[3] I have not verified their statement, which was repeated in other places, that according to a decree of 1890 they would be liable to military service in ten years after the date of the decree. [↑]
[4] 229 houses, with 1360 inhabitants (Family lists of 1886). [↑]
[5] He gives a population of 800 souls (op. cit. vol. ii. p. 304). [↑]
[6] Dubois (op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 298, 299) informs us that the Mussulmans of these districts are the old Georgian inhabitants whom Safar Pasha compelled to embrace Islam in 1625. He adds that the Armenians escaped this persecution, having been accorded by the reigning Sultan liberty of conscience, like the Jews in France under similar conditions.
The river Kur is essentially a Georgian river, even where it traverses districts which belong geographically to the Armenian tableland. For the history and character of the country about its upper course one may usefully consult the works of Dubois and Brosset already cited in this chapter, and Koch’s Reise im pontischen Gebirge, Weimar, 1846. [↑]
[7] Dubois (op. cit. vol. ii. p. 314) calls the Kur a torrent above Khertvis, and says it only becomes a river after the junction with the Toporovan river. [↑]
[8] I must refer the reader to Dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 302 seq., and Brosset, Voy. arch. p. 152. [↑]
[9] So Abich explains the phenomena (Geologische Forschungen in den kaukasischen Ländern, part iii. p. 31). [↑]
[10] Dubois, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 308 seq.; Brosset, Voy. arch. 2me rapport, p. 165, who gives an account of the adjacent church of Tsunda; and Abich, op. cit. part iii. p. 34. I would refer my reader to the last of these writers for an account of the geology of the gorge of Zeda Tmogvi (part iii. pp. 35, 36). [↑]
[11] Brosset is not quite sure about it (Voy. arch. 2me rapport, p. 165). The governor of Akhalkalaki had no doubt about the correctness of the identification. [↑]