From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

On the whole, the climate, with its many variations, may be considered salubrious and favourable to life. Its inhabitants certainly are physically amongst the finest of the human race, notwithstanding the inferior fare and barbarous mode of life that are the lot of a large proportion of them, in Afghanistan particularly. In this country the signs of departed prosperity and plenty are everywhere met with. From Ghazni westward, all along the valleys of the Tarnak and the Helmand, down to the basin of Sistan, the whole country is covered with the ruins of former cities, obliterated canals, and deserted cultivation—all assigned to the devastation of the Tartars under Changhiz and Tymúr in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The country has never recovered the havoc created by these curses of the human race. Since the destruction of the Arab rule overthrown by them, the country has known no stable government, and has been a stranger to peace, order, and prosperity alike. But it has within itself all the material elements of prosperity. What it wants are a firm government and a just rule. With these once more established over it, there is no reason why the country should not again recover its former state of prosperity and plenty. Its mountains contain a store of unexplored treasure, and its plains an only half-developed wealth.

Of its inhabitants I need add little here, as to describe them fully would fill a volume. Suffice it to say, that those of Persia and Afghanistan alike contain representatives of various Tartar races thrown into this region by the successive waves of invasion from the north, as well as representatives of earlier known peoples pushed on into it from the south-west, mixed up with the ancient inhabitants of the land. Thus in Persia, with the ancient inhabitants, who are mostly settled in the large towns and cities, are found various tribes of Mughals, Turks, and Kurds, together with Arabs, Armenians, and Jews. A fourth of the population, which may be estimated at six millions, consists of wandering tribes, generically known as ilyát, a term which signifies “the tribes,” and corresponds with the úlús of the Afghans. In the ilyát are comprised all sorts of tribes, Arab and Ajam, that is to say, of Arab origin and of Persian or foreign origin, or, in other words, tribes who have come into the country at different times from the west and from the north.

In Afghanistan, with its province of Balochistan, both included in the country of Khorassan, are the original Tajiks of Persian origin, the Afghans or Pukhtúns (the dominant race), and the Hazárah of Tartar invasions, together with Kazzilbash Mughals, and Uzbaks and Turks of various tribes, Hindkis and Kashmiris, and others of Indian origin, all in the northern tracts. In the southern are Brahoe and Baloch, of different origin and diverse speech; the Dihwár or Tajik, of Persian race and tongue, and a mixture of different tribes, such as Jats of Sind, Hindus of Shikárpúr, and a few mongrel tribes of nobody knows where.

In our passage through the Brahoe country I collected the material for a concise grammar and vocabulary of that language. It will be found in the Appendix. I had hoped to have been able to add similar grammars and vocabularies of the Baloch and Sistan dialects; but the adverse circumstances of our sojourn in these countries prevented my acquiring a sufficient knowledge of their languages, and I find that the data collected are much too scanty to permit of my making the attempt, though, from what I did gather, I believe both are closely allied to the Persian.

CHAPTER I.

We left Multán by the morning train on the 26th December 1871, and after a ride of near an hour, alighted at Sher Sháh Ghát on the river bank. Here we took leave of our kind host, Colonel Stuart Graham, Commissioner of the Division, and embarked on board the river steamer Outram. By noon we had loosed our moorings, and the Outram, wedged in between two unwieldy flats lashed to her one on either side, was fairly started down-stream of the river Chenáb.

We had hardly proceeded two hours when we were brought to a stand-still by “something” wrong with the engine. Whatever this mysterious “something” may have been, it necessitated our mooring alongside the river bank for the rest of the day. A stout plank thrown across from one of the flats served to communicate with the shore, which is here a dead level of loose sand, evidently a recent deposit by floods. The banks here are very low, so too is the stream between them at this season, as we soon discovered, to the no small trial of our patience. They—the banks—are of loose sand, flush with the general surface of the plain as far as the eye can reach on either side. They are perpetually sucking up moisture from the stream washing them, and then, becoming overweighted, subside into the river, to be restored again in the succeeding year’s floods.