This, like so many of the caravanserais in the towns of Mesopotamia, is of a composite nature. Its yard and the stables surrounding afford accommodation for beast, while the rooms which enclose it on three sides, upstairs, harbour both travellers, and residents, who are strangers without womenfolk. The entrance to this caravanserai was between two huge cafés, at the back of which the yard lay, and above this long entrance were the offices of the mayor, and the agent of Singer’s sewing-machines, an article which has penetrated to the remotest districts of Kurdistan. These offices opened upon a gallery which communicated direct with the rooms set apart for passengers.
Kirkuk is famous for Turkomans, fruit, and crude oil, all of which abound. The town, which must have a population of at least 15,000, is one of the trilingual towns of the Kurdistan borders. Turkish, Arabic, and Kurdish are spoken by everyone, the first and last being used indifferently in the bazaars. Itself a Turkoman town, to its south and west are nomad Arabs, and to its east the country of the Hamavand Kurds. Turkish power is very evident here. Being near to Bagdad—seven days—and possessing a Turkish-speaking population, it is in a position to supply a large number of youths to the military schools, which, half-educating the lads, turn them out idle and vicious, and incapable of existing without a uniform. The result is that they all obtain some post, telegraph, police, or customs, or join the ranks of the superfluous and unattached army “officers,” and return to their native town to lounge in the innumerable tea-houses, and earn a living by tyrannising over whatever unfortunate their position enables them to blackmail and persecute. Consequently, Kirkuk is full of uniforms containing the scum of the town, often drunken brutes—who sap the life of the place, driven to any length of rascality to gain a living, for they are usually unpaid. Despite this plethora of police, I was unmolested, probably the composite crowd of the Kirkuk bazaar makes a stranger too inconspicuous for their attention.
The architecture of the place is purely Arab; the Persian influence noticeable in Bagdad, Mosul, Diarbekr, and other cities of Mesopotamia and Syria is not seen here. Solid stone buildings of no beauty, a few mean mosques and minarets, very solid, but with no ornamentation, and an immense arched bazaar, make the architectural features of the place. The Turkoman population, or rather the commercial section of it, compares very favourably with the people of Bagdad and Mosul. A stranger meets with great consideration, nor is he swindled right and left, nor annoyed, as among the Arabs of the greater cities. Purchasing food and other things in the bazaars, I found everywhere an astonishing honesty and rough goodwill that wins the heart of a stranger, and this, notwithstanding the fact that I was taken for a Persian, and a Shi’a Muhammadan, with whom the Sunni has very little sympathy.
KIRKUK FOLK
I can quote an example which shows how this hospitable quality often appeared.
Some days after I arrived there I found the soles of my boots flapping under me as I walked, so repaired to a shop in the bazaar where Bagdad shoes were for sale. Selecting a pair, I proceeded to bargain, but not knowing the proper price, I was somewhat at a loss to determine my highest figure. The shopkeeper asked two mejidies or forty piastres, so I proposed eighteen piastres, and brought him down by degrees to twenty-two, when having nearly halved the original price, I thought it sufficient, and assented. I produced a mejidie in payment, and was groping in my pocket for the two piastres remaining, when the shopkeeper extended his hand, saying:
“A mejidie is the real price; you are a stranger, and did not our prophet command us all to honour the stranger? Take the shoes, for from you I will not take more than a mejidie, for a Kirkukli the price is twenty-five piastres, but big profits among ourselves do not matter, whereas from you—who I hope will go from Kirkuk with pleasant remembrances—I am content with what a mejidie gives.”
This sentiment I encountered everywhere in Kirkuk, except from the Christians; but that is but natural, seeing that I was in the guise of a Muhammadan. I experienced later the kindness of the Chaldeans for strange Christians in the town.
Besides the Turkomans and other Muhammadans there is a large number of Chaldeans and of Syrian Christians, natives of Bagdad. A few Armenians are also there, employed in Government and commercial affairs, but they are natives of Diarbekr or Armenia. The Chaldean settlement is of considerable antiquity, having migrated here, according to their own traditions, during the time of Alp Arslan, in the 11th century. If Kirkuk is, as the natives assert, a remnant of the Seljuq kings, this is possible, and perhaps even probable. Unlike the Chaldeans of Mosul, they have not forgotten the Syriac character, and while they speak only Turkish, employ these characters in writing among themselves. It is only the Chaldeans who are found living among the Kurds, who have retained their language, both written and spoken. In Mosul, where it is reckoned part of a good education to know it, it has no generality of use, and one has to go to the villages to hear it spoken.
There is a church in Kirkuk administered by priests from Mosul; the Chaldeans are, like nearly all in Turkish territory, Roman Catholics, for the old Chaldean Church died under the unscrupulous assaults of the Roman Catholics, who pursued a Machiavellian policy in bringing over the old Church to Papal allegiance, a change which has been for nothing but the worse.[31]