come to Midyâd to help me out of difficulties. A cheerful travelling companion he proved, and a well-informed. We camped on the second evening under the mound of Karkh, not far from the Tigris, and shortened our way next day by fording the river, which was now a shallow stream, and cutting across a wide bend ([Fig. 205]). This route had the advantage of giving us a first view of Diyârbekr under its finest aspect. It stands upon the high crest of the Tigris bank, a great fenced city built of basalt—“black are the dogs and black the walls and black the hearts of black Amid,” says the proverb. Since the days when Ammianus Marcellinus look part in the desperate resistance to Sapor, and watched from the towers of Amida the Persian hosts “collected for the conflagration of the Roman world,” the din of battle has never been far from Diyârbekr. The town passed to and fro between the Byzantine and the Sassanian. Constantius fortified it and lost it to Sapor; Anastasius recaptured it and lost it to Kobâd and won it back; Justinian rebuilt the fortifications, but it fell with Mesopotamia to the Moslem invaders. The Kurdish Marwânds made it their capital, and after them the Turkmân Ortuḳids; Tîmûr burst through the famous walls and put the inhabitants to the sword, and finally the Turk conquered it in A.D. 1515 and holds it still. But there is no peace for the lawless capital of Kurdistân. Warring faiths struggle together as fiercely as rival empires, and the conflict is embittered by race hatreds. The heavy air, lying stagnant between the high walls, is charged with memories of the massacres of 1895, and when I was in Diyârbekr the news from Cilicia had rekindled animosity and fear. Moslem and Christian were equally persuaded that the other was watching for an opportunity to spring at his throat. Tales of fresh outbreaks in different parts of the empire were constantly circulated in the bazaars, and the men who listened went home and fingered at their rifles. If there had been any sign of further disturbance at Constantinople, Diyârbekr would have run with blood.
With the population in this temper it would have been futile to inquire into the prospects of constitutional government. I spent a day among ancient churches;[202] and a day upon the walls, which are as fine an example of mediæval fortification as any that exists. They hang, upon the south and south-east sides, high over the Tigris—it was from this direction that Sapor’s troops effected an entry through a hollow passage that led down to the water’s edge. On the south-west they crown a slope set thick with gardens of mulberry and vine, and towards the north the wall bends round to join the curve of the river. Four great gateways break this circuit. The Mardîn Gate commands the terraced gardens, and the road that passes through it runs down to an ancient bridge over the Tigris ([Fig. 206]). To the north-west and north the Aleppo or Mountain Gate and the Kharpût Gate open on to a fertile plain, and the Yeni Kapu, the New Gate, stands above the precipitous southern bank ([Fig. 207]).[203] The lie of the ground makes it certain that the oldest fortifications of the city must have occupied much the same position as those which still surround it, and though the latter are proved by numerous inscriptions to be Mohammadan work of different periods, I should judge them to be built mainly upon ancient foundations. The north wall with its round towers is perfectly preserved; even the domed chambers inside the towers, together with the stairs that gave access to the chemin de ronde, are intact. All the arches and domes in the interior of the towers are of brick. Between the Kharpût and the Aleppo Gates a small aqueduct brings water to the town, the few springs within the walls being unpleasantly brackish. The citadel commands the north-east angle above the river; most of the space surrounded by its enclosing wall is occupied by modern buildings and by a mound whereon stood the castle of the first Mohammadan princes. The domed arsenal is said to have been a Christian church, but remembering my unsuccessful attempts to visit the arsenal at Baghdâd, I did not ask permission to enter it.[204] From a postern gate in the north wall a road leads down to the river, passing under a cliff out of which gushes a sulphurous spring. As I watched the soldiers of the garrison washing their clothes in its waters, I tried to reconcile it with “the rich spring, drinkable, indeed, but often tainted with hot vapours,” which Ammianus Marcellinus describes as rising under the citadel, and to see the men of the 5th Parthian Legion in the ragged groups standing about it.[205] From the citadel we walked to the Mardîn Gate along the chemin de ronde, a fine course, lifted high above the close air of the city and swept by the breezes that come down from Taurus ([Fig. 208]). Between the Aleppo Gate and the Mardîn Gate stand two huge round towers, larger than any others and later in date.[206] Near the Mardîn Gate the chemin de ronde is for some distance vaulted over and lighted only by small loop-hole windows on the inner side. To the south of the Mardîn Gate the wall runs out abruptly, and the salient angle thus formed holds a great hall of which the vault is borne on columns. The two main streets lie from gate to gate, intersecting each other at right angles, and since this is in accordance with an ancient scheme of city planning, the line of the streets may be as old as the first foundation of the town. Not far from the point of intersection stands the Ulu Jami’ with its famous courtyard, enclosed to east and west by a two-storeyed portico, which has been conjectured to be either the remains of a church built by Heraclius or a Byzantine palace ([Fig. 209]). The buildings need a more exhaustive study than the fanaticism of the Mohammadan population will at present admit, and the correct plan of mosque and court has yet to be made. The older part of the work is closely related to the ancient architecture of the Ṭûr ’Abdîn.
