[2] I am indebted to the excellent Yusuf, dragoman of the British Consulate at Erzerum and my friend from childhood, for a copy and translation of this inscription: “In the name of God, the merciful and most compassionate, this is the tomb of the great emir, Melik-ul-Umara, Karanlai Agha, who was taken from this place of corruption to the place of mercy and immortality, a Moslem, believer in one God, on the 5th day of Ramazan in the year 689.” [↑]
[3] My photograph of the belle of Gotni displays such a lack of good features that I must refrain from reproducing it for fear of belying my impression. In its place I offer a picture of one of the best-looking of her less flourishing comrades. [↑]
[4] It would probably be safe to say that the Armenian element predominates in the plain proper, and the Kurdish element in the villages bordering upon the plain along the southern border range. Writing in 1838, Consul Brant reported as follows: “In the whole plain of Mush there are not any Mohammedan peasants intermingled with the Armenians: a fact which would clearly point out this country as belonging rather to Armenia than to Kurdistan; indeed the tent-dwelling Kurds are evidently intruders, and the stationary Kurds, it cannot be doubted, belonged originally to the nomad race” (J.R.G.S. 1840, vol. x. p. 347). [↑]
[5] I refer the reader with some hesitation to Cuinet’s account of this monastery (La Turquie d’Asie, Paris, 1892, vol. ii. p. 584, vilayet de Bitlis). See also Saint Martin, Mémoires sur l’Arménie, vol. ii. pp. 431, 467. [↑]
[6] Brant in Journal R.G.S. 1840, vol. x. p. 351. Koch in the forties estimated the population at 1000 Mohammedan and 415 Armenian families, or a total of about 8000 souls (Reise im pontischen Gebirge, etc., Weimar, 1846, p. 405). [↑]
[7] Archives of the British Consulate at Erzerum. [↑]
[8] For the Catholics of Mush and Mush plain, see Boré (Correspondance et Mémoires, Paris, 1840, vol. i. p. 398), and Smith and Dwight (Missionary Researches in Armenia, London, 1834, p. 429). They have evidently increased in numbers since the time of these writers. [↑]
[9] The subject is discussed by Ritter, Erdkunde, vol. x. p. 816. [↑]
[10] Saint Martin, Mémoires sur l’Arménie, vol. i. p. 102. [↑]