his own kinsmen, the Milli Kurds.
But like every astute robber and scoundrel in the Turkish dominions, he bought the Sultan’s favour, and could and did ridicule all the efforts of local government to catch him. For the most part he frequented the hills that border on the Mesopotamian plain to the north, but he was also a power in Viran Shahr and Harran to the south, where he kept everyone in a lively fear of him. Not until the Turks arranged themselves into a Constitution was this powerful brigand, by a ruse, caught and killed, and the heterogeneous collection of rascals dispersed.
The villagers of Charmelik related how his men would follow travellers into the village, instal themselves in the best room, order a meal, and having rested and smoked a pipe or two, stroll out, calmly load the traveller’s effects upon his own cart and take them away to their nearest camp. So much were their reprisals feared—for revenge upon a village was burning and extermination—that not a single person dared protest. Even Turkish officers and officials had to submit to this treatment, and, so the reminiscent throng round the fire assured me, suffer a good beating in the bargain for being of the detested race.
Altogether, Ibrahim Pasha’s was one of the most successful and best organised of the Kurdish raiding parties, and numerically the most powerful. The only other combination, formed solely for the purpose of brigandage and revenge, was that of the Hamavand, whose acquaintance I made later, in southern Kurdistan.
We left this village next morning in a freezing cold, and the sun coming up, found us gradually ascending through gullies and defiles into a considerable range of hills. In that much-abused country, Persia, I have travelled many hundreds of miles by carriage, but I must in justice say, that the worst tracks in that maligned and unhappy country are paved boulevards compared to the carriage-ways of Turkey. Here, within easy distance of the sea and of the influence of Constantinople, the track passes untouched by any of the French-speaking, liquor-loving effindis appointed to look after such things; whereas in Persia there are excellent roads built by the foreign enterprise that she sometimes welcomes and Turkey discourages; and where the European engineer has not made smooth the way, the Persian himself, with no other notion than to ease the pains of travellers, has done his best, by clearing stones and putting down causeways.
For hours we ascended ravines, and slid, banging, down hill-sides, boxes and chattels of all descriptions almost taking charge despite their substantial lashings. Do what one might, inconsequent paraphernalia, eatables, small articles, would leap out and roll away, and one had the greatest difficulty in exercising sufficient restraint upon the overwhelming inclination to follow head first. For miles both myself and the driver walked, helping the wheels over rocks, piloting the carriage round corners of rocky zigzags, or helping the horses in desperate efforts to haul up slopes.
Here and there was a little patch of cultivation among the stones, and a spring made green narrow places in almost every valley. As we neared Urfa, our next stopping-place, ancient cave-dwellings, now unoccupied, began to occur, and bits of carved stone here and there lay about. In one flat plain, some two miles across, were the remains of a large square building, of the style one associates with pre-Muhammadan times, when mud did not enjoy its present popularity with masons.
URFA
However, our troubles ceased suddenly, for turning a particularly bad corner we found ourselves upon a very well-made road that continued all the way into Urfa. This is, I believe, the only made road in Syria, and was the outcome of a project to construct a military and commercial route as far as Diarbekr. The effort expired a few miles north-east of Urfa. Once upon this, we saw what would have been our fate without it, and I quite believed the driver’s statement that, previous to its construction, the passes were not negotiable by wheeled vehicles.
On the way we met with a proof of the curious devotion that leads the Musulman from the remotest corners of Asia to Mecca. An old man, in garments that reminded me of Khorasan of Eastern Persia, overtook us, his stride taking him at a greater pace up the hill than our slow walk. I asked him, as a venture, in Persian where he came from, and learned that he was a pilgrim returning on foot from Mecca to Bokhara. His journey he estimated would have taken him nearly a year, from the time he started from his native town to the time he saw it again. He had the appearance of fifty or more years, but none of the feebleness that might be expected, and marched along—having that day done some twenty miles of mountain—as if he were just set out.