It is not so very long ago that this door between highlands and lowlands was in the keeping of a line of Kurdish princes. The Merchant in Persia, who travelled in the early portion of the sixteenth century, describes Bitlis as a town of no great size, ruled by a Kurd in only nominal allegiance to the Shah of Persia, and named in the peculiar jargon of these early adventurers Sarasbec. The castle, with its spacious area, high walls, turrets and towers, was occupied by this petty feudal sovereign.[2] A century later the Bey of Bitlis impressed Tavernier with his show of power; he could place in the field no less than 20,000 to 25,000 horsemen besides a quantity of good infantry. He resided in the castle, approached by three successive drawbridges; and his private apartments were situated in the last and smallest of three courts through which the visitor made his way on foot to audience. The Bey acknowledged neither the Sultan of Turkey nor the Shah of Persia, and was courted by both on account of the strategical value of his city, barring the communications between Aleppo and Tabriz.[3] When the Jesuits founded a mission in Bitlis in the year 1685 they were kindly received by the ruling Bey. But that prince was in nominal subjection to the Sultan, each successive ruler paying to the Porte a small present as a matter of form upon the occasion of his accession.[4] In the eighteenth century the padre Maurizio Garzoni, who sojourned for eighteen years among the Kurds in the interests of the Propaganda at Rome, speaks of the dynasty of Bitlis as one of the five considerable principalities which divided between them the Kurdistan of his day. The remainder were respectively located at Jezireh, Amadia, Julamerik and Sulimanieh.[5] The last of this old order of princes at Bitlis was a man of many-sided and remarkable character, whose romantic history one peruses with breathless excitement in the dry reports and correspondence of Consul Brant, the eye and ear of the famous Stratford Canning. His name was Sherif Bey; and he built a fortified palace on the heights which confine the valley on the east. The site of his residence I have indicated on the plan, although it has long ago been razed to the ground. After a life of chequered fortune and fox-like resistance to the Turkish power he was finally overwhelmed by the operations of Reshid Pasha and taken a prisoner to Constantinople in 1849. It appears to have been this prince who first deserted the ancient castle, which has now fallen into complete ruin. Since his overthrow Bitlis has been governed by a Turkish pasha, and it forms the capital of a vilayet bearing its name.
The derivation of that name does not appear to be known, although it was prevalent in the time of the Arab geographers.[6]
The place seems to have borne the earlier appellation of Baghesh, and to have belonged to the Armenian province of Beznuni.[7] Local tradition ascribes the origin of the castle to the campaigns of Alexander—a persistent belief which has no foundation upon any known facts. A laughable story is gravely related in this connection. The King of Macedon was impressed by the advantages of the site as he journeyed past it at the head of his army. Detaching one of his generals who was called Lais, or Lis, he ordered him to erect a stronghold at the junction of the two streams and to endeavour to complete it against the return of the royal forces. The general executed these commands to the very letter; and when the King retraced his steps to the valley which had excited his admiration, he found it defended against his entry by a formidable fortress. After in vain employing all the arts known to the besiegers of his day, he contrived to possess himself of the person of his revolted subject. When that rebel was introduced to the royal presence, he defended his action against the vehement reproaches of his master in the following brief speech. “My lord ordered me to build him a strong castle, the strongest which should yet have been constructed. How could I better convince my lord of the obedience of his servant than by successfully resisting in that castle the greatest warrior of the world?” Alexander was pleased by the words, but playfully observed in the Persian language that Lis was a very naughty man, bad Lis. The epithet adhered to the name of the general and survives in that of the town to the present day. This is a good example of an Oriental yarn.
The connection of Bitlis with Alexander is probably apocryphal; but the number of Greek coins that are dug up and offered for sale to the traveller argue the extension of the later Hellenic culture into the recesses of this distant valley. During my stay at Akhlat in the course of my second journey several of these pieces in silver, derived from Bitlis and the neighbourhood, were brought into my tent. One of them, a coin of Antiochus the Sixth of Syria, lies before me as I write. Greek inscriptions, perhaps of the Roman period, are said to be forthcoming in the vicinity. But such hearsay should be received with considerable caution; and the same remark will apply to the statement made to Shiel by an aged native that there had existed an inscription on the wall of the castle ascribing its foundation to a date 300 years before the prophet Mohammed.[8] The Arabic writings seen on the ruins, but unfortunately not copied or translated by modern travellers, have most likely, almost without exception, disappeared.
