From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

14th June.—Zaráh to Míla Gird, twenty miles—route W.S.W., across a wide alluvial plain, bounded by the Alwand mountain on the south, and the Caraghan range on the north. The level surface presents a bright sheet of green corn, pasture land, and meadows, interspersed with numerous villages and gardens, all radiant in their summer foliage. The scene is one of great promise, but its reality sadly disappoints.

On arrival at Míla Gird we rode up to the post-house. A corpse with gaping mouth and staring eyes lay athwart the threshold; hungry, pinched, and tattered men and women, careless of their surroundings, passed and repassed without so much as a glance at it. We too passed on through the village, and witnessed the nakedness of its misery. Men desponding, bowed, and paralysed by want, women nude in their rags, with matted hair and shrivelled features, wandered restlessly like witches, naked children with big bellies and swollen feet turned up their deep sunk eyes with an unmeaning stare as we disturbed them at their morning meal of wild seed grasses and unripe ears of corn. The scene was the most frightful we had anywhere seen, and the roadside deposits of undigested grass and weeds, told of the dire straits the surviving population endures.

We passed on from this scene of suffering, and alighted under the shade of some willow-trees fringing a water-course beyond the village, and there awaited the arrival of our baggage, which by some mistake had taken the wrong road, and was passing our stage, as we rightly concluded by the dust rising on the plain some miles off. Shukrullah Beg galloped after them, and brought them back about midday, all more or less knocked up by the heat of the sun.

In the afternoon I had a quantity of bread prepared and distributed to the poor villagers. The frantic struggles for its possession, the fighting and biting and screaming that followed, decided me not to attempt such a mode of relief again. I had had thirty or forty men and women and children seated in a row preparatory to the distribution. But the bread was no sooner brought forward than they all rushed on Shukrullah Beg and the two muleteers bearing the bread, and nearly tore the clothes off their backs. They dropped their loads, and extricating themselves as best they could, left the crowd to fight it out amongst themselves. And they certainly set to work with the ferocity of wild beasts, and the bread, of which there was a sackful, was torn from hand to hand, and fought over till much of it was destroyed.

15th June.—Míla Gird to Hamadán, thirty-six miles, and halt a day. We set out shortly before midnight by a westerly route along the plain to the foot of the hills, and then turned south-west to Hamadán, at the foot of the snow-topped Alwand mountain. At about seven miles we reached a range of low hills, and beyond them passed over a long stretch of pasture downs, a dreary solitude, without a sign of life for miles. At another seven miles we passed the roadside hamlet of Durguz, and three miles farther on a decayed village, which we were told had been depopulated by the famine. As it stood close to the road, I turned aside to visit it, and witnessed a scene that baffles description, and, from what we heard, is but too common in this part of the country.

The village (its name I omitted to note at the time, and have since forgotten) contained about a hundred and fifty houses, but only five of them were now tenanted. The rest were all deserted, and many of them were falling to ruin. In one of the now still and voiceless streets I passed a middle-aged man, apparently in the last stage of starvation. He was propped in a sitting posture against a wall, with his lank withered arms crossed in front to support his shrivelled legs from weighing upon his misshaped feet and swollen ankles. His sickly-looking face, with puffed cheeks, drawn lips, and sunken eyes, rested on his knees, and as we rode past he had not the energy to move or beg a morsel of bread. I threw him a kran, but, without a motion towards it, he merely gasped out, “Nán, bidih nán!” (“Bread, give me bread!”) A little way on a horrible stink declared the existence of a putrid corpse in the tenantless houses around; and outside the village, on the edge of a small patch of ripening corn, we found the remnant of the population, already at this early hour (it was only four o’clock) staying the pangs of their hunger by literally grazing the green grass. They were three or four hag-like women, and as many half-grown lads; and as they plucked the ears of bearded corn, they chewed and swallowed them beard and all.

At four miles farther on we crested an upland, and then sloped down to the delightful valley of Hamadán. Its green sward, yellowing crops, and gardens dark in the luxuriance of their foliage, presented a picture of happiness and prosperity strangely reversed by the cruel reality. On a hill slope overlooking this crest of upland we observed a couple of small military tents. In front of them were seated three or four sarbáz of the guard, stationed here to protect the road from depredation by the hungry peasantry around. Lower down the slope we passed a party of Hamadánis, driving their oxen and asses in the direction whence we had come. They were almost all armed, indicating the insecure state of the country here, for they are the first armed people (other than military) we have met in all our journey from the eastern frontier.

Our road across the valley led past Surkhabad over a river crossed by a masonry bridge of five arches, and then by Shivím to the city, where we found accommodation in the post-house. We arrived at 7.47 A.M., and at this hour the thermometer rose to 71° Fah. At daybreak on the march it was so low as 48° Fah. Hamadán is an extensive city, delightfully situated at the foot of the Alwand. In the nooks and hollows extending along the base of the mountain, and some way up its bare rocky slopes, are situated a number of picturesque little hamlets, buried from view in their surrounding vineyards and orchards; and in the valley stretching away to the west is a continuous succession of corn-fields, fruit gardens, and villages, amidst which flows a considerable stream fed by numerous little rills coming down from the hills. Altogether the scenery is very charming, and the snowy heights of the mountain above add a feature as pleasing to view as it is refreshing to the senses. The ground, too, is classic. Here stood the ancient Ecbatana, whose mouldy soil yields a variety of ancient relics, Median, Grecian, and early Arab signets, seals, and rings, with coins, beads, and sculptures. Here too are shown the tombs of Esther and Mordecai, and of Avicenna, the Arabian philosopher and physician.

The present city occupies the depression and slopes of a hollow at the foot of the mountain, and is said to contain nine thousand houses. Its situation affords facilities for drainage, but is objectionable on the score of ventilation. The climate, however, is described as very salubrious, although its winter is a rigorous season, as may be well understood from its elevation at 6162 feet above the sea. The surrounding country is pretty and productive, and in prosperous times the place must be a delightful residence, which it certainly is not now.

The population of the city was reckoned at fifty thousand before the famine, and is now estimated at half that number, but I don’t think there can be so many as fifteen thousand. The place was the centre of a considerable trade, especially with Russia by Resht on the Caspian, and had a numerous colony of Jews. It now appears to be utterly ruined. Hardly a decently-dressed man is to be seen, and nothing is to be got in its bazárs; even our cattle were with difficulty supplied with fodder and grain. The city swarms with famishing beggars, and our lodging in the post-house was besieged by crowds of them, whom it was impossible to satisfy. We were prevented moving outside the walls of the post-house through fear of them, for, as Shukrullah Beg warned us, they were in a dangerous mood, and if I ventured into the city on foot, I should certainly have the clothes torn off my back, and might possibly lose my life—neither very pleasant alternatives; so I curbed the promptings of curiosity at the dictates of discretion, and fed my would-be assailants with bread, the distribution going on through a hole in the gateway, by way of protection against assault.