CHAPTER XI
A CITY OF FAMINE
In ancient Hamadan—With Dunsterville at last—His precarious position—"Patriots" as profiteers—Victims of famine—Driven to cannibalism—Women kill their children for food—Trial and execution—Famine relief schemes—Death blow to the Democrats—"Stalky."
Hamadan stands at a height of six thousand feet at the foot of the Alvand range, which is covered with snow for ten months in the year. In summer, when the tender shoots of the growing corn are pushing above the earth, and the trees are blossom-laden, "every prospect pleases." The reverse of the medal is presented after a brief acquaintance with Hamadan's people, and one sadly recalls that "only man is vile."
It is said that modern Hamadan occupies the site of one of the ancient Ecbatanas of the Greeks, of which there were seven, and that it was the treasure city of the Achæmenian Kings, the place taken and plundered by Alexander the Great when he was "strafing" the Eastern World. However that may be, very few ancient remains have been brought to light. On a hill outside the town are the ruins of a citadel, and a carved stone lion of venerable aspect and crude workmanship crouches by the roadside not far from the British Hospital Compound. This lion may once have adorned the façade of an Achæmenian palace, but he has fallen from royal greatness to plebeian utility; for it is popularly believed that he exercises a protective influence against cholera, smallpox, plague, and kindred ills; and Persian mothers bring their children and seat them on his stone back to obtain immunity from disease. Famine is evidently not included, or so many children would not have succumbed during the hunger days of the spring and early summer of 1918, before that never-failing talisman, the British Commissariat, exorcised the famine fiend.
In Hamadan, too, is buried the celebrated philosopher and physician of Bokhara, Abu ali ibn Sina, better known as Avicenna, the legend of whose fondness for eleventh-century wine and women has come down through all the ages, obscuring whatever reputation he may have possessed as a healer or thinker.
The Jews of Hamadan, and they are numerous, point with pride to the site of the tombs of Esther and Mordecai. It is very uncertain whether either of these personages who figure so prominently in the Book of Esther is buried here. Within an insignificant-looking, weather-worn, stucco-covered shrine in the grip of decay, are two wooden sarcophagi covered with faded paint and bearing gilt inscriptions in Hebrew of verses from the Book of Esther.
The Rabbi in charge, a sallow-faced man with a long white beard, who had seen generations of Gentiles come and go while he kept watch and ward here, assured me that the tomb of this heroine of the Jewish race, who stooped to amatory conquest that her people might live, as well as that of her shrewd relative, the opportunist Mordecai, were of unquestionable authenticity. I will leave it at that.
The arrival of our small party in Hamadan at the beginning of May added a hundred or so additional rifles to the unwelcome and uninvited skeleton force already there. As I related in a previous chapter, General Dunsterville, after falling back from Resht, established himself in Hamadan, his available fighting force being a handful of officers and a baker's dozen of N.C.O's. He was in the midst of a more or less hostile population of about 70,000, one-fourth of whom were Turks or of Turkish origin and sympathies, the remainder being Persian, with a small sprinkling of Jews and Armenians.