Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Volume 2 (of 2) / Including a Summer in the Upper Karun Region and a Visit to the Nestorian Rayahs

by Isabella L. Bird

A SYRIAN FAMILY.

Looking round on the handsome men and comely women, who would greet the sunrise with Christian prayer and praise, and whose ancestors have worshipped Christ as God for fourteen centuries in these mountain fastnesses, I wondered much at my former apathy concerning them. It is easier to feel them our fellow-Christians on the spot than to put the feeling into words, but writing here in the house of their Patriarch, the Catholicos of the East, I realise that the Cross signed on their brows in baptism is to them as to us the symbol of triumph and of hope; that by them as by us the Eucharistic emblems are received for the life of the soul, "in remembrance of Christ's meritorious Cross and Passion"; that through ages of accumulating wrongs and almost unrivalled misery, they like us have worshipped the crucified Nazarene as the crowned and risen Christ, that to Him with us they bend the adoring knee, and that like us they lay their dead in consecrated ground to await through Him a joyful resurrection.

There were five degrees of frost during the night, and as I lay awake from cold the narratives I had heard and the extraordinary state of things in which I so unexpectedly found myself made a very deep impression on me. There, for the first time in my life, I came into contact with people grossly ignorant truly, but willing to suffer "the loss of all things," and to live in "jeopardy every hour" for religious beliefs, which are not otherwise specially influential in their lives. My own circumstances, too, claimed some consideration, whether to go forward, or back to Urmi. It is obvious from what I hear that the bringing my journey to Erzerum to a successful issue will depend almost altogether on my own nerve, judgment, and power of arranging, and that at best there will be serious risks, hardships, and difficulties, which will increase as winter sets in. After nearly coming to the cowardly decision to return, I despised myself for the weakness, and having decided that some good to these people might come from farther acquaintance with their circumstances, I fell asleep, and now the die is cast.

We were ready at daybreak the next morning, but for the same reasons as those given at Merwana did not start till seven for an eleven hours' march. I took two armed horsemen and six armed footmen, all fine fellows used to the work of reconnoitring and protecting. Three of them scouted the whole time high up on the sides of the pass, not with the purposeless sensational scouting of Persian sowars, but with the earnestness of men who were pledged to take us safely through, and who live under arms to protect their property and families.

After five hours of toiling up the Drinayi Pass, taking several deep fords, and being detained by a baggage horse falling fifty feet with his load, we crossed the summit, and by a long descent through hills of rounded outlines covered with uncut sun-cured hay, reached the plain of Gawar, where the guards left us. On the way we passed the small Christian hamlet of Eyal, which was robbed of its sheep with the sacrifice of the shepherd's life the following night. At the village of Yekmala on the plain the Kurdish katirgis by a shameful exaction got us into great trouble, and there was a fight, in which Johannes's gun was wrested from him, and some of my things were taken, the Kurds meantime driving off their animals at a fast trot. The aspect of affairs was so very bad and the attack on my men so violent that I paid the value of the Kurdish depredations, and we got away. A little farther on the katirgis were extremely outrageous, and began to fulfil their threat of "throwing down their loads," but I persuaded Qasha ——, who was alarmed and anxious, to leave them behind, and they thought better of it.

The mountain-girdled plain of Gawar is a Paradise of fertility, with abundant water, and has a rich black soil capable of yielding twenty or thirtyfold to the cultivator. On it is the town of Diza, chiefly Armenian, which is a Turkish customs station, a military post, and the residence of a Kaimakam. There are over twenty Christian as well as some Moslem villages on Gawar, and a number of Kurdish hamlets and "castles" on the slopes and in the folds of the hills above it.

The sun was sinking as we embarked on the plain, and above the waves of sunset gold which flooded it rose the icy spires and crags of the glorious Jelu ranges and the splintered Kanisairani summits. The plain has an altitude of over 6000 feet, and there was a sharp frost as we dismounted at the village of Pirzala and put up at the house of the Malek David, having been eleven and a half hours in the saddle. After consulting with him and other village worthies I dismissed the katirgis and paid them more than their contract price. The next morning they swore by the Prophet's beard, and every other sacred thing, that they had not been paid, and when payment was proved by two respectable witnesses, they were not the least abashed. Poor fellows! They know no better and are doubtless very poor. I was glad to get rid of their sinister faces and outbreaks of violence, but for some days it was impossible, being harvest-time, to obtain transport to Kochanes, though I was able to leave Pirzala for other villages.

The next day mists rolled down the mountains, and a good cold English rain set in, in which I had a most pleasant ride to Diza, which was repeated the following day in glorious weather, the new-fallen snow coming half-way down the mountain sides. I was surreptitiously on Turkish soil, and it was necessary to show my passport to the Diza officials, get a permit to travel, and have my baggage examined. Ishu, the present Malek of the plain, through whom all business between the Christians and the Government is transacted, accompanied us to the Mutessarif of Julamerik.

Diza is an unwalled town on an eminence crowned by barracks. The garrison of 200 men was reduced to six during the summer. The Kurds evidently took the reduction as a hint to them to do what they liked, and they have mercilessly ravaged and harried the plain for months past.[42] An official assured me that 15,000 sheep have been driven off from the Gawar Christian villages between the middle of June and the 17th of October, partly by the nomad Herkis. There are now sixty soldiers at Diza, and the Mutessarif of Julamerik is there, having come down to capture Abdurrahman Bey, one of the great oppressors of the Christians,—an attempt rendered abortive (it is said) by a bribe given by the Bey to the commanding officer of the troops.

I was interested in my first visit to a Turkish official. His room was above a stable, with a dark and difficult access, and the passages above were crowded with soldiers. The Mutessarif sat on a divan at the upper end of a shabby room, an elderly man much like Mr. Gladstone, very courteous and gentlemanly, with plenty of conversation and savoir-faire. He said that the letter I carry is "a very powerful document," that it supersedes all the usual formalities, that my baggage would not even be looked at, and that I should not require a teskareh or permit. By his advice I called on the Kaimakam, and in each room a soldier brought in delicious coffee. The Kaimakam was also very courteous, and talked agreeably and intelligently, both taking the initiative, as etiquette demands.