Bigger men live to east and west of them; namely our old acquaintance the Sheikh of Barzan, and the Agha of the Sindigul Kurds, whose name is Abdi. When these men have a disagreement with the Government, it is not a[{312}] case of mere outlawry, but of open war; and the Government does not always, by any means, get the better of them. Abdi Agha of the Sindigulis is perhaps the better off; for he has a stronghold of the most magnificent description, to which no Government troops have ever penetrated, and which is a fair set-off against the religious prestige of his neighbour. This stronghold is the lofty tableland of Tanina; a great plateau among the mountains where there are wood and water for the whole tribe, and pasture in abundance for all their sheep the whole summer through. It can only be approached, the tale goes (for no foreigner has ever been allowed to visit its summit), by three easily guarded ascents; and when once the tribe are on the top, they can afford to laugh at any force the Government of the district can send against them. A large force set to blockade the place could not be fed in the district, while small detachments guarding the “ports” could be overwhelmed in detail. No doubt resolute troops could storm it; but the cost would be heavy. The only weakness of the sanctuary appears to lie in this; that neither man nor beast can live on the top of it during the winter. When the autumn gales and early snows begin, come down they must; and in this fact would lie the opportunity of a Government that really cared about the enforcement of order.
Throughout the district there are plenty of Christian villages, almost entirely of the Nestorian church, though at the western end of it some belong to the “Jacobite” body. All of these, however, are rayat or feudally subordinate, to the Kurdish chiefs among whom they live, and are little better in fact than serfs. The principal town of the land, Amadia, is a fully equipped seat of government, with a kaimakam, a lieutenant of gendarmerie, a district judge, and all complete. But his Excellency the Governor knows better than to issue any order that he thinks likely to be unpleasant to his neighbours.
Thus these second-rate Aghas are left pretty much to the freedom of their own will, and the result is as bad a Government as can well be imagined. An important chief,[{313}] like the Sheikh of Barzan, may at least tolerate no other tyrant; and may possibly see that killing off the bees is not the best way of getting a permanent supply of honey. But the small men have their own feuds with one another; their train of dependents that must be supported somehow; and, moreover, a total absence of conscience—or even of the enlightened self-interest that is sometimes its working substitute.
As for appealing to the Government for redress against the Agha’s misdoings that is entirely wasted labour; and anyone who does so is apt to be given a lesson by the feudal chief, to warn others from doing the like.
A description of some of the actual proceedings of two of the chiefs may enable the reader who has no knowledge of the ways of Ottoman officials in the remoter districts to learn what Turkish rule really means. Reshid, the Mira of Berwar, pays so much lip-deference to the Government’s authority that he does condescend to buy from it the right of collecting the taxes from the Christian villages, year by year. This right is usually farmed out by the local officials (the fact that this is expressly illegal has nothing to do with the matter), the contractor paying a fixed sum to the Treasury, and making what he can out of the place. Reshid pays a sum of £5 for each village, which the Treasury gets; and perhaps another £5 goes in bakhshish, to secure that there shall be no competition, or that some flaw shall be found in any other offer. Then he extracts some £200 from each village.[141]
It is possible that this is not much more than double the real assessment; still, even so, one would have thought that it might be worth while for the provincial governments to institute a better system; for when that is done in some thirty villages, it really represents a material loss to a Treasury that is perennially empty. However, you may talk to a Turk till you are tired, and represent to him that his system is simply robbery, and stupid robbery too; and[{314}] that with better methods he would get ten times as much with one tenth the trouble. You are told politely to your face that you are under a misapprehension; though this ignorance of the country is of course pardonable in a foreigner. What is said or thought privately may perhaps be guessed.
In feuds anything may happen. Thus Mira Reshid has a standing feud, of twenty years date now, with the men of Tyari; which is said to have commenced with a treacherous murder under trust in the Mussulman’s own house. It blazed up fiercely in the summer of 1908; and that not without excuse from the Kurd’s point of view, for some Tyari hot-heads (angry at the fact that a proposed reconciliation had not come off) had carried out a raid in Berwar territory, and killed Reshid’s own brother. That he should cut the bullet out of the corpse, and send word to the chief of the Lizan valley (whence the raiders had come) that he was keeping it to shoot through his heart, was fair enough; but he certainly went beyond all ordinary rules in proclaiming a Jehad or holy war of Islam against Christianity, on account of what was at the most a mere tribal feud.
However, all the neighbouring tribes of Kurds rallied at that call, and he was able to muster 8000 men, armed with modern rifles, against the short 1500 flintlocks that was all that the threatened sub-district of Lizan could produce. It says much for the reputation of the Tyari fighters, that even under those circumstances the Kurds dared no frontal attack, and were content to make a long counter-march through the mountains, to reach the head of that Lizan valley (a tributary of the Zab) which the Christians were defending. Then they marched down it, plundering as they went, while the Christians on the hill above saw their houses go up in smoke one after the other.
There was little spoil to take, for the sheep and women had been prudently sent away to the north; but all the usual courtesies of war went by the board that day. Trees were girdled; houses and standing crops were burnt; irrigating channels broken down so as to ruin the crops in[{315}] other fields; and the conquerors marched down the valley to fulfil an old threat that they would “dance in St. George’s Church on St. George’s day,” and thereafter carry fire and sword up the main valley of Tyari; which was not directly concerned in the feud.
This last outrage, however, was averted by one daring deed. The church in question stands at the foot of the side valley, close by the bridge over the Zab that forms the sole passage to the larger threatened district. One chief of the Christian mountaineers saw that a band of brave men might throw themselves into a house which commanded both, and save their brethren, even if they themselves were ruined. He called for volunteers who would come down with him and cut across the Kurdish advance in the effort to gain that point. He would only take men who would put their lives on the hazard, for no quarter is given in Jehad. He got his party; and the writer must be allowed some pride in the fact that one of the members of this forlorn hope was a pupil of his own, a member of the “English School,” named Saypu. They reached their point and prepared for defence; Saypu’s last preparation being to take his own school-books out of the house (which, as it happened, was his own home) and hide them in a hole in the rock. It was the first token of affection he had given for them in his life! The little band made good their defence; and as they had not to deal with the main body of their enemy, they were actually able to carry out a sortie on their foes as they retired. Saypu, who had gone into the fight with a borrowed flint-lock, came out of it with a breech-loader of his own, the fairly won spoil of its late owner! More important than this, however, was the fact that the bridge was held. Though the side-valley was burnt from end to end, the main one was saved from ravage; and the Christians were able to hold their service on the following Sunday in the still undesecrated Church of St. George.