Travels in Syria and the Holy Land

by John Lewis Burckhardt

The Turkmans taste flesh only upon extraordinary occasions, such as a marriage or a circumcision, a nightly feast during the Ramazan, or the arrival of strangers. Their usual fare is Burgoul; this dish is made of wheat boiled, and afterwards dried in the sun in sufficient quantity for a years consumption: the grain is re-boiled with butter or oil, and affords a very palateable nourishment; it is a favourite dish all over Syria. Besides Burgoul they eat rice, eggs, honey, dried fruit, and sour milk, called Leben. They have none but goats milk. Their bread is a thin unleavened cake, which the women bake immediately before dinner upon a hot iron plate, in less than a minute. Breakfast is served at eight oclock in the morning, the principal meal takes place immediately after sunset. The Turkmans, are great coxcombs at table, in comparison with other Levantines; instead of simply using his fingers, the Turkman twists his thin bread very adroitly into a sort of spoon, which he swallows, together with the morsel which he has taken out of the dish with it. I remember sitting with a dozen of them round a bason of sour milk, which we dispatched in a few minutes without any person, except myself, having in the least soiled his fingers.

The Turkman women do not hide themselves, even before strangers, but the girls seldom enter the mens room, although they are permitted freely to talk with their fathers guests. I was much struck with the elegance of their shapes and the regularity of their features. Their complexion is as fair as that of European women; as they advance in age the sun browns them a little. As to their morals, chastity becomes a necessary virtue where [p.639] even a kiss, is punished with death by the father or brother of the unhappy offender. I could mention several instances of the extreme severity of the Turkmans upon this subject; but one may suffice. Three brothers taking a ride end passing through an insulated valley, met their sister receiving the innocent caresses of her lover. By a common impulse they all three discharged their fire-arms upon her, and left their fallen victim upon the ground, while the lover escaped unhurt; my host Mohammed Ali, upon being informed of the murder, sent his servant to bring the body to his tent, in order to prevent the jackals from devouring it: the women were undressing and washing the body to commit it to the grave, when a slight breathing convinced them that the vital spark was not yet extinguished; in short the girl recovered. She was no sooner out of immediate danger, than one of Alis sons repaired to the tent of his friends, the three brothers, who sat sullen and silent round the fire, grieving over the loss of their sister. The young man entered, and saluted them, and said, I come to ask you, in the name of my father, for the body of your sister; my family wishes to bury her. He had no sooner finished than the brothers rose, crying: if she was dead you would not have asked for her, you would have taken the body without our permission. Then seizing their arms, they were hurrying out of the tent, in search of the still living victim; but Mohammed Alis son opposed the authority of his father and his own reputation of courage to their brutal intentions; he swore that he would kill the first who should leave the tent, told them that they had already sufficiently revenged the received injury, and that if their sister was not dead it was the visible protection of the prophet that had saved her: and thus, he at last persuaded them to grant his request. The girl was nursed for three months in Mohammed Alis family, and married after her complete recovery to the young man who had been the cause of her misfortune. Notwithstanding such severity the young Turkmans boast of their intrigues, and delight in all the dangers of secret courtship; and I have been assured, upon indisputable authority, that there are few men among them who have not enjoyed the favours of their mistresses before the consumnnation of their nuptials. If the woman happens to become a mother, she destroys her illegitimate offspring as the only means of saving her own life and that of the father.