The population of the town appears to have increased during the present century. In 1814 it was believed to consist of not more than 12,000 souls, one-half Mussulman, and the remainder Armenian.[9] Brant computed the number of families in 1838 at 3000, or from 15,000 to 18,000 souls. Of these, two-thirds were Mussulman, and one-third Armenian, besides 50 families belonging to the Jacobite persuasion.[10] In 1868 Consul Taylor speaks of 4000 families, of which 1500 were Christian, that is to say Armenian.[11] At the time of my visit the population of the town probably amounted to close on 30,000 souls, 10,000 Armenians, 300 Syrians or Jacobites, and the rest Mussulman Kurd. The official figures for the town and caza, comprising Tadvan and the head of Mush plain, showed a total of just over 44,000 inhabitants, including about 15,500 Armenians. If we would equalise the number of the females to that of the males, 15 per cent must be added to these figures.[12] Bitlis owes its somewhat flourishing state mainly to its position as a provincial centre; but it does a trade in gall-nuts and gum, collected in the surrounding country, as well as in loupes or whorls found on the trunks of the walnut trees and exported to France for veneering purposes. The nuts of these trees furnish an oil which is also marketable, and madder root is found in the district and used for dyeing purposes. From the leaves of the oak and other trees, the villagers in the neighbourhood collect manna — an old-world practice still in vogue in Kurdistan.
I would now invite my reader to accompany me in a ride through the town. Our starting-point will be a fine house on the heights of Bash Mahalla, immediately adjoining the road from Van. A stone bridge crosses the road from the precincts of the mansion to the dwelling of the ladies of the family, surrounded by a pleasant garden. The best rooms of the salamlik or larger residence had been placed at our disposal by one of the notables of Bitlis, by name Shemseddin Bey. Adjoining this quarter are the open spaces of the Gök Meidan, where you may admire an old medresseh, now used as a military store—a fine square building in hewn stone with four turrets at the corners, and a rich façade in the Arab style on the south side. The place is overgrown with weeds. Ancient elm trees spread their shade over the ruins of a mosque not many feet away. Adjacent is a cemetery with numerous headstones and two considerable mausolea. In this same district, not far from the residence of the Pasha, is situated the small mosque called Meidan Jamisi. A mollah dispenses instruction to some twenty little boys in a small den of a room close by. Descending the cliff-side to the main valley by a paved way, we pass the little mosque of Dort Sanduk, and the Armenian church of Karmirak. The latter, although presided over by the bishop of Bitlis, is an unpretentious building of four plain stone walls, with two rows of three stone pillars in the interior and crowned by a small dome. The bishop—poor fellow—will probably be in prison; that was his residence on the occasion of our sojourn. Attached to the church is a school with four teachers and over a hundred pupils, who certainly impressed us as better-to-do than at Van. Quite a number were wearing cloth clothes.
