Kochanes consists of a church built on the verge of a precipice, many tombs, a grove of poplars, a sloping lawn, scattered village houses and barley-fields extending up the alp, and nearly on the edge of a precipitous cliff the Patriarch's residence, a plain low collection of stone buildings, having an arched entrance and a tower for refuge or defence. The houses of his numerous relations are grouped near it. Everything is singularly picturesque. The people, being afraid of an attack from the Kurds, would not suffer me to pitch my tent on their fair meadow, and Sulti, the Patriarch's sister, has installed me in a good room in the house, looking across the tremendous ravine of the Terpai upon savage mountains, the lower skirts of which are clothed with the tawny foliage of the scrub oak, and their upper heights with snow.
I. L. B.
LETTER XXIX
Kochanes, Oct. 27.
After two days the Patriarch arrived from Gahgoran with nearly forty persons. To realise what this house is like, one must go back four centuries, to the mode of living of the medieval barons of England. Mar Shimun is not only a spiritual prince, but the temporal ruler of the Syrians of the plains and valleys, and of the Ashirets or tribal Syrians of the mountains of Central Kurdistan, as well as a judge and a salaried official of the Turkish Government. He appoints the maleks or lay rulers of each district, where the office is not hereditary, and possesses ecclesiastical patronage. For over four centuries the Patriarch has been of the family of Shimun, which is regarded as the royal family; and he is assisted in managing affairs by a "family council." Kochanes is thus the ecclesiastical and political metropolis of the Syrian nation, and the innumerable disputes which arise among the people of this region are brought here for judgment and arbitration.
It is a crowded life. From sunrise to sunset the pavement outside the rude hall of entrance, the great room, like that at Marbishu, where Sulti presides, and the guest-chambers, are always thronged with men waiting to be received by the Patriarch, sleeping on the big settle in the hall, or cleaning swords and guns, or wrestling, performing feats of horsemanship, playing chess, and eating. Sixty persons more or less are guests here. Every one coming into the valley is received, and horses are stabled while men are fed. Outside, sheep and fowls are being continually killed, two or three sheep being required daily; mules are departing for Diza for stores, or are returning with flour and sugar; oxen are bringing in hay, and perpetual measuring and weighing are going on. The cost of provisioning such an army of guests is enormous, and presses heavily on the Patriarch's slender resources. Intrigues are rife. In some ways every man's hand is against his fellow, and the succession to the Patriarchate, although nominally settled, is a subject of scheming, plotting, rivalries, and jealousies. Then there are various appointments, secular and spiritual, to be wrangled for, the difficult relations with Turkey to be managed, and such a wavering policy to be shaped towards Rome and American Presbyterianism as shall absolutely break with neither.
Among the guests who come and go as they please, unquestioned, are refugees from the barbarities of the Kurds, among the most pitiable of whom is Mar ——, Bishop of ——, bereft under threat of death of his Episcopal seal, and a fugitive from his diocese, which is almost destroyed by violence and exactions. Few hours pass in which some fresh tale of bloodshed, or the driving off of flocks, or the attacking of travellers, or the digging into houses, is not brought up here. A piteous state of alarm prevails. Mar Shimun, naturally feeble and irresolute, and his family council are helpless. His dual position aggravates his perplexities. Counsels are divided and paralysed. No one knows where to turn for help on earth, and "the Lord is deaf," some of the people say.
On entering the house by an archway, where the heavily-bossed door stands always open, a busy scene is to be witnessed in the hall, which is roughly paved with irregular slabs of stone. On the rude stone settle men are sitting or sleeping, or a carpenter is using it as his bench, or a sheep is being cut up on it. At the end of a passage is the "house," a high, big, blackened room, with shelving floors of earth and rock, ovens in the floors, great quaraghs holding grain, piles of wood, men sawing logs, huge pots, goat-skins of butter hanging from the rafters, spinning-wheels, a loom, great roughly-cut joints of meat, piles of potatoes, women ceaselessly making blankets of bread, to be used as tablecloths before being eaten, preparations for the ceaseless meals involved by the unbounded hospitality of the house, and numbers of daggered serving-men, old women, and hangers-on. This room is only lighted from the doors and from a hole in the roof. Nearly opposite is a low dark lobby, from which opens my room, sixteen feet square, with walls three feet thick, and Mar Shimun's room, about the same size, which serves him for sleeping, eating, reception-room, and office.
On the same side of the hall are two guest-rooms, now packed to their utmost capacity, and a large room in which Ishai, the Patriarch's half-brother, a young man of exceeding beauty, lives, with his lovely wife, Asiat, and their four children. In a ruinous-looking tower attached to the main building Mr. Browne has his abode, up a steep ladder. Below there are houses inhabited by the Patriarch's relations, one of whom, Marta, is a dignified and charming woman, and the mother of Mar Auraham, the Patriarch-designate, whose prospective dignity is the subject of much intrigue.