Even this hasty survey of Diyârbekr was sufficient to convince me that the treasures which it contains are still unexplored. Of its many mosques only the Ulu Jami’ has been so much as photographed, though the square minarets scattered over the town are probably an indication of an early date. Once or twice as I walked in the bazaars I looked through gateways into the courts of splendid khâns, where the walls were decorated with contrasted patterns in limestone and basalt, and stripes of black and white masonry are used in many of the houses and mosques. The final history of Amida must wait upon a much more careful investigation of the town than any which has yet been undertaken.
CHAPTER IX
DIYÂRBEKR TO KONIA
June 4—July 1
The frontier between the Arabic and the Turkish-speaking peoples is not sharply defined. Through the southern parts of the Kurdish hills it is common to find men acquainted with one or both languages in addition to their native Kurdish; among the Christians of the Ṭûr ’Abdîn a knowledge of Syriac is not rare; in Diyârbekr, where there is a considerable Arab population, Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish are spoken about equally, but north of Diyârbekr Arabic ceases to be heard, and as we journeyed along the road from Kharpût to Malaṭiyah, Kurdish died out also. Fattûḥ, in addition to many other qualifications for travel, speaks Turkish fluently, though in a manner peculiar to himself; the muleteers who were with me had some knowledge of the language, and I have enough to wish that I had more of that singularly beautiful and flexible tongue. Thus equipped we set out to make our way across Taurus and Anti-Taurus on to the Anatolian plateau.
As far as Malaṭiyah we followed the high road which led us at first across a fertile plain celebrated for its gardens ever since the days of Ammianus Marcellinus. Outside the village of Tarmûr[207] we spent the night somewhat uneasily by reason of certain wedding festivities which were there in progress. Not only did the merry-makers keep up their rejoicings until close upon dawn, but the inhabitants of a neighbouring village judged the occasion to be propitious for mule-lifting, and were driven off with rifle shots. Peace was restored by daybreak, and the marriage procession conveying the bride to her husband’s house set off to the strains of fife and drum. We passed it upon the road, a motley crowd, mounted and afoot. The bride was enveloped in a silken cloak of vivid magenta, which will not, I fear, be needed again for many a long day, if her opportunities for the wearing of finery may be measured by the aspect of her future home, for a more poverty-stricken collection of hovels than the bridegroom’s village it would be difficult to picture. We left her in her brief glory to take up her daily task of preventing her husband’s roof from falling about her ears, and rode on to the hill of Arghana, a bold spur of the Taurus mountains, with a village perched among its crags. I sent the baggage animals along the carriage road and climbed with a zaptieh to the village, and thence by a steep path to the Armenian monastery of the Virgin, which stands on the summit of the rocks.[208] We were rewarded by a magnificent view and by a pleasant talk with the prior who informed me, as I drank his excellent coffee, that the monastery was founded in the first century of the Christian era, a tradition which calls for weightier confirmation than any which he advanced. Be that as it may, the existing house must have been largely rebuilt in the Middle Ages, perhaps towards the fourteenth century—I hazard this date on the evidence supplied by the decoration of the church which had the character of Mohammadan work of about that period. We led our horses down the north side of the hill, by a stony