The prison, full of Armenians, frowns out from the edge of the cliff. We make our way down the trough of the valley and past the castle. It is nothing better than a shell, the inner structures having fallen in or yielded their masonry to serve as material for other buildings. On an eminence, overlooking the pile, is placed the Turkish High School or Rushdiyeh, with seventy scholars and four instructors. Our visit was expected, but no preparations could conceal the squalor and general decrepitude of the institution. Most of the pupils were quite small boys. Where was the Mudir or Director of Public Instruction? It transpired that he too, although a Mussulman, was in prison. He had been complaining to Constantinople that the military authorities had turned him out of the building destined to serve as a High School, and had converted it into a store. The officers retaliated by locking him up.[13]
The Syrian church is situated in the same quarter—that of Kizil Mejid, or the red Mejid. Mejid is said to be a proper name. A plain little whitewashed chapel nestles under the cliff, and here the service is read in the Syriac language, and a Syriac Bible lies upon the desk. Not that any of the congregation understand that tongue; they speak Armenian and are familiar with Turkish. The Bible is expounded to them in Armenian, which may be said to be their native tongue. When we reflect that the services of the early Armenian Church were celebrated in the Syriac or the Greek languages, this transformation in the old order of things is not without interest. The attendant priest, a charming man who had come from Diarbekr, seemed half aware of the irony of the situation. He went so far as to say that the Armenians had usurped the Syrian religion and then set up a separate Church. But the differences between the Churches amounts to little more than a divergence in the preparation of the consecrated bread. The Syrians use leavened bread. There was sadness in his voice when he related the fortunes of the Jacobite community. In old days he maintained that they had been much more numerous; and he believed that the principal mosque in Bitlis had originally been a Syrian church. Some had emigrated; the greater number had become Armenians. A Jacobite marries an Armenian wife whom he leaves a widow; the woman brings up the children in the Armenian faith. I enquired why the faithful remnant spoke Armenian to the exclusion of any Syrian dialect. He replied, “Because this earth is Hayasdan (Armenia).” He added that there were some 1500 Syrians in the sanjak of Sert, mostly in the districts of Sert and Shirvan. Their spiritual ruler is the patriarch of Mardin.
The Armenian Catholics are a mere handful among the inhabitants of Bitlis, amounting to not more than fifteen families, of which only three or four represent the converts of the former Jesuit Mission, founded here in 1685. The remainder have become Catholics during quite recent years. Persecution and schism have dealt hard blows at the Catholic community. In 1838 they did not number more than fifty citizens, and their priest had been taken a prisoner by the Gregorian Armenians and cruelly beaten at the monastery of Surb Karapet above Mush plain.[14] In the eighties that well-informed and genial ecclesiastic, Father Rhétoré of Van, speaks of them as the most neglected and disorganised body in Bitlis, which had dwindled during the Kupelianist movement and from other causes from thirty to nine families.[15] The advent of an energetic pastor, who had studied in the Jesuit college of Beyrut, has infused new life into the flock. He speaks French fluently, has travelled widely, and is an accomplished man. A school has been recently opened. The Catholics of Bitlis have had good reason to resent their treatment at the hands of the Gregorians; but their spiritual leader displayed an antipathy towards the Armenians of the national persuasion in which religious hatred had overcome the bonds of race.
Very different is the attitude of the American Protestant missionaries, whose flourishing establishment is situated in the Avel Meidan within the angle formed by the confluence of the stream from the eastern valley with the main Bitlis river. If their conversions excite the jealousy of the Gregorian hierarchy, their proselytes display no tendency to divest themselves of their nationality, but, on the contrary, remain Armenians to the core. This fact does not increase the goodwill of the Turkish official classes towards the Americans. Founded in 1858, their Mission encountered the same opposition on the part of the Armenian clergy as had formerly been experienced by the Catholics. It was not until after the lapse of seven years that a nucleus of five professed Protestants was formed; and, once a start had been made, progress was rapid. Of late years the labours of the missionaries have been wisely directed to the extension of their schools rather than to the propagation of Protestant doctrine. Debarred from working among the Mussulmans, they have supplied the Armenians with priceless advantages in the shape of a college in the provincial capital, and no less than fifteen schools in the smaller towns and villages comprised within the limits of the vilayet. About one-half of the attendants are and remain Gregorian. The college dispenses three grades of education: the High School, the intermediate and the primary grades. At the time of our visit twenty scholars were included in the first of these categories, fifty in the second, and about sixty in the third. There were fifteen boarders living on the premises. The teachers numbered four, besides the missionaries, the principal teacher having graduated at the important American institution in Kharput. Some eighty girls, some of them boarders, were receiving instruction. Of these the residents were in most cases inhabitants of Bitlis, parents preferring that their daughters should avoid passing to and fro in the streets. The majority pay for their maintenance in kind. They impressed me as being very neat and clean. The Mission was under the direction of Messrs. G. C. Knapp, R. M. Cole, and George Knapp—all zealous, experienced, and amiable men. Their Board have constructed a large church in the quarter, the community supplying a small portion of the funds. There are about 100 professed Protestants in Bitlis, and about three times this number of attendants at service. The Protestants of the whole vilayet may be counted at 1200, including those who have made no public profession.