And this Tahir Pasha did, to the limits of his not very extensive power. He had no great belief in Reform, or for that matter in anything else (except the straightness of certain English gentlemen whom he knew, and in the genius of his favourite hero, Admiral Nelson): and he held shrewdly that “you cannot build very high, when your bricks are made of wet mud”—and of Mosul slime at that he might have added, though he did not say so in words. Still, under his rule nobody’s lot was intolerable if it was impossible for anybody to be really comfortable; and he had absolutely nothing to learn in the art of keeping a simmering province from boiling over, when the Government had no force to back its orders, and did not wish to have any open row. He was an elderly man, tall and portly; with a “short” face, framed in a close-cropped, white beard, and a shrewd and humorous expression. Nature had given him a most attractive manner; and by virtue of it he had survived two revolutions in the country, being the only man of his rank to do so. When things went amiss, “he sat on the stile and continued to smile,” and almost always found that the method softened the heart of the most furious of cows.
Further, he was singularly cleanhanded, as Ottoman officials go. Even those who declared that he took bribes in his youth admitted that he refused them in his old age—“unless they were very big,” they added. Well, for the bribes, what is an official to do, whose salary, is in the first place, wholly inadequate; and in the second, not paid? When he did not need them, he ceased to take them. “How otherwise? I liked him, I confess,” as Browning put it, of a character that much resembled the old Albanian; whose name (by the way) is, being interpreted, “Innocent,” and who had the reputation throughout his province of never sending a petitioner away dissatisfied, and yet of never making a promise that it was inconvenient to keep.
Moreover, there were times when Tahir Pasha could insist on justice; and the fact is rare in Turkey. In 1910 a particularly dastardly murder was committed in Mosul, the murderer being a Christian by race, a member of the “Chaldaean” or “Uniat Nestorian” Church; while[{78}] the victim was of the older and independent Nestorian body.[38] The murderer was, most deservedly, sentenced to death; but that does not at all necessarily imply execution in Turkey. To begin with, Ottoman law lays it down that in a murder case the next of kin of the victim has the right to require the remission of the death sentence if he desires it. This is no doubt a relic of the days when every man could avenge or forgo his own quarrels as he chose; but in practice, it works out very inconveniently for the man in question, who, in addition to losing his own nearest relative, has to undergo a lot of “peaceable persuasion” from the murderer’s relations, till he chooses to exercise the right. In this case, however, the next of kin, also a Nestorian, stood firm, and claimed his legal revenge.
On this the murderer showed the real depth of his Christianity by sending word to Tahir Pasha that if his life were spared he would turn Moslem. Whether the Mollahs were desirous of obtaining so doubtful a convert does not appear, but at least the Pasha was not eager.
“Of course, I am bound to be glad that he proposes to turn Moslem,” he said grimly. “It may even be better for him in the next world. Still, his head has got to come off in this.”
But now a third difficulty arose, from the fact that the lawful executioner refused to act. Like Koko in “The Mikado,” this Monsieur de Strasbourg declared that he “had never cut off a gentleman’s head in his life, and did not know how it was done.” Under these circumstances, there was nothing for it but to call for a volunteer; and another relative of the murdered man generously offered to do his best, if they would lend him a sabre. “You had better do your best,” said some official, “for if you fetch the head off with one chop you shall have thirty pounds, but if it takes a second blow you go to prison for five years!” Under this stimulus the amateur executioner did his part to admiration, and took the head off finely.
Even so there was an afterpiece to the play, for many folk made the conduct of this murderer a ground for a most[{79}] unfair attack on the Patriarch of the Chaldaean Church, saying, “Now we see what sort of Christian Mar Immanuel trains.” The retort that his Grace made, if not exactly scrupulous, was at least effective. Ignoring the offer to turn Moslem altogether, he declared, “Pupil of mine? He certainly was, and I am proud of him. He is a Christian martyr, for he would not have been executed if it had not been for that wicked Nestorian heretic!” And he cited in proof of his saintliness the “miraculous” light above the grave.
The light was there certainly, a form of phosphorescence that is seen at times above a fresh grave in that dry air, and which is usually taken as a proof of the sanctity of the occupant. We suppose that we may be thankful that this rather doubtful character was not enrolled among the saints.
It will be inferred from the foregoing incident that religion in Mosul is of a somewhat militant type. It is in fact one of the most fanatical towns in the empire; and was surely the only place where men wept openly in the streets on hearing of the deposition of Abdul Hamid, and exclaimed, “Now is the pillar of Islam fallen.”
The establishment of a British Consulate there, after a long interregnum, was either the cause or excuse for an outbreak. Certain Dervishes fastened on the fact that the flagstaff on the Consulate was higher than the crescent on the dome of a certain tomb, called the tomb of Cassim, where a descendant of the Prophet was interred. It was, of course, intolerable that the accursed red-cross flag should flaunt itself above the crescent, and a mob assembled at the Consul’s gates, shouting under the leadership of a Dervish of some fame, “O Fatima, Fatima, daughter of the Prophet, will you not avenge the shame of your descendant?”