LODGINGS FOR TRAVELLERS.
The floor was deep with the manure of ages and piled with bales and boxes. In the side recesses, which are about the height of a mule's back, the muleteers camped with their fires and their goods, and laid the provender for their beasts in the front. These places are the mangers of the eastern caravanserai, or khan, or inn. Such must have been the inn at Bethlehem, and surely the first step to the humiliation of "the death of the cross" must have been the birth in the manger, amidst the crowd and horrors of such a stable.
The odour was overpowering and the noise stunning, and when our wet, mud-covered baggage animals came in, adding to the din, there was hardly room to move, far less for the roll in which all mules indulge when the loads are taken off; and the crush resulted in a fight, and one mule got his fore-feet upon my "manger," and threatened to share it with me. It was an awful place to come to after a six hours' march in rain and snow, but I slid off my mule into the recess, had it carpeted, put down my chair, hung a blanket up in front, and prepared to brave it, when the inhabitants of this room, the one place which has any pretensions to being a room in the village, were bribed by an offer of six krans (about four shillings) to vacate it for me. Its "pretensions" consist in being over a gateway, and in having a door, and a square hole looking on the street; a crumbling stair slippery with mud leads up to it. The roof leaks in every direction, and the slimy floor is full of pools, but it is luxury after the caravanserai stable, and with one waterproof sheet over my bed and another over myself I have fared well, though the door cannot be shut, and the rest of the party are in the stable at an impassable distance.
Our language happily has no words in which the state of this village can be described. In front of this room is a broken ditch full of slimy greenish water, which Hadji took for my tea! There has been a slight snowfall during the night, and snow is impending. We have now reached a considerable altitude, and may expect anything. Hadji has just climbed the stair with groans of "Ya Allah," and has almost wailed out, "Colonel says we go—God help us."
Kirrind, Jan. 23.—From Saripul-i-Zohab we are taking the most southerly of the three routes to Kirmanshah traversed by Sir H. Rawlinson in 1836.[12] A sea of mud varied by patches of sodden snow, walls of rock with narrow passes, great snow-covered mountains, seen spectrally for a minute at a time through swirling snow-clouds, black tents of nomads, half-drowned villages, and a long, cold, steep ascent, among scrub oaks and dwarf ash, to snow which was not melting, and the hospitalities of a Kurdish village, comprise the interests of the march from Saripul to Myan Tak, so far as they lie on the surface, but in various ways this part of Kurdistan has many interests, not to be absolutely ignored even in a familiar letter.
Here the Ilyats, who are supposed to constitute a fifth of the rural population of Persia, are met with in large numbers, and their brown flocks and herds are still picking up a scanty subsistence. The great chief of this, the Gurān tribe, holds the region on an annual payment to the Persian Government, gives grain to his tribesmen, and receives from them, of corn one-half, and of rice two-thirds of the crop. These people sow their grain in early spring, and then move up with their flocks to the mountain pastures, leaving behind only a few men to harvest the crops. They use no manure, this being required for fuel, and in the case of rice they allow a fallow of at least seven years. There are very few cultivators resident upon these lands, but Ilyat camps occur frequently.
The region is steeped in history. The wretched village of Saripul is the Calah of Asshur and the Halah of the Israelitish captivity,[13] and gave to the surrounding country the name of Chalonitis, which we have on our old maps. A metropolitan See in the fifth century a.d., soon after the institution of the Nestorian hierarchy, it was called Calah, Halah, and Holwan. If the Diyalah be the ancient Gyndes, noteworthy for the singular delay of Cyrus on his march to Babylon, and Saripul the ancient Holwan, and if in addition to the numerous Chaldæan and Sasanian remains there are relics of Semiramis and of the fire-temples of the Magi, the crowd of historic associations is almost too much for one day, and I will return to the insignificant details of the journey.
We left at nine, crossed the Holwan by a four-arched brick bridge, and in falling snow and deep mud rode over fairly level ground till we came to an abrupt range of limestone rock, with a natural rift, across which the foundations of a wall still remain. The clouds were rolling low, and the snow was driving wildly, so as to make it impossible to see the sculptured tablet described by Rawlinson and Layard, on which a high-priest of the Magi is represented, with one hand raised in benediction, and the other grasping a scroll, the dress being the pontifical robe worn by the Zoroastrian priests, with a square cap, pointed in front, and lappets covering the mouth. Above this is a tomb with an ornamented entrance.
We were now among a very strange and mysterious people, of whose ancestry and actual beliefs very little is known. They are Ali-Ilahis, but Europeans often speak of them as "Davidites," from their special veneration for King David. This tomb in the rift is called Dukkani-Daoud, or David's shop, and the people believe that he still dwells there, and come on pilgrimages and to offer animals in sacrifice from all parts of Kurdistan. He is believed to work as a smith, and the katirgis say that he makes suits of fine armour. A part of the tomb which is divided from the rest by a low partition is believed to be a reservoir containing the water which he uses to temper his metal. A great mound with some building in the centre, on the right of the road near this gorge, though properly it bears another name, is called by the people "David's Fort." Jewish traditions abound, specially concerning David, who is regarded by the tribes as their great tutelar prophet.