The Turkman ladies dress in the common style of Syrian women; their bonnet is adorned with strings of Venetian zequins, or other gold pieces. The dress of the men is that of the Turks of Anatolia. The horsemen wear wide riding pantaloons, or Sherwalls, of cloth; their head-dress consists of a red cap round which they twist a turban of cotton or silk stuff; the wealthy wear turbans of flowered stuffs, or even Persian shawls. Twenty years ago the national head-dress was a tall and narrow cap of white wool, in the shape of a sugar-loaf, since that time the Ryhanlu have left off wearing it, but I remember to have seen a headdress of this kind during my stay with the Turkmans near Tarsus. The Turkman women are very laborious; besides the care of housekeeping, they work the tent coverings of goats hair, and the woollen carpets, which are inferior only to those of Persian manufacture. Their looms are of primitive simplicity; they do not make use of the shuttle, but pass the woof with their hands. They seem to have made great progress in the art of dyeing; their colours [p.640] are beauitful. Indigo and cochineal, which they purchase at Aleppo, give them their blue, and red dyes, but the ingredients of all the others, especially of a brilliant green, are herbs which they gather in the mountains of Armenia; the dyeing process is kept by them as a national secret. The wool of their carpets, is of the ordinary kind; the carpets are about seven feet long and three broad, and sell from fifteen to one hundred piastres a piece. While the females are employed in these labours the men pass their whole time in indolence; except at sunset, when they feed their horses and camels, they lounge about the whole day, without any useful employment, and without even refreshing their leisure by some trifling occupation. To smoke their pipes and drink coffee is to them the most agreeable pastime; they frequently visit each other, and collecting round the fire-place, they keep very late hours. I was told that there are some men amongst them, who play the tamboura, a sort of guitar, but I never heard any of them perform. If the young men would condescend to assist in agriculture, the wealth of the families would rapidly increase, and the whole of the plains of Antioch might in time be cultivated: at present, as far as I could observe, there are few families growing rich; most of them spend their whole income.

A Turkman never leaves his tent to take a ride in the neighbourhood without being armed with his gun, pistols, and sabre. I was astonished to see that they do not take the smallest care of their fire arms: a great number of them were shewn to me, to know whether they were of English manufacture; I found them covered with rust, and they complained of their often missing fire. They have no gunsmiths amongst them; nor any artizans at all, except some farriers, and a few makers of bridles and of horse accoutrements[.]

There are no lawyers or Ulemas among the Ryhanlu. Some families of consequence carry with them a Faqui or travelling Imam, to teach their children to read and to pray, and who in case of need performs likewise the duties of a menial servant, much like the young German barons governor. These Faqui are for the greater part natives of Albostan, educated there in mosques: they follow the Turkmans to participate in the pious alms which the Koran prescribes. They are generally ignorant, even of the Turkish law: they are often consulted however by the chiefs, and their sentence is generally confirmed by the chief whenever there is no precedent or customary law in point to the contrary.

I did not see any books amongst the Turkmans, and I am certain that out of fifty hardly one knows how to read or write. Even few of them know the text of their prayers (which are throughout the Mohammedan countries in the sacred language, the Arabic), and therefore perform the prescribed prostrations silently and without the usual ejaculations. The married people, men as well as women, are tolerably exact in the performance of their devotions, but the young men never trouble themselves about them.

