The Cradle of Mankind; Life in Eastern Kurdistan

by W. A. Wigram; Edgar Thomas Ainger Wigram

THE “PICTURE ROCKS” OF BAVIAN.

No. 4

In the later days of the Turkish Empire Roman Catholic missions brought education to these Christians; and the Roman Church allowed such portions of these old national churches as could be brought to submit to papal supremacy, to retain their own hierarchy, and their ancient services, expurgated to some extent. All these “Uniat” or “reconciled” bodies are, of course, subject to the Pope, but their members do not, normally, communicate with one another. Historically, one rejoices at the preservation of so many ancient rites and bodies, and the method was sound policy also from the point of view of the proselytizing agents of the Roman Church; for both Nestorian and Jacobite might both be brought to acknowledge the supremacy of a distant Pope, if that Pope’s agents had somewhat to give in the way of protection or education, but neither could ever be brought to associate with “that other” whose tenets his church existed to repudiate.

Thus, with sound prudence, rules about diocesan jurisdiction that hold elsewhere are dropped in the Middle East; and Mosul boasts at least three Roman Catholic bishops, namely, a Chaldaean or “Nestorian Uniat”[39] Patriarch, with several bishops under him; a Syrian Catholic or “Jacobite Uniat”[39a] bishop, subordinate to the Patriarch of that church at Beyrout; and an “Apostolic Delegate,” or Papal Legate, who exercises a general superintendence over all Roman Catholic bishops in Mesopotamia, but has direct spiritual jurisdiction over only the handful of Frenchmen who reside actually in Mosul, and any other “Christian of the Latin rite” who may chance to come that way.

There is also a strong colony of Jews in the city, still living in their ancient quarter; where they have lived, they say (with every appearance of truth), since Sargon of Assyria brought their ancestors from captured Samaria in the eighth century B.C. Like all of their kind they are[{82}] traders, for the place is a centre of local trade. Still, most of the wares in the market, other than raw material like wool and oak-galls, come originally from Manchester or Reading; and one doubts if it would still be possible to find in Mosul any of that fine “muslin” which has carried the name of the city over all the world.

One branch of the local export trade to which we may refer is that in liquorice, a plant that grows wild freely on the plain. The fact that European merchants were anxious to buy it caused much wonderment; but presently the real explanation got known and was accepted by everybody. “King George of England likes nothing so much as sucking liquorice; and he has sent twenty-five millions of English sovereigns to secure a supply that shall last him all his life.”

On the left bank of the Tigris, opposite to Mosul, lies Nineveh, and the one place is approached from the other by a bridge that is thoroughly characteristic of Turkey; it goes, that is to say, some two-thirds of the way over the river, crossing just that part of the bed which is dry for most of the year. As the real channel is approached, the bridge stops abruptly, and a series of pontoon-like barges takes the place of it. This bridge of boats is itself removed in flood-time, and the traveller may then, given good luck, get over in the course of an hour, with the help of a very clumsy ferry-boat. Bridges, it may be said, are regarded in Turkey rather as natural impediments to travel than as assistants to it; and the fact that “there are bridges on that road” is always made an excuse for asking twice the usual fare for a carriage.

The bridge of boats at Mosul is civic property; and is hired out annually to anyone who will farm it, for a very substantial sum. The lessee is expected to keep the whole bridge in order, and charges a toll on every man or animal that crosses the bridge.

Nominally the rent of the bridge is spent, of course, upon the needs of the city, and is handed over to the administrative council for that end. Still, when a city has no pavements or lamps or drainage, or any of the numerous[{83}] unnecessary things that the West indulges in because it has more money than it knows what to do with, after all it has no needs.

A city, too, is composed of citizens, argue the councillors; and what is spent for the needs of worthy citizens is, in a sense, spent for the benefit of the city; and what citizens can be worthier than those who toil daily at the administrative council for the benefit of their fellows? So the bridge rent is spent on those worthy objects; and as yet nobody has raised any other objection than that he was himself left out of the sharing of the plunder. What the narrow-minded Western calls corruption will not cease till public opinion condemns it; and what passes for public opinion in Turkish provinces now can imagine no other way of getting anything done.