I did not stay long enough among the Turkmans to be able to judge correctly of their character, especially as I was ignorant of their language. I saw enough, however, to convince me that they possess most of the vices of nomade nations, without their good qualities. The Turkmans are, like the Arabs and Kurds, a people of robbers, that is to say, [p.641] every thing which they can lay hold of in the open country is their lawful prize, provided it does not belong to their acknowledged friends. The Arabs make amends in some measure for their robberies by the hospitality and liberality with which they receive friends and strangers. In this respect I soon found that I had been led to form a very erroneous opinion of the Turkman character. I was introduced at Aleppo to Mohammed Ali Aga, a man of considerable influence amongst the Ryhanlu, as a physician who was travelling in search of herbs, and I succeeded in supporting my assumed character during near a fortnights stay under his tent. Before my departure from Aleppo, I made him a present of coffee and sweetmeats, to the amount of sixty piastres, and I promised him another present, when he should have brought me back in safety to Aleppo. Notwithstanding these precautions, my reception in his tent was rather cool, and I soon found that I was among men who had no other idea than that of getting as much out of me as they could. They were not under the least restraint, but calculated in my presence how much my visit was worth to them, as I sufficiently understood, from their animated tone and gestures, added to the few Turkish words, which I learnt. To spare my dinner my host took me out a visiting almost every day, just before the dinner hour; and that he might know how far it would be prudent to incur expence on my account, he permitted one of his friends to search my pockets, and was cruelly disappointed when he found that my purse did not contain more than four or five piastres. My horse, for the maintenance of which I had agreed with my host, was fed with straw, until I told them that I should take care of it myself, when they were obliged to deliver its daily portion of barley into my own hands. Such was the liberality which I experienced in return for the medical advice and medicines which they received without hesitation from me upon demanding them. Their minds seemed intent only upon money, except among the lovers there was no other subject of conversation, and instead of the Arab virtues, of honour, frankness, and hospitality, there appeared to be no other motive of action among them than the pursuit of gain. The person of a Frank may be safe among them, but his baggage will be exposed to close search, and whatever strikes the fancy of a powerful man, will be asked of him in such a manner, that it is adviseable to give up the object at once. I had fortunately hidden my compass in my girdle, but a thermometer which they found in my pocket, attracted general notice; if I had explained to them the use I meant to make of it, it would have confirmed the suspicion already hinted to me by one of them, that I intended to poison their springs. I pretended that the thermometer was a surgical instrument, which being put into the blood of an open wound served to shew whether the wound was dangerous or not. It is not more from the behaviour of the Turkmans towards myself, that I formed my opinion of their character, than from their conduct towards each other. They are constantly upon their guard against robbers and thieves of their own tribe; they cheat each other in the most trifling affairs, and like most of the Aleppo merchants, make use of the most awful oaths and imprecations to conceal their falsehood. If they have one good quality it is their tolerance in religious matters, which proves, on the other hand, how little they care about them.

[p.642] The men marry at fourteen or fifteen, the girls at thirteen. Excepting Hayder Aga, and some of his brothers, there are very few who have more than one wife. They celebrate their marriage feasts with great pomp. The young men play upon those occasions at a running game much resembling the jeu de barre, known on the continent of Europe. Their music then consists in drums and trumpets, only, for the Turkmans, are not so fond of music as the Aleppines and the Arabs, nor did I ever meet among them with any of the story-tellers, who are so frequent amongst the Arabs of the desert. Whenever a son reaches the marriageable age, his father gives him, even before his marriage, a couple of camels and a horse to defray, by the profits of trade, his private expenses. At the death of the father, his property is divided amongst the family according to the Turkish law. The Ryhanlu bury their dead in the burying places which are found scattered among the ruins of deserted villages.

My observations were confined to the Ryhanlu. But they will probably in great measure apply to all the large Turkman tribes which inhabit the western parts of Asia Minor, and concerning which I obtained a few particulars.

In the level country between Badjazze and Adena lives a tribe which is tributary to the governors of these two places. They are called Jerid, and are more numerous than the Ryhanlu; they likewise leave their plains towards the approach of summer, and winter in the Armenian mountains, in the neighbourhood of the Ryhanlu. Like the latter they have one head, and several minor chiefs, and they are divided into six tribes: viz. Jerid (chief Shahen Beg), Tegir (chief Oglu Kiaya), Karegialar (chief Rustam Beg), Bozdagan (chief Kerem Oglu), Aoutshar (chief Hassan Beg), Leck (chief Agri Bayouk). The Lecks speak, besides the Turkish, a language of their own, which has no resemblance either to the Arabic, Turkish, Persian or Kurdine; it sounds like the whistling of birds, said the Turkman from whom I obtained this information, and the same remark was confirmed by others. The name of the Leck, renders the supposition probable that they are descendants of the Lazi, a people inhabiting the coast of the Black sea, and who in the time of the great Justinian opposed his forces with some success. Chardin mentions having met descendants of the Lazi near Trebizond, whom he describes as a rude sea-faring people, with a peculiar language.